I remember a very good saying that goes something along the lines of "if given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of the game," and that statement can hold true in many games not just mmos. While I do enjoy a bit of optimization myself, it's still more important to play what you find fun.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
That quote is exactly right! And I do agree! 😊
@ttabood74622 күн бұрын
That's precisely why I don't do high end trials. It's always seemed pointless unless I can play my job flawlessly. I enjoy progress but I have no interest in perfection.
@lunaticmode6382 күн бұрын
Except in this case its the developers that do the optimization
@notGeist2 күн бұрын
@@lunaticmode638 Its ok to not speak up if you don't know what you're talking about
@Smarfton2 күн бұрын
@@notGeistYeah, it really is the dev team. Take a good long look at any given tier, look at the gear and stat weights for BiS, look at the stat weights on food and pots, who do you think tossed those items to us, with those very carefuly weighed stats? The rotation optimization is the last and simplest to figure out as you work backwards from the gear. Toolkits are flat, there are no types of items or gear that fundamentally changes any of this in a tier, so, it really does come down to basic math to find what and where things work and will have to be done. And the fact this side gets figured out by players, doesn't mean it's not also already known by the devs and left to us to "figure out." I really think you don't get how restricted this game is designed around. Forget the 2 min meta here for a second, you have no say on the gear, materia, food and pots, rotation you will be using and doing, ever, in any raid patch and haven't since HW for endgame progression. And all the 2 min meta did was streamline their design practices into a very neat and clear process and dance for the projected clear time at the minimum item level and full party comp, that is it.
@Jilhel2 күн бұрын
In this timeline, Cae is here to prevent us turning into the omicrons or the Ea.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Hmm! Maybe the story was trying to tell us something! 🤣
@ittlenanzo77442 күн бұрын
I completely forgot thats the reason why the omnicrons went extinct lol
@pedroscoponi49052 күн бұрын
This is why the job of the designer usually boils down to making sure the most optimal way to play the game is _also_ the most fun for the average gamer, whatever that definiton of "fun" might look like. The devil is, of course, figuring out what "fun" means for your game...
@leighg9o6 сағат бұрын
And 14 is doing neither of these at the moment lol
@alloounou69002 күн бұрын
It's interesting seeing fight design become less rigid and a tad bit more random while staying sequenced. If this is the direction they keep going, we may see dps checks get more lenient in favor of fights that are more difficult to optimize.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
That would probably be a better way to go about it since making the dps checks super strict isn't as interesting as making the fights themselves super complicated! At least in my opinion! 😊
@BlitzkriegOmega2 күн бұрын
Agreed. I don't consider a fight hard because it has a strict DPS check. I consider a fight hard when it is mechanically difficult to solve The mechanics. Barbaricia (endwalker EX4) It's honestly one of my favorite fights for that exact reason. It is a chaotic, fast-paced, Rush of a fight, With lots of moving parts and complications to make the fight difficult, Even though the DPS check is Relatively lenient if you're not playing at minimum IL. Similarly, Thordan EX and Warrior of Light EX are Incredibly fun to go through for the same reason.
@Naoto-kun10852 күн бұрын
I much prefer fights having interesting designs than difficult dps checks!
@leighg9o5 сағат бұрын
And there you have it.. OPTIMIZE.. maybe I just wanna play a fun game not ve fuckjng optimal.
@Osteichthyes2 күн бұрын
Fun fact, in Ragnarok Online the Knight quest had a part where you literally do nothing for an extended period of time, as part of a self control test. Also the Ranger quest FFXI, literally stand still while an old tiger slowly dies. Attacking anything (even if you missed) meant you instantly failed. Old MMO design was wild. Edit: Just realised that they were both job/class unlock quests as well.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Huh, that is a very interesting design choice. I'm guessing it is all explained so not understanding these things is partly about not listening to the quest dialog! 🤔😊
@riaglitta2 күн бұрын
I remember that RNG (ranger) quest! Not the only 'wait' quest either, although the only one I think that was a stand very still quest - unlocking chocobos, the samurai unlock quest... And people complained a lot of course lol
@Osteichthyes2 күн бұрын
@@riaglitta Oh yeah, FFXI was just waiting for the next day for soooo much of it, though I don't remember anywhere else where you had to wait in a particular spot. At least with the other quests you could leave and (try) do something else.
@Tobeh2 күн бұрын
There was an old game I played called Dark Ages by Nexon and the monk class’s legendary weapon was earned by AFKing or “meditating”. Nothing was told to you, either. You would go into a high level dungeon and at the end of a 5-6 hour run you’d find a letter among the loot. With that letter in your inventory your character was now flagged for the class specific event, however it was meant to happen. Tons of theory crafting went into how to get it and then, if memory serves, one day a monk with the letter forgot to log off, didn’t get DCed, and came back hours later with a strange, never before seen weapon in their inventory. Only other one I can remember was the warrior weapon would be found by just walking around the world with the letter in your inventory. Once it was determined that random wandering got the weapon people set up “walking” macros that would walk them around every square of non-hostile or minimally hostile regions.
@danielf.71512 күн бұрын
I forgot who said it, but there's this amazing quote. "If given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of a game."
@Cobra07982 күн бұрын
it was the creators of the civilization series
@CeliLarsonient2 күн бұрын
Hm... I'm starting to think that Shadowbringers is when the general player base started to *really* latch onto to what Speedkillers were doing. I distinctly remember seeing the best Speedkill groups intentionally delaying personal/raid buffs to have "mini bursts" throughout a fight that would add up to more then the typical 6 minute reopener you'd have by pressing everything on cooldown, *and then* still getting a reopener if the fight just naturally lasted long enough despite the Speedkiller's best attempts to kill it so fast it just couldn't happen. MANY of the more community facing ones told people "You don't need to do this to win, the DPS checks are still pretty tame." but that did *not* stop people from suddenly trying to do those mini bursts, which lead to people going "Buff alignment is too haaaaaard!" and that lead to the current 2 minute situation. And, of course, the amount of optimization lower skill tier players attempt to do only got higher from there, both from natural optimization progression, *and* because forcing everything to align means you have to balance around the fact that they do, requiring more perfection out of the players then when things didn't naturally line up often. Big big big paragraph to basically just say, people who wanted to do what the best players do complained about it being hard and made things harder on themselves in the process. Flexibility *that actually is flexible* generally leads to a pseudo-difficulty select. This is only an issue when people don't really understand that that's what's going on. There's also just plain more to 14 then pure damage but people *really* don't like to admit that one. XP
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Indeed! Pretty ironic that simplifying it somehow made it harder in a way! 🤣 I believe a major reason we focus so hard on damage is because all the other things are much harder to "measure", so presented with only one metric we focus on it 🤣
@CeliLarsonient2 күн бұрын
@@CaetsuChaijiCh That would make a lot of sense. Humans have a pretty bad habit of latching on to the one thing we can actually measure, rather then trying to understand the things we can't, even if said thing we can measure can't be measured that well. *coughcritscough*
@ultimatecalibur2 күн бұрын
It more or less originated in Heavensward patches 3.4/3.5 with Cruisechaser's Orb dps check skip and Zurvan's "skip soar or disband" which significantly eased and shortened fights if you could pull it off. Post-HW SE went pretty hard in on fixed timeline boss patterns and then when Shadowbringers removed TP costs it removed pretty much all downtime needs of non casters so fights could only really be shortened by constant optimization rather than by effectively bursting.
@CarToOxX2 күн бұрын
@@CaetsuChaijiCh 1000% agree. As humans we are bias machines. It also applies in business ($ are ez to measure), environnement (CO2 is ez to measure relatively) and so on... Most of the time it is important stuff but lacks nuance and context.
@anthonydelfino61712 күн бұрын
possibly though I remember this being a thing really going all the way back to when ninja was added into the game and the entire mindset changed to apply your biggest damage moves during the trick attack window, even if that meant holding damage skills until then. also I'm not sure I agree with the argument that players thought buff alignment is too hard, and more the developers noticed players doing a thing and adjusted the game around it. this both raises the skill floor, but also makes it easier on them to attempt to balance damage output across jobs. they can easily make changes to move on a 90 second cooldown if needed to change a job's overall damage potency without them being multiplied in every party buff window
@dbull6202 күн бұрын
Your smn equal to pictomancer hypothetical when discussing the utility tax was also much the same conundrum that machinist found itself in for much of shadowbringers and the early part of endwalker. For a long time, mch not only wasn't able to contribute as much damage to the raid as bard and dancer could, they also offered no additional utility to compensate. As such, you didn't see mch used as much because it was objectively better to bring the other two. Before they added dismantle back to mch in the middle of Endwalker, even at times when mch could provide similar raid damage it was still worse than bard and dancer for not offering the same amount of utility.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Absolutely true, and to some degree it is still a problem machinists deal with now! 😰
@qamarqammar76292 күн бұрын
So well thought out, thanks. I prefer FFXIV's rather "static" system because as you point out, more "flexible" ones just end up being optimized anyway - meanwhile I would have to waste my time checking websites to end up in *exactly the same place*. This is time better spent enjoying the encounters, or in my case, fishing. I like the encounters in 14 so works for me.
@4.11322 күн бұрын
Before playing FF14, I mostly played action combat MMOs (TERA, ESO, SOLO, Lost Ark, Tower of Fantasy, BDO etc.) with RNG just about everywhere. It’s very much a situation of pick your poison. Very RNG heavy fights can feel amazing even the 900th time around, but they can also sometimes take hours to clear because RNG is so heavy. It’s also usually a mess to balance class toolkits, though they tend to be more centered around a specific niche or class gimmick and some people take it as a personal challenge to play the “worst” classes and make them the best. You also don’t really get more abilities with expansions so the focus is more on using the given toolkit wisely while the fight complexity goes up. Rotations are still quite rigid but when punishment is death or wiping, “optimal” becomes situational (there are still priorities but some of them come down to skill and personal preference, but there’s also a clear expectation of how to set up gear and what is deemed skilled by other players). FF14 feels a little like it does it the other way around where fights aren’t always centered around the complexity of the encounter but the complexity of the toolkit. I don’t think I know any other MMO that adds new abilities like FF14 😂 Love the game but I can see that with optimization it is a lot less flexible by nature, because it’s not as reactive. I don’t know if introducing more RNG or situational abilities is helpful if it boils down to a social expectation to play the game a certain way rather than a mechanical imperative. It might also be more of a problem of tolerance both between players and in the context of skill prioritization. Whatever ends up happening, it’s bound to anger someone 😂
@1337penguinmanКүн бұрын
Old School WoW used to have this exact problem. Classes in that game had talent trees where you could choose how to build your character. But what happened is the "optimal" builds were quickly figured out and if you wanted to do any group content at all you were pretty much required to use those builds.
@le_luk9 сағат бұрын
These were bad days.
@june_0052 күн бұрын
This video is lovely, like genuinely absolutely 100% on the mark. I personally adore FFXIV's focus on more like.. "relaxed perfectionism" in terms of how the jobs actually play outright. I think it's honestly funny that I've never particularly found a lack of flexibility to be an issue, probably because flexibility in a lot of games is.. ultimately going to be superficial at some point, there is ALWAYS going to be some answer that is superior to another, an option that beats another, so on, so XIV just outright sticking to (mostly) spreadsheetable, static, studiable rotations makes me rather happy as someone who values that form of skill expression.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Thank you! And yes, ffxiv embracing this kind of optimization in its design and skill expression is a way to recognize that flexibility is, at the end of the day, not really very possible anyway!
@InnocentGuillotine16 сағат бұрын
@@CaetsuChaijiChyeah, multiplayer games especially have to pay attention to the downsides of flexibility in design (because there is a push and pull of benefits and downsides to it, ff5 showcases this brilliantly). If someone plays badly it negatively impacts a lot of other people on top of just the inefficient player.
@krisshietala21192 күн бұрын
I wish haste was more relevant and skillspeed/spellspeed was more useful. Faster gcd makes it harder to double or triple weave...SO just make it that sps/sks also reduces the animation lock so you can weave as efficiently on 2.11 gcd as on 2.50gcd.
@Bobuliss2 күн бұрын
Personally, I like that FFXIV doesn't have a ton of randomness in the job design. I enjoy knowing what's coming.
