FFXIV's Powerful Pictomancer Problem - The Tip of the Job Design Iceberg
To those who tuned into the release of Futures Rewritten Ultimate, the first Ultimate level raid of the Dawntrail Expansion for Final Fantasy XIV (FF14), it was easy to register the buzz and excitement in the air as the highest caliber of players and their teams made progress throughout the game’s newest content, developing strategies on the fly for one of the most difficult fights in the game. And with more teams participating in one of the largest streaming events of the year for the Final Fantasy MMORPG, the excitement was palpable as viewers watched closely to see who would step away crowned as the first to complete this challenging fight. That being said, a large shadow was cast over the lively competition, sparking concerns over a specific issue: the distinct lack of diversity within the jobs chosen by the top players of the world and with one egregious standout, Pictomancer.
Pictomancer had already been the subject of much conversation within the FFXIV raiding community, this discourse raging on due to Pictomancer’s perceived formidable strength. And following this anticipated event, it was hard to not return to the topic at hand, as Pictomancer had wormed its way into every team participating in the race to world first. The community has rightfully called for a nerf to Pictomancer’s damage, as its current numbers are warping the landscape of jobs being played to heavily favor its inclusions. However, although a nerf for this painterly caster is warranted, the community has yet to see any action taken publicly by the development team as of Patch 7.15. As the current hot issue, it’s hard to imagine that some action will not be taken by the developers, as the gap between Pictomancer and the rest of the DPS jobs is egregious. However, I am of the mind that Pictomancer may be emblematic of larger and deeper problems currently plaguing FF14’s job design, simply serving as the most visible example of the underlying systemic issues that exist. The game needs larger and more ambitious changes to be made across the board to multiple jobs if the game seeks to foster and retain a thriving raiding scene that players of all skill levels and flavors can partake in.
In its current state, the game and its current fight design places high emphasis on a few simple tools: abilities that increase the amount of damage dealt to the raid boss, mitigation to reduce the amount of outgoing damage from the boss, and other utility tools such as movement abilities that aid in the successful completion of mechanics. The value of damage tools is not lost on the average player, as more damage means a sooner end to the fight, rendering the need to perform mechanics and utilize additional tools moot. Mitigation is essential for survival, ensuring that the group will survive hard-hitting raidwides and providing an additional layer of security for the group while making progress. And other utility tools such as movement abilities also hold their own, assisting raiders with things such as reaching safe zones and completing mechanics with greater success. It’s not difficult to see why these tools are held in such high esteem by raiders, as they bring a huge boost in power and flexibility for their teams. And with the high value of these tools, one would expect them to be distributed fairly amongst the twenty-one playable jobs as of Dawntrail’s release, balancing and spreading out the power budget to as many jobs as possible.
Unfortunately, as evidenced by the dominance of Pictomancer and a few other jobs across the raiding scene, this is not the case. On closer inspection of one of the largest offenders, Pictomancer, it becomes clear that their kit which is built around a unique ability, allows them to jump ahead of the rest of the competition. This tool to take moments of downtime (moments where the boss is unable to be attacked or dealt damage due to a cutscene playing or a transformation sequence taking place) and convert them into large bursts of damage later, allows them to jump ahead in leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the competition in terms of damage. And as it turns out, being the one job with access to an ability that takes advantage of an aspect of fight design that no other jobs can replicate, practically guarantees that Pictomancer is the default pick for any raiding team.
To make matters worse, Pictomancer has been granted a whole sleuth of tools in addition to what’s been mentioned. It has access to what could be described as the best movement tool in the game, a dash that can be used to avoid damage from a mechanic while leaving the player an additional movement speed buff that allows for minute and particular positioning. The Pictomancer, which already deals some of the highest damage in the game, is able to provide a teamwide buff to the party, providing higher numbers for the entire team on top of their own impressive ones. The cherry on top is that Pictomancer also comes with a defensive tool as well, being able to provide a shield to the entire party helping with survivability and alleviating some of the pressure on the support roles. With a combination of a unique ability in tandem with the spread of various other tools as well, there is no question as to why Pictomancer continues to be an appealing choice for players to pick up in difficult fights.
But surely, even with Pictomancer’s dominance, there are other jobs within the DPS category that can hold a candle to its performance. Being a Caster DPS, there must be other jobs within the role that are its direct competition that have their own unique niches that allow them to remain as competitive picks even if they falter due to their respective numbers. Regretfully, the answer is tepid at best: Black Mage, the caster job known to bring a large amount of damage to a team with little utility, has been usurped as the highest damaging caster resulting in its fall from grace; Summoner, with its lack of tools and damage, has been relegated to the bottom shelf, only being dusted off by players who find the job appealing for personal reasons; and Red Mage, which has fared better due to its ability to raise downed party members quickly to stabilize the team, has found its niche waylaid and relegated to the “prog mage,” a member of the team whose only purpose is to further the team’s progress when learning a fight by picking up bodies, but is quickly replaced once fight knowledge is acquired as its damage pales in comparison.
With this, it becomes clear that the main issue surrounding Pictomancer is an issue of sharp contrast with its closest peers. One where a single job with access to a unique tool allows it to monopolize the playing field and soar to heights that cannot be reached by other jobs. But as mentioned earlier, the problem of sharp contrast is a multifaceted one as jobs dominating the higher tiers of play can be classified roughly between two categories: jobs that have been given kits with access to unique tools and jobs that have been given overloaded kits with many tools that are not distributed fairly amongst its peers. Both of these conditions result in a lack of competition for jobs from their peers, effectively pushing all other jobs out to become fringe choices and disincentivizing diverse team compositions, which results in less fun across the board.
