Just because something is subjective doesn't mean it's irrelevant or without benefit to discuss though. If you genuinely have examples of mechanics that were super obtuse without addons I'd love to hear them, because like I said I just genuinely can't think of any, so I'm curious where the floor is. I can easily think of examples in FF14, which again was my original point. If you don't want to then no need to respond to it, but again I will treat it as an admission that I am right (if that matters to you at all).
Very true, I am just surprised you stuck around in that environment knowing what I know about your personality. I assume there are other reasons you stayed (friends, schedule, skill level, etc.). No need to respond unless you wanted to clarify the reasons.
Netcode is a feature of the game. It's built in and designed in game. WoWs netcode makes the game play buttery smooth in almost all situations to the point that if I get stuck on a AUS server with 240 ping it plays just a hair worse thant FF14 with 120 ping. I live US EST. That's a whole other can of worms though why my ping is 120 with them and any other game with servers in San Jose doesn't go over 90. I'd kill for some US EST based servers, but not Montreal please. I know people had tons of issues there (even if I didn't).
- Top to bottom FF14 has about a 15% differential in rDPS with no outliers in the last tier across 10 DPS jobs. I won't bother using aDPS.
- Top to bottom WoW has about a 42% differential in DPS with 3 major outliers in Castle Nathria in Mythic across 24 DPS specs.
- Top to bottom WoW has about a 19% differential in DPS in Castle Nathria in Mythic across 21 DPS specs. The difference being 3 outlier specs, 2 of which are in GROSS need of buffs as they're completely unplayable (actual count of parses is barely in the hundreds, let alone thousands), and one is significantly overperforming.
Looking at this I would wholeheartedly agree that this is terrible balance, but let's consider a few points first though. WoW has over double the amount of DPS jobs as FF14. It's gearing model is incredibly more complex with easily more than triple the number of variance points and yet they get within less than 5% of FF14 if we just remove or improve the 3 outliers? Not only this, but this is at the highest level, it gets closer if we measure by median score.
Fixing numbers is easy. It's a plug and play equation on their end. I genuinely don't know why they don't, but I do know the knobs are there and do work. Fixing the feeling of how a class/job plays though is the challenging piece, which easily explains the bottom 2 though.
WoW tank/healer paradigms have much faster pace and more responsibility than FF14. FF14 tanks are super boring, and FF14 healers just hold down a DPS button 95% of the fight (this is not hyperbole, this is my static's GCD usage for one of the savage fights, 13 healing GCDs between 2 healers cast out of 276 GCDs cast total.
Scalable content? It means to have content flex across player types and be able to be used repeatedly. PoD/HoH is a good example (RIPE with opportunities for improvement). It has content for players who want something easy (can group), and it has content for players who want something challenging (soloing). Granted this example isn't perfect because there's a lot of little gaps, but the something like Eureka that wasn't just braindead zerg fests or gathering and AOEing down mobs who don't really fight back. That's fine that the content exists, but it would have been nice to have more challenging features built into it that would attract savage player types to it.
That's mostly a concession. I'd actually prefer WoWs raid model. I love the way storming a place and moving about and having SOME agency over order of boss fights, but I fully support just zoning in a la Trial of the Crusader like FF14's been doing every expansion (note ARR was different). If we're nitpicking I'd really love to see "savage" versions of the 24 mans (but retuned for like 8 man teams) because I don't actually enjoy large party size raid content. It'll feed some more mid core content while reusing assets and give that feeling back.
A very common outcome or mechanic in WoW raids.
Let people who want 1-2-3's in a single button press have it. Fix the spell queuing with macros, but I do agree against fully automating.
Fair enough.
Agreed, that's why I separated it from the bullet list. This is more a wishlist item.
I'm ok with a little bit worse balance for a little bit more interesting gameplay decisions. I understand that some people aren't, but I don't think it's fair to dismiss it or make it seem like it's the end of the world.
Examples of games with better netcode? Not saying you're wrong merely curious if I've played them or not (TO BE FAIR almost every other game has great netcode, FF14 is the outlier here) and my previous example of other JP dev's fighting games.