About Button Bloat and job accessibility

I realized the main reason why Kaiten is getting removed is because of "button bloat"

You know what kind of button bloat I'd like for the to remove. Make High Fire II / High Blizzard II an upgrade of Fire III / Blizzard III. I never quite understood why we have different spells to swap Astral and Umbral phases for single target and AoE.

Black Mages have shiny new spells they never use in raid. Not to mention the slight change to Ninja. Making Mug the new Trick Attack is an obvious way to lower skill ceiling because they don't want Genins to lose their party buff because they bunnied. Genins will still be underperforming because they'll bunny a Ninjutsu anyways.

Personally, it started with Healers to lower their skill ceiling to DPS. Monk/Summoner followed (Monk was done much better than Summoner). Summoner became a complete joke in the raiding scene. Painted as a physical DPS that deserves to do no damage for being a no brain job.

If you guys really want Kaiten back for the uniqueness and gameplay, do look back a bit and support the jobs that got butchered. Summoner is super popular now, clearly a "success" but people still play it bad. Summoner is clunky, Carbuncle is 1 button from being glamour and... let's be real, some Summoners will never use Radiant Aegis in their life so it is already glamour for them.

How about Dragoons that lost their aura in the name of simplicity? Or Monk losing their aura from GL. These may as well be called just flavor and glamour but it does remove identity to the job imho.

The thing that frustrates me the most is that the people changes like these are meant for aren't even the same people who will do the harder endgame content...
What does it matter if they can't play optimally in freaking dungeons and story mode trials <_<?
Why should people in Savage, Extreme and Ultimate have their Jobs become less fun to play because of them?

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

The thing that frustrates me the most is that the people changes like these are meant for aren't even the same people who will do the harder endgame content...
What does it matter if they can't play optimally in freaking dungeons and story mode trials <_<?
Why should people in Savage, Extreme and Ultimate have their Jobs become less fun to play because of them?

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Remember, a bad Genin that can't properly Suiton to get TA won't properly Raiton ;P

A Samurai that had no idea how to manage his Kenki for Kaiten won't know how to hold it up for burst windows.

I just feel 6.1 is a log of QoL for the players and they are preparing to welcome less experienced players. Aka, single player RPG players that just don't play with online players and they are catering to bad players. At this point, its not even to casuals. I'm sure a ton of casuals don't want to lose Kaiten. That removal is literally just to accommodate bad Samurais. If anything, less players will play the job. Embrace Monks I guess.

I am having the suspicion that the Kaiten removal might be more motivated by high ability input, rather than button bloat. Kaiten comes up quite often in the rotation, more so than shoha, ogi or even tsubame.
True, unifying those actions and their follow up actions, into morphing keys, would help actual button bloat.
However, I expect Kaiten was chosen for removal, to lower the cpm between various different key inputs instead. Kaiten is a good candidate for this result, as it is used so frequently.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

The thing that frustrates me the most is that the people changes like these are meant for aren't even the same people who will do the harder endgame content...
What does it matter if they can't play optimally in freaking dungeons and story mode trials <_<?
Why should people in Savage, Extreme and Ultimate have their Jobs become less fun to play because of them?

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While we can only speculate on, my personal theories are:

1. They're aware of ACT's ubiquity in raiding and know even less experienced players will be encouraged to use it, thus seeing lower results
2. Casual players are typically more excited by big numbers, which guaranteed crits (and direct hts) displays consistently
3. Despite not partaking in higher level content, the "meta" scene often trickles down and the devs don't want casual players to feel bad when told they're playing jobs wrong.

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Originally Posted by Quyn

I am having the suspicion that the Kaiten removal might be more motivated by high ability input, rather than button bloat. Kaiten comes up quite often in the rotation, more so than shoha, ogi or even tsubame.

