Well on the servers who do rp it is supposedly everywhere unlike lets say MG who keeps it contained to one area and unlike FFXIV that just happens on MG you do not see that stuff happening on WRA.
I’ve seen it on both, and not restricted to one place, or faction.
I think you need to just stop.
2 Likes
It depends on the class. Machinist and Monk are extremely busy and fast classes. Overall with high haste levels WoW is faster paced but XIV has way better class design.
You need to think 20 steps ahead during fights, time every single ogcd and buff. The skill ceiling on that game is far higher than WoWs. The raid bosses on XIV are also way more complicated.
2 Likes
I disagree - the rotations themselves are easy and static - the difficulty in them is only positional in the case of MNK (dance moves) or burst window (latency dependent) in the case of MCH.
Regarding difficulty, it’s fair to say the memorization of abilities and constant movement is more difficult (dance moves) but it’s all very static and scripted. There’s no dynamic challenge like M+ with different affixes changing up how you play. Once you’ve memorized the fights, it’s just knowing when to use your cds and where to be. There’s zero dynamic reactive gameplay.
Regarding class design…It’s only “better” if you love the implementation. It’s easier to balance and “get right” because there’s zero flexibility as there’s no player choice in abilities, talents, or even gear.
Sometimes you wanna be a demonology lock even if they suck, and sometimes you want to be a frost DK even if they suck.
You don’t get the choice in what kind of BLM or DRK you wanna be…you just accept it or don’t play.
2 Likes
They have actual rotations is the thing though. Go to The Balance and look up the openers, the NIN opener. Look at WoWs. 1111221111113. Classes in XIV need to double weave which increases the action economy so while you’re stuck with a generally higher GCD you have more buttons you need to press overall.
WoW’s class design has been trimmed down to the barest minimum. There’s no more thought into it. Most classes use very few rotational skills. What a tank would use in FF (as they have the smallest rotations" every class uses in WoW.
Most of the depth and mechanical skill is gone. DK’s don’t stance swap, they no longer have the three runes, now it’s all over simplified. You don’t even stop to consider your next move, you just mash the same 2 or 3 buttons.
Have you even played FF to the end game? The difference is night and day.
2 Likes
Yes.
14 isn’t bad by any means, but it’s just dance choreography + how to play your job.
WoWs class mechanics aren’t rocket science either, and it has its own dance choreography, but it has a much better feeling of dynamic response, specifically in the mythic plus scene.
14 is just very static.
2 Likes
You say that like rotations require thought. They don’t. Any true rotation is literally something devoid of thought, a fixed, inflexible series of actions that together compose a single decision.
Take Dragoon, for instance:
I want to single-target: True Thrust -> Disembowel -> Chaos Thrust -> Wheeling Thrust -> Fang and Claw -> Raiden Thrust -> Vorpal Thrust -> Full Thrust -> Fang and Claw -> Wheeling Thrust.
I want to multi-target: Doom Spike -> Sonic Thrust -> Coerthan Tempest.
That’s a lot more buttons, sure, but it’s no more cognitively demanding than spamming Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning, respectively. It merely replaces the majority of the room otherwise available for actual tactics or agency with button bloat, all the while making sure that even plentifully intelligent players are pushed out if carrying relevant mechanical disabilities [in the literal sense of using one’s hands]. (That’s not to say you can’t play XIV damn well even without hands, as any Youtube search of Machinist rotations will quickly point out, only that the vast bulk of XIV’s rotations, increasing in pervasiveness with each xpac, provide a purely mechanical challenge, rather than anything even touching on cognition or ingenuity.)
To be clear, that wasn’t always the case. When Disembowel was target-specific, you’d have to think about who it went on. When Chaos Thrust was longer and not so overpowered that you’d necessarily use it even in short fights, you’d have to think about placing it on a non-focused target so it could actually get decent DoT value.
Sadly, XIV design has only progressed increasingly towards the lowest common denominator, all the while replacing actual thought with flashier skills and more checks as to whether a situation is simply single-target or AoE (because that’s what passes for ingenuity or agency these days, despite providing virtually no point at which a target is worth focusing over continuing AoE for higher total damage).