@Taldemarr2 күн бұрын
Great discussion, as always. It's the dillema on modern game design. While this is no solution for the problem, I feel like FFXIV could use some more synergy between abilities (deterministic or not) for a more enjoyable high-end gameplay.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
That could perhaps help. I wonder how that could work 🤔
@cordrac2 күн бұрын
Dominant Strategy is a joy kill in some ways. I think something that would at least placate me would be having these suboptimal or useless abilities just for flavor. As a kid on WoW, I certainly wasn't going to need all my abilities in a fight, but knowing that I had them when running around the world with friends made the game feel more vibrant. Being able to run on water or summon a demon outside the city or cook food on a mage who set himself on fire added something fun. I don't mind, for example, only having Broil on scholar in harder content. I get why when I have to focus on the party's health. But if I'm doing or replaying msq and the npc's are all healing themselves, it feels kind of bland. The world turns into a hub world where all your moves are unclickable because they all exist for an instanced fight and very little exists in a way like, say, ninja freezing enemies or teleporting around. It kind of makes me really feel the use of the term "job" instead of class, because you don't play with a job when you're out with friends, you wait till it's time to work and optimize.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
I very much agree here. Before shadowbringers, some role action options were a bit like this. Like, any mage had the ability to slow an enemy with break. Or drain some hp. Incredibly weak actions, but at least they gave the mild sense that your spell book was a bit more than 30 ways to destroy an enemy, and it is something ffxiv could use more of!
@cordrac2 күн бұрын
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Thank you for the reply! I joined in shadowbringers, and I couldn't quite shake the hub world feeling then either. I hope at least the eventual job identity reworks bring something nice (at this point, I'll take a fake same potency combo for aoe so I can do more than one sound effect and image. give me a butterfly rising from the ground art of war follow up, or let aoe be on 3 instead of 2). PVP is currently the only place I feel a sense of adventure on SCH and AST. And now I'm too busy to focus on high end content so I'm really begging for something to do when hopping around, or for my two-player adventures in variant dungeons or maps to feel fun without me needing to accept that healers don't exist to be fun outside of high end. (Seriously, art of war probably was only melee to give scholar weaving room that it no longer needs). Anyway, thank you again!
@shiro12okami692 күн бұрын
I gonna be completely honest,that was a rly good video explaining the combat in Ffxiv,and in general combat with the background of optimizing encounters etc
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Thank you! 😄 I'm glad to hear that!
@bendonatier2 күн бұрын
When people talk about the lack of flexibility in jobs, my first thought is "the reason specs exist in wow is so one player can hop between roles, not to make you feel better" I know it's changed over time this way and that, but for instance you'd have a priest with a spec for healing and a spec for damage so you didn't have to level two characters to fit those roles. Jobs aren't classes they are specs, with the greater party role really being the classes. Shield healer, pure healer, tank, melee, and ranged. Then you get into just how tightly tuned FFXIV is with the exception of picto, and how often times jobs play very differently doing the same things, and I feel like FFXIV is probably fine. Is there a better choice between sage and scholar? Probably. Would I take different ones to different fights because they are more comfortable on some than others? Explicitly. Have I leveled both? Yes.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
You are exactly right that ffxiv giving the flexibility of switching jobs as you please essentially make them the ability to adjust to the fight. It is strange how with a game like wow, it seems more... "normal" to be okay with switching spec for the encounter, where in ffxiv it feels less normal somehow. Not to say, there are definitely players of wow that only want to play one spec of their chosen class, too!
@bendonatierКүн бұрын
@CaetsuChaijiCh Between having to level and if you're a melee or phys ranged regear in order to switch that hesitation doesn't surprise me. Aesthetic also plays a large role I'm sure, but by the time you are worried about aesthetic we have once again left the realm of perfect efficiency, and entered players making the choices they want.
@Cathy56142 күн бұрын
My favorite example is with healers actually. Yes the AST old card system was trash in raids but it certainly was more flexible and many non-raiders loved it Same with the SMN/SCH pets. They were very "neat" and the shared toolkit from ARC was "neat". Most issues these game mechanics had weren't that big of a deal in casual content. But in raids managing pet AI on top of all the problems DoT's had was just a nightmare. I kind of miss that but I understand why it's not around anymore. Though the unfortunate side effect is that now I've got to play with Raid-optimized healers in content that only requires like half of said optimization and I have nothing else to use my attention on. I didn't play Tanks much before SHB but I remember the whole tank-stancing Dark Arts thing was very difficult to get into. Removing both might've been a bit too much. Now DRK is just a different flavor of WAR.
@GayLPer2 күн бұрын
DRK feels very different from WAR though, in actual gameplay. It feels like their similarities only exist on paper.
@vanessacys2 күн бұрын
this problem also relevant to Monster Hunter series since like forever. which is kinda sad.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Yeah, I remember this exploded forward when world came to pc and players made dps meters too. It mightve already been a thing before that, but dps meters have this special kind of effect! 😰
@vanessacys2 күн бұрын
@@CaetsuChaijiCh sadly it's already a thing way before World. Monster Hunter has very large variation in term of gear set, skillsets, weapons, but in the end 95% of those skill will never seen any daylight unless you're do meme run. This obssive over optimization is getting much worse since they introduce some instance with DPS check in Iceborn.
@liasprings65022 күн бұрын
It's also great to talk about this whenever ultimates come up because most of these points apply on full uptime fights. And on flights with frequent downtimes like ultimates, the current kits of all combat jobs have plenty of optimization to offer already. It's just that very few people actually look at the numbers themselves and go with what others have calculated out. Dragoon for example benefits a lot from purposely breaking its combo strings at several points in DSR and very likely in FRU as well, and forced misalignment of cooldowns is always a joy to spreadsheet around as someone who enjoys that.
@biggrayalien47912 күн бұрын
I remember when I first started the game back in Heavensward I liked to play through to cap before looking up optimized rotations. When I brought this up to peers, they said, "we walk paths that have already been tread," meaning don't bother learning organically, because people before you already did, so doing so is a waste of time(and I guess their time as well). I still prefer to just wing a job until I hit cap, and then look up inspiration and optimization. It's how I learned the really cool and seemingly off-brand double stardiver setup for Dragoon, and it felt good to discover it because I was already so personally well invested in the job due to my own organic experience.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
The best way to hone your skill in understanding and figuring out how rotations work on your own, is to actually do it! Some players like to check guides gradually as they go just to see if they're on the right track, but genuinely as long as you try your best, I can't see a problem with figuring it out as you go on the leveling journey! 😊
@thesunthrone2 күн бұрын
I think this is a question you have to answer for yourself - what do you seek from mastery in a game? Do you want to just "beat" it? Or are you more interested in cracking the puzzle open and draw satisfaction from understanding how it works, and the actual "winning" is secondary for you? Personally, I simply find more interest in the second - because that is something that's transferable across games. Understanding how mechanics work and WHY helps you with all games, not just this one. I am having lots of fun revisiting games I played ten years ago and now just completely breaking them open because of this transferable game knowledge. I never used to "know" how to make builds - now I do because I'm primed to look for synergies thanks to the many games that have tasked me to do so.
@biggrayalien47912 күн бұрын
@@thesunthrone I find the latter one much more engaging, but I also find that in order to truly get _to_ that latter question, I have to be able to _do_ the former. Now, this can sort of be applied to the higher end content, because in order to get to that content, I had to "beat" the prior content. And understanding how mechanics work and _why_ they work like that is pursued through general content and gameplay. It is the application of that latter question that helps higher end content feel challenging and rewarding. If, for instance, I had just been given a level 100 Dragoon and been told that I was going to play the most recent ultimate, learn the mechanics, I would be unable to reach the latter because I would be stuck in the former, the "just trying to beat it" phase of learning and understanding. I might be able to beat it, but I wouldn't have the investment from days of practice and learning the class to get to that point. There are so many layers of being ready for raiding that casual players just won't ever be interested in, it goes beyond just that question. This is where shotcalling can help a lot of players, because if you are good at following directions, you can turn the analytical part of your brain off and just focus on something else. But it can also be a double-edged sword, because if someone's not shotcalling, suddenly you don't know what to do, even if you've done it a few dozen times already. But if you're not personally comfortable with your own movement, if you lack confidence, if you lack motivation or drive, if you can't take the time to improve solely for yourself and no one else, getting to those two questions is like asking a child if they want to eat their ice cream now, or wait until later to get a whole tub of ice cream, and their favorite cake along with it.
@ittlenanzo77442 күн бұрын
I feel like this video brings up a good point about how options wouldn't help with job design since people will always seek the best way to play. I continue to hear about iobs feeling similar, mainly the tanks and healers and most suggestions boil down to just adding stuff to make them stand out more rather than think about other alternatives.
@Zharf2 күн бұрын
as said, trying to provide options for players is just going to be pointless because players just gravitate towards the "best", there might be some design space to make encounters look for something specific from a job that's "non-standard"... but if that's too good then you risk alienating other jobs from the encounter or you give every job the same thing, it's a tough problem but I don't think there's ever going to be a solution that satisfies the player base's desire for "complexity" or "choice"
@pleaserespond3984Күн бұрын
Regarding skill trees - as you said there will be an optimal build and either you're playing it or you're kicked out of partyfinder. I honestly think more jobs is a better solution, just think of them as preset skill trees.
@masterplusmargarita2 күн бұрын
The Elementalist is my favourite class in Guild Wars 2. You switch between 4 elements, each completely replacing every ability on your bar - fire burns, water heals, lightning hastes, earth hits hard and bleeds. It's super fluid, versatile and fun in casual open world content. If you want to play the class in hard content, though, you're built to stay in one element. Maybe two. And then you just hit a pretty standard rotation like anyone else. It's maybe the most boring class to play well (or was, when I played the game way back), because it's designed around a varied kit and you ignore 75% of it, since your whole stat and gear build is specialized on doing the thing the element does. It feels wrong to play the class right, and that's because it's a class that's completely oriented around flexibility and player expression, which is close to incompatible with optimization. (This is all from way back in the day when I played GW2 in like... 2016 or something. It may well have changed, so any current player please chill)
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
All I know on this subject is that the various sub classes added to elementalist over the years have different ways of motivating hopping between elements for different reasons so it doesn't become fully one element elementalist, but I don't know enough on the subject to be sure! 😅 But the take away that the optimal way to play something is incredibly Grey and boring compared to what it could have been is very understandable!
@Kylesico912x6 сағат бұрын
These days you do use all elements but usually only one or two spells from each with some exceptions based on role. So same problem different form.
@SuzakuBlitz9 сағат бұрын
Take my Like, that was an enjoyable listen xD I remember back in the HW days when 'optimal' tank gearing was to use STR accessories with VIT melds since tanks with higher strength would generate more enmity and thus need to rely less on their enmity combo to keep hate and can keep laying on damage with their DPS combo instead. The trade off was that you had less HP but good CD management can help you get through that for specifically mass trash pulls. Your lower HP meant less buffer HP though, so if you messed up and your healer couldnt compensate, the party went splat. The amount of debates this gearing choice sparked was immense and eventually lead to the current accessory locking and change in materia utilizations.
@BjornStatenguardКүн бұрын
The reality of human existence, is that optimization baked in. And jobs must be balanced so that none are so significantly weaker than the others, because if it is...people will optimize that shit out of their groups.
@ryskar_2 күн бұрын
It reminds me of how enmity management in FFXI was a group effort; this was more approachable since the gameplay was much, MUCH simpler, often boiling down to auto attacks and using a weapon skill after building 100 TP (yep, weapon skills weren't abilities you pressed but things you spent meter on). When I played Dark Knight (a squishy DPS) for example, I had to judge when to use Souleater, because the mob would be stuck on me until it died - so I'd have a macro telling the healer I was actually using it. If I used Souleater too late, I would get little value and it became wasted; conversely, if I used it too early, I'd eat dirt and the *healer* might end up being next because they had to spam cures to keep me alive, angering the monster (this was more applicable to non-WHM healers, since WHM's Cure V accrued *significantly* less enmity than RDM's Cure IV.) This was also what gave Thief its primary niche, aside from increasing droprates; doing damage but dumping the enmity onto the tank via Trick Attack. Enmity was such a weird thing in XI because it came in multiple forms: there was enmity that decayed more gradually (like Provoke), and enmity that would spike, but fall off very quickly (for example, Monk's Boost skill). While this was a cool mechanic in a game with much more simplistic gameplay like FFXI, I can't speak as to how it works/doesn't work in other MMOs. Overall, XI was sort of the opposite of current XIV. No tank stances, instead you had to do things like use Provoke, Flash, deal damage, etc. I can still remember turning around as a melee dps and not attacking because the monster started looking my way too frequently... seriously, DRK players were *infamous* for grabbing too much hate and dying! That and whiffing all their attacks.
