The SAM changes - and the current direction of job balance - is LAZY. Here's why
There, I said it. It's been over three weeks since the 6.1 patch was released and SAM's have not been shy about giving their feedback. It's safe to say that the verdict is in; the changes are terrible. First, let's sum up the major points that point to this laziness I spoke of in the title. We've got a lot to cover so forgive me if this gets wordy:
- "Button bloat" was the initial reasoning given, as per the translations on SE's own slides. The player base, even before the patch was released, quickly provided no less than five possible ways to reduce the total number of hotkey binds a SAM uses. This would have preserved Kaiten while also addressing the issue of button bloat.
- "Action bloat" was the correction we were given. We were told the translation was not entirely accurate and that the real reasoning was not to reduce the absolute number of keybinds but rather to reduce the number of actions a SAM was taking, or in other words to lower the APM (actions per minute). A quick comparison between ShB, 6.0 and 6.1 APM showed that SAM's were now doing - at most - one less action in 6.0 compared to the end of ShB, and that the changes from 6.0 to 6.1 would lower this APM by an additional one per minute. Which functionally is nothing and has zero practical effect on the job or how busy it is.
- Somewhat concurrently with the first point, we were told part of the reason behind the removal of Kaiten (and subsequent destruction of job synergy via the addition of auto-crits and potency reduction on Midare/Kaeshi/Ogi) was to reduce the damage variance between low-end and high-end SAM performance. While it was something that looked fine on paper, in practice it killed a big part of the fun players derived from playing SAM. That is to say, the build-up to a nice big hit that felt good to do, even if it didn't crit. This issue of damage variance was 100% created by SE's own job design decisions. The addition of a second charge of Meikyo and Kaeshi, as well as the addition of Ogi Namikiri and it's Kaeshi follow-up, forced SAM into a strict two-minute cycle. This cycle naturally aligned with raid buffs, meaning all of SAM's biggest damage was now shoved into a small period of time under raid buffs, further widening the gap. Had SAM remained on a 60s cycle, it's damage profile would naturally avoid the insane spikes that were now possible with the 120s cycle. Instead of addressing their own recent design decisions, the balance team opted to gut SAM instead by removing Kaiten and then destroying a huge chunk of of it's party synergy. To add one final insult to the injury, a brief comparison of 6.0 and 6.1 damage shows that the new auto-crit Midare's and Kaeshi's hit for less than the old Kaiten-buffed Midare's and boosted-potency Kaeshi's.
Oh, and let's not forget the as-yet-unchanged skill explanation for the Tsubame-Gaeshi tooltip that is still on the official Lodestone job page. Said explanation still reads that it repeats the previous Iaijutsu "with enhanced potency" which is not at all true in 6.1.
- Lastly, after much consternation and demands for further explanation now that the previous reasons were so cleanly debunked, Yoshi P. came out and explained that the existence of Kaiten as an ability on SAM was making it very difficult to iterate on the job for future expansions. So the decision was made to remove it, because the job balance team was just having too hard of a time working around it.
Posts #47 and 48, by Quyn:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-anymore/page5
So the decision was made to remove a core - and much-loved - aspect of the job that served the vital function of requiring resource management while simultaneously tying all of SAM's resources together. In it's place, SAM got nothing.
- Lastly, in that same link, Yoshi P. talks about a longer-term plan for job balance in the game, second paragraph of post #47, bold added by me:
"And then, I am also well aware of how the critical synergy works well with jobs...and I'm definitely aware, but this is also the overall problem of FFXIV itself, and there are discussions where we should have change that itself to begin with. But we can't be doing everything simultaneously at once so please understand that we want to tackle on that gradually."
This tells us that there is a longer-term plan for job balance currently being worked on and that the current state of SAM is simply the balance team unable to do "everything simultaneously." From this we can infer that there are more changes in the offing for other jobs and that SAM was simply the first to suffer from these backward, tone-deaf and decidedly un-fun changes.
Taken together, none of this paints a good picture. When SAM was originally released at the beginning of 4.0, it was universally praised for how "together" everything felt. Both it and RDM had a clear direction to them and each had kits that worked with and fed off of other parts of the job. Building Sen built Kenki, which was used to empower the attacks granted by Sen. Further Kenki use was for extra oGCD damage to keep the job interesting and add a measure of resource management on top of hitting our pair of positional attacks. Everything was tied together in a nice neat little package, and the wrapping that kept everything in place was Kaiten. It fused the Sen and Kenki resources together and forced the player to manage their Kenki resource and properly time the use of Shinten so as to ensure they never lacked for Kenki when it came time to use an Iaijutsu. In short, SAM was a whole and complete job from a gameplay and thematic perspective.
