This is probably going to prove controversial. Agree or disagree, I actually welcome the discussion and I'd like to hear other people's inputs on it. Take it as you will, from someone that has played CC since season 1 in Endwalker.
There is two major issues to my eyes that make the mode less enjoyable than it could be in the core design principles. I do not mean to talk about technical problems that have been complained to death, like the matchmaking, the netcode, delays, etc.
Melee weight
While melee jobs are certainly not dominating or part of a meta in Dawntrail CC pvp (people talk about the ranged meta for a reason), I do believe that they still benefit highly in solo Q from a disproportionate weight in games. I am talking mainly about bruiser types of melee DPS and tanks (and ninja less so, which is more technical and utility focused).
This means that the performance of the player behind those jobs holds more weight in games than behind other types of jobs, and this can swing both ways. A very good player behind one such job has an insanely high carry potential for the whole team, as a very bad player will most likely drag down the team badly.
At lower or higher ranks, the core problem is relatively similar: a huge part of the game is about defending, and soaking damage well, which denies enemy resources and burst attempts. Even if at lower level bursts aren't exactly synced or happen at all, it still absorbs enough damage and denies kill attempts enough that an enemy team will waste all of their resources into nothing if the melee just gets away with it.
We all know how some jobs like DRG, GNB or VPR are disproportionately overpowered at that level because they can output enough damage to make lower skilled opponents keel over while soaking every damage pressure coming at them without flinching.
Well at high ranks, the jobs may change (VPR is kinda bad... but is it?), but the principles remain.
How many times do we get crystal/omega/ultima games where there is that top ranked ultima ccrc player playing one such job (MNK, SAM, DRG, PLD) and you already know at the loading screen who's likely gonna win? They'll just walz in, soak all the burst attempts from your lower skilled players, and just go away, rinse and repeat.
I think this stems from the game being too much designed around defense prediction and resource denial. Don't get me wrong, it is actually a good thing that there is an actual high skill ceiling there because it favors skill expression, especially in pvp, but I think to my eyes it's more of a matter of the weight it has on games. I wish the skill ceiling in CC games would be more spread around equally into different areas.
The reality is that this is also made a lot worse in most solo Q games since the skill gap is colossal (either at low ranks between john fantasy's first game that doesn't use recuperate and regular players, or at high rank in crystal games where diamonds get perma focused because they crumble faster and just explode). But I also play on JP and while the gap is less so, it still exists and generates the same issues.
One taps
That one was one of my biggest pet peeves in Endwalker pvp before the changes in 7.1. The game was essentially a game of rocket tag with synced burst targets that would insta stun/silence the target and make them explode under half a second. At high level solo Q (and especially in LP games), it was rampant and the primary way of playing the mode, and I hated it.
I personally don't find it fun to get stunned and insta tapped out.
I know that 7.1 tried to change that approach and tentatively reduced most damage outputs for burst overall while increasing job HP in general. I think it was a good approach, combined with the hit registration change that made stun/silencing a bit less instant and more easily reacted to. But the problem came from other things:
1) Stalling got out of control with the usual culprits namely paladin, astrologian and scholar. I do understand that there is a delicate balance between too much damage and too much stalling, but the problem is that the tools to deal with said stalling are bad, notably guard cracks, that are on top of it on the very jobs that enable said stalling.
So we had games early in DT where nothing ever died and meta comps were 3-4 supports (notably PLD/SCH/AST). SE seemed to take note of this and try to over correct by adding back more and more potency into job toolkits to overcome this.
This had the result to slowly creep back to where we were in EW, bringing back games of rocket tag (just watch any LP game) because damage is now high enough to enable this once more.
2) The amount of free nukes and damage sustained output. This initially was probably meant to accompany the lower burst damage in 7.1 all across the board and spread damage out more to enable sustained damage profiles a bit more, since EW was all about burst and sustained damage was scoffed at.
In a nutshell it was a good idea, but since then it has stayed into the game. This means that now that burst damage has gone up again, all of those damage nukes have been buffed as well and anybody will notice the difference: not only you eat colossal burst damage on the first GCDs, but then it keeps coming and coming and coming. Even if you guard perfectly, you're not out of the water yet because everybody in the enemy team still has half their nukes at disposal or more.
To compound the issue we also have the infamous guard cracks on problematic jobs like PLD and SCH that actually deny people to even guard this. So people just melt and die and can't do anything about it, even if they defended masterfully.
Consequences
Combined both issues in this thread and you may see where I'm coming, or I hope so. How can a good melee player carry a game? They have the jobs best equipped to deal with this. If they're able to sustain all that damage, they already half won the game. If they keep dying to it, they already lost their team half the game because their frontline will have evaporated.
This reminds me a little of Feast healers that had an absolutely disproportionate weight on games: more often than not, it was all about who had the best healer would win. CC isn't as egregious with this fortunately, but I still feel we have some traces of this left in the form of frontline bruiser jobs.
I know this is a very delicate balance, and I do think some bad choices were made along the way. I'd personally like if the game was less about burst one taps, and more about sustain, without falling into obnoxious stalls. I'd also like if full red team vs red team comps wouldn't turn into "who murders the enemy the fastest". Having so many nukes one after another means you often see in those games at high level (or even lower level) 3-4 people chasing after one target and dunking on it like monkeys until it dies before moving to the next.
One taps, dogpile chases, or similar situations, I don't think they feel exactly good. And it doesn't help that to make up for this the game is riddled with rampant hard crowd control everywhere to keep melees in check, and empower ranged jobs.