@GCavalcanti16042 күн бұрын
I played GW2 for a long time, and to a certain extent "hardcore", and I can guarantee, the community will exclude you if you don't play with the correct build, even the most ok content, raid? forget! Ff is not perfect, if you intend to play an ultimate, for example, the community expects certain things from you, but not having the false "freedom" is much better. I'm rehearsing my first ex/savage attempts now that I have a level 100 character, and seeing about it, if I play "ok" I'll still be able to not only get into one of those fights, and very rarely will I get kicked out of PT. And there's another detail, I don't expect me to be able to play well with all the professions, but knowing that the game won't create one that I need an intensive course to be able to play ok makes me feel very calm, I see a lot of people complain of accessibility, but when you're an adult, with work, college, family, not being "penalized" because I can't play 90 hours a week is a blessing! I don't expect to be tier 1 ultimate with any profession, but I know that if I study the guides, train a little I can be... ok with almost all the current ones available even with little time to play per day, and that all my effort will be rewarded one day
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Indeed, a huge part of what draws me to the game is also that it doesn't expect you to grind and grind every day to have a chance to be relevant. Having jobs of all difficulty levels is also great since there's at least something for everyone!
@trustyTankadin2 күн бұрын
Lots of great points. Awesome video!
@shadowofchaos7252 күн бұрын
I really enjoyed listening to this entire thing despite me having nothing to add. But I think it was genius the way they removed tank stance in Shadowbringers. I think I learned from your channel way back that they effectively made the tank damage reduction from the former stances a "stealth passive" compared to DPS. So the players never have a perception that they got the reduced damage. Despite most of the vocal people in Stormblood about dps stances being never knowing they just had the former reduced damage tank stances forced on them lol
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Yep that's correct! It is weird to have a hidden -20% damage done on tanks for so long though! 😂
@Lenvoran2 күн бұрын
There's a concept that I like to think about when considering customization in games. The idea of Comparables versus Incomparables. Comparables are anything that can be directly numerically weighed against each other. You can use math to find out what is correct because the only basis on which they can be judged is matched perfectly. If you can choose one ability that deals 500 damage to a single target or another that does 1000 damage to a single target, these are directly comparable making one an objectively correct choice. Easy peasy. Most MMO choices fall into this category. Directly compare damage options, mitigation options, or resource economy options one for one and then math from there. Even XIV has it to a very minor extent in sub stat prioritization. Incomparables are things that cannot be directly compared through numerical analysis. Which is better? A 20 yard dash or the ability to put a crowd of enemies to sleep? In XIV this is a really easy question. There is no typical content that warrants the use of any longterm crowd control, but imagine there was. What if there were trash packs that could just kill a tank, and therefore the party, without some of them being controlled for a not insignificant period of time? Then you might evaluate the power of these two abilities differently, not because one is definitely better in all circumstances but instead because they are uniquely strong in specific circumstances. Making players chose between Comparables has the exact problem that is stated. Over Optimization strikes and turns into a series of fake decisions since one choice is right and all others are wrong. Especially if they're perfect one to one comparisons. Incomparables can make the choice about the utility the situation requires. Or even make situations where choosing exclusive damage options isn't correct. Maximizing AoE DPS isn't the best option if everything being allowed to attack at once would be guaranteed to result in a wipe. However, Incomparables are much harder to design into a game. You have to challenge players on multiple fronts, making them manage encounters in more ways than just dealing the most damage in the least amount of time. You have to be more willing to let players fail and make them experiment. I think more Incomparables could be introduced across the genre, but I'm just not sure that's compatible with current MMO design philosophies, nor am I sure that such a thing would make those MMOs more successful. In the end, it's a business, and if the thing that brings in more players is more controlled designed then that's probably what they should do. Whether that's to my tastes or not.
@xakuray55222 күн бұрын
12:50 regarding the whole discussion about options. I agree that trying to make alternatives solely based around damage is completely pointless as it only leads to correct and wrong options. (same with enmity honestly) What if the alternatives were utility based instead. As a tank, what if you could choose for your 3 step finisher between +20 potency or another skill, slightly less strong, but that gives you a heal, or a 5s defense boost, or turns for 10sec into an oCGD that gives you such an effect. Or for paladin, what if divine might only lasted 10 seconds, and you had an alternative that was slightly stronger but melee only (no divine might buff). In both cases, yes, in a vaccum, it would be optimal to always use the slightly stronger skill. But if you need the utility the alternative provide, it is there and can be the better option in certain circumstances. If you will be forced out of melee range as paladin, and you know when it's going to happen, you can make the decision to take the slightly lower potentency alternative, in order to get the utility from the holy spirit free cast and win out in dps as a result, from a conscious and knowledge based decision one has to make.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
That is also a way to go about it. The reason why I focused exclusively on damage in my example is because if we take your two examples, as the game is right now, the option that does more damage will be the one you use 99% of the time if the alternative is a defensive property. This is probably partly because jobs in general have too many defensive options, they don't need (at least right now) any extra, and absolutely not for the price of dps! 😰 For the paladin example, there would definitely be more to talk about but it also relies on how big the damage difference is. Obviously using the ranged option when you can't use a melee option is always optimal, but the alternative path is that paladins find ways to not NEED the ranged option, similar to how the three other tanks get by. A classic example is how red mages have to plan out their melee combos as they both serve as a damage spike, but also the greatest mobility option they have. However I do have a red mage in my savage static, who has, in broad strokes, stated that this rarely comes up as a problem simply because you do have other mobility options (in other words, where tanks and raid teams have plenty of defense, so sacrificing damage for defense is considered unwise, red mage has enough mobility that sacrificing damage for mobility is also not required) That is to say, even these more interesting flex options would ultimately become "the damage option is best, the alternatives are optimized out because you can use skill to possibly make them unneeded" It would however, I should clarify, be a lot more fun if our options were more than damage and damage, even if the not damage option was rarely used! 🤔😊
@raarasunai48962 күн бұрын
So what I hear you saying is the complexity that the elitists clamor for would just result in them basically doing the same thing they already are while having new things to yell at casual players for not doing
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Kind of! More complex rotations would indeed do as you described, but even trying to just add more "options" to rotations would equally just mean there are more "wrong choices" in the eyes of optimization! 😅
@MofubeanКүн бұрын
Great video! I think that interesting discussions about FFXIV's game design are rare, probably exactly because the game is design to be so rigid that there isn't much creativity in what we could discuss. Personally, I think that the #1 killer of "flexibility" in FFXIV is the existence of the 2 minute meta and the existence of raid buffs in general. It is the one thing that EVERY job in the game must adhere to, which I believe causes it to be the biggest reason why jobs feel so homogenized. While I can't say that the removal of raid buffs would solve this game's issue, I think it would be interesting to see what happens if they spent an expansion with all raid buffs removed, and instead for buffs and resources to be all personal. Along with that, I think introducing more RNG elements to rotations as well as cooldowns that don't fall under 15/30/60/120 seconds would be great. While I've only casually tried WoW, I found Affliction Warlock to be fascinating due to being a DoT job with DoT timers that lasted something like 12, 18, and 30 seconds which gave it more of a DoT "juggling" feel as opposed to simply refreshing at the same time every time like what BRD does every ~45 seconds. Likewise, the fast-paced and random rotation of Enhancement Shaman made it feel a lot more dynamic compared to DNC giving procs are very predicable times. I believe that if jobs weren't so restricted to playing around 2 minute buffs, we would see a lot more job-specific and fight-specific optimizations and decision making open up. While some people might say that it would take away from the teamwork aspect of raiding, I think that the emphasis on team work should have more to do with fight design, utility, mitigation, and healing which is its own can of worms. I personally don't think that coordinating 2 minute buffs is a particularly interesting or challenging form of teamwork, so I don't think FFXIV would lose much by letting that go in favor of increasing the complexity and skill ceiling of individual DPS.
@thesunthrone2 күн бұрын
In a game where you win by getting the boss HP to 0, everything is a math problem. As such, there is usually ONE correct answer that gets you there the fastest. The amount of variables do not matter, and if winning is all you care about, you only ever have ONE way to play. I have played a fair bit of MMOs other than FFXIV (WoW being my biggest timesink to this day), but I have also played a lot of tabletop games that involve dice. It's in these games that you truly see how, despite there being a myriad of options, dozens of splatbooks, hundreds of builds and full randomness of the dice rolls at play... there are still optimal ways to build and play if all you care about is winning. They become math problems with added algorithms for decision making and probability percentages to try and account the dice - but they are STILL just math problems. As such, a game of Warhammer 40k tabletop often becomes less about figuring out your unique army, and more about optimizing the maximum amount of weaponry that can deal with the broadest amount of enemy forces. Each edition shakes that up and changes the main big answer, and of course, fundamentals of decision making, movement and deployment are all crucial - but after those ephemeral, uniquely human things are taken out, it's a math problem. The game has gone through many many editions and changes, each with developers doing their best to try and reign in the big winners and boost up the underperformers. Currently the game is rather simplified from its many incarnations, and the developer's goal is to have all armies be between 45%-55% win rate, with frequent points updates to shuffle them back and forth. But in order to make things manageable, they have significantly scaled back on the amount of rules and customization each unit has. Likewise, the sci-fi skirmish game Infinity is similar - the N3 edition that I had most experience in held an absolute wealth of units and gear options available to every single faction, and the amount of rules for each that you had to retain in your head was truly staggering. And yet, over the course of that edition, an "optimal" strategy that worked for most factions still emerged - get 20 orders, have groups of lean universalists over expensive specialists, and ideally, as many of them able to camouflage as possible - because camouflage in that edition required a full order expenditure from your opponent to remove, even if their expensive specialists could see right through it. The developers could only try and change the prevailing strategy with how they adjusted units and builds and gave seasonal buffs to certain units, because the top players always found a new prevailing strategy, and while the game remained extremely complex to a layperson, to a seasoned player it was very much solved. All this to say - both of these tabletop games can be played in a relaxed and fun atmosphere. You can take wacky units, you can perform weird strats, you can catch opponents off guard by playing tactics they simply have not seen for a long time. You can have fun - but you are NOT guaranteed to win. If you want to play competitive PVE, you have to pick the outcome you want - balance OR variety. Variety means imbalance, which means there are clear winners and clear losers, which in turn means that if you want to win, there isn't really a choice at all. You will play the top class with the optimal rotation and you will like it, or you'll lose. Balance, in turn, means lack of immediately visible choices and at a certain point of game knowledge and game mastery appears as homogenization - because that is what happens when the developer is tasked to keep everyone on a similar page. But when there is that coveted single digit percentage difference, you are free to choose whoever you want to play as. So long as the game is competitive (is MADE competitive by its players), whatever "builds" or "talent trees" or "random rotations" the developers try to come up with are only problems to be solved, and become set in stone soon after. That's what the coveted "optimization" that a fair few FF content creators like to throw around really means. It's nothing more than a temporary math problem that WILL be solved. Don't enshrine it as some great good design goal. See it for what it is - an illusion.
@callbackspannerКүн бұрын
There will always be an optimal solution in any game. If your aim is more variety in how things play out, having more niche options is the way to go. Having jobs run on priorities which themselves interact more with what is happening in a fight creates a much wider variety of gameplay experiences and differentiates one fight from another. Sure repeating the same fight and optimizing it will have you doing the same thing each of those times, but in another fight it may be completely different. A base priority system mapping out into per-fight optimization means there is always something new to learn every time a new fight comes out. Compare that to the strict 2-minute rotations we have now. Per-fight optimizations are rare and minor. You are expected to repeat the same actions with little to no variance no matter what the fight itself is doing. It's dull. It wears on you much quicker. If we had several niche options, each of them would only need occasional opportunities to shine, yet it would vastly expand variety between fights. And between jobs as well, it would be much healthier for balance if the rankings were different for every fight. One downtime-heavy fight favors PCT, while a high uptime fight favors BLM, and a fight with chaotic movement during burst windows favors RDM and SMN. Every job could feel valid knowing they have a fight they are legitimately optimal for. And while the heaviest of speedkill optimizers would pick a different comp for every fight, most normal players would stick to one main, especially given how gearing works in this game, and even for optimizers having more jobs to learn and play for different fights is a much more engaging variety of gameplay. You can't fight the trend towards optimization. But you can build a system where the act of optimization itself is more fun and engaging for the players doing it.
