Bring Back Kaiten

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Originally Posted by RyuuZero

with 7.05 they nerfed the Potencies of SAM to liberate Tsubamegaeshi from Meikyo Shisui which greatly enhanced the Feel of SAM's Gameplay.

Funnily enough, they could do this again! Nerf the Weaponskills once more and give agency to the Player to boost those nerfed Weaponskills with Kenki, how it used to be.

they just did it with Tsubamegaeshi, but I want that they also do it with Kenki itself, since that's how it used to be and what some people will bring back to Samurai.

I, for example rather sit on 20 Kenki to boost my next Weaponskill/Iaijutsu/Ogi (or Enpi, if I feel fancy) instead of sitting on 25 Kenki for Senei because it is ready in like 25 to 10 seconds.. and spend it on Shinten outside..

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Can you clarify how it increases player agency to have an ability that is only used to buff the potency of iaijutsu and something that must be used for every single iaijutsu? If you weren't using kaiten for all iaijutsu, you were being suboptimal. If you were using kaiten on any other weaponskill instead of just pressing shinten when you had kenki to spare, you were being suboptimal.

Kaiten was a zero agency ability, so I really want to know why you think it increased player agency in any meaningful way. It's just a different button to press that must be pressed before every iaijutsu usage. Were you just misusing kaiten? It was never a dps gain to use it for anything other than iaijutsu.

Since you suggested you would use kaiten on enpi, I am pretty sure you were just misusing kaiten.

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

Can you clarify how it increases player agency to have an ability that is only used to buff the potency of iaijutsu and something that must be used for every single iaijutsu? If you weren't using kaiten for all iaijutsu, you were being suboptimal. If you were using kaiten on any other weaponskill instead of just pressing shinten when you had kenki to spare, you were being suboptimal.

Kaiten was a zero agency ability, so I really want to know why you think it increased player agency in any meaningful way. It's just a different button to press that must be pressed before every iaijutsu usage. Were you just misusing kaiten? It was never a dps gain to use it for anything other than iaijutsu.

Since you suggested you would use kaiten on enpi, I am pretty sure you were just misusing kaiten.

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Why are you even arguing with him. As i see it his issue is not the missing kaiten, but something more deeply rooted.
I doubt that the devs will even listen to him at all. ;D

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

Can you clarify how it increases player agency to have an ability that is only used to buff the potency of iaijutsu and something that must be used for every single iaijutsu? If you weren't using kaiten for all iaijutsu, you were being suboptimal. If you were using kaiten on any other weaponskill instead of just pressing shinten when you had kenki to spare, you were being suboptimal.

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Yes! because you have to make sure to have enough Kenki to boost the necessary Skills to dish out serious damage.
20 Kenki for a Potency Boost instead of 25 Kenki for an Attack and It's not true, you also boosted Ogi with Kaiten. Kaiten enabled you to boost All Weaponskills

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

Kaiten was a zero agency ability, so I really want to know why you think it increased player agency in any meaningful way. It's just a different button to press that must be pressed before every iaijutsu usage. Were you just misusing kaiten? It was never a dps gain to use it for anything other than iaijutsu.

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..and your takes (like that) on this forum are zero iq! but okay I'll explain how Kaiten gave the Player more agency: because they had to press a button to make their skills stronger not unlike Life Surge from Dragoon, with the difference that Kaiten had an entire resource to back it up, the Problem with Life Surge is that it just gives your next weaponskill a crit+life steal but no interaction with the Dragon Gauge. Kaiten on the otherhand introduced Kenki as a Weaponskill boosting resource and that aspect has been lost since 6.1, many Samurai critique that Kenki right now (as of Patch 7.05) still feels useless.

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

Since you suggested you would use kaiten on enpi, I am pretty sure you were just misusing kaiten.

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I didn't suggested to use Kaiten on Enpi, I just aluded the Option, since a Kaiten Buffed Enpi is still stronger than a Normal Enpi!
Hell! You can have your Midare Setsugekka ready, see you don't have enough Kenki for Kaiten, throw 2 Enpi, have enough Kenki for Kaiten, use Kaiten, do Midare Setsugekka, GG!

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Originally Posted by Unyqua

Why are you even arguing with him. As i see it his issue is not the missing kaiten, but something more deeply rooted.
I doubt that the devs will even listen to him at all. ;D

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huh? It's not about me, but the aftereffects of the Kaiten Removal and how it makes Kenki feel useless
which Kaiten's Existence prevented. The Thing is Kenki isn't a Weaponskill boosting resource anymore, you just use it for Shinten effectively which is dull in comparison to the Kenki and Weaponskill Synergy that Kaiten enabled.