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The reason I question if this is their intent is because removing Kaiten doesn't reduce Samurai's APM. You're simply pressing Shinten in place of Kaiten now. The only differing factor is Shinten spam is mindless. So long as you put it under raid buffs, you can press it whenever you fancy whereas Kaiten must be used on specific abilities.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

While we can only speculate on, my personal theories are:

1. They're aware of ACT's ubiquity in raiding and know even less experienced players will be encouraged to use it, thus seeing lower results
2. Casual players are typically more excited by big numbers, which guaranteed crits (and direct hts) displays consistently
3. Despite not partaking in higher level content, the "meta" scene often trickles down and the devs don't want casual players to feel bad when told they're playing jobs wrong.

The reason I question if this is their intent is because removing Kaiten doesn't reduce Samurai's APM. You're simply pressing Shinten in place of Kaiten now. The only differing factor is Shinten spam is mindless. So long as you put it under raid buffs, you can press it whenever you fancy whereas Kaiten must be used on specific abilities.

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Exactly right. Following this train of thought, should mean that they cut down not on the cpm but the amount of different keys that need to be pressed regularly.
The cpm stays the same but the quantity of different regular button usage, has been reduced.
Unifying ogi, shoha, tsubame, wouldnt result in the same sized impact on that desired outcome. If we differentiate between keys that are pressed regularly and ones pressed once every 40 to 90 seconds, we see how these changes have different results.

That is how I came to the suspicion that this was the actual desired effect. If true, then kaiten makes the most sense for removal or alteration.

Whether it is a goal players agree with in the first place, is of course another topic.

Yeah, I saw all of that. All that, "The job is easier and more brain dead" when I was really excited about Summoner in Endwalker and I got Endwalker Summoner and now I'm raiding on BLM/RDM.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

the devs don't want casual players to feel bad when told they're playing jobs wrong.

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The devs should probably put more effort into teaching these players how to play the jobs correctly/as intended rather than simply dumbing down jobs to appeal to those who don't want to read their tooltips. I'd much rather they revamped Hall of the Novice to have individual job-specific lessons to teach about job-specific mechanics. By trying to please the casual crowd, they're really pleasing nobody because the casuals aren't going to stick around for as long by virtue of playing casually, so it's just gonna end up with veteran players sitting around with classes they don't really want to play anymore.

Tbh if someone is told in a helpful way and they get offended then I think they're being overly sensitive and ridiculous.
It also just immediately tells me that they don't even care about playing correctly and make zero effort.
If someone actually cares about playing properly then they'll be more open to it.
I've tried to help before when people were standing in front of the boss and died repeatedly to boss cleave and been met with people getting mad at me for trying to help.

If someone can't even learn the basic rotation of their Job then I kinda just think that they don't actually matter in the grand scheme of things.
They're not going to do any content where dps actually matters regardless of how many buttons they have to press at that point.
Learning your rotation is such a low entry bar if they can't meet that then I'd never trust them with learning mechanics in Savage etc.
If they get upset by being told so then okay, enjoy being gatekept out of content where it matters that simple.

I actually think that casuals are more capable than people give credit too, I think most will manage the base concept at least just fine.
It sorta feels more like the devs are catering to people who don't even want to learn and just want less things to do so that they can avoid doing them.

But yeah, the Kaiten thing has been met with such overwhelming negativity that I think and hope they won't go through with it.
I hope this has lead to a discussion that made the devs rethink too, I think people are fed up with it.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

You know what kind of button bloat I'd like for the to remove. Make High Fire II / High Blizzard II an upgrade of Fire III / Blizzard III. I never quite understood why we have different spells to swap Astral and Umbral phases for single target and AoE.

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BLM definitely has some unnecessarily redundant buttons, but (H)Fire II + Fire III and (H)Blizzard II + Blizzard III are not them. The II spells are intended to be cast not just to swap but also after swapping. The III spells are intended to be cast just once and then abandoned for the rest of the rotation. If you want to unify them you have to reduce the cast time of the III spells or you need to increase the potency of the II spells.