@soulslife52822 күн бұрын
People will always gravitate towards the best. Best examples are Metas in shooters. Even if a weapon has a time to kill even 0.05 sec faster than an other it will be the most used regardless of the fact it makes no real difference with ping and reaction times.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Exactly. Some players might choose the "worse" option out of preference (aesthetics maybe?), but as you improve you'll eventually probably end up choosing the objectively superior option, however little difference it might make
@mattik19242 күн бұрын
great video and i agree to most of the stuff you say here. The only thing i see different is diversity which lead to choices that are no choices. Well i agree in the scope of ff14 beacause ff14 is mostly static, but if you include other games with build diversity i think this topic is much bigger. on one side there are games with so many build options that there its practically impossible even for many many players to find "THE" optimal build, instead there are a couple for each playstyle. The other thing is RNG in content, where you cant for 100% be sure which enemys you will encounter, or in which composition they will come, here again it will lead to more then just one optimal way, Then there are games with a very long powercurve where most of the players ar enot even close to the "achievable" power. then theres pvp games where the enemies are able to actively counter your build, leading again, to more then 1 optimal playstyle. and last but not least.... building and experiencing abilites and playstyles is for some people a genre in itself. i love old games like COH or DDO just for their build diversity. one of the best "healing" moments i had in ff14 where probably no one in the group even realised what was going on, was with with a lowlvl group in aurum vale where i used the old card system options of the astrologist to recover my manapool so heavily that we didnt wipe despite all guys standing in bad stuff over and over. but of course in "optimal" play, these gameplay options where useless. again great video, good luck
@GamerNymКүн бұрын
There's another factor you don't really bring up in this video. FFXIV is a multiplayer game, and by that vein alone there is a social pressure to be "perfect" lest you be labelled as harassing the people around you. Consider also that FFXIV is a Japanese game, where similar such social pressures are far more ingrained into society. It's easy to understand by that why FFXIV is as streamlined as it is. Every point of "flexibility" introduces a "fake" choice, and each choice introduces a potential point of friction between players with no significant upside. In fact the only potential upside is it's another factor to optimize, a process that only gets to be done by scant few people (
@davidpower5710Күн бұрын
But sadly they are the loudest and so lack self reflection a good chunk of the time
@adamrussell95732 күн бұрын
Funny that this was posted today, I happened upon a forum thread yesterday on the black mage changes leading up to DT and the destruction of the nonstandard rotation. It was a largely stupid fight on how low level and non-black mage players (atleast those who interacted with the thread) were genuinely happy for the changes, because it forced black mage down a static rotation like the rest of the jobs. Because they didn't like that the absolute ***pinnacle*** of black mage play, a level they weren't even close to interacting with to begin with, was able to deviate from standard play unlike the rest of the jobs. But in reality, nonstandard was a marginal gain at best, and mostly was there to give black mages more to work with and higher mobility as a result. It was and IS still completely viable to do standard, even at the highest level of content, and that form of optimization is just there for people who enjoy it.
@Sipricy2 күн бұрын
There's a good amount of FFXIV-specific knowledge here! I think it can be easier to understand this kind of situation by abstracting pieces of it through board games. If you think about board games with no hidden information like Chess, Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect Four, and Go, there's always technically a correct move to make in any given situation, even if the possibility spaces makes that sort of thing impossible to compute for a game like Go. The simplest games here (Tic-Tac-Toe and Connect Four) are "solved", meaning that you can determine who will win in those particular games before they even start, given that both players make the best moves possible (it's a tie in Tic-Tac-Toe and it's the first player in Connect Four). For Chess and Go, the possibility space is too large for us to have solved them as of this comment. It's expected that Go will never be solved. Solved games typically aren't very interesting though, so the solution for this is introducing hidden information (info which only one player/team has access to) and/or some amount of randomness (like drawing cards from a deck or tossing dice to determine your available moves or the results of said moves). Hidden information, like unknown cards in your opponent's hand in a trading card game, means that you can't know for sure what the optimal play is. Despite this, there are ways of guessing what your best move is, based on the current state of the game and knowing what your opponent has played earlier on. Randomness is another solution, but comes in two forms: Input Randomness, where you get random game pieces or game actions to use and you decide what to do with them (like drawing a card from a deck, or how Astrologian in FFXIV used to work when they drew cards), and Output Randomness, where you get some kind of random result after deciding on a game action (like rolling dice for damage, or whether or not you get a critical hit in FFXIV). Square Enix actually does employ a small amount of randomness to their fight design. They utilize Input Randomness, where players will be given some kind of randomized information and they need to decide what to do with it. A good example of this is M4S, which has you solving these "puzzles" while also going through your rotation. In this fight, you're getting lots of debuffs, where the kind of debuff itself might be random and/or it might have a random timer on it. Of course, the randomization is only within a small possibility space (you might get one of two timers, or one of five kinds of debuffs), but it's still randomness. Since hidden information can't really be used for FFXIV, the only thing they could really do to make a class flexible would be to introduce some kind of randomness to a class. They already do this with Dancer, to an extent. I don't think people would actually find this fun though; people already get upset about how crits heavily determine how much damage you'll deal and how they're completely out of your control, and this kind of randomization is no different. I think people just don't know that rigid rotations are simply the better kind of design, and that classes like Dancer should be few and far between (though I think that having a couple of these kinds of RNG classes is good for variety).
@anthonydelfino61712 күн бұрын
I feel like they had this to a degree with the original implementation of machinist where the job was layers of RNG on top of each other, with a couple job specific actions on cooldowns that could force the RNG to go in the direction you wanted it to for optimal damage. But it was a system that didn't seem to be much enjoyed, which is why they removed it.
@tanhongyi71802 күн бұрын
If we put ourselves in the shoes of the developer, how do you think you can incentivize options? The answer is, you don't. If I were to, let's say, designed a tankbuster damage so high that no mitigations of current meta could let the tank survive and it ignores EHP, and then I coupled that outcome with an instant enrage condition if the tank dies to it. When playerbase comes back decrying how impossible it is to overcome that, and I were to say "It's simple, we designed that damage with Gemdraught of Vitality in mind". What do you think the response from the community will be? No doubt the community will raise their pitchforks and criticize the hell out of it. But here's the thing : If Gemdraught of Vitality is so undesirable and pointless, why does it exist in the first place? Being a former tryhard gamer I know this to be true to myself : Tryhard gamers always leans towards choices that grants them a sense of superiority and control over the understanding of the game. We compare and optimize for superior stat choices, we mod away undesirable aspects and datamine information from the game. It's always the hidden desire to validate the need to overcome the limitations the game imposes on you, because it feels rewarding when you'd achieved that peak. That is also why critical damage is the most popular stat modifier in any game. So if you were YoshiP and his team, as a developer, you can't shove forced alternatives down your consumer's throat. Because it breaks that illusion of superiority, and basically it's what most people describe it as "game's not fun that way". It's a contradiction and paradox of a gamer's mind : They don't like being forced to take alternatives, but they want alternatives so that they can make superior choices out of it.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Indeed, and even if you DID make a situation where vitality potions where mandatory, that wouldn't add any choice anyway, since it simply specifies what the optimal path is by restricting it to just one path! Case in point, sometimes players can be annoyed by mechanics that REQUIRE a specific kind of limit break to get past, because it is the exact opposite of options!
@siosilvar2 күн бұрын
one sentence in, immediate like
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Thank you! I hope the rest of the video adequately discusses that first sentence as well! 😁
@siosilvar2 күн бұрын
@@CaetsuChaijiCh It did indeed! Matches up pretty well with my intuition as an optimizer & observations as a game designer. The hardcore players will optimize the fun out of any choices you put in front of them and, even if the culture is so elitist that they try to hide what they're doing from the rest, everyone else will follow suit eventually. This is especially true for an MMO, where you have the social pressure from some players who will say you're wasting their time not showing up with the perfect setup to group content. I will say that you *can* sustain some level of build variety by giving choices that accomplish the same thing in different ways. I could imagine, say, MCH choosing between halving Chainsaw's cooldown and getting a potency boost to Blazing Shot. But even if they're generally equivalent, there's still always a better choice... the best you can do is getting them close enough that they're better in different fights. The player agency (even if it's ultimately an illusion) would make some folks happier, but it requires so much more dev effort that I totally understand why Squenix has never tried it and SpS vs. crit is the closest we get.
@Kwstr422 күн бұрын
the solutuon is to also optimize your friends, if they are strict about how you play, you need to upgrade to more optimal ones who are too busy with their own characters to critique yours lol
@FloatingGhost2 күн бұрын
honestly yep the solution really is to ignore it I'm a machinist main, and prepping for FRU was an exercise in ignoring both other people, as well as the little voice in my head saying "nooooo but bard does 0.4% more meaningless damage" it's been a hard few weeks ignoring that one
@kyrs.76872 күн бұрын
Great video! Whenever balance comes up in FFXIV, I always think about the job design in FFXI, where many of the technical details were obfuscated. I have no idea if this was the intention or not, but it made optimization very challenging, allowing for a lot of flexibility in the early years. Of course, players extensively tested the game systems and eventually uncovered even the most obscure mechanics, and FFXI's optimization grew in tandem with every new discovery.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
That is an interesting point and I have recently heard a lot of fascinating things about builds in ff11 as well! 😊
@trevorromein142 күн бұрын
The chase for Optimal DPS is a Cancer in Video Games that, while good for the heavily dedicated gamer, is a complete buzzkill for anyone not in the top 10%."
@hoodiesticks2 күн бұрын
Optimal play will always end up being inflexible, but MMO players won't be doing hardcore raids during every minute they play the game. The approach I'd like to see is jobs that can be flexible and fun outside high-end content, but then drifting towards a set "optimal" rotation in high-end content that is also designed to be fun. Sounds like a lot, but it's kind of in the game already. Look at Blue Mage - spells like Choco Meteor or the direct HP manipulation spells only work outside high-end content, and the challenge of putting together a hotbar for whatever specific piece of content you're currently doing is pretty interesting. I think BLU proves that you *can* have build diversity and flexible options in an MMO that encourages mastery, you just have to segregate them from the hard content to an extent.
@Jedi44MasterКүн бұрын
Souls games changed my mindset for this design problem. People do challenge runs all the time and it lets the player choose how they want to engage. Optimal paths will always exist, the problem is when you are forced to take them when you dont want to and the biggest source of this is multiplayer games. You COULD build/play sub-optimally and consider it a challenge run if you need that brain rewire, but in multiplayer games it requires others to agree to that.
@fawkes63522 күн бұрын
This is very well-said. Personally, I was never too bothered by the lack of skill trees in FFXIV, if only because I knew I'd obsessively try to match whatever the community considered optimal. Even in other games where I only play casually, I tend to go for the optimal builds; for example, my Pokémon all have their optimal EV builds even if I never play competitively with them, just because I want to bring out their full potential. (It does help that modern Pokémon games make EV training much more accessible, but still.) I do have mixed feelings about high-end FFXIV encounters having much less downtime than normal encounters, though. On the one hand, it makes the bosses feel less dynamic than their normal mode counterparts; on the other, waiting for Brute Bomber to stop his fifth or sixth Lariat Combo so you can get uptime will get aggravating, especially if you're trying to prog the fight. It's got pros and cons.
@madkitten52 күн бұрын
Reminds me of that mogtome event where all alliance raids gave tomes. I like alliance raids, so I just spammed the roulette and got a fun mix. Until someone crunched the numbers and realized that Syrcus tower gave the most tomes/time spent. And then the roulette was filled with syrcus tower. I just wanted to have fun in random alliance raids and maybe help fill out queues for people doing their stories.
@linhilde19 сағат бұрын
When I was a Monster Hunter speedrunner, actively diffusing discourse from people who "hate meta," I'd literally tell people: "Understand that the meta will always exist; there will always be a 'best', but that doesn't mean your way of playing is invalid. Just play what you want, how you want, and make it work. If you want to optimize your meme, do it. If you want to optimize in the meta, do it. But do NOT hate non-meta, do NOT hate pro-meta." I was a Gunlance enjoyer who loved ledge tech and snowman-barrel bomb shenanigans. I didn't care about playing optimal stuff, however. I'd play Long, I'd play Normal, I'd play Wide, I had 108 Gunlance builds for funny memes, optimal play, niche picks, and weird concepts. It kept me going in MHW:IB, a game that eventually lead to multiple of the best relationships I've ever had.
@N00bie6662 күн бұрын
Im def the odd man out, but optimization for me is a large part of the fun, save paying for things. its one of te reasons i like Path of exile so much. also players will also the majority of players will ALWAYS find and use the most optimal and time effective in game way of doing things, again save paying for things. this has been a thing since the dawn of gaming and its not going to change. it CAN be a problem, but it dont think its inherently an issue. The thing about optimization is you can just not do it. find a like minded group of players and run content with them. there is no need for you to run content with people who overoptimize if you dont want to. As for fight design, random elements dont really stop you from optimizing, it just makes it slightly more difficult. Side note. the whole "If given the chance players will optimize the fun out of everything" quote is dumb. if optimizing the way you play a game ruins the fun for you, all your game had was optimization potential to begin with. games CAN and SHOULD be optimizable AND fun at the same time. its not one or the other, they are not mutually exclusive.
