This is quite an essay, which I started back in early 6.3 and was slowly adding more stuff every now and then. Because I was writing this occasionally, bit by bit, I don't guarantee that everything is coherent. I thought I would not even post this, but after Kaiten sparked yet another discussions recently, and after overhearing stuff like button bloat for 1000th time, this time in NN(yes, I'm in NN, I like play MMORPGs with some background noise), even though whole button bloat has been disproven before 6.1 even went live, and after finding out that people don't even know what Kaiten did (some claimed it made Midare CDH), I eventually decided to post this.
If you're already familiar with the situation, you won't learn much from chapters 2 to 8 and frankly, it's way too detailed. In those chapters, I basically talk about why typical excuses for Kaiten removal make no sense, some crit variance rant, my propositions and so on, nothing that haven't been said here million times already. If you just need refresher about whole 6.1 SAM situation, just skim through introduction and go straight to the conclusion.
1 - Introduction to the issue
It's been nearly 1.5 year since patch 6.1, which introduced the infamous SAM rework. However, a long time has passed, and I've noticed an increasing number of people misunderstanding the entire issue, or worse, parroting excuses that were debunked a long time ago. That's why I wanted to provide a comprehensive explanation of the entire Kaiten situation.
Firstly, there is a misconception that it's only about Kaiten. It's not. The 6.1 rework included several changes, such as:
- Removal of Kaiten, an oGCD ability that did cost 20 Kenki and increased the next Iaijutsu's potency by 50% (technically all weaponskills, but it was dps loss on anything that isn't Iaijutsu or Ogi).
- Implementation of guaranteed hits for 4 skills. That was one patch before compensation for lost crit was even implemented.
- Increase in potency of all basic GCDs.
- Decrease in potency of all big hits (such as Iaijutsus and Ogi) that SAM was known for.
- Transformation of Tenka from a cone shape to a circular area effect.
Here's link to 6.1 patch notes.
However, it's mainly the removal of Kaiten that really hurts. The reason is that removing Kaiten also removed Kenki management. You used to need to save 20 Kenki, otherwise, you'd deal significantly less damage if you used Iaijutsus without it. But they removed Kaiten and we were given no replacement for it, so now we just spam Shinten all day. 20-23% of all SAM's actions are Shinten. This means on average, you do shinten every 5th action. It's most frequently used ability, even more frequent than Hakaze.
Kaiten was also simply satisfying to press. It was this calm before the storm, just a cool twirling animation before your Midares that amplified the whole effect.
Here's one of Misshapen's chair video about Kaiten that he released before he lost his mind from the lack of Kaiten.
Here's some quote from another one of his videos when talking about devs simplifying jobs further and further.
Introduction is over, so let's have a look at some classic excuses that people parrot.Quote:
Who are these changes indented for? Super casuals who don't want to play the game correctly anyways? It can't be, because they're going to mash whatever button their little heart desires. Is it for hardcore players who are going to maximize their job no matter how stupid it is? That doesn't seem right either because usually those are the players that are most in the love with the small amounts of complexity the game offers them.
2 - Button bloat
One of the most prominent thing players talk about. Funnily enough, I could not even find devs saying something about this fictional "button bloat" issue.Quote:
It was removed because of button bloat
First off, think about what is a button bloat. Is it when you have too many buttons? If so, how many? Is 25-30 buttons, half of which are situational or infrequent, too much for you? If your answer is yes and you don't have physical handicap, then check your keybinds, they're garbage.
So what is button bloat really? It's when certain button/skill is not required. When something becomes so situational, it's not worth keeping it on good keybind or when it makes sense for skill to be consolidated with other skill, but it isn't, like Ikishoten not turning into Ogi Namikiri, even though you cannot ever use Ogi Namikiri without using Ikishoten first.
Few examples:
- SMN's Physick - you should never use it, period.
- BLM's Scathe - Only good if you need to keep moving for most of GCD's duration AND you ran out of all the instacasts.
- PLD's Shield Bash - GCD stun is very situational, every bash is damage loss. Can be great in some old ARR dungeons and DDs, but you nearly never use it anywhere else.
- Afformentioned Ikishoten and Ogi Namikiri
There is also gray area of button bloat, which are skills that could be technically merged together. Some make sense, some not so much. Things like putting NIN's Huraijin effect as an uncomboed Armor Crush - it technically makes sense, sure, but then again, you're benefiting from using uncomboed action, which I personally think isn't good way to go. Consolidating some skills is good, but it's definitely not good for every situation.
So do you think Kaiten is bloat because you use it before every Iaijutsu? If yes, then why do we need to press Iki before Ogi? Why do we need to press Ogi before Kaeshi? Why do you always activate FoF and Requiescat together? Hell, why do we do rotations, they are all rigid anyways with barely any flexibility. You always do FoF->Req->Goring Blade->Scorn->Gap Closer->Expiacion->Gap Closer->Faith Combo and so on. This mentality is slippery slope which devolves into auto combo and eventually into removing everything except auto attack.
If we really wanted some button removal/consolidation for SAM, then we have:
- Kyuten, which is AoE version of Shinten
- Guren, which is AoE vesion of Senei
- Shoha 2, which is AoE version of Shoha 1
These 3 pairs of the same skills are completely identical except that they are ST/AoE versions. They have same Kenki/Meditation cost and even share cooldowns. So why do they use 6 buttons? Why not just merge them into 3 buttons, which would be functionally identical? Plenty of skills already use the "Deals X to the target and Y to nearby enemies". In fact, Guren does exactly that already, so why don't we just put Senei's single target potency into Guren?
These simple changes would be fully beneficial to SAM. It's purely QoL and unlike Kaiten removal, it won't affect gameplay, it will simply remove 4 unnecessary buttons.
Also keep in mind that (if my math is correct, all buttons, pot and LB included):
- 6.08 - SAM had 35 skills, while PLD had 36.
- 6.3+ - SAM has 34 skills, while PLD has 37. Kaiten removed, Bulwark added.
If 35 buttons was too much for SAM, why is PLD with 37 fine? It's not like PLD doesn't have button bloat. I'm not saying that PLD didn't need Bulwark, it was long overdue, but SE clearly doesn't care about button bloat enough to help PLD and merge Sheltron with Intervention, FoF with Requiescat or anything similar.
Conclusion: Kaiten was really low on priority list when it comes to button bloat, and there is no mention of "button bloat" from devs I could find in a first place.
3 - Action bloat
This is official reasoning for Kaiten removal, as written in Live Letter 70:Quote:
It was removed for action bloat
https://i.imgur.com/MDCJU2S.png
But does it really fix action bloat, if there is any action bloat to begin with?
