I am creating this thread to provide my feedback on the 7.0 changes to Dragoon and I welcome anyone else to add their feedback as well. Normally I would post in an existing thread but this is going to be incredibly long. I'm going to try to format my feedback in an easy to digest manner so apologies if this ends up reading like a book report.
THE PROBLEM(S) WITH 7.0 DRG
I. Background
I think it might be appropriate to give a little background on myself in relation to the job. Lord knows there are many DRG players better than I, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who loves the job more than I do. Not only is DRG my favorite job in FFXIV but it's also my favorite job in the entire series. Kaine, Freya, Aranea, and my namesake Cid Highwind from FFVII are my favorite characters from their respective entries. I mained DRG in FFXI and I always had a Lancer in my party in Final Fantasy Tactics. Heck, I even started playing the Insect Glaive in Monster Hunter after they added the DRG lance.
I say all this to illustrate that I am not some doom and gloom person who cries "my job is ruined/dead" any time there's a change and hops from job to job. I'm about as ride or die as it gets with DRG and until Dawntrail I've rolled with whatever changes came down the line whether I agreed with them or not.
Like a lot of DRG mains I was dreading the rework because I viewed Endwalker DRG as pretty much perfect and extremely fun. When the Dawntrail changes were shown I actually breathed a sigh of relief and thought we dodged a bullet. However, at this point I've played through the MSQ and a decent chunk of current endgame content as DRG and for the first time ever I'm just not finding the job fun at all.
Below I'm going to break down most of the issues I have with the job in its current form. It's going to be in two main sections, Gameplay and Animations, because in my view both are contributing factors to why the job feels so rough to play in Dawntrail.
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II. Gameplay Issues
In 7.0 all of this has gone away. The periods between Life windows feel hollow and your burst window feels like you're just throwing random nonsense at the boss. Activating your burst has all the excitement of turning on a faucet since you do nothing to build up to it. You just wait around until the burst button is off cooldown, press it, then roll your face on your keyboard.
During the job action live letter the DRG slide said the following:
"To reduce the number of inputs during burst damage phases, certain actions will be removed or adjusted."
Why is it a bad thing if the job has a lot of inputs during its burst phase? There are 20+ job in the game now. If someone doesn't like busy jobs they have a multitude of other options to choose from. Furthermore, they didn't even accomplish that goal because it's just as busy as it's always been if not more so, except all the parts of the job that formerly worked together are all disconnected now so it feels horrible to play. If 6.X DRG was a concert pianist, 7.0 DRG is a toddler banging on a piano.
I also find it pretty nonsensical that it's apparently asking too much for people to manage Dragon Eyes but this is totally fine:
Proposed Change: In the short term, revert the Dragon Eyes system to 6.X including its cooldowns and give full resources at the start of an instance like PLD. On a longer timeline, probably 8.0, address the burst phase to return to the flow it previously had in some form rather than the freestyle oGCD vomit that it is now.
Proposed Change: In relation to the Dragon Eye change above, return Mirage Dive to building Dragon Eyes.
Proposed Change: Revert to the previous design. If this isn't possible, Drakesbane needs major work which I address in the animation section.
Proposed Change: Remove Winged Glide. Return Spineshatter Dive and remove the damage. If SSD looking like an attack is a problem, create a new gap closer animation that is a jump and not a dash.
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Regarding DRG animations, the average FFXIV lance is visually a heavy and cumbersome weapon. For much of the game's history the DRG animations conveyed this very effectively. Even when your character was doing a flashy attack you could always feel the weight behind those attacks and it made them feel powerful. Endwalker replaced Chaos Thrust with the very floaty and weightless Chaotic Spring and Dawntrail has not only doubled down on this trend but made some very bizarre animation decisions. I hate to disparage the artists that I'm sure worked hard and did their best on these new animations but many of them quite frankly look amatuer.
During the job action live letter, while commenting on the new DRG animations, Yoship said "you want to have cool looking actions." Below are a few examples which I would argue do not look cool at all, and definitely much less cool than many of the animations that preceded them.
1. Lance Barrage
Issues:
- The character is so extremely low to the ground they're practically sitting down.
- This posture makes it unbelievable that they could then push off for a thrust forward.
- Because there is no power to the character's stance and movement, it looks like she's just holding onto the lance while some invisible force yanks it back and forth.