I feel the balance slider isn't set in the proper places. What do you think of this?
Continue reading...
There is two major issues to my eyes that make the mode less enjoyable than it could be in the core design principles. I do not mean to talk about technical problems that have been complained to death, like the matchmaking, the netcode, delays, etc.
Melee weight
While melee jobs are certainly not dominating or part of a meta in Dawntrail CC pvp (people talk about the ranged meta for a reason), I do believe that they still benefit highly in solo Q from a disproportionate weight in games. I am talking mainly about bruiser types of melee DPS and tanks (and ninja less so, which is more technical and utility focused).
This means that the performance of the player behind those jobs holds more weight in games than behind other types of jobs, and this can swing both ways. A very good player behind one such job has an insanely high carry potential for the whole team, as a very bad player will most likely drag down the team badly.
At lower or higher ranks, the core problem is relatively similar: a huge part of the game is about defending, and soaking damage well, which denies enemy resources and burst attempts. Even if at lower level bursts aren't exactly synced or happen at all, it still absorbs enough damage and denies kill attempts enough that an enemy team will waste all of their resources into nothing if the melee just gets away with it.
We all know how some jobs like DRG, GNB or VPR are disproportionately overpowered at that level because they can output enough damage to make lower skilled opponents keel over while soaking every damage pressure coming at them without flinching.
Well at high ranks, the jobs may change (VPR is kinda bad... but is it?), but the principles remain.
How many times do we get crystal/omega/ultima games where there is that top ranked ultima ccrc player playing one such job (MNK, SAM, DRG, PLD) and you already know at the loading screen who's likely gonna win? They'll just walz in, soak all the burst attempts from your lower skilled players, and just go away, rinse and repeat.
I think this stems from the game being too much designed around defense prediction and resource denial. Don't get me wrong, it is actually a good thing that there is an actual high skill ceiling there because it favors skill expression, especially in pvp, but I think to my eyes it's more of a matter of the weight it has on games. I wish the skill ceiling in CC games would be more spread around equally into different areas.
The reality is that this is also made a lot worse in most solo Q games since the skill gap is colossal (either at low ranks between john fantasy's first game that doesn't use recuperate and regular players, or at high rank in crystal games where diamonds get perma focused because they crumble faster and just explode). But I also play on JP and while the gap is less so, it still exists and generates the same issues.
One taps
That one was one of my biggest pet peeves in Endwalker pvp before the changes in 7.1. The game was essentially a game of rocket tag with synced burst targets that would insta stun/silence the target and make them explode under half a second. At high level solo Q (and especially in LP games), it was rampant and the primary way of playing the mode, and I hated it.
I personally don't find it fun to get stunned and insta tapped out.
I know that 7.1 tried to change that approach and tentatively reduced most damage outputs for burst overall while increasing job HP in general. I think it was a good approach, combined with the hit registration change that made stun/silencing a bit less instant and more easily reacted to. But the problem came from other things:
1) Stalling got out of control with the usual culprits namely paladin, astrologian and scholar. I do understand that there is a delicate balance between too much damage and too much stalling, but the problem is that the tools to deal with said stalling are bad, notably guard cracks, that are on top of it on the very jobs that enable said stalling.
So we had games early in DT where nothing ever died and meta comps were 3-4 supports (notably PLD/SCH/AST). SE seemed to take note of this and try to over correct by adding back more and more potency into job toolkits to overcome this.
This had the result to slowly creep back to where we were in EW, bringing back games of rocket tag (just watch any LP game) because damage is now high enough to enable this once more.
2) The amount of free nukes and damage sustained output. This initially was probably meant to accompany the lower burst damage in 7.1 all across the board and spread damage out more to enable sustained damage profiles a bit more, since EW was all about burst and sustained damage was scoffed at.
In a nutshell it was a good idea, but since then it has stayed into the game. This means that now that burst damage has gone up again, all of those damage nukes have been buffed as well and anybody will notice the difference: not only you eat colossal burst damage on the first GCDs, but then it keeps coming and coming and coming. Even if you guard perfectly, you're not out of the water yet because everybody in the enemy team still has half their nukes at disposal or more.
To compound the issue we also have the infamous guard cracks on problematic jobs like PLD and SCH that actually deny people to even guard this. So people just melt and die and can't do anything about it, even if they defended masterfully.
Consequences
Combined both issues in this thread and you may see where I'm coming, or I hope so. How can a good melee player carry a game? They have the jobs best equipped to deal with this. If they're able to sustain all that damage, they already half won the game. If they keep dying to it, they already lost their team half the game because their frontline will have evaporated.
This reminds me a little of Feast healers that had an absolutely disproportionate weight on games: more often than not, it was all about who had the best healer would win. CC isn't as egregious with this fortunately, but I still feel we have some traces of this left in the form of frontline bruiser jobs.
I know this is a very delicate balance, and I do think some bad choices were made along the way. I'd personally like if the game was less about burst one taps, and more about sustain, without falling into obnoxious stalls. I'd also like if full red team vs red team comps wouldn't turn into "who murders the enemy the fastest". Having so many nukes one after another means you often see in those games at high level (or even lower level) 3-4 people chasing after one target and dunking on it like monkeys until it dies before moving to the next.
One taps, dogpile chases, or similar situations, I don't think they feel exactly good. And it doesn't help that to make up for this the game is riddled with rampant hard crowd control everywhere to keep melees in check, and empower ranged jobs.
I feel the balance slider isn't set in the proper places. What do you think of this?
Continue reading...