Kenki generation did not change. Shinten is and was 25 Kenki, Kaiten was 20. Meaning that for every 5 Kaitens, you do 4 Shintens instead. But when? Image below is a comparison between 6.1+ and 6.0 opener.
https://i.imgur.com/5L2ujmD.png
As you can see, in both openers, APM is identical, removal of Kaiten didn't even change opener/burst (assuming my 6.08 opener is correct, let me know if it isn't). You also need to use same amount of buttons for it, since in 6.1+, you'd leave burst with 10 Kenki left, so you need to use Gyuten to spend that last Kenki. Further in your rotation, you will generate 5 less Kenki for every Iaijutsu compared to 6.0, this will reduce apm a little further, I don't know when or where, I'm too lazy to simulate whole timeline, but I sure don't care about doing few extra Shintens per fight. Much better than doing nothing but Shintens. At the same time, you can only get 2 extra Shintens into 2 min burst by pooling Kenki because of Ikishoten. Conclusion? [B]Burst barely changed, it removed Kenki management and didn't affect APM in burst (assuming my 6.08 opener is correct). It did bad job solving action bloat, if there really was such a thing in a first place.
What would really be a good solution for action bloat, if there was any? Nerfing Kenki generation and increasing Shinten's cost. If Shinten went from 25->35 for example, you would pool less Shintens into burst while lowering APM.
4 - "Kaiten is badly designed"
This is (probably) 3rd most popular excuse.
Welcome to FFXIV! Here's WHM rotation:Quote:
Doing X before every Y is bad design
Glare-Dia-Glare-Glare-PoM-Glare-Assize-Glare-Glare-Glare-Glare-Glare-Glare...
How about SGE rotation, aka the DPS healer?
Dosis-DoT-Dosis-Dosis-Phlegma-Phlegma-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis...
You get my point.
Yes, it might not be the most sophisticated design in videogame history, but it still gives the job more depth. Without Kaiten, you only use Kenki for Shinten. Kaiten requires you to keep watch on your Kenki, if you don't, it's significant damage loss. Is it hard to make sure you have those 20 Kenki saved? No, but it still adds a depth. Being able to keep track of Kenki is the difference between bad player and average player (even though one might argue that those are the same players). These small nuances are what creates healthy, gradual skill curve. You should never define skill curve by anything too significant. Imagine old positional which broke combo. If someone struggled with positionals, they might as well quit playing melee. Player would be walled from playing whole role just because of this.
5 - Crit variance
This part is less about Kaiten itself and more about nerfs to big hits, guaranteed hits and SAM's fantasy of low damage while building up resources, and high burst while spending them.
This is not a SAM problem, this is game's problem. Endwalker has made very questionable change of putting every big skill and raidbuff on 2 minute cooldown. This amplified problem of the crit variance. Right now we have critical hit, direct hit, critical direct hit and 95%-105% variance. Stacking multiple buffs on top of that creates very RNG dependent damage, while we also do big damage skills less often, since plenty of skills went from 60/75/80/90s and similar to static 120s. Lower frequency means lower chance at averaging out all the RNG. Most non-ultimates fights take 6-10 minutes, meaning you have only 3-5 chances to get some crits with your big damage button like Double Down. You don't need to do math to realize that odds of either not criting even once or all the time are too big. This can be variance of 1000s of potency throughout the fight. So once again, this is problem with the game, not a SAM.Quote:
It's because of crit variance!
SE's solution? Instead of fixing the actual problem, they make jobs oblige this meta. This was what SAM's rework was mostly about, and PLD's rework too. Yes, Kaiten is most talked about, but 6.1 changed whole damage spread of SAM. Instead of having low damage, building resources and then unleashing massive burst, aka the class fantasy of Samurai, we now have very bland damage output throughout the fight. 6.1 amplified potency of all regular GCDs, while it lowered potency of all the big hits SAM was used to be known for. Midare went from 660 + 50% from Kaiten, to 600 + guaranteed critical hit and no Kaiten. Ogi + Kaeshi went from 900 + 1350 to 800 + 800 with guaranteed crit. Crit compensation was implemented in 6.2, whole patch after SAM rework. Midare now deals similar or even lower damage than some tanks skills, which is just embarassing, since Midare is SAM's identity.
6 - Kaiten vs Crit variance
But back to Kaiten. What was the point of the removal? If Midare was nerfed even further and Kaiten added 50% + guaranteed hit, it would be identical to current Midare. As for Ogi, it would be fine with guaranteed hit and lowered potency until 7.0, or simply just removing whole skill. It's just cheap high damage button on way too long cooldown anyways. Seriously, how did balance team even allow to release EW with skill that originally used to be 900 + 1350 potency in 2 GCDs, without guaranteed crit and on 2 minutes cooldown? No wonder there was crit variance. Anyways, if we did these things, SAM would still follow the garbage 2 minute meta, but at least we would have Kaiten and Kenki management.
Another point is circle Tenka. You used to do 1-2, 1-3, reposition, Kaiten and then Tenka. Now you just stand in middle of trash pack and spam 1-2, 1-3, Tenka, all while standing still in the middle of the pack, now with ridiculous 8 yalms range. That's just lame, bring back cone Tenka. At one time I though that I started to tolerate circle Tenka, but then I started playing RPR and holy, it makes such a difference having to actually move around and correctly position yourself.
7 - My proposition
My solution to all of this? Just give us Kaiten back, slap a guaranteed crit on it and recalculate potencies. Lame solution, but will do until 7.0. But it's too late for all of that, unless they throw a bone out of pity on us in 6.5. For 7.0 onwards, all SE needs to do is to get rid of the garbage 2 minute meta, return to old varied ShB cooldowns, finally remove direct hit, maybe even 95%-105% variance and remove all the guaranteed crits. Maybe merge ST and AoE variants of Shinten, Senei and Shoha. After that, even old Kaiten with old potencies won't be such a problem.
8 - SE's response and my analysis
Before final summary, I would like to address some of the dev responses/Yoshi P's comments that I found:
Here is me trying to analyse SE's (mainly Yoshi-P's responses) from Live Letter 70 and 6.1 patch reading stream. I do not speak Japanese. I blindly rely on unofficial translations from Discord, since that's all I can do. I do not like this over-analyzation of someone's words, which are even translated on top of it all, if I was Yoshi-P, I would hate that someone analyzes my every word, but this is only response I could find. So take this part with a grain of salt.
Anyways, some comments from LL 70:
Straight up nothing of consistence here. Just a slide with afformentioned "action bloat" excuse.
But there was one heartwarming thing Yoshi said which was unrelated to Kaiten.
That's all from LL 70 as far as Kaiten goes.Quote:
I think that's good, we're all creating this game together in a way after all.