- The forward thrust is an equally absurd contortion of anatomy. Some exaggeration is fine and can really sell an attack, but the races in this game are more or less just humans and we all know how a human body moves. Contorting them into extremely unnatural poses not only looks ridiculous but robs the hit of visual impact.
Compare it to a similar animation, Fang and Claw.
Fang and Claw looks like what Lance Barrage is trying to be.
- There's a windup before the first upward strike, then she takes a big step back to build momentum for the thrust forward.
- The pose during the thrust is totally believable, looks cool, and it's held for a second to really sell the hit.
Proposed Change: Have the character stand up more and adjust the animation so the character is shifting their weight appropriately to thrust the lance forward. The character should look like the driving force behind the attack and right now it looks like they're just along for the ride. Adjust the ending pose of the thrust so it looks like a pose an actual human being might perform.
2. Drakesbane
This one is rough.
Issues:
- In combination with the particle effects showing multiple slashes (not pictured) the attack looks like flailing around with no coordination or focus. This is accentuated by the fact that it always follows Wheeling Thrust or Fang and Claw, both of which are very quick (and very cool looking) attacks. What was formerly a very flashy two hit combo now looks like one cool attack followed by your character frantically swinging around like they're totally lost on what to do next.
- After the second lance twirl the character does a thrust forward that, similar to Lance Barrage, looks like some invisible force is yanking the lance from them. They actually look like they almost fall over trying to hold onto it.
- Despite thrusting a lance forward they somehow do not move at all from their original position. Their legs just slide into opposite position and back again. It looks like they're being suspended from an invisible wire harness.
- The final hit looks even more weak due to holding the lance very far to the front. Her body shows zero recoil or any sign that she just hit something.
- Much like Lance Barrage, during that final hit the character is contorted into an incredibly bizarre pose. Does this look "cool" ?
- You can't tell from the gif but the entire attack sounds like you're whacking the target with celery. The sound also seems to not line up correctly with the actual animation.
Let's compare it to a similar animation, Chaos Thrust.
This animation does everything right that Drakesbane does wrong.
- You can see the character shifting her weight around to move the lance.
- There's a delay after the lance twirl to build anticipation of the following thrust.
- Her front foot and lower body move back a bit during that anticipation, then she takes a big step forward to thrust the lance. It looks totally believable instead of the bizarre shuffling in place of Drakesbane.
- She holds the lance toward the back which makes the thrust look more powerful. Also, you can see her body recoil back slightly from the force of the blow.
Even with no target, one of these animations clearly looks like she's hitting something solid with a powerful weapon and one looks like she's struggling to attack the air.
Proposed Change: This would require so many changes to be halfway decent you may as well just make an entirely new animation. If simply reverting to how the combo previously worked isn't an option, perhaps Wheeling Thrust and Fang&Claw could simply change to a flashier version without the positional instead of being replaced entirely by Drakesbane, similar to how Draconian Fury is basically just Super Doom Spike. If you have to keep Drakesbane, it could work if you end the animation after the first two hits, adjust the sound to sound like lance hits and not a pool noodle, and make the sounds line up properly with the strikes.
3. Rise of the Dragon
Issues:
- To me the fantasy of DRG is jumping and attacking with your lance. It's one thing for dragon heads to accentuate what we're doing with our lance and another to just stand there and summon a giant head. It doesn't fit the fantasy of the job or the visual flow of abilities in my opinion.
- Wasn't Nidhogg my mortal enemy? Estinien is using his power but I'm not. Stardiver can be written off as a flashy jump but for RotD I'm literally summoning Nidhogg.
- Why does the attack that looks like Stardiver come after Dragonfire Dive and not Stardiver?
Proposed Change: This does not fit DRG at all in my opinion. Remove in 8.0.
4. Starcross
Issues:
- What is even going on during this attack? We jump up, there's a particle effect, and we land and do a little spin. We didn't throw our lance because we're not picking it up after the fact. The little spin isn't the attack either because it happens after the particle effect. Is this just an act of god happening and we're getting out of the way?
- The particle effect is a big flash of nothing with a gold color scheme that strongly clashes with the long established red/blue scheme we've had up to this point.
- The sound is either nonexistent or turned down so low it may as well not be there.
- The lack of any animation lock makes the ability feel even more weak.
- The 3 yalm range makes it very awkward to use.
