Let me preface this by saying, like a lot of people I do believe Evolved mode has a lot of potential. In fact I've been no stranger in constantly advocating for pvp inspiration to give jobs more identity, or more individuality as they said in the keynote.
However this alone cannot hope to solve most of the issues of identity and is tied directly to the rest of the pve model, which relies on way too little variables to provide meaningful job to encounter interaction.
This didn't use to always be the case: MP/TP management, party resources, job actions based on limited resources rather than basic recast cds, aggro management, mob and boss positioning, character arcs (rear, front, flanks) having multiple kinds of mechanics beyond some positionals, and if we go back enough like pre 50 ARR, a lot of actual crowd control very much in line with the FF franchise (heavy, slow, etc), that weren't just reduced to boss mechanical gimmicks (like mini to dodge the chakrams).
This isn't to say that those were necessarily good, or well done, or perhaps some actually were, but factually, there used to be an actual battle system around which pve used to be built, and interact with. Damage was still king, true, but the game had other things in store. And perhaps that wasn't enough? That's possible.
Either way, we just have to look at the new Evolved designs to see how much they already struggle with this conundrum:
- DRG somewhat survives because it can rely on positional constraints to build up its bigger strikes, and benefits from Sky High from pvp. But positionals are a full blown melee mechanic, not just a DRG specific mechanic, so how are other melees going to deal with this variable? The same way?
- WHM is the elephant in the room when it comes to how little SE seems to have any idea where to go when it comes to healing and the trinity, in a game increasingly designed around encounters that are all about standing in specific spots and listening to simon says. A game where you're only allowed to have fun when everything goes wrong and healing is not only actually required (which savage+ provides so go play ultimates, filthy casual!), but also unexpected. No matter what you do, if nothing of this is required in more normal content, then healers aren't going to magically change away from the glare mage problem®.
- BRD is another sign of this, because it's held back by the rphys problem: rphys has no positional or melee range issues, and no cast times issues. In short, rphys has been stripped over time of all of its constraints progressively (harder rotations, actual party support, rng-heavy cycles and procs that go beyond than just playing whack a mole with the glowy buttons, etc). Where does this leave the role? Just doing damage. And it shows with what we have seen of the BRD preview, which is literally current summoner 2.0 with freeform legos you can play in any order, which doesn't matter at all because it's irrelevant and devoid of consequences (so much for the advertised player agency). It's literally pick you lego and play a glorified combo sequence in order. It can hardly do more than just this, because again, the game's only variable in terms of battle content is damage.
Why does it work in pvp and shows limits here? Because in pvp, there is many more variables than just damage, damage and more damage (with the mandatory party heal check every 30s, please use Indom/Soil, zzz). Why are pvp sequences less boring after 10s? Because you have to defend, guard, heal yourself, hide, retreat, dive on changing targets, deal with crowd control or secure kills with it, and align limit breaks that will not always align when people die, or when stars aren't quite aligned.
PvP is all about choices and agency, and pve isn't, because the pve model isn't about this.
So, all of this to say, when all your metrics look like nails (damage), then all you can hope for by designing jobs around those, is to make every job a hammer.
All of this to say, I'm very supportive of the Evolved mode, but I'm frankly worried because those to me are the greater limits that have always held back the system due to the lack of basic battle system building blocks to play around.
Continue reading...
However this alone cannot hope to solve most of the issues of identity and is tied directly to the rest of the pve model, which relies on way too little variables to provide meaningful job to encounter interaction.
This didn't use to always be the case: MP/TP management, party resources, job actions based on limited resources rather than basic recast cds, aggro management, mob and boss positioning, character arcs (rear, front, flanks) having multiple kinds of mechanics beyond some positionals, and if we go back enough like pre 50 ARR, a lot of actual crowd control very much in line with the FF franchise (heavy, slow, etc), that weren't just reduced to boss mechanical gimmicks (like mini to dodge the chakrams).
This isn't to say that those were necessarily good, or well done, or perhaps some actually were, but factually, there used to be an actual battle system around which pve used to be built, and interact with. Damage was still king, true, but the game had other things in store. And perhaps that wasn't enough? That's possible.
Either way, we just have to look at the new Evolved designs to see how much they already struggle with this conundrum:
- DRG somewhat survives because it can rely on positional constraints to build up its bigger strikes, and benefits from Sky High from pvp. But positionals are a full blown melee mechanic, not just a DRG specific mechanic, so how are other melees going to deal with this variable? The same way?
- WHM is the elephant in the room when it comes to how little SE seems to have any idea where to go when it comes to healing and the trinity, in a game increasingly designed around encounters that are all about standing in specific spots and listening to simon says. A game where you're only allowed to have fun when everything goes wrong and healing is not only actually required (which savage+ provides so go play ultimates, filthy casual!), but also unexpected. No matter what you do, if nothing of this is required in more normal content, then healers aren't going to magically change away from the glare mage problem®.
- BRD is another sign of this, because it's held back by the rphys problem: rphys has no positional or melee range issues, and no cast times issues. In short, rphys has been stripped over time of all of its constraints progressively (harder rotations, actual party support, rng-heavy cycles and procs that go beyond than just playing whack a mole with the glowy buttons, etc). Where does this leave the role? Just doing damage. And it shows with what we have seen of the BRD preview, which is literally current summoner 2.0 with freeform legos you can play in any order, which doesn't matter at all because it's irrelevant and devoid of consequences (so much for the advertised player agency). It's literally pick you lego and play a glorified combo sequence in order. It can hardly do more than just this, because again, the game's only variable in terms of battle content is damage.
Why does it work in pvp and shows limits here? Because in pvp, there is many more variables than just damage, damage and more damage (with the mandatory party heal check every 30s, please use Indom/Soil, zzz). Why are pvp sequences less boring after 10s? Because you have to defend, guard, heal yourself, hide, retreat, dive on changing targets, deal with crowd control or secure kills with it, and align limit breaks that will not always align when people die, or when stars aren't quite aligned.
PvP is all about choices and agency, and pve isn't, because the pve model isn't about this.
So, all of this to say, when all your metrics look like nails (damage), then all you can hope for by designing jobs around those, is to make every job a hammer.
All of this to say, I'm very supportive of the Evolved mode, but I'm frankly worried because those to me are the greater limits that have always held back the system due to the lack of basic battle system building blocks to play around.
Continue reading...