Then there is next stream, the 6.1 patch notes reading, which has even smaller translation coverage. But as you will see, it actually contains much more relevant info, unlike LL. I had no clue about this, I just thought that patch notes reading streams aren't something relevant and I didn't bother with them since it's all in Japanese, but as it turns out, it seems that Yoshi talks a lot about actual problems here, shame I needed to dig very deep into Kaiten issues to find that out. Official english coverage, or at least official subtitles 1-2 days after streams would be great. Anyways here we go:
Translator's notes:
Here's the "test it out first and then post feedback on Official Forums". There was even phrase "revert them" when talking about the changes. Then there was this:Quote:
- Do note that he will keep reviewing the Official Forums and he welcome your feedback and voice on the matter. Once again, I'll say this, Do it politely and do NOT bitch, whine, gaslight or guilt trip. Just state out your disappointment and your reason politely. Push for a change and they'll look into it.
- YoshiP will not read everything for job changes, but he does state that the most focus they poured onto was NIN and SAM.
- Some comments wanted the person who worked on NIN to address their rationale, YoshiP replied that it doesn't matter if they did or not because the changes are done based on the discussion between YoshiP AND the one who worked on job balances, and they discussed it before taking the risk to apply the changes.
- The same applies on SAM as well. Since this is dragging out really long. A separate post will be made later here.
- YoshiP is also aware of the result of changing skill to deal guaranteed Crit and its effect on synergy, the specification is something YoshiP is always worried about whenever adjustments are applied. But for now he wants the players to test it out first and then post feedback on Offical Forums for them to gauge on.
- [B]YoshiP for now wants players to play the changes to the job first and then post their feedback in OF so that YoshiP can review on them and made changes (or revert them, depending on the response). Do note that your comment matters, because what you post WILL influence how the job direction will do in the future.[B]
- They put new traits for NIN and SAM so that the level 90 combo potency don't look too weak while at the same time not making it too strong before reaching level 90.
I'm sorry but it doesn't feel like our comments and feedback matter at all, just check Celesti Cer's post with all the compiled SAM feedback which did absolutely nothing. It's not like there were people praising these changes either, here on EN OF, I would say there was like 10:1 ratio of people who hated changes vs who liked them or was neutral. If you don't count trolls, it would be even less.Quote:
Do note that your comment matters, because what you post WILL influence how the job direction will do in the future.
Obviously Kaiten is not problem for people who are used to it and can play the job properly. There is this thing called skill curve. If you had problems with using Kaiten, you were worse than those who didn't. What's wrong with that? Should good players deal same damage as bad players?Quote:
On NIN though, the biggest will be...Trick Attack. We made it....conforming to 120 second cycle. Just...we split it and put it on Mug...well we did indeed have a huge discussion on that, and....for what we could we changed the position....and due to that we extend the effect timing so when it comes to PTDPS the effect duration lasts far longer than before.
Well what next would be Doton during the opener, we thought that it's more trouble than its worth so we adjusted to eliminate the trouble so we thought this is wha...well, you could say Mug is also a part of defense＊...
(The following would be YoshiP looking at stream chat that got flared up voicing their dissatisfaction on NIN changes and YoshiP eyed it very hard throughout replying to them)
Hmmm....this really troubles me every time...to do it, or to just leave it like that....
Well, if we put it this way, Samurai too...ummmmmmmmm...yeah, people who say that it wasn't a trouble at all must be really used to the job by now, I think...oh dear, this is really troubling...hmm...I do think it's easier to not change it at all...now what do I...oh well this is troubling...I know I won't get away by avoiding this so I do look at various comments here and, hmmmmm....whether it's okay to change...well to the person who like that kind of troublesome at hand is easy to read I suppose. I mean, they've been really fond of the job for quite a while now...
Typical crit variance talk. Instead of solving crit variance in the whole game by removing direct hit and bringing back ShB cooldowns, they decided to just gut SAM. He touched upon the Kaiten being removed because they felt restricted... Restricted to what? Fun gameplay? Jobs with some depth? Players are now restricted to spam Shiten every 3th/4th weave window. It's really hard to tell what Yoshi meant by that. Since Midare and Ogi got guaranteed crit anyways, then Kaiten wouldn't really affect anything when it comes to crit variance, since it's all completely static and predictable damage. There would be no extra variance caused by Kaiten, maybe by Hingabana and Tenka, but non-Dot hit of Hingabana is just 300 potency, and Tenka is AoE, which is close to irrelevant for balancing matters and has higher chance to balance itself out since it's AoE.Quote:
But if we continue this then we won't be able to change anything and if we pick up and rebuild again it'll cause more complicated experience than it's worth...
I saw comments asking for the person responsible to come out and explain themselves, but even if they come out I doubt that they will say anything different than what I did. By the way, the adjustments you see here are the result of me debating with the person who worked on it, along with discussing the risks it come with, and in the end, decided and then signed on it after knowing and acknowledging that performing such changes are for the sake of the playerbase. So this is definitely my responsibility...so probably no matter how much I say here it will just be some speech where people either be convinced or not so...
Of course there are times where I thought of just flip the table and not change anything...but still...yeah on SAM's guaranteed critical, having that will make SAM's performance jump really high but there are also parts where SAM doesn't see drastic jump as they should...and on Kaiten getting removed we did that because we want to do away having to be restricted by that move, and as for its sub stats, the influence of those stats as the patch moves on will become bigger and bigger and it'll jump the job's performance really high, more so than expected and in reverse the numbers on lesser patch will see the job not jumping as high as the job should....hmmmm...Indeed, it is true that the job's strength and weakness will depend on whether the job's amount of critical dealt and I agree the job relied on that aspect too much, and as for the strength and weakness...yeah that's what it is. I of course do understand that this is part of the fun for the job....and, as for this time, we saw specific actions determined the the composition of DPS and perhaps it leaned way too much so we let some of the weapon skill value loose and we know that if we just increase the potency of weapon skill it'll result in those skills at lower level being too strong, so we adjusted on those values as well by... please refer to the new traits added to SAM located below. So...yeah, this is the adjustments for the job we made for this patch.
Yes, 2 min meta is terrible for the game. But 3 patches later, and there were no gradual changes, situation is still problematic. They haven't "tackled that gradually", they merely put more and more skills on guaranteed crits and even reworked PLD just to oblige the meta. They made compensation for guaranteed hits in 6.2, but that is not fix, but merely a band aid. Just like PLD and SAM reworks. Please, start providing actual solutions.Quote:
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. We do experience cases where it's hard to adjust when a skill with and without critical can cause such a huge disparity...and so we performed this adjustment precisely we care about that so I apologize but I'd like you to please give it a try first.
It's obviously not an easy thing to make these decisions. But when it comes to Kaiten, community clearly agreed that it should be brought back just a few weeks after 6.1 went live. I don't think this specific issue is hard to solve when people are vehemently against the change and balance wouldn't be such a problem since everything relevant is on guaranteed crit anyways.Quote:
(long pause)
But still...on adjustment in the future............ it's really hard to decide what should and shouldn't change....