Iaijutsu, and ogi. So where is the player agency again? You use it for those abilities and if you don't you're misplaying, if you use them for anything else, you're misplaying.

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you have player agency. You can also use life surge for true thrust on drg. Should you? Is this player agency?

You should never ever be in a position to have midare ready without having enough kenki for kaiten. This 2 enpi for kaiten example honestly makes me feel like you are trolling.

Even the idea of player agency in this game is silly. Rotations are set in stone entirely. Even on RNG based jobs, you don't have player agency. You either misplay or you press the right button in response to the rng condition.

You want player agency? You're playing the wrong game. Player agency will never be part of the discussion in ffxiv. Even when talking about non-standard BLM, it was just a more complicated form of optimal play. There's no player agency in playing less than optimal.

The amount of buzz words you're throwing around in bold text is pretty amusing though. GG!

not necessarily, you see you have to make sure to have enough Kenki to use Kaiten on those big weaponskills. It's about utilizing Kenki's Synergy with Weaponskills to make the most out it. That Aspect has been removed in 6.1 and many want it back!
A current criticism about Samurai is that Kenki feels useless, I wonder why.. Funnily Enough with Tendo, you now can use Meikyo Shisui like Kaiten, but Kenki remains useless :/

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

Even the idea of player agency in this game is silly. Rotations are set in stone entirely. Even on RNG based jobs, you don't have player agency. You either misplay or you press the right button in response to the rng condition.

You want player agency? You're playing the wrong game. Player agency will never be part of the discussion in ffxiv. Even when talking about non-standard BLM, it was just a more complicated form of optimal play. There's no player agency in playing less than optimal.

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okay.. that seems quite nihilistic.. like.. if there is no player agency.. where is the Gameplay then? If there is no Player Agency.. why even play the game? why not just write scripts and macros to enable auto-play? You seem against entire aspects of fun, if you ask me. But you seem busy yourself with stuff since you don't play DRG anymore

and regarding the 2 Enpi, that was meant as a fail safe not trolling, but I can see how your approach of playing video games sees everything remotely indiviual as an Insult.

In the End I want more out of Kenki but the Idea of Shinten.

1.Make Sure your Sen look like this:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...c86b4a0a97b72&
2.Your Iaijutsu should look like this:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...7d724483e5a82&
3.Now press Meikyo Shisui (when it's available):
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...158a2904c102a&
4.Now your Iaijutsu should look like this:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...025c9dc421606&
5.Now press Iaijutsu
*insert image of massive damage*

Now to explain why/how&what it's quite simple, Meikyo Shisui can be used like Kaiten due to the Tendo Boost at lvl100. But Kenki remains still useless. Where I propose the Return of Kaiten as lvl52 Skill that grants the following Weaponskill Direct Hit at the cost of 20 Kenki and an Upgrade with the Tendo Boost at lvl100. Seriously! Kaiten followed by Tendo Setsugekka would look AMAZING! So I want that!

But this is my discovered Samurai Technique. The Reason why I called it Nintendo Setsugekka is because it sounds funny, I mean the Nin of Nintendo Setsugekka stands for the Choice that the Player makes, who decides to press Meikyo when they had Midare Setsugekka ready to use Tendo how they would use Kaiten.

First things First:
Tendo is Kaiten but not really

Kenki is still a useless Shinten Gauge, are you happy?

and Shoha is Geirskogul now... (A Line AoE with no other Option)

Where I have been?
I've been playing Games, also aside FFXIV I beat and 100% FFXVI the Base Game (on my PS5pro, don't worry I skipped on the base PS5 ofc) and tbh.. it would've been better if FFXVI played a bit more like FFXIV but back to the Topic.

The Tsubamegaeshi Change is Good, I'd even consider bargaining unfreezing my Samurai Alts IF: Tsubamegaeshi would be the lvl52 Skill because that would be fun, unlike getting a sleep inducing Shinten Gauge that adds.. 1 OCD every 25 Kenki :/

We should congratulate the Combat Design Team making Job Design so boring that it cure Insomnia :D but I'm just a Player.. not a Doctor.. so I only can tell from a FFXIV Player Perspective..

but back to Tendo, which btw really helps tricking the Brain of having Fun but again Kenki Remains to be useless since all you spend it on is Shinten But What about Zanshin!? Zanshin costs 50 Kenki, true But it also requires Zanshin Ready granted by Ikishoten, not only soaking up 50 Kenki but making the 50 Kenki Cost redundant because why does it cost 50 Kenki if you can't use it without Zanshin Ready? Inturn: Making Ikishoten your 2 minute Cone AoE Button.. I didn't even needed to rewrite my Ogi Macro for that.. just rewriting the name from Double Slice Buster to Rising Slice Buster

The thing is.. visually they could just used the Kaiten Animation for Tendo because Kaiten in to Tendo Setsugekka LOOKS SO AWESOME!! which is why I think/hope Kaiten coming back not only making the Next Weaponskill Direct Hit but also granting Tendo! I mean Tendo for 20 Kenki? Then we would've meaningful Kenki Interaction again instead of just Shinten.