Since it's release, Kaiten has been a core part of playing SAM. But despite the long and positive history of Kaiten as an ability, SE chose to remove it, with the reasoning that it was difficult to expand on the job at some undetermined point in the future due to the job design team feeling "restricted" by the existence of Kaiten.
As far as we know there was never, at any point in time, a consideration of changing Kaiten in some way, such as lowering the potency granted by it. Instead, the design team took an axe to it and gave us the very much half-baked bandage of auto-crits to "make up" for the potency lost.
Now, taking all of this into consideration, it's become clear to me that what we are seeing with SAM is not innovation, but laziness. Job design laziness, to be specific. The concept underlying the removal of Kaiten was "it's too hard to design around" coupled with "good changes are coming, just trust me bro." While I would certainly agree that Yoshi P. has built up no small amount of faith - and I personally do have a lot of faith for that man, as an original 1.0 player who saw what good he's done for FF14 - I have to say that my faith right now is shaken.
In the above linked post, Yoshi P. states that the changes are for the players:
"I'll repeat myself that we really did all these adjustments for the sake of player's enjoyment here so I'll be thankful if you all can understand this."
Respectfully, I disagree. These changes do not feel like they are for the players, they feel like they are for the devs. Specifically, to make life easier for the job design team.
Let me be clear; I am under no illusion about how easy the job design team has it. It is most definitely NOT an easy job. But that isn't justification for these changes. The goal of the design team should be to make something fun and engaging, not to axe core parts of a job because working around an ability is too difficult. Adding further fuel to this fire is the absolutely braindead timing for these changes. Many SAM's have voiced how this kind of a change is much more suited for the release of a new expansion than it is for release in the middle of an existing one, two weeks before the most highly anticipated end-game content is set to come out. If, as Yoshi P. says, the goal is to create a better experience for the player then I don't think anyone would be against that. But to do so right now? And with a job that was so loved and enjoyed by it's players? And then go throw so many varied excuses at us in a way that just comes off as, well, shady?
I've said it before and I'll say it again; it boggles the mind.
The only conclusion then can be laziness; this approach, whether the devs intend it or not, is rooted in making their own jobs easier instead of making us, the players, happier. Even if, in some hypothetical future, Kaiten was to be removed, then do it at the transition of an xpac when that kind of radical job shift is expected. Do it when the entire new system has been finished and is ready for roll-out instead of the "gradual" implementation that destroyed an entire job. Every decision leading to this point reeks of corporate committee-ism and design-by-spreadsheet, both of which are just lazy and completely lacking in any kind of innovation.
So, Yoshida-san, should you ever read this, please take what I say to heart, as the earnest plea of a long-time fan that's been with this game for many years; direct your energy towards steering the design team away from whatever direction they are going. SAM has already suffered. Healers and tanks have been suffering for many years. Other dps are also suffering, or scared of what will come next. If this plan must be implemented then implement it when it is complete, with full transparency towards the players about it well in advance. Personally, I'd like to say that I have faith in the job design team going forward but the truth is that I do not. Not anymore. I would rather these changes to SAM be rolled back and the entire internal plan scrapped. I would rather the whole approach to job design - not just for dps but also for tanks and healers - be re-directed AWAY from where it's been going the past few years, which is to say AWAY from designing jobs to be braindead outside of the most difficult content in-game. To use a quote that Roxus provided us from the CN and KR servers:
"But it doesn't stop there. CN and KR are also starting to get loud, while behind in patches, they know what's coming. Stop making adjustments for those who don't want to learn or improve. Existing users matter as much as new users."
And one final quote from myself:
"Good to see that the other versions of the game are now making a stink about this too. Hopefully SE will understand the major mistake they have made, walk back the 6.1 SAM changes in their entirety and then start on a path of revising EVERY OTHER JOB that has suffered like this. Deal with MCH and their issues, address the boring healer rotations, add more complexity to what tanks can do beyond what's present for a tank in a savage or ultimate boss fight; actual REAL rotational challenge instead of the race to the bottom bullshit. That final quote makes a lot of sense. They might very well see a new influx of players but they'd be abandoning some of their longest-term and most stalwart subscribers for a casual playerbase who most definitely isn't going to stick with them through the years."
edit: as of 5-5-2022, Misshapenchair has released a great youtube video that touches on a lot of what I've discussed here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d_fMH9Lwvs
Definitely worth a watch, as he's also attempting to sound the alarm about the direction FF14 is taking with it's job design.