(long pause)
I appreciate that there are at least some comments regarding the issues (even though it's only in JP). And again, asking for feedback. Which is still ignored 'til this day.Quote:
I do receive comments saying "Well you don't have to go your way to get troubled with this issue, since this is just a Patch Notes Reading stream", and...yeah it's there but I do have to explain on the adjustments we made halfway and we touched upon making sure the definite number is adjusted to what we wanted, I mean if we didn't we definitely can't release them, since there's also part where we have to touch upon everything to make sure....but still this time it's just...hmmmmm...well, just give it a try and if there are large voices saying not to change this or that part to that extent then that's the direction we're taking for future adjustments so is it fine for you to submit your feedback to us? ....I'm sorry.
Sounds like Yoshi wants to say that they wanted to make SAM more accessible. But why though? It was one of the most popular jobs, it didn't need more. It's not hard job either. Also, please, for the love of Hydaelyn, stop listening to the players who don't even main the job. I mainly play SAM, my opinion on let's say BLM should weight a fraction of opinion of someone who does main BLM and vice versa. Stop listening to players who don't even play that job. That's how homogenization and dumbing down starts.Quote:
Closing Note That Touched Upon Job Balance
I am sure that there are people who think I shouldn't be touching on job balances anymore but I would like to apologize because I do hesitate a lot halfway during that segment, and the lack of proper adjustments were...well, there are many cases where it's due to my hesitation in judgement...but basically while there might be people who this isn't the case, I would like all players to know that we perform adjustments and improvements with the premise that every player can enjoy them not only on the short term but also on the long term.
Can we get some acknowledgment that you do? All the feedback seems to fall on deaf ear. Even to get to this response in english, I had to go find it in some random DC channel.Quote:
However, as for opinions, Of course we do and indeed read those properly, including those that think it's not right to over standardise jobs or comments like "you overdid yourself when it comes to our only trait or the optimization elements we have". We do indeed want to push it for as much as we could, and we are very well aware of people who understand this, as well as people who are already used to what they have now and people who told us not to do anything unnecessary. We really get that but in order for the expansion to continue and for each jobs to continue getting new actions, and whenever we think of trying to maintain the individual characteristics of each job, we found out that this "optimization" is quite tied and connected to the irregular element that was created in the past, and if we don't work to address this we can no longer build upon the existing elements and improve things further, and it'll land us in a situation where we can no longer steer ourselves forward.
Then there is this infamous "future proofing". Kaiten was removed but you did not add anything back. There was no compensation. There is no need to make space for new skills if you don't add any. If you really needed more space, you should remove something when you actually have something else as a replacement. Why was Kaiten removed in 6.1, we've been playing as hollow shell for over a year now, and it's still more than a year for next expansion where we might get something that could take Kaiten's place.
Again, asking for feedback. Yes SAM's identity suffered, Midare now deals lower damage than even some tank skills. We spam Shinten all day now. Why Shinten though? Isn't stabbing last thing you would want to do with katana? It's primarily cutting weapon and while stabbing is possible, it should not be used too much, if we want to go into "lore" details. Can we, at the very least, get some better, more fitting animation for it?Quote:
Still, I of course do acknowledge that there are parts where people did not ask for, like Ninja or Samurai..and regarding Samurai's guaranteed Critical, we indeed struggled a lot on the balance adjustments due to the strong ratio fluctuation here, and we really attempted to close the variance gap for as much as we could, and we know this is done for the sake of job balance so I really appreciate if you can understand what we're trying to achieve here. You can send us feedback from there and if the voices of how a job's identity has been taken away too much then these comments will act as a reference to the direction of job balance and improvements we'll be performing in the future. So please, if you do think it matters to you, do send us a feedback regarding the matter.
Then give us some response. Simple "we're working on it" goes a long way. Granted, you really need to actually work on it (as in it's gonna be finished in 6.X, not in the next expansion).Quote:
Well, of course I am very well aware and understand that players will feel lonely and their displeasure will get really big when certain elements of the job they played and got used to for quite a long while now gets changed or removed, so it's not like we're purposely looking away these comments with disapproval or something, but it'll definitely be much appreciated if you can tell us which part you want us to retain or tell us more on which aspects are more favorable to you after touching on the adjustments so that we can take your comment as reference, and from there we'll know where to draw the line. 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. (The rest omitted)
As for what I would personally go for - Using Iki changes into Ogi, add guaranteed crit effect to Kaiten and compensate potencies for it. When 7.0 comes out, remove that and finally remove direct hit too, fix 2 min meta and bring back old Kaiten with potencies similar to 6.08. Midare should be one of the most potent ability across all jobs, not a laughing stock.
These changes were talked about since 6.1 released, yet it's 6.4 already and we still get nothing.
As for things that shouldn't ever change - don't ever implement any insta casts. Iaijutsu should always be hard casted. Do not put any "QoL" skill that will instacast next Iaijutsu. Don't "upgrade" Meikyo by giving it one stack of instacast buff. Don't bring back Kaiten just to make it have instacast. No "1 charge of instacast every minute". None of that.
As for drawing the line - I think they learned where we draw the line now, which is at removing skills for "future proofing" while that future is 2 years away. Which is presumably why they post-poned AST and DRG changes. Surely it was because there was a lot of stuff to do, and not because they wanted to wait for players to cool down after the SAM/NIN backlash, right?
9 - Conclusion
Here comes the part that doesn't affect only SAMs, but everyone.
They asked us for feedback. They told us to try it out and we did. This is the feedback just here on EN forums (keep in mind that it wasn't updated for some time):
Compiled SAM threads against 6.1 changes / Kaiten removal
Back in july 2022 (6 months after rework) I counted pages on JP's SAM megathread (they use chaotic megathreads for some reason). At the time, thread had 325 pages worth of discussion. Meanwhile, from SAM's release in SB (June 2017) to 6.1, there was just 170 pages. That means 170 pages in 4.5 years vs 155 pages in just half a year after 6.1 release. I think it's safe to say that even JP community wasn't excited about rework.
So what was SE's response to all of this? Radio silence. After nearly 1.5 years, they still didn't respond to anything. There wasn't even "we're working on it", "we hear you", "we will fix it in 7.0", nothing. I don't care if they're right now working on Final Fantasy XVII: The Kaiten Reborn, if they don't tell us what's going on, it's just worthless and frustrating. Community wants to at least hear SE address the issue, yet we don't even get that.
Going radio silent and waiting until the community calms down and gives up is a bad outlook for developers. Not only because they claim they listen to the community, but especially since they specifically asked for feedback for this specific change. Sad thing is that this seems to be their go-to tactic, just look how they ignore all the healer issues.