Proposed Change: Some sort of high impact sound should accompany the ability and the range should be increased. In the bigger picture though I don't think there's any way to truly salvage this ability. Remove in 8.0.
5. Spiral Blow
All things considered this one actually isn't half bad. The lance spin is neat and it has a fun sound effect. It could use some tweaks however.
Issues:
- At the start you wave your lance to the right for no apparent reason before swinging back to the left to begin the attack. This makes the attack feel like it has a weird delay to it. It also forces the rest of the animation to be that much faster so, once again, it all ends up feeling rather weightless.
Compare that to its predecessor, Disembowel.
- This is one of the best examples of how the old animations really sold the impact of your attacks. As with other old examples, you can see her shifting her weight around to move the lance, there's a slight pause before the last strike, and after that hit you can see her body recoil a bit from the force of the strike. Even with no target this looks like a powerful blow.
Proposed Change: Remove that first swing to the right and begin the animation at the windup for that first upward thrust. Use the time gained to slow down the animation overall and add a touch of anticipation before the strike after the lance twirl.
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I keep wondering, who was this rework even for? The job was changed enough to ruin the previous design for people who liked it, but not changed enough to appease people who wanted it reduced to atoms and reworked entirely. Who is this supposed to have made happy?
I'm really at a loss trying to understand how the same team that designed such a near perfect job with pre-7.0 DRG could then turn around and make it into such a miserable experience. The best I can think of is that it's yet another casualty in this misguided attempt to make every job appeal to the people who hate it even if you have to ruin it for the people that like it now.
I can put up with many things I don't agree with in an MMO as long as my class is still fun to play, but now I'm in a position where that is no longer the case. I've tried to switch my main to something else but no other job scratches the same itch that DRG used to. This has a cascading effects into the rest of the game such as not being able to enjoy the new raid tier despite it being objectively pretty fun. If I didn't care so much about my Free Company I would probably just quit the game at this point. Instead I've chosen to leave my feedback and hope for the best. While my hopes aren't high for the job to be fun again I have to hold out at least a little hope that this makes it to the dev team and something comes of it.
I've always been a DRG main and I always will be, I just want being one to be fun again.
Thank you for reading.
Continue reading...
THE PROBLEM(S) WITH 7.0 DRG
I. Background
I think it might be appropriate to give a little background on myself in relation to the job. Lord knows there are many DRG players better than I, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who loves the job more than I do. Not only is DRG my favorite job in FFXIV but it's also my favorite job in the entire series. Kaine, Freya, Aranea, and my namesake Cid Highwind from FFVII are my favorite characters from their respective entries. I mained DRG in FFXI and I always had a Lancer in my party in Final Fantasy Tactics. Heck, I even started playing the Insect Glaive in Monster Hunter after they added the DRG lance.
I say all this to illustrate that I am not some doom and gloom person who cries "my job is ruined/dead" any time there's a change and hops from job to job. I'm about as ride or die as it gets with DRG and until Dawntrail I've rolled with whatever changes came down the line whether I agreed with them or not.
Like a lot of DRG mains I was dreading the rework because I viewed Endwalker DRG as pretty much perfect and extremely fun. When the Dawntrail changes were shown I actually breathed a sigh of relief and thought we dodged a bullet. However, at this point I've played through the MSQ and a decent chunk of current endgame content as DRG and for the first time ever I'm just not finding the job fun at all.
Below I'm going to break down most of the issues I have with the job in its current form. It's going to be in two main sections, Gameplay and Animations, because in my view both are contributing factors to why the job feels so rough to play in Dawntrail.
-----------------
II. Gameplay Issues
- Burst Phase & Removing Dragon Eyes
In 7.0 all of this has gone away. The periods between Life windows feel hollow and your burst window feels like you're just throwing random nonsense at the boss. Activating your burst has all the excitement of turning on a faucet since you do nothing to build up to it. You just wait around until the burst button is off cooldown, press it, then roll your face on your keyboard.
During the job action live letter the DRG slide said the following:
"To reduce the number of inputs during burst damage phases, certain actions will be removed or adjusted."
Why is it a bad thing if the job has a lot of inputs during its burst phase? There are 20+ job in the game now. If someone doesn't like busy jobs they have a multitude of other options to choose from. Furthermore, they didn't even accomplish that goal because it's just as busy as it's always been if not more so, except all the parts of the job that formerly worked together are all disconnected now so it feels horrible to play. If 6.X DRG was a concert pianist, 7.0 DRG is a toddler banging on a piano.