And speaking of jobs that dominate the field due to having overloaded kits, the meteoric rise of Astrologian within the Pure Healer role has dominated the scene due to its effortless access to various tools. Astrologian has had a long and turbulent history, facing consistent reworks and updates almost every expansion. Astrologian players of long repute are familiar with the rise and fall of their job over the years. However, with its latest rework, the job has come into its own so securely that the Astrologian completely overshadows its counterpart, White Mage, in almost every regard. White Mage, once having had a niche as a powerful burst healer that excels with raid progression, now has so little to offer in comparison that not a single White Mage could be found amongst the teams vying in the streamed world race. A cursory look at logs recorded for the Futures Rewritten Ultimate fight shows that completed runs feature about four times as many Astrologians as compared to White Mages, further cementing the fact that in its current state, White Mage fails to offer any real incentives to be played.
And it’s no surprise that the best healers would choose Astrologian for their pick when in comparison to White Mage it brings more useful tools granting more teamwide damage, damage mitigation, and free and unrestrained movement for the player. In the past, this overloaded kit was balanced by the job being dependent on a healer’s level of skill to play effectively. But with recent philosophical changes aiming to make jobs more approachable to the general player base, Astrologian’s recent rework has allowed for unrestricted access to an ever-growing power budget with little work needed to reach it. And with White Mage having been given no equivalent tools to balance the playing field, it’s not rocket science to see why Astrologian has become the default pick on many teams. Astrologian is exemplary of the other problem that job design currently faces, one where a job artificially monopolizes the limited tools that exist within the game as developers heavily favor it, resulting in a skewed and much larger power budget for the few and leaving only scraps for the remaining many.
And on that note, it becomes clear that Final Fantasy 14’s Pictomancer and Astrologian problems are centered on a philosophy where a handful of specific jobs are designed with the intent to ensure that power is at the forefront of their design. Power that other jobs are conspicuously missing, a disparity that greatly expounds the strengths of the chosen jobs, putting them ahead of their counterparts in leaps and bounds. The why for this reason is easy to make sense of, as developers want their efforts to be rewarded. And by creating powerful jobs, the player base is guaranteed to show the shiny powerful toys some extra love. But even with recent efforts to supplement declining jobs through small numerical buffs, a shift in numbers has not been enough to challenge the dominance of the reigning jobs, signaling that the problem is too large to be fixed with just an adjustment of numbers. It’s clear that significant changes are needed to bring the rest of the jobs into the fold. The lack of action on Pictomancer seems to indicate that developers are not interested in tearing down their newest addition to the game, and perhaps they are right on the money. The solution to the current problems plaguing the job system may rely more on reworking existing jobs to grant them unique or additional tools that create niches for them, allowing them to remain competitive in differing ways rather than serving as direct competitors vying for the highest numbers. But considering how decisive action has not yet taken place, and with historical precedence hinting that it doesn’t seem likely that serious change is on the horizon, it appears the current state of the game is here to stay.
At this point, it’s expected for players to encounter the same high-performing jobs in almost all new content moving forward and wait and see how the developers will respond to this situation. Many who are unhappy with the current state of affairs have signaled to the developers that the game is not in a good place, some even claiming that this is the beginning of the end for FF14’s golden era. However, assuming the current tolling of the bell is actually a death knell seems preemptive at best, as the discussion surrounding job balance and design is amplified by the recent release of new raiding content, putting it at the forefront of the community’s minds. That being said, it cannot be denied that pressures have begun to build, raising alarms for the overall health of the player base as frustrations foment.
As a player who entered the game during the golden high of Endwalker, the current era of conversation seems to point towards a concerning downward trend for the game. Endwalker was rife with its own problems, but job balance had never felt in such dire straits. To say that there have been no improvements since Endwalker would be to lie, but it would also do the game and its players a disservice to assert that things aren’t worrying as they currently are. And when thinking on the potential solutions that could right the current course of the game, it seems unlikely that the significant changes the game needs will be coming anytime soon.
Game development is very difficult, and no one can claim to know what Yoshi-P and his teams are working on behind the scenes. But for a game that has thrived off of building trust with its diverse player base, be they eternal or on-and-off with the game, it’s concerning that discussions have taken such a sour turn. The feeling that many of these players who have been asked to wait time and time again, will at some point decide “enough is enough,” is difficult to shake off. How much longer should the frustrated Ranged Physical DPS players who have been witness to the sinking of their role over the past years be expected to wait? How much longer should Machinist mains that want to master, play, and excel at their favorite job be asked to remain as the lowest performing DPS, when things have reached such a point that some parties online exclude their participation? Should these players wait four months with hope in their eyes only to be met with minor adjustments that have little to no impact on release? Or is waiting two years for the launch of an entirely new expansion be what the players should be willing to budget into their expectations?
And while waiting for these long stretches of time, be they four months or two years, is it naïve and foolish to be concerned as friend lists dwindle in size patch after patch and longtime friends move on from the game? It’s important to acknowledge that FF14’s player base is a varied and diverse one, but it’s also evident that with things remaining the way they are, the game may struggle to hold onto the people who may interact with the raid content more casually, those who are seeking to have a good and challenging time with their friends while playing the jobs that they love. Players that may believe that the developers have seemingly abandoned them, cold and unresponsive to their concerns. At the end of the day, only time will tell to see how Yoshi-P and his dedicated teams will seek to right the course and prevent the hollowing out of the player base. I just hope that the correction will be made soon enough, before those who love the game decide that the game no longer loves them in return, or at least enough for them to stay.