You might say that SAM is just single issue that they choose to ignore, but fact is that community's backlash was massive and most importantly, very one sided. Ignoring one big issue is just as bad as ignoring plenty of smaller ones. If all of this feedback did nothing (except of making them scared of making original 6.3 reworks for AST and DRG), then how is any other feedback relevant? If they didn't listen to this magnitude of community uproar, how can we expect them to listen to anything else? They only listen to feedback they want to hear or isn't too inconvenient for them. Only proven way for them to listen is to make drama out of it. There were barely any QoL things before all the plugin drama, now we get some good QoL every patch. So what should we learn from that? Do we need to fabricate drama for them to finally acknowledge problems or what?
TL;DR: 2 minute meta bad, reworking jobs just to follow meta bad, kaiten good, shinten bad, ignoring feedback bad, endwalker mid.
Comprehensive Guide to the Kaiten and 6.1 SAM rework
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07-06-2023, 06:48 AMDeo14Comprehensive Guide to the Kaiten and 6.1 SAM rework
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07-06-2023, 07:31 AMAsiTsurugi
Good post, and I agree with all the points made. One small (pedantic) correction though. In point 6, you said Ogi wasn't affected by Kaiten, when Kaiten did in fact buff Ogi (not Kaeshi Namikiri, like the regular Tsubame-gaeshi skills), for the short period both skills coexisted in the game. Other than that, I think it is a great post, and might be helpful to cross-post or link this post in the JP megathread about SAM to possibly get more eyeballs on it.
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07-06-2023, 07:47 AMEorzean_usernameThis seems to be commonly brought up in response to this, but I think it misunderstands the reasoning behind it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Deo14
Kaiten's design essentially split 1 action across 2 buttons, since separating them was ~100% useless in all possible cases. So Iaijutsu was basically a 2-key combo... except it had no tangible effect, other than invisibly increasing your action to the correct Potency.
If you look at other similar "2-key combos", there's some kind of tangible change to the functionality of the affected action.
...etc.
• Eukrasia + Dosis → becomes entirely different action
• Reassemble + Drill → becomes automatic CDH
• Disembowel + Chaotic Spring → DOT applied, unlocks Wheeling Thrust action
Because it was basically impossible to ever not be able to Kaiten (assuming reasonably-correct play), Kaiten was basically just a formality that un-nerfed your artificially-lowered Iaijutsu Potencies, at the cost of an extra keypress and keybind.
This probably made it seem very tempting as something "superfluous" that could be eliminated without much consequence, when a designer zoomed-out and viewed things from a detached, clinically-organised, meta-level perspective.
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Now, you may be wondering things like, "But what about the cascading effect on Kenki usage, diverting even more casts into the already-overused Shinten?"
Or, "Why not first make an effort to differentiate Kaiten more, so that the keypress feels more mechanically-meaningful, such as causing it to also grant extra effects to Iaijutsu?"
Or, "Why not make Kaiten more of a decision and less of a formality, by turning it into something like a Reassemble clone, with a hard cooldown and 2 charges?"
Or, "Why not start out by trying literally anything other than obliterating the action with an orbital Lalafellin space laser?"
These are good questions, but they are beyond the ken of mere mortals to answer.
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My best guess, though, is that overworked, understaffed, overwhelmed designers — who are receiving dubious feedback at best from the community teams and/or a poorly-designed, corporatised feedback-gathering system — are inclined to just rip things out and change them in sweeping, massive bursts that target the "expected ultimate endpoint", rather than bleed time and energy into trying to manage and keep track of more gradual, incremental, fine-tuned changes.
You see similar philosophies throughout FFXIV's current design — Dungeons become completely-standardised "2 pulls → Boss" hallways because "Oh, that's what everyone will eventually just do anyway once they learn the ideal route"... etc.
Maybe part of an internal philosophy like, "Jumping straight to the bone-marrow of a design in one pass is cheaper than iterating successively to get there slowly". -
07-06-2023, 07:48 AMDeo14I'll fix that. I wasn't sure if I was remembering it correctly, so I just assumed that you wouldn't get another 50% to 1300 - but yeah, that was just a brainfart, it makes so much sense that you would get 900+50% with Ogi, and non-buffed 1300 with Kaeshi. This also means that my assumed 6.0 opener is incorrect. I'll remove my image and put in 6.1+ opener from balance and some 6.0 opener that I managed to find.Quote:
Originally Posted by AsiTsurugi
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07-06-2023, 10:44 AMvetchThe tangible effect was to increase gauge management complexity and also to give you a hit of 'job fantasy' via an animation when you used it. Not every job element has to be an 'adds function'. Some of them can be a 'don't screw this up or it's suboptimal'.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
C.f. the dungeon changes, where something was very tangibly lost when the design shifted from 'use your judgement to anticipate how much you can safely pull' to 'everyone lick the wall'. -
07-06-2023, 10:57 AMShurrikhanWhile true, I don't think it ever pretended otherwise. Moreover, this analysis leaves out the thing Kaiten was clearly intended to do: to force gauge margining.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
We can call that a minor mechanic (I'd argue that Senei/Guren costing 50 and Ikishoten being on a 1min CD back in ShB had a slightly larger effect, even), sure, but it was nonetheless a mechanic that was lost with Kaiten's removal.
Remember, we started originally with spenders at 10, 15, 20, 25, and 50 Kenki.
Now? 10 (situational) and 25 only... -
07-06-2023, 10:57 AMAravellI highly doubt that they were scared off by the negative backlash from the Kaiten removal. They're definitely going full speed ahead with whatever they intended to change, they're just waiting until everyone calms down and eventually forgets about the Kaiten upset. Waiting until the next expansion is quite a long wait, a lot of time for a lot of people to lose interest in the whole situation and allow them to push out the reworks with lesser negative backlash.Quote:
Originally Posted by Deo14
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07-06-2023, 07:50 PMEorzean_usernameThat's not what I mean by "tangible effect", since it's entirely an abstract HUD / number management which is transparent outside of parsing, or squinting at either gauges or flytext — and even then, since you'd never want to actually not Kaiten, even the potential flytext comparison stopped being relevant over time.Quote:
Originally Posted by vetch
That Kaiten had an effect seems inarguable to me — since yes, you needed to maintain the extremely-mild tension of pretending that the floor of your Gauge was 20 instead of 0 — but that effect was detached from the action execution or consequences themselves, making it decidedly abstract in function.
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Taken out-of-context, this could just as easily be describing Summoner Primals and Gem Charges — a hit of "job fantasy" via an animation, which doesn't add much function, but "feels good", and is suboptimal if you somehow manage to "screw it up".Quote:
Originally Posted by vetch
But anyway, while that's fine, it's also something that designers are naturally going to target when they're dealing with constraints such as an upper ceiling on how many Actions and Keybinds a given design is allowed to have, or attempting to cut down on clutter that the (mythical) "most players" don't seem to engage with much — What you're basically saying is, "This key exists because I like pressing it and it looks cool".
Which is also fine — above all, gaming is a subjective entertainment experience, and an art, not a science. If the playerbase just likes something a lot, and claim that "something" increased their entertainment value, then it doesn't have to make objective, clinical "design sense", and those players aren't wrong for wanting it back.