XIV’s sole complexity at this point comes from macro-rotation, e.g. how soon do I clip Army’s Paeon? Do I hold Empyreal in hopes of a double proc I can quickly cap? Will the add pop soon enough that I needn’t hold Lance Charge for two affected Nostrands and Stardiver? When should I swap to Ad Hoc SAM play, given a 10-second boss disengage two minutes in at a 2.35s base GCD? They’re significant, but also nothing WoW itself lacks on, say, a Sludgefist or otherwise time-scripted fight.
— Yes, I’ve completed the Savage raids on every job. Your praise for XIV’s rotational “complexity” makes me expect, however, that you might not have.
I again feel I should be clear here: XIV has had some really, really high highs… in the past. If there were simply some actual tank-specific duties beyond scheduled defensive CDs (such as raids with bosses you actually had to smartly position) SB Paladin, a buffed 4.0 Warrior, and 3.x (or, very different, even the 4.x) DRK would have had claims to fame. Late Stormblood MNK was just a bit of bloat (stances meaning all of nothing outside of Riddle of Wind) away from incredibly compelling. In late-Heavensward, too, high SkS Monk and the 2.33 dungeon build of DRG, too, were damn good. The problem is that as the core of XIV’s combat has only become more “streamlined” (read: thoughtless, linear, and in too large of parts for any modularity or, thereby, ingenuity) as time has gone on.
2 Likes
I’m currently 11/12 this tier with P2 on prog. So yeah, I’m nearly there. When you mentioned the DRG rotation you omitted the OGCD’s. There’s also the jumps and other abilities too.
The fact is that there’s more mechanics to deal with in the XIV classes. You argue that there’s been less thought, but that’s not the case. When ARR launched there was no mechanics in the classes. The only thing you had to watch was TP and MP. Now they have stuff like Enochian and Beast Gauge to keep track off. I play BLM currently and I have to constantly watch my Thunder, Poly stacks, Enochian timer. If any of those fall off or let my stacks overcap then it’s a huge dps loss.
I will say that WoW used to be demanding at certain points. Back before the Legion reworks, some of the classes took some study to play properly, that’s not the case anymore. Blizzard destroyed class depth with Legion and it’s too simple now. I can pick up just about any class now and crush the charts, it’s too easy now.
If Blizzard could bring that back then I’d agree with you.
2 Likes
I noted everything that requires a modicum of thought therein.
Memorizing an initial order and using CDs as soon as they refresh does not make for a thought provoking experience. Even what little thought is required to DRG, especially, is never adaptive unless you’re new to a given fight or a downtime-forcing phase change occurs at an awkward time due to a %HP trigger. In a ‘striking dummy’ fight, your hold timings, too, are merely memorized.
That is blatantly false.
Sure, there were fewer RNG gates on RNG gates to do the same (accounting for potency inflation) oGCD potency one could do before, and on average at about the same frequency, but at the time each jobs’ core mechanics weren’t so lenient as to be nigh non-mechanics and there was significantly more depth in coordinated teamplay and demands against which to respond that put those mechanics to the test.
Early ARR WHM, for instance, made use of proc banking to deal incredibly healing (Cure I feathering to ready a Cure II, favoring main heal position for mechanics to line up a guaranteed Cure III crit by which to almost immediately full heal the party between heavy hits). Now, its mechanic is “every 30 seconds you gain access to an empowered GCD heal; after spending 3, you get an empowered offensive GCD”. The latter design is good, but certainly no more complex, especially when considering the coordination involved in cohealing.
Ever seen a 2.x Monk speedrun? That requires very specific pull timings and positioning to maintain Greased Lightning uptime across the run. Ever played T9 pre-nerf? Same idea. I could maintain GL through all but meteors, but I’ve yet to see that from other Monks outside of a Lucretia video. In 2.x, if you were a Monk, the core mechanics ensured that you felt like no other class.
Beast Gauge is literally just ARR Wrath stacks with a higher maximum. No more, no less. Its capacity has been in the game since the start.