But in terms of Gameplay Expectations I tuned down my Standards for FFXIV alot, basicly most Warriors Games smoke FFXIV since and before Dawntrail out of the Water, mostly One Piece Pirate Warriors 3&4

Finally some real problems!!

Just stop the copium kaiten will never come back.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

Just stop the copium kaiten will never come back.

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No? Since the Kaiten Playstyle was Last Time This Game had Fun Gameplay^^
Or do you wanna defend how Viper plays instead?

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Originally Posted by RyuuZero

No? Since the Kaiten Playstyle was Last Time This Game had Fun Gameplay^^
Or do you wanna defend how Viper plays instead?

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It was for YOU maybe the last time it was fun, but overall does the current samu feels incredible with the recent changes to tsubame, and thats something the majority thinks of, kaiten will never come back so just accept ist, and no i dont defend viper which is my main on my RAID TWINK

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

Can you clarify how it increases player agency to have an ability that is only used to buff the potency of iaijutsu and something that must be used for every single iaijutsu?

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In itself, it doesn't enhance "agency", no. The better way to look at it is that it accentuates skill expression among other, surrounding parts of the kit, helping to tie the Kenki gauge together (alongside the old varied Kenki costs, likewise removed).

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Originally Posted by RyuuZero

since a Kaiten Buffed Enpi is still stronger than a Normal Enpi!

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No, unless the difference would finish off an enemy that could not otherwise be finished off without greater waste of relative potency, a Kaiten-Enpi is weaker than a normal Enpi in any sense that matters, for the simple fact that the Kaiten's worth of resource could have been better spent on any normal action (Gyofu for uptime, Kaiten-Iaijutsu, Shinten if overflow, etc.).

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Originally Posted by RyuuZero

if there is no player agency.. where is the Gameplay then? If there is no Player Agency.. why even play the game? why not just write scripts and macros to enable auto-play? You seem against entire aspects of fun, if you ask me.

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Hikari's being pretty reasonable here, actually. "Agency" is simply a misnomer for what you're describing; one can understand that you instead mean the closest thing to 'agency" that we may have, but... in XIV, you're playing sheet music and being graded by how precisely close to what is written you can get, not by any potential "value added" or what "new spin" may be possible. If teamplay were more integral, that could better provide a space for seemingly different types of knowledge or instinct rewarded, and if our rotations were less fixed with obvious best answers more would seem to fall to nuance and branching gambles that could potentially be called "agency", but this XIV. Teamwork in this game has increasingly come down to playing in adjacent recording rooms, careful only to follow the same BPM rather than to truly adapt to anyone else.

And while some anchors (fixed, obvious things, like Kaiten before Iaijutsu) accentuate the skill expression surrounding them and could, in the right context, even see some use reminiscent of "ingenuity" while helping to give a job's playflow its easily recognizable flavor, having too much that is covered by those anchors or otherwise inflexibly pinned down can work to collectively stymie any room for what we might call "agency".

For that reason, to my mind, when considering something like Kaiten, just as with Power Surge before it (the last skill to have been given the same warrant for removal, despite wildly different contexts), it's worth considering not just whether it should be kept or removed, but what it could have been to provide as much benefit as possible. Kaiten was pretty flawed, but worked well at least to accentuate the gauge contexts of Shadowbringers and Stormblood. Ideally, though, I would have liked to see it form something a bit less... rote, so to speak. /shrug

Kaiten before Iaijutsu was the Main Use but the Application was that it boosted all Weaponskills and Enpi with 50% more Damage (due to Kaiten) is stronger than a Normal Enpi unless the Buffed Enpi doesn't crit but the normal one does.

But in the current Day of the Samurai Gameplay Kenki really feels useless and Tsubamegaeshi should be the 52 Skill, that would be fun.

Yet if Kenki should remain: Kaiten needs to come back

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Originally Posted by RyuuZero

Kaiten before Iaijutsu was the Main Use but the Application was that it boosted all Weaponskills and Enpi with 50% more Damage (due to Kaiten) is stronger than a Normal Enpi unless the Buffed Enpi doesn't crit but the normal one does.