@Taldemarr2 күн бұрын
Just sat down and needed a video. Perfect timing Cae!
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Oh nice! I hope you enjoy! 😄
@Noah-gn2gu2 күн бұрын
I appreciate this discussion a lot. As a DRK main I spend a lot of time thinking about the StB design because everyone seems to worship it. Opportunity cost was just not it. Spending MP and having choose between sustain/aggro/damage is just way too complex in an unfun way that always boils down to "be toxic, push dps, blame other people." 14 also used to have builds, but those were cut out. And for good reason. Opportunity cost/builds are the foundation of toxicity in MMOs. I've gone back and looked at people discussing builds/rotations for jobs in ARR/HW/ShB and people are extremely toxic about it all across the board. 14 is MUCH better off not having builds or opportunity cost in rotations. Nowadays someone messes up their rotation and all it is is "they don't know their optimal rotation... yet, they'll get better with practice" instead of "they're dumb and got it all wrong and I need to correct them." People who have fun making builds are having fun being suboptimal and that's fine for a solo game, but I think 14 made the right choice. It's just how people are. That said, I think there is still potential for some deviation. Namely, SKS/SPS has a lot of potential to create a secondary build for every job without hugely impacting DPS. Intelligently designed kits can make it work. GNB used to be one of these jobs, as almost every part of their kit was affected by SKS. And due to Sonic Break being a DoT (which has an extra multiplier with SKS) AND also affected by SKS itself as a GCD, it more than exponentially grew with SKS. SKS is interesting because it starts off worse than other stats but the more you get of it it exponentially grows, eventually surpassing Crit in value (although we can't achieve that level of SKS ATM). This alongside smartly designed job kits could create two builds that are almost perfectly at the same DPS as each other. It's possible, if some dev takes the time to sit down and spreadsheet. I think SMN is one of the most fascinating jobs to me right now just because it does have a SPS build that works because of its kit incentivizing it. Bahamut is a buff state, more SPS means more Bahamuts, but also, more buffed GCD within each Bahamut state. So theoretically you could infinitely Bahamut if you had enough SPS, which ends up being a potency gain large enough to offset the decreased value of SPS compared to Crit. At the same time, Phoenix being tied to that same CD and having a HoT means you end up getting the Sonic Break effect on SMN's party utility healing. Now with Solar Bahamut, SPS SMN is just going to be putting out heals left and right. This kind of "different build" is not really an objectively better but rather a subjective preference, which I think is tolerable and no one would get salty over like in other MMOs. As long as it's balanced appropriately. There will be the fact that different fights would end up preferring Crit or SKS builds depending on timings, but that doesn't make one build specifically better, and laziness will trump optimization in this regard. It would be such a pain to swap your build just for one single fight that no one will do it except parsers. Even then, people crazy enough to actually do it would probably get a kick out of having to get good at two different versions of the job. This would also make different gear pieces viable, allowing for people to not have to fight over the same Crit pieces all the time.
@17MasterКүн бұрын
(Nowadays someone messes up their rotation and all it is is "they don't know their optimal rotation... yet, they'll get better with practice" instead of "they're dumb and got it all wrong and I need to correct them.") Isn't that more so because players are AFRAID to say anything to correct mistakes because they may be reported and punished for it? So instead they just have to hope others learn rather than pointing out themselves how they could improve.
@Noah-gn2guКүн бұрын
@@17Master Nah, I still see people who do speak up here and there. It's mostly regarding outside of game, where I very rarely see people just straight up bash other people like you see in a lot of old forums/videos. The attitude is a little less combative and more corrective, if that makes sense.
@ChannelRaznoffКүн бұрын
FFXI was my first MMO. I loved the CoP era because much of the game hadn't been completely figured out. By the time ToAU released, everyone had started to get into the mindset that you had to sub ninja even if it only gave your job shadows (they absorbed attacks) because everyone was just trying to shave off a few secs from kill times and subbing a another dps for your healer accomplished that. At that point, I fell off because it wasn't any fun being forced to sub one job for everything. I went back during the Abysea era and quit a month later because things got even more optimized to the point that everyone leveled in just one zone. Several months ago, I went back and played with trusts. I leveled the way I had back in the old days with my NPC party and loved it. I only saw a few players during my journey, and one of them stopped and watched me as I was grinding. They asked me "What are you doing?" And when I said "leveling" they replied with "lol, that's super slow. You should be doing this instead." I just responded with the old "[Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass.]" Auto translation and went on about my day lol.
@Lordwhizzkid8 сағат бұрын
This is probably going to be extremely long, because I've been thinking about this but have no one to discuss it with: To start with, the bandaid fix to picto right now would be swapping the cast times from Motifs to Muses. That way you're forced to have a target outside other than Starry Muse, but would also cause a whole lot of other problems I don't want to get into. But in answer to the ultimate question, I think it's worth zooming out rather than focusing on granular details. I know you dismissed the argument, but more recently I have just been getting further and further on board with "Is it fun". Because, no matter what you do players will optimise, and you'll likely not be able to predict just how far they'll go, or you'll have an oversight that they'll exploit. Answering each of those optimisations every single time means you're running a race you'll never solve, or will limit you to the point where your work will be significantly harder than ever before. Like imagine trying to design every single future FFXIV encounter with the words "no more than 2 seconds of downtime", or "melees must never be forced to leave melee range". That 2nd one led to some massive hitboxes that made no real sense, and kind of dulled the fun of optimisation for some. And so, the conclusion I have come to is every time you should ask yourself 2 questions. 1) "Is this fun?" 2) "Does it make logical sense to play this way?". That way you are only limiting optimisation if it is not enjoyable to do, or if it goes against what the class is telling you you're meant to do. This is why I believe non-standard BLM died, not because it wasn't fun, but because it played illogically compared to the class fantasy of BLM. And I think it can be applied to other cases as well. For instance in the case of Tank/Damage stances: It likely was fun, however it also probably caused many problems casually with tanks not wanting to actually do what they're intended to, or not meeting DPS checks because they didn't know to turn it off. Which means those questions can extend to the people around the problem in question as well. Going back to answer "is Picto having downtime optimisation okay?", I would personally say that it makes logical sense, and it's fun for the Pictomancer, but it's not particularly enjoyable for the other caster classes, who are being forced to take a significant backseat due to Picto's dominance in both downtime & non-downtime fights. Having downtime optimisations themselves are fine, however Picto's are rather excessive compared to many we have in the game currently, and will likely require a change up of how their job functions to ensure they aren't as drastically far ahead as they are right now. To finish this off, using this I'll show examples using Rez tax, and Ranged damage tax. For Rez tax: It is fun to know you could pull a fight back from the brink due to getting someone back into the fight, however if you are in a place where that is not needed, that fun can change to frustration that you're limited by something you may have no need of. There is a logic in doing less damage because you can save a pull, but an impact where you may not even want to play that job is too great to ignore. My personal solution would be to increase the damage of classes, while increasing the cost of using a rez. This could come in a shape such as a longer Recast timer for non healer raises, or more significant mana costs. It will still likely be a benefit to having the raises, but this way you are punishing use over potential of using. If the gap is too great, maybe discuss limiting Dualcast from being applied to raises, however the job fantasy is so strong here this should likely be avoided. Ranged Damage tax: Free Movement is fun. Free movement is also entirely unnecessary for current fight designs. It is rare that anyone needs significant and constant freedom to move while still doing damage as they either have tools to address that, or fights have downtime where you don't need to care about it. Because fights are designed for all to clear, that Free Movement is often not used as it'd clash with others who don't have access to it, and the compensation of extra mitigations is a little wasted as those too aren't considered in fight design, and they also eat into the job fantasy of tanks & healers. I can currently find no logic in keeping this as is, and players are being turned away from physical ranged & the game itself because of just how low the damage is. This should be an urgent priority to bring physical ranged much closer to where other classes are in damage values. Reducing movement could be a mechanic in the future, but I wouldn't recommend it being applied to all physical ranged, as the classes playstyles are mostly seen as okay, other than a few small tweaks that any other class could want. Adding this to all of them could change that playstyle up too significantly, or not make sense within the classes kit, feeling a little tacked on. Instead simply increase their damage, and maybe look into better visibility of all damage on the boss so those playing can see all they're doing (i.e not being able to see the final Wildfire damage number, when it is a major part of your damage, is really silly and should be more visible).
@VashimuXIVКүн бұрын
This might be just a bunch of ramblings, but I couldn’t help but think about this when listening to your discussion, Cae. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong of players to want to optimize and perform at their best when your in a game that encourages you to work together with your team. Doesn’t just apply to Final Fantasy XIV, can be other series like Monster Hunter, MOBAs, and when high end raids are built around more optimal usage of your GCDs and mitigations, along with your knowledge of executing mechanics, it turns into a dance with margins for error and some mix up with elements of fights and adjusting, along with the emergent player behaviors of adhering to being optimal. The only problem that arises is when it feels like people would disband after a single wipe because of someone making a small mistake, but I understand that’s more hyperbolic. Now I wasn’t around for the days of ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood, so the existence of things like DPS stance and utility abilities are foreign to me, but even if I was playing in those days, I get the feeling I’d still see people wanting to mimic what speed killers were doing and using spreadsheets. I could be wrong, but it just feels like that is how people operate. Final fantasy XIV is still in need of some new life injected to it, but I think the dungeons and trials are making up for that in the current games environment but being more chaotic than what has come before. Perhaps that’s more of a temporary fix than a solution to the question of “flexible game design”, but I still enjoy playing it, so it must be doing something right for me.
@17MasterКүн бұрын
19:45 missed opportunity to show a party with two Bards.
@Vibrosis87032 күн бұрын
This is a difficult nut to crack, since generally people tend to take the path of least resistance lets say the resistance is dmg output needed for a boss then picking the jobs doing on average more dps, taken in a vacuum without the consideration of player skill, will be the path of least resistance compared to picking jobs that output less thus it would lead to the situation where some jobs may be excluded or at least less desirable for example if they weren't tightly balanced. One fairly recent example of this was the healing check in p3s where you had to heal the party to full or they die, this lead to whm being excluded in a lot of pf parties simply due to ast being able to aoe benediction with macro cosmos. Again the least resistant path leading you to pass that check was to bring an ast over whm. Or even the original balancing of p8s phase 1 where people had to switch jobs to meet the dps check i.e. war and pld where replaced by gnb and drk just to name of few swaps that was made to pass the check in the first week of the tier. FFXIV has inherently such a large emphasis on perfection as you said since mechanics needs somewhat precise positioning while doing sufficient amounts of dps. Just by looking at the fact that healers are required to dps as much as possible to contribute to the overall party dps you can see that another core emphasis is of course doing damage. Thus the path of least resistance would then be to maximize your mechanical execution while maximizing your dps output since that reduces the resistance to beat an encounter. I rambled a lot but I guess y'all get my point. I would also love for jobs to be engaging together with interesting fight design without ending up in a situation like wow in terms of balancing. Personally I just play the jobs I like within the role I enjoy the most and Im a perfectionist so I tend to gravitate towards optimization for myself since I find a lot of enjoyment from it, but I also dont mind people that do not want to optimize.
@alexhaupt21342 күн бұрын
I thought about this when I was looking up info about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance recently. All the guides online are written as if you want to min-max characters; "dont even bother with that job in this race, make sure you always level up on this job for the best stat gains" etc I don't care if my magic stat will suck, I want to be a mage! is all I could think. But it meant I had to parse stuff a bit, because they didnt really present the information neutrally. I also think about PvP games (I guess FFXIV also has that!) where you can't actually play just by doing a standard rotation, or else every fight would just be a stat check or waiting for someone to mess up. But that's because those games rely on things like crowd control and opponents who are never TRULY predictable by virtue if being human. It's fun to imagine a version of FFXIV where you were forced to use skills opportunistically, and in ways you could mess up through no fault of your own and be forced to adjust. Imagine a boss where you had to sleep adds because your job isn't capable of killing them fast enough to outpace their DPS, but another job HAD TO dish out as much damage as possible because they lack the "safe" option. In a PvP environment, there's an element of randomness in what other players use and in hiw they behave that could lead to either if these scenarios, but in a PvE encounter? The no-sleep job would simply clear the fight faster lol. I think you're right that you kind of just have to ignore it. Luckily, for most players, they aren't necessarily good enough to replicate the spreadsheet :P
@anthonydelfino61712 күн бұрын
Probably because it's the same universe.... but this is why I really disliked the change to the zodiac job system for FF12 in all the releases since the PS2. I get it, too many players couldn't resist the temptation of building 6 identical characters, but now if I wanted to relive my old days of the game, I can't. I built my original Basch character as a dark knight, but the skills I'd need to recreate his kit are spread across three boards. And this problem repeats on a couple other characters too who also had unique builds from each other. It's disappointing when people who optimize influence developers to remove flexibility for people who just want to experiment and have fun
@17MasterКүн бұрын
" It's fun to imagine a version of FFXIV where you were forced to use skills opportunistically, and in ways you could mess up through no fault of your own and be forced to adjust." XIV used to the latter part of that. It was an Accuracy stat. You could just randomly miss with your attacks and spells. And players -hated- it.