Thunder is literally just a DoT. You can hardly call that unique complexity. It is, however, also a DoT to which other jobs used to have access. You think Affliction has a lot of DoTs? Try ARR Summoner.
You do not need to “watch” your Poly stacks or Enochian timer. Polyglot generates passively every 30 seconds, mirrored by WHM’s Secrets of the Lily. You have no Raging Strikes window anymore in which to buff their expense, so unless Tricks-Litany-Brotherhood is coming up within the next 30s, you can spend them as soon as target count is maximized (as Xeno only adds 100 potency despite not being AoE). It is incredibly difficult to misread a situation so badly that you’d let Enochian fall off, and at that point you have two skills whose sole in-combat purpose in the game at this point is to make it a further non-mechanic.
2.x DRG at higher Skill Speeds, likewise, could massively alter its rotation (to the point of a Triple Full Thrust) to favor burst or sustain. HW DRG had actual risk-reward behind its Geirskogul spending. Monk could vary between Demo-drop and Double-boot rotational strings, aligned variable around Fracture and Touch of Death, or (earlier on) even go full burst via Impulse Drive spam. Early ARR BLM had access to Quick-Flare combos and MP shadowing, generating a higher skill-ceiling out of even just 6 spells than the modern BLM does with the 6 further spells added since. Heck, even in HW, Blizzard IV added a rotational option, rather than being so powerful as to be obligatory (and thereby make any burst alteration to your rotation impractical).
And that’s not even starting into the team mechanics permitted at the time.
Early ARR team coordination made use of the fact that actions that dealt no immediate potency did not break Sleep effects in order to DoT all but a focus target, sleep, and maintain 0IP DoTs while downing the focus target.
Buff purging, though a bit stillborn, was actually a thing. Timely pacification and CC was actually a thing. Purposely pulling threat off or for the tank where safe to reposition or kite for tank-mitigation, Aetherial Manipulation taxi-ing, and actually making meaningful use of one’s pets via microing — all reasonably commonplace among good players because the game at the time gave some actual reward for doing so.
Heck, early ARR allowed for dungeon-length kiting via tank-less, heal-less SMN comps. 2 Bards, a DRG, and a SCH? No problem, even with Bind and Heavy as your only CC. Everything played differently, but you could still get through the dungeon via the Bards running figure-8s through each other and using Repelling Shot off each other’s mobs while the DRG nuked down the ranged (and therefore unkitable) and the Bards supported with their direct damage. You can call it “less sophisticated” or whatnot all you like, but the opportunities and rewards within gameplay, on the whole, left jobs feeling more distinct, impactful to team play, and capable of ingenuity.
I do think many (not all, but tentatively most) of the job systems added since are good ones, but adding complications without agency and adaptability is not “complexity” in the typical sense of the word, but merely convolution, and by building only upward without any real grasp on the general cohesion or decision-making available to jobs, they only make their kits duller and more bloated.
1 Like
Well that’s a fair point, but I guess agree to disagree.
This is what sticks out most to me. Getting an interesting dungeon run out of XIV practically requires some level of meme. In ARR, there were oddball comps, such as no-heal Warrior runs or no-tank kite runs. (Heck, in leveling—especially, pre Int/Mind-split—3-SMN + Bard was generally the fastest way to dungeon spam.) In HW, there were makeshift runs, where I’d have to tank as Monk or Dragoon after a bad tank rage-quit or the like. And at any point there have always been a dungeon or two that allow for larger pulls than the norm in the name of unholy speedruns. (Doma Castle leveling spams probably took the cake in this regard, or Brayflox HM for a level-cap equivalent.) But a typical run? Everything is so… scripted, more so even than any meta-driven M+ dungeon run at a given key level.
It makes me wonder what XIV could do with a concept for dungeon reiterability and challenge, if the faintest whiff of a lesson learned from or advantage seen in some other MMO didn’t immediately bring out torches and pitchforks.