I also find it pretty nonsensical that it's apparently asking too much for people to manage Dragon Eyes but this is totally fine:
Proposed Change: In the short term, revert the Dragon Eyes system to 6.X including its cooldowns and give full resources at the start of an instance like PLD. On a longer timeline, probably 8.0, address the burst phase to return to the flow it previously had in some form rather than the freestyle oGCD vomit that it is now.
- Mirage Dive/High Jump
Proposed Change: In relation to the Dragon Eye change above, return Mirage Dive to building Dragon Eyes.
- Positionals
Proposed Change: Revert to the previous design. If this isn't possible, Drakesbane needs major work which I address in the animation section.
- Winged Glide
Proposed Change: Remove Winged Glide. Return Spineshatter Dive and remove the damage. If SSD looking like an attack is a problem, create a new gap closer animation that is a jump and not a dash.
- Ability Follow Ups
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- III. Animation Issues
Regarding DRG animations, the average FFXIV lance is visually a heavy and cumbersome weapon. For much of the game's history the DRG animations conveyed this very effectively. Even when your character was doing a flashy attack you could always feel the weight behind those attacks and it made them feel powerful. Endwalker replaced Chaos Thrust with the very floaty and weightless Chaotic Spring and Dawntrail has not only doubled down on this trend but made some very bizarre animation decisions. I hate to disparage the artists that I'm sure worked hard and did their best on these new animations but many of them quite frankly look amatuer.
During the job action live letter, while commenting on the new DRG animations, Yoship said "you want to have cool looking actions." Below are a few examples which I would argue do not look cool at all, and definitely much less cool than many of the animations that preceded them.
1. Lance Barrage
Issues:
- The character is so extremely low to the ground they're practically sitting down.
- This posture makes it unbelievable that they could then push off for a thrust forward.
- Because there is no power to the character's stance and movement, it looks like she's just holding onto the lance while some invisible force yanks it back and forth.
- The forward thrust is an equally absurd contortion of anatomy. Some exaggeration is fine and can really sell an attack, but the races in this game are more or less just humans and we all know how a human body moves. Contorting them into extremely unnatural poses not only looks ridiculous but robs the hit of visual impact.
Compare it to a similar animation, Fang and Claw.
Fang and Claw looks like what Lance Barrage is trying to be.
- There's a windup before the first upward strike, then she takes a big step back to build momentum for the thrust forward.
- The pose during the thrust is totally believable, looks cool, and it's held for a second to really sell the hit.
Proposed Change: Have the character stand up more and adjust the animation so the character is shifting their weight appropriately to thrust the lance forward. The character should look like the driving force behind the attack and right now it looks like they're just along for the ride. Adjust the ending pose of the thrust so it looks like a pose an actual human being might perform.
2. Drakesbane
This one is rough.
Issues:
- In combination with the particle effects showing multiple slashes (not pictured) the attack looks like flailing around with no coordination or focus. This is accentuated by the fact that it always follows Wheeling Thrust or Fang and Claw, both of which are very quick (and very cool looking) attacks. What was formerly a very flashy two hit combo now looks like one cool attack followed by your character frantically swinging around like they're totally lost on what to do next.
- After the second lance twirl the character does a thrust forward that, similar to Lance Barrage, looks like some invisible force is yanking the lance from them. They actually look like they almost fall over trying to hold onto it.
- Despite thrusting a lance forward they somehow do not move at all from their original position. Their legs just slide into opposite position and back again. It looks like they're being suspended from an invisible wire harness.
- The final hit looks even more weak due to holding the lance very far to the front. Her body shows zero recoil or any sign that she just hit something.
- Much like Lance Barrage, during that final hit the character is contorted into an incredibly bizarre pose. Does this look "cool" ?
- You can't tell from the gif but the entire attack sounds like you're whacking the target with celery. The sound also seems to not line up correctly with the actual animation.
Let's compare it to a similar animation, Chaos Thrust.
This animation does everything right that Drakesbane does wrong.
- You can see the character shifting her weight around to move the lance.
- There's a delay after the lance twirl to build anticipation of the following thrust.