But in the current Day of the Samurai Gameplay Kenki really feels useless and Tsubamegaeshi should be the 52 Skill, that would be fun.

Yet if Kenki should remain: Kaiten needs to come back

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Only the net value of actions are relevant. The net value of using Kaiten on Enpi is less than using Kaiten on any of its usual means of expenditure (Higan, Midare, etc.) while instead using Enpi normally.

It is therefore, "in any sense that matters", weaker than normal Enpi and always a weaker choice (as decisions are the emphasis in evaluating any increased breath of player "agency") than normal Enpi.

Yupp but seriously the Uselessness of Kenki needs to be pointed out, glaringly.
Since It's what Kaiten addressed:
At lvl 50 The Samurai learned to master Iaijutsu
At lvl 52 The Samurai learned Kaiten to utilize Kenki in order to boost all Weaponskills

Kenki was supposed to enhance the lvl50 Rotation with a Resource to make the Big Attacks hit bigger thanks to Resource Management that Kaiten provided.

What's the Resource Management of Shinten? "Oh.. I have 25 Kenki, Press Shinten for an OCD.. wuuhuu", not as deep as to have an Energy Gauge to make your Big Hitter hit bigger.

which is why if Kaiten doesn't come back they should at least scrap Kenki, but Tsubamegaeshi to lvl52 and go back to sleep.. or what they done to Summoner.. idk

Just adding my voice to this - bring back Kaiten.

Kaiten, like so many oGCD spenders or weaves, was just silly.

It commits the same cardinal crime a lot of design in FFXIV does, confusing complexity of gameplay with depth of gameplay. Somehow we (the playerbase) have all accepted that just having a lot of buttons to weave/mash somehow is indicative of skill, despite that quite literally being the gameplay of Mario&Sonic Olympics 100m dash or WiiSports or so.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Kaiten, like so many oGCD spenders or weaves, was just silly.

It commits the same cardinal crime a lot of design in FFXIV does, confusing complexity of gameplay with depth of gameplay. Somehow we (the playerbase) have all accepted that just having a lot of buttons to weave/mash somehow is indicative of skill, despite that quite literally being the gameplay of Mario&Sonic Olympics 100m dash or WiiSports or so.

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But WiiSports is fun. (´･ᴗ･`) ~♥

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Originally Posted by RyuuZero

Kaiten before Iaijutsu was the Main Use but the Application was that it boosted all Weaponskills and Enpi with 50% more Damage (due to Kaiten) is stronger than a Normal Enpi unless the Buffed Enpi doesn't crit but the normal one does.

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And that's why it will never come back: The devs don't want to balance it. There are too many variables going on. Buff the potency of a GCD skill and suddenly Shinten becomes useless.

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Originally Posted by Tint

And that's why it will never come back: The devs don't want to balance it. There are too many variables going on. Buff the potency of a GCD skill and suddenly Shinten becomes useless.

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No. That's like saying you can't have Senei be powerful or Shinten would never see use. Kaiten was stronger than Shinten/Kyuten only when buffing certain skills.

An ST GCD skill originally needed at >480 potency for buffing it to outpace Shinten and an AoE GCD needed >240n potency for buffing it to compete with Kyuten. That left only the Iaijutsu (940, 360n, 720).

And since the frequency of those spenders' use was constrained, so too was Kaiten's (just as Guren/Senei's and Gyoten/Yaten's are).

As for now, they could absolutely re-add Kaiten at whatever degree of reward over not bothering with it they want just by adjusting the %damage bonus and/or the Kenki cost.

If still at 20 Kenki, and if they wanted, say, Kaiten-Midare to go back to a ~50% effective-potency-per-kenki gain over Shinten (per pre-EW Samurai), they'd need only reduce Kaiten to a 40% bonus even with its now-bloated effective potency (640*1.5 = 960). Done.



(No, the bigger issue, if anything, is simply in flavor -- from Tenka Goken being reduced to a wet fart and base SAM AoE skills in general being diminished so greatly in favor of Shoha II and Ogi Namikiri.)

But you describe precisely why it wasn't a useful ability. It was a rote use, it had no meaningful interaction with anything, it was just a semi-fixed drain on the gauge for a semi-fixed gain in potency.

It wasn't like you had a mechanic that'd suddenly leave you flooded in gauge and you'd be using Kaiten on ~every GCD to not overcap it, the way Dancers semi-spam Sabre during burst. You might as well just fold the potency into the skills and remove Kaiten, you leave the amount of brain required to play at the exact same level but reduce RSI inducing mechanics in your players.