I just also think that there's been excessive attempts to "lawyer" the developers into returning Kaiten based on over-exaggerating its prior, actual mechanical value, rather than just more honestly stating "We liked it because we liked it, and we want it back because we liked it".
Because I maintain that the Shinten issue was long-standing, has always "needed"(?) to be addressed, and was merely magnified by Kaiten's removal, not directly caused by it (and is not even addressing the seemingly-perplexing change to Senei/Guren costs). -
07-06-2023, 08:11 PMEorzean_usernameThis is all true, I just think its overall effect and value is — again — being overexaggerated in hindsight.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
And also, that the drop of Senei/Guren to 25 was actually the stranger and more influential change, with regard to the management of Ikishoten and Kenki during burst, and was something that was far more likely to be "reckless" about and "mess up", due to the much tighter "margin" on 50 vs 20 — though this was perhaps more relevant when Ikishoten was still 60s CD.
As for the 15, that applied only to Seigan, and — to be blunt — that was an at-best-trivial component of even the "glory days" of the Samurai rotation, which I think was a good example of "additional complexity without (much) reward". I'm not surprised it got KO'd, though I would have much preferred simply rejuvenating it into something more relevant (just like Kaiten).
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When you really look at Kenki historically, the spread was really:
• 10 — Gap-closers which were previously self-flagellating to use, and avoided as much as feasible. The Celestial Revolution of Kenki spends.
• 15 — Essentially a gimmick.
• 20 — The actual floor of your gauge, essentially always-available, and relatively-easy to recover from mild misplays due to its low cost, unless you really, truly botched something.
• 25 — The vast majority of your Kenki spends, since the Job's inception.
• 50 — Your big hefty burst, which previously made sense to justify banking and building to this extra cost.
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Another thing to consider is that the original "gauge-focused" design and components were released in Stormblood, when Yoshida went "gauge-crazy", and both SAM and RDM were obviously designed around the new Gauge system at their core, and to showcase it heavily.
At that time, SAM had very little else going on — it was basically "Black Mage with a Sword", in the sense of having nearly no real burst window, and most of its damage coming from just pumping out GCDs consistently and steadily.
Kenki thus was central to what system SAM did have, right down to its primary rotation focusing on sacrificing as many Midares as possible into Kenki via Hagakure on-cooldown (and then dumping that gain into — Guess which action).
As Samurai has evolved over time to have a true "rotation", a very definite "burst window", and a more robust and matured system overall, it may well be that the designers feel that the Job no longer needs so much detail involved in, nor devoted to, its Gauge management in-specific — ie, bringing SAM's Gauge more in-line with most other Jobs.
From that perspective, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Shinten eventually ends up becoming a 50 Kenki action. -
07-06-2023, 09:17 PMvetchThat'll be great, then samurai and warrior can both suffer for the lack of a useful way to prevent overcapping before burst. Why have gauge management? Just make everything clunky as shit and make up for it with raw potency.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
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07-06-2023, 10:58 PMValence
I want to preface that I mostly agree with the general feeling behind the thread.
But bullet point 4 makes me chuckle every time. The closest comparison to kaiten is not a static healer rotation, but would be the old DRK's Dark Arts spamm, that everybody hated with a burning passion. And if anything, it was more intricate than kaiten because it affected many more skills in more varied ways. I find the irony pretty telling. -
07-06-2023, 11:49 PMDeo14I don't mean it as comparison, it's more of an example of actual bad design. Basically, saying that X before every Y is bad design, when much worse designs like healers rotation are in the same game, seems kind of, I guess off-topic/irrelevant. Fixing these real issues should come before they try to fix these tiny ones.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valence
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07-07-2023, 07:36 AMForsakenRoeAnd could have been addressed, like Dark Arts, in several ways that were not just 'remove it entirely with no replacement'. Also, Dark Arts is just replaced by Edge spam now, no? We wanted to dump DA in raidbuffs then, and we want to dump Edge in raidbuffs now, so it's not exactly like much changedQuote:
Originally Posted by Valence
As for this:
The only parts I agree with is 50 and 25. There were times when you'd want to purposely spend yourself under the 'safety net' of 20, knowing you'd get back to 20 before KaitenTime, and that is what we call skill expression. 15 and Seigan was literally the skill ceiling of the class, knowing how to use that effectively was what seperated the good from the great. Merciful Eyes was the 'gimmick'. And the gap closers were useful if they gained you a GCD (in), and could be used to create a 'filler GCD' in the SHB onwards when the 60s loop enforced by Tsubame came around (dash out). Now I'm not good at SAM and haven't been ever since SB ended, but even I can see that Kaiten, Seigan, Gyo/Yaten all had their placesQuote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
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07-07-2023, 09:46 AMEorzean_usernameI think that the effect of this is being overexaggerated, as well as the reason to even do it.Quote:
Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe
I'm assuming you're referring to something like getting an AST card, or burst windows, or openers, where you could push in an extra Shinten or a Seigan if you'd build up enough Kenki before your next Iai (and could guarantee the positional hits to do so).
And sure — but that is, broadly-speaking, fairly niche, and basically irrelevant outside of buff windows (ie, in a hypothetical "cursed comp" with no party support, it would make close-to-zero difference whether you performed Kaiten-budget gymnastics or not).
Meaning that, broadly-speaking, this factor added relatively-little to the Job experience, especially internally; outside burst windows, you would have a small eternity to build back up that pittance of Kenki before your next mandatory Meikyo, especially given the option to slush-up 5-10 Kenki by creeping your combo past a full Sen stack.
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You need to understand that I am not assessing this from the perspective of, for example, a Balance Discord Job Mentor — the kind of players who will hunt down and sniff out every possible tiny adjustment, because it just brings them satisfaction to do so.
I'm framing why, to a developer, certain elements seem trivial or unimportant when considering what to preserve and what to weed-out at a broader design level.
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Yes, you've described why gap closers are useful — not why their gauge cost was relevant or interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe
And that's just a general property of DPS-affecting gap-closers across all Jobs — "if doing something suboptimal with this will increase your uptime and be a larger proportional gain, then do it". The consideration is more-or-less the same, whether the loss is from not spending all charges inside burst, or the loss is from bleeding gauge off suboptimally.
I don't think that this indicates anything interesting in specific about its relation to Kenki as a system, and like Onslaught for WAR, it actually resulted in stubborn and counterintuitive behavior — ie, while everyone else is just using their gap-closers to gap-close, you're technically-pressured to find a way not to (or just eating a loss, in which case the Gauge cost is not particularly-interesting, because it 'just happens').
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As for Yatenpi, what makes that interesting is not the Gauge cost, which is essentially neutralised anyway, but rather how it can jigsaw into your loop, or the rare cases like Shadowkeeper where it can allow you to razor-edge a GCD before some obnoxiously-massive AOE (or etc).