- Her front foot and lower body move back a bit during that anticipation, then she takes a big step forward to thrust the lance. It looks totally believable instead of the bizarre shuffling in place of Drakesbane.
- She holds the lance toward the back which makes the thrust look more powerful. Also, you can see her body recoil back slightly from the force of the blow.
Even with no target, one of these animations clearly looks like she's hitting something solid with a powerful weapon and one looks like she's struggling to attack the air.
Proposed Change: This would require so many changes to be halfway decent you may as well just make an entirely new animation. If simply reverting to how the combo previously worked isn't an option, perhaps Wheeling Thrust and Fang&Claw could simply change to a flashier version without the positional instead of being replaced entirely by Drakesbane, similar to how Draconian Fury is basically just Super Doom Spike. If you have to keep Drakesbane, it could work if you end the animation after the first two hits, adjust the sound to sound like lance hits and not a pool noodle, and make the sounds line up properly with the strikes.
3. Rise of the Dragon
Issues:
- To me the fantasy of DRG is jumping and attacking with your lance. It's one thing for dragon heads to accentuate what we're doing with our lance and another to just stand there and summon a giant head. It doesn't fit the fantasy of the job or the visual flow of abilities in my opinion.
- Wasn't Nidhogg my mortal enemy? Estinien is using his power but I'm not. Stardiver can be written off as a flashy jump but for RotD I'm literally summoning Nidhogg.
- Why does the attack that looks like Stardiver come after Dragonfire Dive and not Stardiver?
Proposed Change: This does not fit DRG at all in my opinion. Remove in 8.0.
4. Starcross
Issues:
- What is even going on during this attack? We jump up, there's a particle effect, and we land and do a little spin. We didn't throw our lance because we're not picking it up after the fact. The little spin isn't the attack either because it happens after the particle effect. Is this just an act of god happening and we're getting out of the way?
- The particle effect is a big flash of nothing with a gold color scheme that strongly clashes with the long established red/blue scheme we've had up to this point.
- The sound is either nonexistent or turned down so low it may as well not be there.
- The lack of any animation lock makes the ability feel even more weak.
- The 3 yalm range makes it very awkward to use.
Proposed Change: Some sort of high impact sound should accompany the ability and the range should be increased. In the bigger picture though I don't think there's any way to truly salvage this ability. Remove in 8.0.
5. Spiral Blow
All things considered this one actually isn't half bad. The lance spin is neat and it has a fun sound effect. It could use some tweaks however.
Issues:
- At the start you wave your lance to the right for no apparent reason before swinging back to the left to begin the attack. This makes the attack feel like it has a weird delay to it. It also forces the rest of the animation to be that much faster so, once again, it all ends up feeling rather weightless.
Compare that to its predecessor, Disembowel.
- This is one of the best examples of how the old animations really sold the impact of your attacks. As with other old examples, you can see her shifting her weight around to move the lance, there's a slight pause before the last strike, and after that hit you can see her body recoil a bit from the force of the strike. Even with no target this looks like a powerful blow.
Proposed Change: Remove that first swing to the right and begin the animation at the windup for that first upward thrust. Use the time gained to slow down the animation overall and add a touch of anticipation before the strike after the lance twirl.
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- IV. Community Sentiment
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- V. Closing Thoughts
I keep wondering, who was this rework even for? The job was changed enough to ruin the previous design for people who liked it, but not changed enough to appease people who wanted it reduced to atoms and reworked entirely. Who is this supposed to have made happy?
I'm really at a loss trying to understand how the same team that designed such a near perfect job with pre-7.0 DRG could then turn around and make it into such a miserable experience. The best I can think of is that it's yet another casualty in this misguided attempt to make every job appeal to the people who hate it even if you have to ruin it for the people that like it now.
I can put up with many things I don't agree with in an MMO as long as my class is still fun to play, but now I'm in a position where that is no longer the case. I've tried to switch my main to something else but no other job scratches the same itch that DRG used to. This has a cascading effects into the rest of the game such as not being able to enjoy the new raid tier despite it being objectively pretty fun. If I didn't care so much about my Free Company I would probably just quit the game at this point. Instead I've chosen to leave my feedback and hope for the best. While my hopes aren't high for the job to be fun again I have to hold out at least a little hope that this makes it to the dev team and something comes of it.
I've always been a DRG main and I always will be, I just want being one to be fun again.
Thank you for reading.
Continue reading...