If Kaiten had an interesting interaction with the kit, again, sure. But it didn't. I'm not saying plenty other skills don't also lack interesting interactions (in fact that is the primary problem of FFXIV's job setups, they're all extremely boring static-rotation jobs with no flexibility, interactivity or challenge because 100% of that has all been pushed into the fight design instead of the characters). But Kaiten surely wasn't one, either. There's no loss from it being removed. At all.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

But you describe precisely why it wasn't a useful ability.

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I also described why being rote use doesn't necessarily mean that a skill isn't useful as an addition to the gameplay of a given kit:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

In itself, it doesn't enhance "agency", no. The better way to look at it is that it accentuates skill expression among other, surrounding parts of the kit, helping to tie the Kenki gauge together (alongside the old varied Kenki costs, likewise removed).

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Originally Posted by Carighan

It was a rote use, it had no meaningful interaction with anything, it was just a semi-fixed drain on the gauge for a semi-fixed gain in potency.

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Effectively, not semi-fixed, but simply... fixed. Each skill had its own fixed ppk via Kaiten. Kaiten-Midare is, for all intents and purposes, not Kaiten-Higanbana or Kaiten-Tenka, just as Life Surge-Heavens' Thrust is not Life Surge-Raiden Thrust.

But let's consider:

Shinten is likewise "rote use". It is objectively a fixed drain for a fixed gain in potency. You use it when you would otherwise overcap Kenki, including over the 2 GCDs before Ikishoten, and during raid burst, as SAM's lowest priority oGCD outside of a preemptive utility buffs needed for less than their whole duration (Third Eye, Arm's Length, Bloodbath) and True North.

Kaiten was SAM's highest priority oGCD except where able to double-weave (in which case driftables took the lead, especially if a fight would go over 7 minutes). It was therefore a fair bit less lenient about when it could be hit and therefore about preemptively reserving weave space. It also meant that Kenki amounted to more than just 4-generic-spender-charges a la DRK MP if TBN's MP cost were removed.

There objectively was loss to SAM's depth of resource it being removed, just as there was from Senei being 50 gauge while on a separate CD-interval from Ikishoten. Whether the single button saved (a bit laughable an excuse at the time, though, when Ogi Namikiri remained separate from Ikishoten) was worth the loss in complexity or not is debatable, but there was a loss.

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It wasn't like you had a mechanic that'd suddenly leave you flooded in gauge and you'd be using Kaiten on ~every GCD to not overcap it, the way Dancers semi-spam Sabre during burst. You might as well just fold the potency into the skills and remove Kaiten, you leave the amount of brain required to play at the exact same level but reduce RSI inducing mechanics in your players.

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Again, see Shinten. In fact, see APM existing for so long as there are rote rotations.

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If Kaiten had an interesting interaction with the kit, again, sure.

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It had, by consequence of its requirements, kit-interaction more interesting than some 80% of extant Samurai skills and a good two-thirds of skills in any other job kit more broadly. It wasn't great individually, but virtually nothing in this game (or arguably any game) is. Such is scarcely possible, after all.

Now, to be clear: I don't hugely care whether Kaiten had stayed, as I still mostly enjoy Samurai so long as a fight gives me things to Gyoten and Yaten and occasionally Ogi-cleave, but let's not ignore how kit synergy actually works. It has at least as much to do with what constraints they impel upon the other kit and what cognitive load that introduces (potentially an "anti-synergy" in ease of output but a synergy in gameplay produced) as, say, how it removes a challenge in order to "shore up" a weakness (a synergy in ease of output but potentially an anti-synergy in gameplay produced). I just find the reasoning typically given for its removal rather ludicrous given what all else would then fall under the same warrants.

If skills can generally be described introducing directly or indirectly...

• a fair bit a depth (see Flare in the context of double-quickenings, pre-ShB MP costs, or Despair/Flare among nonstandard lines despite being very simple in itself),
• a little bit of depth (Fuma Shuriken in the era of oGCD mudras and DoT management to perfectly no-clip if its tuning had been even a sliver higher; Fracture among HW or ARR Monk when usable to avoid positional requirements while maintaining rhythm),
• a sliver of depth (e.g., Fracture on HW Warrior),
• or virtually no depth (Ikishoten / Ogi Namikiri / Namikiri-Gaeshi; etc.)

...Kaiten would have still been solidly in the upper half.

Oh, I see where the disconnect comes from.