@stonium692 күн бұрын
I had a discussion with a friend about this topic. Imagine if Summoner had 2 "modes." (that could only be switched between every 2 minutes, lets say) One which gave it less mobility (eg making every cast during bahamut have a cast time or something like that), got rid of raise and other utility options, but also made it do equal damage to pictomancer, and a second mode which was like current summoner. They're pretty into optimization and they said (and I think this is pretty telling), that playing summoner in the non damage mode would be considered trolling in the vast majority of cases, even for prog it can often be better to have more damage so that you can compensate for people dying, once you're about ready to clear a fight. Thinking about it. the only reason we don't consider playing any job that isnt the best jobs trolling is because of the time investment to level a new job up, learn their rotation, etc etc.
@arashelahi26182 күн бұрын
I believe the biggest contributor to this is that fights (mostly) happen the same way every time. Even in something like Seat of Sacrifice EX, the most variance is in which order you are doing the mechanics. If we look back at RPGs, and JRPGs like earlier final fantasy games, we see the way designers prevented this was by introducing unpredictability. I'm not saying we should do that, or that it would help, just that Most fights do not react meaningfully to player actions beyond skipping mechanics if you meet a DPS check, thus allowing Optimization to be the most rewarded skill rather than breadth and depth of knowledge, or on the fly decision making.
@skellysniperyt3210Күн бұрын
I feel as though the answer is making the optimization the skill. For example, Scholar's Dissipate: trade your ability to heal for the ability to do a lot more damage. But, if you're doing that randomly the first time you do a fight, you're going to die horribly because you didn't mitigate that raidwide. Almost all jobs have some variant of this optimization they can do. Some are easier than others. Viper just needs to save Uncoiled Fury for the right moments, whereas Machinist essentially only needs to know how to save reassembles. Samurai has harder optimization, due to less flexible tools- you have to choose the order in which you do positionals, learn where to use Tengentsu, and be in the correct spots earlier than other melees because you have castbars. To go to a further extreme, Black Mage, or at least Black Mage before the Despair rotation. Since you have to be casting almost all the time, you need to know exactly where and when to move at all times, in addition to managing all the things that your rotation does tightly. There will always be a "best" way to play. But if that best way to play is restrictively hard- before Pictomancer, there was a good reason you didn't see Black Mages all over the place, because Black Mage was restrictively hard to play correctly, and you'd do better to take someone more reliable, like a "phys ranged" in the form of Summoner, or a Rez Mage for when you're learning a fight. Similarly, Samurais had a bad reputation, because they were difficult to play well, and it was a coin toss whether you'd have a good Samurai or a useless one. One solution could be to make one class in each role definitively better, but restrictively hard to play. This would be the thing you would expect a hardcore optimizer to play, the Black Mage. One thousand extra damage per second would be nothing to sneeze at, but maybe even more. However, you would still *not* see people doing that, because the kind of skill it takes to play that kind of class well isn't something people can easily dedicate themselves to. Another solution, and the one I prefer, would be to have each job in a role have a specific weakness. Black Mage can't move, perhaps, but maybe Red Mage needs 100% uptime or some otherwise suboptimal or strange buttons in order to generate the resources they need for a burst. Summoner has the mobility and easier resource generation, but has to micro-manage a fiddly pet AI with range restrictions in order to get their attacks to land. Pictomancer, in the meantime, doesn't have any of these explicit weaknesses, but has lower damage. (I'm fully aware this will never happen.) This makes different classes easier or harder in specific circumstances, but if you happen to be really good at dealing with the specific weakness of the particular job, not unviable. Since you can share gear between them, flexing between jobs as the situation requires would be an important skill. Fights could have more or less uptime, bigger or smaller boss hitboxes, more or less movement, and these would all impact your choice. This solution would also go some way towards addressing the constant cries about lack of job diversity. The only place where this might be difficult is with melees- there are so many that designing unique but relevant weaknesses for them might be difficult. There is already "niche overlap" between Samurai and Viper- where Samurai was previously the only "selfish" DPS, now Viper is here and is simply easier and more damaging. As a Samurai player, I am upset. A combination of the two could also work. Giving every job some *thing* that they can do that requires some particular skill or restriction that makes them more difficult to use in different circumstances. Samurai's Tengentsu could be expanded on into a job that benefits greatly from counterattacking, but requiring precise mechanical execution to do so (and also restraint in order to not die). Astrologian's cards... or at least their old cards... had a strong degree of randomness, but rewarded you for being flexible and able to react to the cards you were dealt. In each of these solutions, there is an optimal choice, because there will always be an optimal choice. Causing that optimal choice to be linked to what skills you prefer gives you back job identity while also allowing people to optimize in the way that suits them. If they are well balanced, then the ability to play the class well becomes more relevant and more prominent of an issue than having picked the correct class in the first place.
@nolydo4359Күн бұрын
As you said, "optimal will always exist". No matter how many "choices" we give the player, one will always be the objective best (in regard to optimization, not fun). Sadly that's how it is. The only job I can think of that had some variety was BLM, up to Endwalker (goodbye my beloved). Your rotation depended a lot on procs, mana ticks (mitigated by pulling always at the same time relative to said tick) and phase timer. But even then, there was a clear better rotation on every fight, it was just much harder to find than other jobs who just had to do their rotation normally for the whole fight. Concerning the PCT issue, as a PCT main now, I know my static will always have a PCT so this doesn't affect me much directly, but I do agree. The design of the class in ultimates where downtimes happen every trio / phase change is an issue, but I don't know how they would be able to fix that. Just those 2 things don't go together well balance wise, gotta deal with it. Thankfully PCT is fun enough to play that it's not a chore to switch to it for DPS sake (imagine if SMN was the big caster DPS :( )
@brontome2 күн бұрын
the true end to optomization is nothingnes. This is a topic ive been thinking on a lot recently and while optomizing is a huge factor of the fun of playing video games, its solving a puzzle, we do also need to learn that its ok to not be optimal. great video and well put together. You know i like these vids lol
@Envinyon2 күн бұрын
A lot of these sentiments are why I like black mage. You can't do an optimal rotation. It's just not possible given how its highest damaging abilities are also used for movement. Even in a highly optimized environment, you can still only be as optimal as the fight allows. Not only that, but if you could theoretically not move an entire fight and have an optimal burst window every two minutes, it would be a REALLY boring job to play because the fun is in the decision making and figuring out how to handle mechanics. So, optimization isn't this one singular thing, it changes from fight to fight and sometimes even pull to pull within the same fight. This to me is very healthy design because no one expects black mages to be optimal and what's "correct" and what's "incorrect" is very vague, especially now where sometimes just ignoring Flare Star is actually a valid thing to do. I'm unsure of how you expand on this philosophy but the key thing to me here is that there really aren't many wrong ways of playing black mage outside of just pressing random buttons. I've never had someone complain that I wasn't putting enough xenoglossies in raid buffs or that my leylines aren't 100% aligned with raid buffs because its understood that black mages just cannot always do that. People think this community can't deal with jobs that have decision making in them, but the reality is that stuff is happening all the time and people are simply not aware of it. Red Mages sometimes use a melee combo for movement and not have a second melee combo during raid buffs. Pictomancers sometimes use holy in white for movement. I'm sure there are other examples, but this is just what I have familiarity with.
@HildeTheOkayishКүн бұрын
ok last comment lol, as a former League player this also bothered me in that game. you have a whole bunch of items you can buy during the game, one building on top of the other. and you really have very little choice in what you are allowed to pick xD technically you can buy anything for any character but the nature of the game, everything is a competition, makes it so that you quickly get feedback if you don't pick the "right" thing because others feel like you are harming their chances of winning. i believe now there even is a set of recommended builds included in the game it self. it is kind of counter intuitive. here is a set of options feel free to pick, but not that one! only that one! yes there is some flexibility in what you can pick depending on how the game goes but it is very limited for the amount of options you have. especially if you go play ranked. i think that is the risk of optimisation. you essential have a feature in the game, a store with items that help in battle, and it is removed in favour for a list of things you must pick. it reduces the amount of game there is to play.
@Densoro10 сағат бұрын
If I think about flexible design, my mind goes to a completely different genre. My other main game is Warframe. It’s a game that’s less concerned with upward progression, and more concerned with amassing a toy box full of ‘mods’ (effectively materia, not actual mod files) that you can endlessly remove and recombine in new configurations. Once you get the 220% Base Damage materia or the 200% Critical Chance materia, this raises the damage floor of every weapon in your arsenal, even the ones from the beginning of the game. With eight materia slots per weapon, you have room to make any weapon viable. These weapons have different hitboxes, attack animations, projectile spreads, and one-off gimmick mechanics that you can build around, and the materia can make almost all of it scale into endgame. Additionally, you can mod each _character_ in countless ways, prioritizing survivability/scaling stats, or buffing their abilities in terms of: Duration Efficiency (MP cost or cooldown duration) Range Strength (raw damage/healing potency, de/buff percentage, etc.) Furthermore, there’s a mechanic that lets you teach one character’s spells to a completely different character, opening new synergies for the recipient character. So one player could make a build that sacrifices range in favor of strong, long-lasting selfish buffs - another player could mod the same character to _prioritize range_ to share a weaker version of those buffs with the party + teach them a crowd control AoE to shut down the whole map. And all the while, they’re carrying weapons purpose-built to match their chosen play style. _Would_ FFXIV ever veer this direction? God no. But hypothetically, _could_ this model work for a hotbar MMO? I wonder.
@shybandit52113 сағат бұрын
In terms of flexible job design I was thinking like, give Pictomancer a second Landscape. Maybe it could be a mini healer-LB3 (half the range, only rezzes to half HP, doesn't skip Weakness). Most people would take it off their hitbar as they'll literally never cast it since its stuck on a 120 second cooldown that ideally always has the cooldown spinning, but it's a massive flavor win that might also make Picto more enjoyable in content like Bozja (where basically any caster that doesn't have the MP Regen of BLM is left out to dry by the lost action system)
@shybandit52113 сағат бұрын
Man I get what you mean maybe this is a bad idea
@Smarfton2 күн бұрын
I'm in the early stages of writing an article on the impact of Kodawari in Japanese designed games including this one, but I will say this, because this subject is near and dear to me with ff14, you make the same mistake everyone that tries to tackle the subject and base it on the system currently employed. And you're not at fault for doing it, but it also doesn't really address anything. With how jobs and fights are already designed, there is no where else to go. They have designed themselves into a corner that practically everything you mentioned here can not be employed. That's it, unfortunately. For a fully realized difference to be made, ff14-2 would need to happen, when the foundations of the game can be dug up, relaid and built completely different from a different perspective, and with a different design team and philosophy. The perfectionism, is fundamentally the barrier point for millions of people, enough so that the number one issue I get from people playing this is the damn combat. And they tell me that as they quit and go play something else. Dozens, and dozens have told me this. Maybe a hundred people with no exaggeration here. Optimization is NOT perfection, and rotation priorities are NOT imperfections and when faced with the latter I personally would rather have the former in spades.
@spark9189Күн бұрын
imo the obvious answer is just add more randomness to fights. don't make them completely random, the precision and syncs are a large draw to ffxiv fight design, but just add some more randomness. stuff like you might randomly have to tank swap or invuln, or there's some raidwides that just come out at random intervals so the healers (and jobs that benefit from unavoidable damage like samurai) have to stay on their toes. the old emnity system would be great if you had to actually pay attention to emnity instead of just dealing with it at the start or knowing exactly when you had to deal with it. if you really want to push it use the yozora method of "i will randomly start the fight with a phase transition, because it's funny" (legit one of the funniest boss mechanics in any game i've played). some jobs would obviously have more decision making here than others. healers and tanks are the obvious ones, but the jobs that are already somewhat flexible on a fight to fight basis like black mage and reaper would start having to make many more decisions while more rigid jobs like dragoon would mostly make minor adjustments like having to decide when to pop true north or use their movement tools, but imo that's a strength and leads to more class diversity. to be clear, this would not kill optimization. it's impossible to make there not an optimal option in any given scenario. all this would do is make players have to make choices and figure out that optimal option in every given scenario.