If you removed the Gauge cost entirely, ~nothing would change about it in practice.
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Unless I am severely-misremembering something, the difference between hitting every possible Seigan and not failed to gain you much beyond what random variance could.Quote:
Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe
That a very, very small portion of people could make good(?) use of it to try to bank more Kenki going into buffs, and/or squeeze a little more Kenki into buff windows, and/or gain a chunkier boost through a combination of buffstacking and crit variance, was surely satisfying for them — but in terms of what it broadly-added to the Job's Gauge system, I maintain that it was basically a gimmick, and maximising its usage was usually akin to a self-affixed merit-badge rather than any meaningful benefit.
In fact, the removal of Seigan and the shift to raw Kenki from Third Eye actually made proactive awareness of incoming damage both much more significant, and much more rewarding.
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My points here are not trying to say, "Ha ha, see, varying Gauge costs are always pointless!"
It's: "The Kenki system and its costs were honestly never very well-explored nor realised, a lot of it is being viewed retroactively with nostalgia, and that's probably why the SE devs went on a tear ripping most of it out". -
07-07-2023, 11:26 AMTsumdereAnd it has not reduced ability spam at all. DRK is busier now than ever before. So I have to ask, why was Dark Arts spam so bad when you just Edge spam now? It's literally the same thing with a different name and less interactivity (cuz Dark Arts actually augmented skills while Edge does nothing).Quote:
Originally Posted by Valence
Why is Kaiten spam worse than Shinten spam? This is the same thing where Kaiten interacted with the kit more than Shinten does, but instead of adjusting it they just threw it out the window. -
07-07-2023, 05:11 PMShurrikhanThey cost, at release, 12 potency per use relative to Shinten-spending. Just 12 potency... to have at the time the only gap-closer on a less than a 30s CD outside of Warrior (who then immediately lost that capacity).Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
Except for... playing completely differently from BLM, and quite distinctly from even any other melee?Quote:
At that time, SAM had very little else going on — it was basically "Black Mage with a Sword"
It... already had one, from the start, in old Hagakure -- more frequent but simply faintly less susceptible to latency, than Shadowbringer's single-charge TG rotations.Quote:
As Samurai has evolved over time to have a true "rotation", and a more robust and matured system overall...
In what possible way is Endwalker's massive lulls and bloat something that'd form an objectively "more robust and matured system overall"? That's pure opinion on your part.
Then that'd be idiocy. That other jobs have increasingly come to waste their gauges does not mean that turning that entire gauge into, effectively, two Shinten charges by turning the "self-flagellating" gap-closers into 30s CD and increasing Shinten's cost to 50 would likewise be a more "mature" design.Quote:
...it may well be that the designers feel that the Job no longer needs so much detail involved in, nor devoted to, its Gauge management in-specific — ie, bringing SAM's Gauge more in-line with most other Jobs.
???
Okay, but where does that end? It appealed to most who played it at the time -- certainly far more than its removal or "Do I Shoha... or Shoha II?!" and having action only for 20s per 120s BS that's replaced that gauge management.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
At what point can we honestly say, as you suggest here, "X was too shallow, so it needed to be shallowed out further"? And why would Kenki, of all things, be a reasonable choice for that butcher's block? -
07-07-2023, 10:24 PMEorzean_usernameI'm trying to recall, but I think Shinten was originally 300 Potency for 25 Kenki? While Gyoten was 100 Potency for 10 Kenki.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
Normalising to 12 PPK, that would have put Gyoten's 10 Kenki at ~20 potency loss relative to Shinten, right?
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Regardless, the wisdom was still "try not to do it", because it was still a Potency loss — same as "Try to do it" with Seigan, because it was still a Potency gain.
If you (in the collective, not personal, sense) are going to hold up Seigan — a pinhead-sized drop of potency gain — as some sort of epitome of true mastery and skill expression, then you shouldn't dismiss the pinhead-sized drop of potency loss from unnecessary gap-closing.
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But anyway, I'm not doing the "scream emoji" and saying, "Gap-closing Samurai RUINS DPS output with this ONE MISTAKE!"
I'm saying that the lossy 10 Kenki cost added very little over not having a cost at all, and in fact contributed to a psychological "guilt" / "pressure" over using it, regardless of how "rational" that feeling might have been when zoomed out.
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If anything, I think that Gyoten (and rarely Yaten, when a solar eclipse happens and you need Yaten but can't insert another GCD into your loop with Enpi) becoming potency-neutral to Shinten has done more to make Gyoten/Yaten's Kenki costs interesting than their "lossy" design ever did.
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Now come on, this isn't even fair.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
You literally (intentionally?) cut my sentence in half, in order to attack an implication that I was not making:
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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
In the sense that every single Job inevitably ends up having some sort of "rotation"? Yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
In the sense of having a complete structure and strict 60s-timing goals like the ShB changes gave it? Absolutely not.
ShB aggressively-sync'd Samurai up with the 60s burst cycle that the game broadly operated under, and in turn, gave Samurai a repeating and identifiable 60s structure to its filler cycles — which was a dramatic change, and revitalised the Job in many ways.
There was a vague feeling of this in SB — things like staying on-track so that Higanbana / Kenki-dumping ended up in Trick, not drifting Guren, etc — but it had far less structure and was, by and large, operating on the "ad hoc" model, compared to the firmed-up "loop" that became established in ShB.
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I have to be honest, I am really not sure where to begin with this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
The original context that you're responding to was, explicitly, referring to the difference between the SB "just kind of chillin' " Samurai, and the ShB "now I, too, am a 60s burst Job!" Samurai (which EW modestly-expanded upon via Tsubame/Meikyo charges and the addition of Ogi to differentiate 2-minute windows more strongly).
But now you've suddenly leapt into a critique of the Endwalker design.
If you want to do that, could you start by elaborating on what you currently see as "massive lulls and bloat" ?
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I suppose if you want to attack it as "pure opinion", and duel it with your own "pure opinion", that's your prerogative, sure.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
In that case, I'll try to lawyer-up more thoroughly, and say:
"I personally think that the ShB design changes significantly-matured and refined the SB Samurai design into a more robust and complete Job, especially within the broader XIV party design that has become established in coordinated content over time, and I suspect that the developers feel similarly, hence their apparent comfort with deemphasising the (ostensible) complexity of the Kenki system, which I see as one of the few 'legs' that was implemented to prop-up the original SB design."
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Okay, now it feels like you're swinging all over the place, gluing things that I've said together seemingly at-random. This is becoming mildly-frustrating.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
First of all, I am speculating about why the developers are doing things, not objectively advocating for or against any specific change.
Second of all, you're (intentionally?) taking out-of-context a comment about the fact that lossy gap-closers led to them being considered something to ideally avoid using if possible.