I see them all as adding ~0 depth, simply because all of the examples you give merely ask for a certain amount of digital dexterity (as in, your fingers) while going through a pre-solved rotation that is optimized for you. All actual modifications to this happen only as a result of either a) the fight forcing more than a workaround, some deeper break like delaying a whole burst window and this messing with certain jobs that rely on gauges or cycles or b) messing up, drifting, and then depending on the job being more or less able to rectify this.
Which are both, importantly, external to the actual job design. They're not part of the job itself, they only interact with the portion of the kit "vulnerable to" drifting or delaying.

Now don't get me wrong, static rotation type classes can be really well-designed. They just always tend to be shallow in their gameplay, as nowadays we can simply look up the optimal rotation and then it's all just about honing said dexterity to never fumble your buttons. At which point the entire gameplay is a physical exercise, with its difficulty scaled on how often you have to press buttons (so lots of oGCD weaving = more difficult).

A form of difficulty for sure, but sadly not at all the type I personally enjoy. :'(

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Originally Posted by Carighan

I see them all as adding ~0 depth, simply because all of the examples you give merely ask for a certain amount of digital dexterity (as in, your fingers)

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Name any rotation in any game and chances are that all depth amounts simply to, again, digital dexterity and quickness to respond to visual cues.

Every risk/compromise has breakpoints before which A is better and after which B is better. Every RNG output still has an optimal action (not necessarily the roll that one, but always the roll that has the greater effective probability of winning, the 1-99 in a 99% chance, rather than the 100 that may have ended up the output despite all odds). One can be forced to memorize a greater number of situations, but there is still ultimately a best output for each.

At best, such therefore shifts which is easier between complete memorization and memorization of guidelines/breakpoints/rough_estimates only.

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They just always tend to be shallow in their gameplay, as nowadays we can simply look up the optimal rotation and then it's all just about honing said dexterity to never fumble your buttons.

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I'd agree, but at the same total complexity against a striking dummy, etc., the same could be said of a kit firmly in the cult of RNGesus. So long as there are no varied encounter opportunities from which to revalue skills, a chance-based job will nonetheless follow a strict APL (action priority list).

Yes, a RNG-varied kit provides a greater number of exact situations (even if they might easily be boiled down by math into a much smaller number) per action than a chance-less kit, but both require shifting parameters (effective mob count, TTK, positional access, etc.) to see variance between combating a striking dummy and doing a given encounter.

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All actual modifications to this happen only as a result of either a) the fight forcing more than a workaround, some deeper break like delaying a whole burst window and this messing with certain jobs that rely on gauges or cycles or b) messing up, drifting, and then depending on the job being more or less able to rectify this.
Which are both, importantly, external to the actual job design. They're not part of the job itself, they only interact with the portion of the kit "vulnerable to" drifting or delaying.

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Yet those are no less, fundamentally, than the impacts incurred within nonstatic rotations.

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A form of difficulty for sure, but sadly not at all the type I personally enjoy. :'(

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Same. I prefer having to do quick maths than to just have quick hands. (A bit of chance tends to help with that, aye, and varied situations in each encounter even more so.) And for that reason, losing Kaiten wasn't all that impactful to me, personally.

My point is, though, that Kaiten did maintain most of the qualities generally associated with "decent" or even "good" skill designs: It vitally enhanced surrounding systems (for which it was neither unique nor quite sufficient but still necessary), added stress to surrounding weaves enough to increase threat of drift, etc. and thereby incentivize a bit more forethought and raise cognitive load in a manageable but subtly noticeable way that lent SAM a bit more its persistent but readied vibe, held iconic flair and flavor, and doubled down on what to many felt best about Samurai.

For that reason, it was certainly a loss by nearly all criteria firmly and broadly held in consensus (i.e., as close as we can get to "objective" in an experience), including those usually held by players defending its removal.

What if Kaiten just became Samurai's version of Reassemble or Life Surge?

The skill itself leant into the job's overall fantasy, and even came with a measure of skill expression, but Samurai as a job always felt like there were too many buttons for what the job ultimately wanted to do. I don't think the issue was ever Kaiten itself, but the superfluous additional buttons.

I feel like that'd offer far less to gameplay than it did before, all while still costing the same amount of buttons again. If anything, the most superfluous addition we've had of late (apart from the thankfully removed Shoha II)... is probably just Ikishoten, at least if the plan was always to drop Senei/Guren down to a mere Shinten of cost. It compels us to drop down to 40-45 Kenki before it refreshes, but it no longer has anything excusing its original implementation (in place of old Hagakure to quickly gain enough Kenki for 2 Kaiten and a Senei). Tbh, the new skill by which to instantly spend and then forget about the 50 Kenki generated seems to make it even worse in that regard, especially in that it then prevents Ogi from being consolidated into Ikishoten despite being equally strictly dependent on Iki to be castable. 🤔

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Originally Posted by ElysiumDragon

What if Kaiten just became Samurai's version of Reassemble or Life Surge?

