So the Fan Festival is going on for the rest of this year and North America had the first one last week and there was a lot of news that came with it. So ill just jam a bunch of images about Evercold.
So there seems a massive sweeping change to the game that’s going to make a lot of “Feel new”. But will it? We’re pushing off from a daily system to a weekly system? I’m pretty sure we are very much just a weekly system with the Allagan tomes, weekly custom deliverables, fashion reports. We live in a weekly system already but just have minor daily things like beast tribes or doing your daily roulettes. All the new and shiny things that people need to hold onto but its not very new in a way?
Im sure you can look at the video and gauge your own reactions. But what really caught my eye in particular was the Reborn vs Evolve mode debates that have been happening for the last week and just how interesting the reactions have been. Some really love it and think its going to bring new life into the game, some see the reductionism sneaking its head back in in the form of a new title, and some drool on their controllers and don’t know what the difference is beside “Button Bloat = bad, Less good”. So what was shown so far? We have 4 classes.
So they only gave us Paladin in terms of all the skills in one place but it displays just how everything is compacted into a very small bar of 17(?). So I don’t wanna get lost in the weeds of the idea of “Button bloat gone = good.” I seriously couldn’t care if its 1-2-3 vs 1-1-1. These things don’t matter because many of the buttons that matter with these filler combos mean nothing. You broke a combo? Start over and its still fine. Missed positional? Punishment; slightly lower damage. It means nothing. What people are not realizing is that you’re being stripped of even MORE agency as a player and even MORE choice. Lets just list what you don’t have in Evolved mode Paladin:
- No Bulwark
- No Fight or Flight
- No Circle of Scorn
- Oath Gauge is gone for a 40(?)
- Condensed Combos: 123+ Blades Combo
- AoE Conditional(?) Button?
- Gap Closer + Cover condensed (God why.)
- Taunt + Shirk condensed
- Silence + Stun is now 1 interrupt. One or the other has been removed. Either way this removes using your brain for having to use one or the other in various situations
- Shield lob and shield bash are condensed
So you’re losing many of your tools for the sake of lower cooldowns, less information to process, less upkeep and even less choices when it comes to fail states for a raid. Cause I really want you to imagine a world where you want to cover a healer to save them but there are multiple holes in the square arena or the idea of you covering them while they take damage to LB3 but now you dash onto them, double your taken damage and die.
And this isn’t even getting into the weeds with Dragoon’s DPS changes. Which to put simply are:
- Losing 2 minute Buffs
- Losing Personal Buffs
- Possibly gaining arbitrary positionals
What I fail to understand is how these sweeping changes are equivalent to more of a class identity. There is always the constant argument that complexity and “janky” design is what leads to depth and challenge for a lot of classes but if we look at our current design for classes, none of them give any level of friction or pushback to being poorly executed. Our fight designs are not remotely complex enough to warrant the level of sanded and smooth over classes we have now.
This tweet isn’t quite the full list but gives a very real breakdown with how many classes over the course of two expansions have been changed and worn down for the sake of “ease of use” when in reality they created the homogenization that they are trying to dismantle with even more simplification. The idea that more job identity comes from less unique interactions with the class skills/passive/gauges/playstyle is just a level of delusional that will feed the Devs into an even worse spot then we already are.
So people also wonder why you want to kick up a fuss early with things they’ve shown so far? Even if we consider this “Pre-Alpha” footage, the team that runs FF14 will constantly tell you vague things, show you concepts, allude to ideas they “want/wish” to execute… then simply drag you along till you forget about it. Wanna talk about Beastmaster (Summoner 3.0)? Wanna talk about how Summoner was a simple framework that never got anything changed for the better? Wanna talk about housing interior resizes? Wanna talk about team PVP queues? Wanna talk about Blue Mage updates? The list could go on for things that are already more then a few years old as talking points. Historically they won’t make any form of change or course correction for these choices because players have never made a concerted effort of negative feedback to push against the design choice.
But its alright, we can just wait till Berlin. We’ll get told its still in development as the goalpost gets shifted back toward the job trailer, then people can push it back till the media tour and push it toward 8.0 release. Then when its finally realized that we lost far more then we gained, its gonna be stuck with the game till they eventually remove Reborn mode altogether and you’re really stuck.
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