@Fish_CEO2 күн бұрын
I agree with a lot of this, but think there's a few things worth mentioning: 1. A lot of times when people mention "job flexibility", they mean the job changing per-timeline, or "room for optimization". Very obviously the optimal way to play a job will be the same with the same timeline and same kill-time, but something like EW Monk versus DT Monk, even beyond the target count change you mention, the opening GCD in uptime phases of Ultimates would change for extra ticks of Demolish or losing an unbuffed DK for a buffed DK. Very obviously there is an optimal sequence here: but the fact that the sequence isn't "obvious", or in-line with the normal full-uptime way of playing the job, is what makes it interesting. Whenever people ask about EW vs DT Monk, I link the DSR document, because on top of planned TCs and Sprints for keeping Demolish up on p4 Eyes, there's special GCD sequences for each uptime segment that really exemplify how much "room for optimization" the job had. I think EW's nonstandard Black Mage filled this kind of niche as well: nonstandard was about planning resource usage ahead of time, which you will very obviously memorize a plan for in a specific fight, but figuring out that plan for a certain fight, or figuring out that plan blind while doing the fight, were both really interesting "additions" to FFXIV's game system. 2. This can be taken to the extreme: Tornado Kick Monk (from 4.3 to 4.5) was _so_ incredibly freeform and "flexible" that the way you would play it was often different per-fight. Again, obviously, the way to play the job in a specific fight could be optimized such that you just memorize a fixed rotation for a single fight, but that's still more interesting than what we have now, especially if you consider world prog, or in an Ultimate group where you're vastly ahead of other players in terms of mechanic progression and can "feel" that you're playing the job sub-optimally. In a situation like this, you don't have time to read a document on how to play your rotation, and you have an excuse to try new things on the fly. It's something extra you can do to connect the fight gameplay with the job gameplay, keeping FFXIV feeling like a single complex game rather than two separate simple games (WASD game and hotbar game). 3. I love running weird builds in other games, especially intentionally on first playthroughs. But in FFXIV, if you're playing a "suboptimal" build, you're inconveniencing 7, or potentially 23 other people. I was playing 1.82 GCD Monk in Endwalker for a while, but it did so little damage in Savage compared to what a 660 Monk should have been doing, that I chose to not play it in Savage because I would have considered myself griefing. This creates a lot more issue in running weird builds than the simple single-player "the game is harder for yourself and yourself only". For people arguing that "looking up your exact rotation sequence isn't fun", I agree: I think (2) TK Monk is the exact antithesis of that. The TK Monk guide doesn't hand you "here's your filler, here's your burst": you get a 46-Row spreadsheet with a bunch of different timing options, and you have to figure it out on the fly. I myself think that having one rotation that you use on every fight all the time is possibly the least amount of fun over having no rotation, which is what DT jobs are kind of drifting towards, even for the "more difficult" jobs of a role.
@nahuel34332 күн бұрын
Great video I do think there is something to compare to fighting games here. Now, many things there will be differnet by the sheer fact that it's PvP vs PvE content what I'm talking about. But every time you get a hit, a fighting game (usually) basically becomes a single player game in that you can do your combo while the other guy is stunned. And as such there is always a theoretically optimal combo for each hit and situation. That said, there is still flexibility because of one factor. Execution barriers. You can do the optimal combo... which is usually harder or your "tournament combo" an easier variation of it that is pretty much guranteed to give you "good enough" damage (or other advantages). Although I have to emphasise I think it's important that the damage difference is pretty minor. Still optimal to go for the optimal path, but if it's worth it or not to go for that minor difference is up to the player. Still the very nature of GCD timings with 2 oGCD weaves makes it difficult to do tricky exectution but I think there are ways. Maybe a bit harder to predict resource building (though not completely) where you basically have to either decide to commit to your resourceless combo or go for the route that uses the resource not 100% sure it'll be ready by the time you have to spend. I couldn't get into it when it was still out but I do wonder if stuff like Monk's optimal drift windows were something to this effect in that, yes optimally you pressed riddle of fire in these variable places depending on your current stance and DoT remaining, or maybe you could press it always in this point so you have more consistent output and it's harder for you to mess up. Still interesting topic, and something people often forget when talking about their woes of current job design and such.
@HildeTheOkayishКүн бұрын
honestly the pictomancer downtime example is really true for most jobs. i don't mean all jobs benefit from downtime specifically but rather that each job has it's own conditions under which it will thrive better then other jobs might. it's just that in pictomancers case it is very visible. but if you look at the job rankings for each fight you will see there is quite a bit of movement between fights. not just for picto. i don't think it is something you can balance out in fight design without making each fight the same. and i don't think that is good. i actually quite like there is an benefit for having some jobs work better then others in specific fights. and the optimisation need some have is a problem we as community should solve rather then change the fight around it. for example, i am a scholar main but i found that in m3s it is way easier to use sage (Panhaima was made for that raidewide xD). so for progging i tried using sage. but now that i have done it i would like the extra challenge of using scholar again. did i have to swap? nah not really. nobody asked me. we are chill like that lol. but i wanted to give it a go so i could. but that is only because i have a community that allows that kind of play. it is not a fight to do it the fastest or in the perfect way. we are happy if we make progress and elated if we beat it. and i think (but this is an assumption) that for most people who want to try extreme content this is the case. many people are driven away from this need for perfection. i was for a long time till i found my group that worked. so that is my conclusion :p this is not a game design problem but a community problem. yes it is of course ok if you and your group want to optimise play. if that is what gives you joy go for it. but we should strive for it not to be the default. not something that is expected of newcomers. but if anything it shows that if square should change something in the game design it is FCs. or rather, the way players find FCs and communities (yes im going all over the place lol). each person has a group of people they fit with, but there is really no good way to know what kind of group you are stepping into when you join an fc. there are some online tools to find an fc for you (does anyone use those?) but really we need something in game to better facilitate the finding of social contacts so that everyone can get into a place they feel at home and play the game with people that have similar goals in game. i think xD idk.
@TheIvoryDingo32 минут бұрын
While I don't believe the phrase perfectly fits the topic, I would say that "Perfect is the enemy of good" fits decently enough.
@RagnarokiaNG2 күн бұрын
One of the many reasons I love Summoner is due to how flexible it feels both with the order of summons and the high mobility, having the freedom to jump around the arena and summon whichever feels right in the moment while planning a good time to use the few cast times it has keeps it always being fun, for all the complaining about the job not being more complex I find its freedom to engage with its choices makes it more fun than more complex rigid jobs. Of course I'm sure I could ruin all the freedom by min maxing a tiny bit more damage... but I wont.
@tatlxtael2303Күн бұрын
I've been thinking about this a lot ever since Endwalker. Just like, how it only leads to classes being standardized soups of "do you want to do a certain thing in a specific way?" and also about how bad it can be for fight design. Remember how overtuned P8S was that some people were restricting which tanks could even join and just how miserable it was to try to clear in PF because of how overly optimized it was? I feel we're getting to the point of optimizing the fun out of the game u-u
@tatlxtael2303Күн бұрын
the ignorance is bliss comment you made really gets me, like, I've met some people who are so obsessed with parsing and optimizations that they refuse to touch some classes over them. Or worse you get those high end raiders who won't let you join their group to raid unless you show logs and prove you're parsing a specific color
@Caine8308 сағат бұрын
There is only one way of doing things ffxiv so you can’t have choice or flexibility. And since there is a sea of endless whiners that cannot be bothered to play another jobs when their main isn’t meta, all jobs need to be almost the same crap with different names. I liked the more choices we had between tank stance and dps stance. It would allow me to do content blind and adapt depending on the situation. I used to do dmg on my war on par with most dps under dps stance. So when I wasn’t main taking I was doing dmg. But if crap hit the fan and the main tank died, I could switch stances and actually tank. The I would walk a tight rope between tank stance and dps stance. This actually happened once in the diadem with the big dinosaur. Also, the vast majority of players are not the 1% with autism that optimize everything. Most people will choose a comfortable build over a hyper optimized one. If you only play ffxiv that statement will seem hard to believe. But play any other game with choice and watch how people play. I noticed it a lot in games like monster hunter. You can make a hyper optimized heroics build and kill any monster much faster yet probably only 1% of the top 1% will use that build. Because it doesn’t matter how good a build is if you keep dying with it. Ok so you gotta sacrifice dmg for survival. How much dmg and how much survival? Depends on your skill. And as you get better your build changes or not. Maybe your build changes depending on the monster. What I am trying to say is, having more REAL choices is always a good thing imo.
@CalvinooiКүн бұрын
I don't mind if optimization streamlines the rotation options, i just feel great knowing other options exist Its like for EW BLM, I know other rotation exists, so if i fuck mt rotation up i have the flexibility to hop onto another rotation and slowly get back to normal
@madeline80622 күн бұрын
I like trying to build my gear for maximum spell speed, i think it's fun :) though ive thought about trying to get lots of crit on scholar for big shields but that value isn't as immediately obvious. -0.01 seconds on your casts is easier to see than +0.01% chance to crit
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
In case you're curious, the amount of stats needed to reduce your gcd by 0.01 second averages the amount of stats needed to increase your crit chance and crit damage by 0.6% 😊 (with the base chance being 5% and base damage bonus being 40%)
@SirUmneiКүн бұрын
When it comes to Picto, I believe the issue stems from the fact that not only it does the most damage, it also has the most utility and flexibility combined while being the 2nd easiest caster. A raid buff, a dash + sprint, downtime tools, auto-crit direct hits, a heal (that doesn't come into play that often), a shield that can spread, etc. Meanwhile, Black Mage mains need a degree in rocket science to manage their phases, debuff timers, movement tools, ley line placement... just for them to be objectively worse than Picto in almost every field. The reward vs. effort is just not there. Bard is another example of a job that is very difficult to play for little reward compared to the other two. Not only that, but Picto being this good just makes it so if you don't have a Picto in your end-game content party, you're essentially griefing yourself. Not that the other jobs cannot complete the duties, they absolutely can, but Picto is on a level where it's not really about optimizing to do it better/faster, it's about not being stupid and just playing what's one of the easiest and strongest jobs that gives little to no headache to neither the person playing it nor the party. The discrepancy in what Picto can be/do is way to large. It's the best job in every single piece of content that features any downtime whatsoever, and even the best in a lot of the ones that have no downtime too. In a game like XIV, no one wants a clear winner standout job that is just without a shadow of a doubt the best. It makes players feel demotivated to play their favorite because they know it's worse. When the lines are way more blurred, and you can say that "SAM is great, but MNK is better in this regard, NIN better in that regard, but not better than SAM in those regards, etc." it makes for a much more engaging experience that validates any playstyle. It also, like you mentioned, just limits encounter design. The moment Picto came out, while I found it to be super interesting, I knew IMMEDIATELY that it would be a balance nightmare, even before logs and whatnot highlighted the discrepancies. And look at it now... **EVERY SINGLE** group in the world first race has a Picto. And they would have 2 of them if it wasn't for the Limit Break gen changes. When it concerns to the "illusion of choice" that some jobs used to have, I think it's true that it did essentially nothing and it was about optimizing never having to do said combos... but that was still more engaging for most people than what we have now. For instance, I and many other think that this iteration of SAM is the best it has ever been: You can choose what combo to do based on your position around the boss, you can smuggle Iaijutsu for use on melee downtime, you have a defensive that rewards you greatly for being proactive with your weaves even inside your burst, it has 2 different skill speed tiers that are competitive with one another... there's just a lot of small little things you can do to enhance your experience with the job that are by no means *required* by anyone, but just feel good to do. Options, even if mere illusions, are better than no options at all. This is the type of design other jobs need to have, little things that you *can* do to make your experience better, but aren't required. You don't have to optimize your burst with PLD, but not only do you deal more damage if you do, you also have to play this little minigame in your head of what you should use next for things to line up. It could be better, certainly, but it's way more engaging than pressing 1, 2, 3 ad nauseam on WAR or DRK. Jobs that feel *stiff* to play are just falling out of favor because some of the jobs have some amount of choice, flexibility and micro-optimization that falls out of the "I MUST do this to be great at the job" kinda deal. And with all of that in mind you can compare PCT to BLM, where Picto has an almost freeform rotation where you can do almost anything in your kit at any time and it's probably a good choice anyways, while BLM *must* use 6 Fire IVs, a Despair, a Flare Star every single burst and not fall out of Astral Fire, and spend the least amount of time as possible in Umbral Ice, while also managing the Thunder duration so you don't waste potency, while also... Or BRD that has to manage procs, DoTs, several oGCD cooldowns and song timers while MCH only has to press buttons in a general order. The point is: There's a sweet spot between ease of use/flexibility and complexity. Samurai is one job that has hit said sweet spot in its current iteration, if you ask me. A lot of the older jobs have way too much complexity compared to flexibity, making them feel stiff compared to the more newly designed jobs/reworks that attempt to hit a middle ground, while other even newer designs just present way too much flexibity and not nearly enough complexity. And when it comes to optimization, most of the time, whatever is the most flexible while still lifting the most weight is likely to be one on top. And Picto is just that: Lifts the world on their back while dancing and strolling singing a happy song.