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That's what Kaiten was ^^ just that it costs 20 Kenki and being the First Skill to spend Kenki on.
Kaiten was the Skill that introduced Samurai to the Kenki Resource, basicly:
"You know your lvl50 Rotation, here have something cool to boost your stuff even stronger!"
now with Shinten.. uhh an Attack for 25 Kenki.. accelerating.. not really though..
and come on, easy would it have been for the Devs to cut Kaiten's 50% Boost and make it give Direct Hit Instead!? Yeah DPS ppls may've cried for a week but the Gameplay would still be there especially at lvl100!!
I mean.. think about that, what if Kaiten got a buff at lvl100 to not only give Direct Hit but also Tendo:
Tendo for 20 Kenki I would love that!

But there's no factual difference between Kaiten and Shinten. They both transform gauge into damage. They have minor implementation differences but those would be sanded off by job balancing anyways as they only affect the damage profile. Mechanically they have no difference, you just deal damage.

wouldn't having the flexibility to shift when you boost your damage be more useful if raid buffs came in more varied timings than 2m or when you want an extra push near the end of an encounter?

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Originally Posted by Carighan

But there's no factual difference between Kaiten and Shinten. They both transform gauge into damage. They have minor implementation differences but those would be sanded off by job balancing anyways as they only affect the damage profile. Mechanically they have no difference, you just deal damage.

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In terms of total output, yes, it is impossible to differentiate anything from Glare spam. However, that nonetheless doesn't make, even with tuning aside, Reassemble feel identical to Gauss Shot or Life Surge to Jump. They're damn close, sure, but the first in each pair is more co-constrained.

That said...

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

wouldn't having the flexibility to shift when you boost your damage be more useful if raid buffs came in more varied timings than 2m or when you want an extra push near the end of an encounter?

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Between the two, Shinten gives more control over when your damage is dealt, precisely because Kaiten's useful spending depends on the GCD immediately after its uses.

That is true of course. I find a good litmus test for gameplay validity of multiple similar skills is whether you, as a player, could tell the difference if the information were removed. Imagine a scenario where both the damage numbers above the enemy and the tooltip details of both skills were redacted. It'd be incredibly difficult to figure out what both of these do different from each other. Enemies die quicker and they use gauge. And that's always a bad sign for both existing, IMO. Don't get me wrong though, I'd be fully for removing Shinten again in favor of Kaiten, even though I understand why they did it.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

But there's no factual difference between Kaiten and Shinten. They both transform gauge into damage. They have minor implementation differences but those would be sanded off by job balancing anyways as they only affect the damage profile. Mechanically they have no difference, you just deal damage.

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I'd say there is: Kaiten boosts All Weaponskills, thus making The Kenki Resource Interact with all Weaponskills of the Samurai. Shinten is just an Ability that you throw out. As well as the Kenki Cost, which might be small but 20 Kenki and 25 Kenki Feel very different! I want to utilize 20 Kenki again.

I mean.. yeah Shinten is an Attack that you can use by using up those Kenki which are generated by Weaponskills, but Kaiten gave the Power back to the Weaponskills which was a nice aspect.. Now there is kinda only Hagakure which just drains your Sen into Kenki.. for what? Shinten?

The solution to the Kaiten problem is to make it the effect only apply to weaponskills that have a cast time.
No more People doing Kaiten-Yukikaze filler or some other nonesense, Job is fixed, you're welcome.

No one was ever doing a Kaiten-Yukikaze spam anyways. It's less efficient than Shinten.

???

For that reason, though...
@RyuuZero

No, Kaiten interacts, in the sense you seem to be referring to, only with Iaijutsu. It simply adds a button/timing trap to all else.

While, on the other hand...
@Carighan

It would be plenty easy to tell Kaiten apart even without tooltips.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

No one was ever doing a Kaiten-Yukikaze spam anyways. It's less efficient than Shinten.

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Lol
Lmao
And no one ever uses Doton on a single target either

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

It would be plenty easy to tell Kaiten apart even without tooltips.

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Assuming that FFXIV players are Literate is a MASSIVE mistake.

In my 10 years of playing, with over 2,500 days of playtime, I've not seen a single person have a problem with Kaiten. I didn't see a single person have a problem with it in the stream chats where Yoshi-P claimed he'd met someone that had a problem with it.