M+ is by no means near the ceiling of its potential, but it represents a huge swath of possibilities that XIV could play upon in its own way. It’d be sad to see them leave that discarded just because they decided that their playerbase now only wants their quickest possible currency-spam roulettes to get to their weekly caps asap, rather than to actually enjoy the content available to them.
Dungeons in 14 (and Raids, and Alliance Raids) are pretty much all completely irrelevant the day they drop.
Crafted stuff with penta melds are almost always better from an itemization standpoint, if not also ilevel standpoint, and with dungeons never ever dropping gear that actually are ever upgrades for anyone, they’re just a chore to get your tomes.
I love dungeons and I HATE that they’re so pointless.
As a DRK tank…you just wall pull…wall pull…boss with 1 or 2 mechanics…wall pull…wall pull…boss with 2 mechanics et cetera.
The REAL boss is staying awake and convincing yourself going through with this is worth it.
Like I just did Matoya’s again today and to keep myself awake I run ACT to see if I can outdps the dps…but I found myself falling asleep at the keyboard anyway
3 Likes
Completely agree on that. The dungeons haven’t really been interesting as they’re all the same thing. I get that most of the focus is in the story and raids but it would be nice for them to spice it up a little.
1 Like
I just wish they gave me a reason to do them. Everything’s just a chore for tomes.
The M+ at least can be fun to see your recount/skada/w/e blow up, which is always fun and nice.
But because the way gear works in this game, there’s no gear choices or really even any upgrades that makes you different from the other guy…so it’s all totally predetermined.
In WoW (well of old anyway, haven’t done much recently) it ALWAYS brought a smile to my face seeing my meter after I just blew things up. Like wow it feels good.
Never happens in 14. Ever. Even after you get your tomes and gear. You still don’t feel powerful.
1 Like
At least SAM and maybe Monk still get some significant Skill Speed breakpoints, but otherwise… yeah.
The sad thing is there’s a lot they could have done with those stats back in the day if they’d decided to go the other way with certain design considerations like enemy Defense or CC usage.
Imagine, for instance, if Slashing, Piercing, and Blunt, Elemental, and Unaspected damage types had different inherent effects (e.g. mechanics) and the Resistance Down debuffs instead worked like a Defense reduction against those mechanics, rather than a mere flat typal damage buff. In that more necessary on more armored mobs and less necessary on the chaff of a given pull — far from annoying in big AoE pulls, since if all mobs were equally (un)important, you could just go into AoE instead of wasting 2 GCDs on a obligatory, generalized damage buff like modern Disembowel, but focus targets would allow for team coordination and distinct strategies.
Consider, for instance, if they brought back absorb effects with status immunity such as the old T4 Stoneskin: you could just caster-nuke, sure, ignoring the physical absorption, but then you couldn’t pacify, stun, or silence the thing that’s wrecking your tank and/or raid.
Now, maybe Disembowel would allow a portion of damage to pass through that shield regardless. Maybe blunt weapons could CC through that shield or the passive Defense, improved further by Dragon Kick’s Blunt Resistance Down debuff. Maybe an Unaspected vulnerability would allow you to overcharge the enemy, breaking the shield from within. Etc., etc.
These are obviously spitball, but the idea is that you’d have distinct strategies available to you, as a party, rather than each playing individually and irrelevantly to each other, as if each merely fighting a separate striking dummy with a collective health pool.
Apart from that, it mostly just comes down to the game having overpowered its specializations, passively, rather than adding meaningful role-specific tasks or gameplay. Tanks can no longer vary meaningfully between offense and defense. Healers have no offensive depth to go ham into at risk of party health. And because those two are so passively powerful now (tanks truly passively, through their Armor, and healers through their overladen oGCD heals), there’s no room for cross-role ingenuity from DPS.
XIV Community: I want to do more tank-like things, like actually positioning the boss or having rotational active mitigation to manage and time for risky but rewarding plays.
XIV Developers: Oh, you want to feel more like a tank? Okay, we’ve made half your previously active mitigation passive, removed your offensive risk-reward options, and made it so anyone who’s not a tank will be one-shot once you die. You should therefore feel more vital and tanky.