@prod.arcsyne2990Күн бұрын
Enrages are the biggest constraint on the game, optimizing is alot more fun when you can optimize for different things. In monster hunter a player can optimize their build to counter the monster, dps output, or comfort/trvializing the fight. Because you have so much time to beat the monster and a plethora of skills you character can use, your build reflects how you like to achieve the goal rather then when. Final fantasies hard enrages make dps more important than any other aspect of the fight. And limit room for mistakes so their is nothing to optimize other than do max dps so enrage is near impossible to hit.
@Gat720Dua2 күн бұрын
Game design can be a delicate process, if you change just one thing than everything else have to be reworked. If FF14 allowed similar RPG mechanics to WoW than suddenly it's a much different game than before.
@CaetsuChaijiCh2 күн бұрын
Absolutely, and that's kind of the problem too right? If you look over at wow and say "why cant we have that", it's because that's wow and getting that would ultimately make this wow too and not ffxiv! 🤣
@Gat720Dua2 күн бұрын
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Although one thing I would like for WoW to have is a MSQ 😅
@GzzGtu20Күн бұрын
Probably an incredibly dumb comment but I wanted to drop it here. I'd like to start by saying that I *hate* DoT. It's stupid, and a waste of a slot. Now of course, I would LOVE to see it be deleted forever, *and* be replaced by something else. So I thought about how certain Healers (Sage, Scholar), and DPS wise, mainly (and only, lol) Summoner, could have different use of their abilities to outright new abilities: Starting with Summoner because I actually played that class all the way to lvl 80 and at least remember a bit of it, mainly because it has very little. *In my opinion* I think the idea of a pet, a summon, could serve as a summoner's primary means of offense/utility. Like for example: - We take Carbuncle as the basis, we give it a 3 GCDs combo attacks, as well as its main defensive ability and another 2-3 OGCDs unique to itself. - Now, we keep the way Garuda/Ifrit/Titan are set on the hotbar, and we add 3-6 new summons on top of them: Shiva, Ramuh, Leviathan, Diabolos, Alexander and King Moogle (massive reach there, forgot most of the summons at the time of writing this 😅). - Shiva, Garuda and Diabolos could be similar with their own flare (again, no DoT, that's lame), Ifrit, Leviathan and Alexander would be the offensive summons, and then Ramuh, Titan and King Moogle could be the middle ground on top of having utility. All of them would follow the same pattern as Carbuncle, they have a 3 GCD combo, 1 unique buff or debuff, and 2-3 OGCDs specialized for the summon. On top of this, add Phoenix and Bahamut/Solar Bahamut, the latter three getting extra OGCDs at the cost of a unique buff/debuff (akin to Carbuncle's, which I'm pretty sure would not be a problem since Phoenix already has its thing with heals, and Bahamut is big damage anyways). That's only for the summons, the summoner needs agency too, so we make use of Ruin IV and Tri-disaster for its personal single target and AoE attacks, and Aetherfont is also there, don't forget the raise (which, imo, could be tied to Phoenix, so long as Bahamut/Solar/Phoenix aren't tied to one another anymore but are given their own separate calls with a similar recast time). There, now SMN feels like an actual summoner instead of early game "I'm stuck with Ifrit Shiva and Ramuh and nothing else for now, damn". Now for Scholar and Sage, I wanna address a simple "fix", which imo works better for them as non pure healers (not saying Astro and WHM don't deserve something too, I just only have an idea for the former and not the second one lol): - For Scholar, give up its personal heal, and double down on abusing the fae for every form of healing possible. Of course, now you can free some space and add a basic 1-2-3 for Scholar, and let aetherfont abilities be its means of agency (as well as the other utility spells it possess). Also, let the fae/pixie handle the raise from now on. You're just the sidekick healer here, unfortunately. For Sage..I guess give it a 1-2-3 and maybe let it be.. besides nuking the DoT (nope still hate those I'm afraid 😓), I feel like Sage is fine as it is, it just needs to have more then "press 1 attack button at all times until an OGCD comes up, oh and heal of course, that's your job :P". TLDR: I'm a casual who barely touches high end content but I do in fact dislike certain things in this game gameplay wise regarding certain jobs and I just wanted to bring up certain ideas even if at the end of the day it probably sucks major stink and/or just wouldn't work. Also, I'm a DoT hater! (I do use them of course, still hate the idea behind them) :D
@idleeidolon2 күн бұрын
possible > viable > optimal
@hambor122 күн бұрын
1:20 This doesn't exist in Final Fantasy XIV but it does exist in Fortnite, given there's an entire cottage genre of user-created Creative maps made entirely for XP farming as described, withvarying levels of Not Really Playing the game (ranging from Roblox-style obstacle courses to outright idling servers where you wait 10 minutes to an hour to unlock a timegated room with a huge amount of XP coins) XP in this sense is meant to advance the seasonal battlepass, and while there are many ways to gain plenty of pass experience through playing Actual Fortnite, Fortnite Rock band (Festival), 3rd Person Rust (Lego Fortnite) or Fortnite Mario Kart (Rocket Racing), that's still anywhere from a week to a month of actively working within the intended parameters instead of, say spending an hour a day idling on a creative map, gathering the XP, and then having a maxed BP in 2-3 days. because it's the most Optimal Method, despite having genuinely 0 gameplay whatsoever.
@vespi57Күн бұрын
I'd say the core flaw of this subject is in us humans from the start. We tend to be creatures that seek out a perfect world, even though we can never achieve true perfection. In a similar fashion, players tend to be perfect with encounters and playing their job. Drop out the strive for perfection from humanity, and what would we have then?
@darmorel5492 күн бұрын
Im surprised you didnt mention Bard, Dancer, or Red mage during the rng section. Because guess what, those are literally a list of priorities where you use the ability that is unlock with rng before the one that isnt (outside of a very specific lvl range for Red mage where the rng options are weirdly worse 99% of the time).
@andrewbunch2394Күн бұрын
This became a problem in WoW very early into the game and of course significantly worsened over the years. Part of the problem is that playing optimally benefits the group directly and can make the difference between a clear and a wipe. FF14 handles this well by breaking up the raid into encounters that are queued for individually. One option I always liked was to have each job or class have some speciality that has advantages in different fights. While there will always be an optimal setup for each fight, it averages out somewhat decently
@TakoArishi6 сағат бұрын
As an Ultimate raider and stuff in FFXIV, I ended up trying out WoW during the latter end of Endwalker just to compare the two games. I noticed that WoW pretty much is just like FFXIV, except with less complex mechanics but with skill trees that... honestly did not add much to the game half the time. It was still an enjoyable game, but the moment I started to look at numbers and throughput, I felt like my enjoyment dipped faster than in XIV. My conclusion was complicated, but it boiled down to a combination of "priority lists aren't really any better", "a faster GCD hampers complexity and thoughtfulness and penalizes slower reaction times", and "bosses with timers on their gimmicks behave exactly like perfectly-planned FFXIV bosses, just with different times on their gimmicks." I still like both games, but FFXIV feels more like home - it's easier to pick back up and enjoy, ignoring the perfect optimizations I could be doing. Skill trees are kind of fun in that way that Lost Actions are cool, though. Variety is a good palette cleanser sometimes. Kind of.
@thatguy-dh1qh19 сағат бұрын
I've been saying this for a while, since people are asking for skill trees or more job customizations for abilities. The job masters in the balance discord will just optimize each job anyway and all the developer work will go to waste. Developers need to make job feel more fun to play and also feel unique from different types of jobs. Also, get rid of the 2 minute meta. It feels less fun overall.
@red11rus85Күн бұрын
tbh, optimizing is a double edged sword for me. because optimizing the grind of something is a good idea. Like leveling classes from 0, way back when i was in Shadowbringers. Hunting log, then Potd, then squadrons, then HoH, Then bozja. But optimizing the savage... Ough, no thanks. Pinpoint the exact strategy and hold on to it for the rest of the fight, if somebody does a mistake, then go to wall, and start again. It's like crafting without a macro. If i could loot dyiable gear FROM SAVAGE but without doing it, i would take it tbh. When there's chaos in alliance raids, it's recoverable, but when it's chaos in savage it's a restart.
@soldierorsomething2 күн бұрын
At 13:15, if you ever decide to play the XCOM: enemy unknown games then you will run in to this problem, since the game is designed as a arms race and if you cant keep up with tech upgrades / lvling up the soldiers, then the enemy AI will become too strong and wipe you off the earth since their forces will outclass you in all situations 😂
@thesunthrone2 күн бұрын
The classic problem of XCOM Ironman saves bricked by bad early RNG. Incredibly frustrating!
@mismismism2 күн бұрын
This is why I've never been on board with people that say they want to be able to make different builds and loadouts for jobs, because in every multiplayer game, that actually gives you less options because meta strong arms players into playing the "correct" builds or they can't play with others. That said, I still think the best answer to the problem, especially in a game where you are not locked into a single job, they should remove the 2 minute window so all the jobs aren't stuck to the same timings, actually make the jobs in different roles different woth pronounced strengths and weaknesses and push pkayers to main a role so they can make fights that favor specific jobs and what they bring over others, with balance existing because there are equal numbers of encounters that favor each job individually because you can't have every job equally viable in everything without basically making them the same because they directly compete with each other in all content so you end up with the Picto vs BLM or SMN/RDM issue, when they could have a situation where one encounter needs extreme self damage favoring BLM maybe forcing single DPS to burn things without outside buffs, vs downtime heavy fights favoring PCT, etc. Maybe that's a hot take, but it's what I'd prefer and would actually match the point of a job change system in mainline FF and other RPGs. I don't think there's an answer to flexible builds, but at least homogenization could be stopped so even though jobs have set rotations, they actually feel very different.
@apljack2 күн бұрын
SCH optimal play expects Dissipation. I have never used, and never will use it. It is not even on my bar. XD If you have me healing, the faerie stays out all the time. Those 3 Energy Drains are not worth it to me. I know my GNB rotation is hardly 'balance' optimal, but I still do good enough with it. I only looked once near the end of SHB for an idea how they did openers in the day when trying out savage with the FC. I've molded my rotation from that ever since new abilities popped up, never tried to change it based on what I could look up. I'll never be an Orange or Pink funny number, but I manage purple and high blues plenty.
@MrTripleM3Күн бұрын
I have only two issue with what you said. I do agree that optimization is a poison pill and it's the sole reason why if I ever get a group of 10 ten people together who never player Guild Wars 2 but are willing to try it, I would try the raids there. GW2 is a flexible game for players. Yes there is a "optimal" choice but it's more a suggestion due to how much damage is required for it's respectiive fight. That said and this is the first criticism this is only a PvE problem. All PvE fights are solveable and if there is a solution there is a best way of getting to it. Flexibility in PvE only exists if all variables of the fight are unknown and the more known they become the more optimased it becomes. The second one is the focus on dps as a example of flexability. As you said having more attack options doesn't open up flexability. Using DRK as the constant example, having Dark Arts to mitigate a dps loose through bad positioning during a fight (mechanics pushes you into a bad position via rng or party member's circle) does. Flexability only exist in the context it can be used and the utility it provides in it. If you only observe it through independed view points you run into your example of SMN vs PCT which is correct. If the classes had utility parity, you'd pick the easier one. But utility can be more easily spread out, take the healers for this. Each brings their own utility to the fight and therefore can be flexible in it.
@evelyn785Күн бұрын
Well yeah, the obvious "solution" is to increase the complexity of encounters, not to increase the complexity of jobs. If, theoretically, encounters weren't solvable, if they instead were designed using significantly more randomness and actively responded to player input, then jobs and rotations wouldn't be solvable either. You would be forced to think on the fly at all times. But of course, the majority of existing players would hate that and I would argue this just wouldn't really work in FF14. Reactive problem-solving has just never been emphasized in the game; instead, FF14 is almost entirely about cleanly executing choreographed inputs and mechanics, with a few extra healer oCDS to round out the errors. So of COURSE over-optimization is a 'problem' in FF14. The game is INTENTIONALLY designed to reward extreme optimization.