BLM has several button pairs that are mutually exclusive and should be unified:

• Freeze + Flare
• Blizzard IV + Fire IV
• Umbral Soul + Despair
• Ley Lines + Between the Lines

The first three pairs are spells where one can only be cast while already under the effect of Umbral Ice, and the other only while already under the effect of Astral Fire, and so only one of each pair is ever available. The last pair is a buff and the second action it unlocks, and this second action can only be used while the buff is active, and the buff ability's cooldown is longer than the buff duration, and so only one of the two buttons is ever available.

And besides these there is also the awkward pair Foul + Xenoglossy, wherein the AoE action Foul is a standard part of the single target rotation until you learn the single target version ten levels later. Which means that when you sync down, you have to press a different button to do the same thing you would be doing at a higher level, or you need to move your AoE button to the single target button's slot when syncked so that you don't have to change your input pattern. Because of this, Xenoglossy should just be an upgrade to Foul, increasing its primary target damage but not its splash damage.

Many jobs have button pairs like Foul+Xenoglossy where two actions do exactly the same thing with the exact same cost and cast but one is an AoE and the other ST, but SAM is especially guilty of this. Shinten+Kyuten, Guren+Senei, Shoha+ShohaII. Really they should just add a target count logic to these actions, and adjust the potencies so that the damage on two targets isn't less than the damage on a single target. Examples:

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Originally Posted by Hissatsu: Guren SAM70

Delivers an attack to all enemies in a straight line before you with a potency of 550 for the first enemy and 250 for all remaning enemies. [note: 550 so that there is not a 50 potency loss against two targets]

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Originally Posted by Hissatsu: Guren SAM72

Delivers an attack to all enemies in a straight line before you with a potency of 550 for the first enemy and 250 for all remaning enemies. If there are no other enemies besides target, delivers an attack with a potency of 800 instead.

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Originally Posted by Foul BLM70

Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies near it with a potency of 560 for the first enemy and 224 for all remaining enemies.

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Originally Posted by Xenoglossy BLM80

Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies near it with a potency of 560 for the first enemy and 224 for all remaining enemies. If there are no other enemies besides target, deals unaspected damage with a potency of 760 instead.

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Originally Posted by Shadow of Death RPR10

Delivers an attack with a potency of 300.

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Originally Posted by Whorl of Death RPR35

Delivers an attack to all nearby enemies with a potency of 200 for the first enemy and 100 for all remaining enemies. If there are no other enemies besides target, delivers an attack with a potency of 300 instead.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

The thing that frustrates me the most is that the people changes like these are meant for aren't even the same people who will do the harder endgame content...
What does it matter if they can't play optimally in freaking dungeons and story mode trials <_<?
Why should people in Savage, Extreme and Ultimate have their Jobs become less fun to play because of them?

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Cause they represent the biggest chuck of the subs. Now I don't mean these change were good or not. But crafting class around the 3-4% of player that do the high end content makes no sense either.

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Originally Posted by Venur

Cause they represent the biggest chuck of the subs. Now I don't mean these change were good or not. But crafting class around the 3-4% of player that do the high end content makes no sense either.

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Crafting the class around feedback and suggestions from the people who actually play the class consistently, at the high level, in the hardest content the game currently has to offer makes a damn sight more sense than whatever it is they're doing now though. While it's true that it's a minority of players who are doing this content, it's those players who have the most knowledge about their classes, the intricacies, the nuances and the major annoyances. So why not straight up ask them what they want or what they think should change if a job absolutely has to change? The devs are always talking a big game about community involvement and taking onboard feedback but it seems to me that this particular change is unwarranted, wasn't asked for and is ignorant of the people who kept the game alive all this time. If the new push is to say "screw the hardcores, screw the veterans, let's just horde that casual sub money" then they're going to lose everyone sooner rather than later.

Button bloat isn't an issue for jobs right now. This is just devs simplifying classes to make things more accessible for casual players, and gutting the complexity of jobs in the process. It's this same bad philosophy that killed WoW classes.