Ehhh. I can think of several times I cackled a bit upon dealing absurd amounts of damage. And then there are the tank moments too: in SB, popping Blood Weapon on a high-target Quietus spam such that it each Quietus refunds its Blood cost atop generating nigh infinite MP for TBN and Dark Arts - Abyssal so that the only response to inevitable death, quite literally, is to pull more (weak) mobs… brilliant.
1 Like
I miss the old dark arts.
Felt like super saiyan powering up and some thought
But alas it’s all dumbed down now
Same, especially before it was every 2-3 GCDs as in Stormblood.
I also miss the anti-synergy between (otherwise slightly overpowered) CDs, like Dark Arts -> Dark Dance, oddly enough. It made for a bigger difference between emergency and strategically trickled CD uses that made you feel more engaged and adaptive.
Damn, if only they’d given Grit a lower (effective) potency cost to cast so we could more often swap about, instead of leaving it clunky for 2 xpacs only to then remove tank stances altogether… (Obviously, same for Sword Oath / Shield Oath, though I’d argue Sword Oath could have just been passive unless it were given some new mechanic, as there was never any benefit for going stanceless on Paladin despite having that option.)
There’s honestly nothing wrong with any of this. That’s just how the developers decided to roll, and players seem to enjoy it that way.
Personally, as long as I wasn’t healing, I quite enjoyed the “static” nature of their fights, I thought it made progression quite enjoyable, because it meant that once I had memorized a fight I had effectively mastered it. “Set back” nights we get stuck on a lower boss were a lot less common than they were back in my days of WoW raiding. You wouldn’t wipe because this time the boss had randomly stacked two mechanics on the wrong guy or used an ability in the wrong spot. There was a clear upward progression.
For raid healing, yeah WoW’s more chaotic fights are a lot more fun IMO, because you have a lot more triage to do. I don’t understand how people enjoy healing raids in that game, it’s complete garbage to me. Dungeon healing and Eureka healing was a ton more fun than raid healing, which is really sad because raids are supposed to be what you aspire to do if you push PvE in an MMORPG.
For the lack of choice in class design, I don’t care that I can’t be a DPS white mage if I can just switch to black mage. Maybe I would have enjoyed sub-jobs like in FFXI, but IMO specs and talents would have only added bloat. Besides, if there were specs there would be meta builds you’d be expected to follow in challenging content, so whether you would actually have a choice is up for debate.
Nah, I think the class system was adequate for what the game was, and the class rotations were fun to play in general. With sub-jobs it would have been perfect, but it was good enough for me.
You disagree, and that’s fine. We’ve already established we will basically never see eye to eye on this.
What you view as a plus, I see a minus. And vice versa.
Obviously there’s a reason for different games for different people.
I also very much dislike the color green.
To be fair, that doesn’t require bosses to be inflexibly timed down to the second as in XIV, but merely internal cooldowns on the reception of debuffs…
There’s no need to oversimplify or precisely standardize fight designs for a potential issue that can be remedied with trivial effort.
As opposed to… none (in the vast majority of modern XIV fights). Unless someone makes a blatant but non-fatal error (not often possible in Savage difficulty), you rarely ever need to see what’s happening on screen in order to heal a fight in XIV so long as you know which threat will have threat when. The rest is time-stamped single-target on essentially prefigured targets for tank-busters or AoE heals for raid damage. Spot-healing, or actually responding to on-screen information beyond a boss’s skill timeline alone, is the rarity.
On this I’ll largely agree, especially so long as those choices are going to be as homogenous, anyways, as they are in XIV. If the choices are not distinct, they add little. Moreover, I will always take choice in how to play a class (i.e., via in-game decision-making where my take on what is optimal in a fight, given present contexts, is a gamble by which to potentially outperform others) over what spec to play.
This, however, is nonsensical if used as a warrant by which to dismiss any value for further options than those XIV gives.
The same can obviously be said of job/class choice in the first place: Why make more than 8 jobs, if only those 4 DPS, 2 Tanks, and 2 Healers will be the best overall for a given raid tier?
1 Like