This change was when the changes had ceased to just be removing bloat, unused/annoying stuff, stuff that couldn't work anymore, to removing all stress and confusion at the expense of job identity.

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

in a side scrolling game, if there aren’t any holes you can drop down into if you miss a jump, of course the game would lose its stress, but it would also lose its fun.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

In my 10 years of playing, with over 2,500 days of playtime, I've not seen a single person have a problem with Kaiten. I didn't see a single person have a problem with it in the stream chats where Yoshi-P claimed he'd met someone that had a problem with it.

This change was when the changes had ceased to just be removing bloat, unused/annoying stuff, stuff that couldn't work anymore, to removing all stress and confusion at the expense of job identity.

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Kaiten added no additional depth to SAM. It was a button that had no nuance. No gray area. It had 1 specific use case, use it before a sticker spender. That's it. Because of Shinten's existence, you had a very clear, strict barrier where its use was either more efficient than Shinten (correct use case), or not more efficient (incorrect use case). It was a worthless, pointless filler button that acted as a gauge spender. It introduced a fail state that never occurred in actual gameplay because of how old SAM flowed. That fail state being "I used Shinten the GCD before Iaijutsu." A fail state so rare that you have to intentionally trigger it to get it to happen.

Of all the buttons Square has removed, Kaiten is one of the few that was actually justifiable. It was just worthless button bloat. It's ONLY benefit was thematic and rhythmic. But SAM's identity isn't just fucking Kaiten. And, if you were legitimately stressed or confused with Kaiten's use case? I'd tell you to play something simplistic like Warrior, but you've beaten me to it.

There is only one use for Midare: to spend it before your next Sen. There is only one use for Tenka: to spend it before your next Sen while in AoE. There is only one use for Shinten: to spend its Kenki before you'd overcap until dumping under raid buffs. Even Higanbana, Yaten, and Gyoten barely have two use cases.

Does that make all those skills, likewise, degenerate bloat?

Or perhaps, just perhaps, might things work rather more interdependently as a complete system, with the likes of only our 2-Sen being AoE, or Kenki originally desiring certain variable margins mindful of upcoming Higan, Guren/Senei, etc. timings, and the like actually make a difference overall even if not skill by individual skill?

Inb4 "Kaiten-simp" or the like: Kaiten can stay gone for all I care, but could we please consider the implications of our warrants evenly when (or ideally before) arguing whether something should or should not have been removed? Else, in giving ammo for anything alike to be removed in the future, we may find far more taken than we first posted...

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

There is only one use for Midare: to spend it before your next Sen. There is only one use for Tenka: to spend it before your next Sen while in AoE. There is only one use for Shinten: to spend its Kenki before you'd overcap until dumping under raid buffs. Even Higanbana, Yaten, and Gyoten barely have two use cases.

Does that make all those skills, likewise, degenerate bloat?

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Yes, actually. These are all "bad" buttons. You're getting close to a core problem with most DPS class designs in FFXIV (and in fact tanks and healers too but in different just thematically similar ways): They are mostly button bloat.

The core underlying class identity and design is incredibly minimal, and does not at all translate well into the main gameplay loop. The fact so many oGCDs exist in itself hints at this, as it shows a need to find "between the cracks"-space for more buttons to give people more to "do", as their core gameplay holds no mental attention as there's nothing to it.

So yeah, correct, virtually all such buttons are pointless for their respective jobs. And once you take them away, the static rotation exposed beneath the thin veneer shows how utterly simplistic it is, and that in turn shows just why static-rotation-type jobs just don't work well, at least for FFXIV. They really ought to be moving away from them more.

Take for example the core visual/lore/operational identify of Samurai. Casted melee attacks. How often do these actually even impact your gameplay feel at all nowadays? They do not. They are too fast, they aren't important enough, they are too variable in their placement specifically. They ought to be extremely restrictive moves, but go with the lore have huge payoff when you pull them off - in fact not being able to do should probably be expected to happen sometimes to account for the burst in power. Instead, Samurai has the same static-rotation GCD flow that autohotkey could play optimally for you, with the same filler oGCD spam as everyone else.

Those buttons you mention only exist to make you feel more busy while playing an incredibly mind-numbingly boring core gameplay. It's the equivalent of constantly having to tap on buildings to collect currency in mobile games, nothing more, nothing less. To a very small degree this is not problematic or unexpected, but in FFXIV these non-player-interactive filler buttons have become the vast majority of skills and hence hotbars are so bloated that this is noteworthy when people discuss the game to non-players.