Thirdly, I'm pretty sure that I didn't say anything about increasing gap-closers to 30s — you seem to have just inserted that at random.
Fourth, at no point did I say that "increasing Shinten's cost to 50 would be a more mature design".
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Instead, the actual statement was:
This is a cause-effect statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
A. Because Samurai has matured as a design over time, and added significant additional details and breadth to its rotation,
B. The developers may feel that there is no longer a need to have so much detail or attention focused specifically on its Gauge management,
C. And therefore they may continue to push Kenki towards functioning like other Job Gauges,
D. To the point that I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually normalised Shinten to the generic "50 Gauge cost" that most Gauge-spenders use.
I did not advocate for this happening, nor comment on whether I see it as a good or bad idea, nor state that this change, specifically, would be a cause of a "mature design".
Instead, I identified it as a possible cascading consequence of developer response and perceptions related to how the Samurai design has evolved and expanded over time.
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Well, we don't honestly know that, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
It's extremely-difficult to retroactively go back and razor-out how many players signed up for Samurai because they felt that they could achieve high levels of "skill expression" with Kenki management, or liked how many Kenki-spending decisions the Job gave them...
...versus how many just wanted to play a Samurai, because it's a Samurai, and wields a katana, and looks cool, and is accessible and comfortable to understand at an entry-level.
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If anything, I'd say that a contributor to Samurai popularity was possibly (note that I am making a speculation, not an attempt at factual assertion) due to the fact that there was actually so little relevancy to most of the Kenki system.
ie: Seigan could pretty much not exist; the gap-closer costs were basically a formality for most players beyond level 62; and just banking 20 Kenki for Kaiten at all times would rarely cost most players anything noticeable.
So, the fact that the bulk of the Job's Gauge performance could comfortably be boiled down to: "Don't overcap; save enough for Kaiten; spend on Shinten; make sure you can use Guren/Senei on-cooldown"... very likely increased the appeal to a lot of players — ie, it was intuitive, accessible, and quite forgiving outside of stubborn optimisation goals.
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I think that Shoha 2 is indeed an utterly-underwhelming addition, right down to its comically-uninspired and frankly-inappropriate name (in the sense of not following the Samurai naming conventions / flavor)...Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
...but I feel like Shoha 2 is also a bit of a "decoy target" here, being an easy and recognisable "punching-bag".
Shoha 2 changed ~nothing about the rotation, it's just "there". You didn't "trade" anything core to the rotation out in order to get Shoha 2 tacked-on to Expert Dungeon clears.
Likewise, Shoha 2 wasn't a specific attack on Samurai — it's just another in a long line of semi-lazy "AOE versions" that the anxiously-smiling developers keep trying to disguise as birthday-presents each expansion (eg, Orogeny, Energy Siphon, Shadowbite, etc).
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As for the "Do I X... or Y" sarcasm, I don't honestly get it — by that same reasoning, you could ask the same sarcastic question about Fuko, Mangetsu, Oka, Kyuten and Guren.
Is the argument here that you feel that there is no need for separate AOE rotations?
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I'm honestly struggling to connect this one together.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
The Samurai "filler" between 60s bursts since ShB is basically just what it was doing full-time in SB, except structured into more of a definite and recognisably-repeating pattern, with the additional puzzle-piece of how to arrange filler and adapt to disconnects.
Samurai isn't even on a strict 120s cycle, because you have a distinct mini-burst at 60s that you still want to build-to, manage, and then adjust fillers around.
And compared to ShB Samurai, you're still performing ~the same sort of filler loop, with the same considerations for counting fillers, adjusting for speed, and "fixing" with Hagakure.
You've now stripped 1 (one) Kaiten keypress / gauge-spend out of that filler period, and while you've lost Seigan, you've gained a significantly-stronger incentive to weave in Third Eye whenever possible, as well as the option of using Gyoten/Yaten for fine-tuning instead.
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If anything, I'd say that the loss of Kaiten has much more drastically-affected the feel of the burst windows — dropping from machine-gunning up to ~4 Kaitens in short succession, to (obviously) zero Kaitens in that same window.
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Could you elaborate more specifically on what you feel has been lost during the apparently "actionless" 100s that you're referring to?
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Once again, that is not what I actually said; that is not what I suggested here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
What I said was, to rephrase yet another way:
"I think that the depth of various components of X is being overexaggerated in hindsight, and on account of that, as well as [other factors], the developers were probably motivated to consider various underwhelming aspects of X to be expendable, when considering the Job more broadly on the whole".
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Well, for the reasons I've outlined at length.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurrikhan
In case this is coming across wrong, I am not saying that you — or anyone else — are wrong for having found satisfaction, depth, or enjoyment in any of the previous tools or designs that have been attached to the Kenki gauge.
Saying, "Hey! I liked pressing Seigan!" or "Hey!! I liked pressing Kaiten!" is completely-valid, and you are well within rights — and doing exactly what you should do — by offering this honest feedback to the developers.
And Deo's thread here is a well-formatted, considerate, and legitimate way of trying to express that feedback.
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What I am instead trying to say is that, I think, a lot of these experiences were very niche and specific, and more of a manifestation of personal preferences, rather than truly being part of a particularly-deep or meaningful system compared to what Samurai has now — especially considering the mitigating (but not completely-recompensating) factors of the dramatically-increased value of Third Eye, and the new use-cases now available to Gyoten/Yaten.
And that, in turn, is probably why the developers have done things that seem incomprehensible from the perspective of players who were already eyebrows-deep in the system, and finding personal enjoyment in those niche details. -
07-07-2023, 10:42 PMValenceNo, it's not like Edge at all. It was literally like Kaiten and enhanced a lot of different skills of the DRK's arsenal, which technically was more interesting because it went beyond just "increase potency". But it turned out that you needed to use it all the time, much like kaiten for every iajutsu.Quote:
Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe
Dark Arts is still there as a passive buff mechanic behind TBN when it breaks, giving out a free Edge. That's completely different than what it used to be. They could have called it something entirely different, but decided instead to re-use the name.
But if you mean that you think people would be pleased by Kaiten making a return without the ability and without the awesome flair/visual it provided, but just there as a passive buff coming from someone, I have a big doubt about that... Else, just go play pvp, it's there as a passive buff actually (which is a big troll tbh, pvp has so many lost abilities just being there taunting players, it's silly).
It's not the same thing, but it's definitely a spamm.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsumdere
You see were I was going in any case. Why were people mad about the dark arts spamm, when they suddenly are mad that they got the kaiten spamm removed? What has changed in the mindset? Or is it just tied to the ability visuals? Something else? -
07-08-2023, 04:31 AMShurrikhanIt... wasn't, though? Not a single post you've responded to quoted has made any comparison between Stormblood and Shadowbringer Samurai, only between 6.1 and either 5.x or 6.0 Samurai.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
So, yeah, when I see you responding to a critique of Endwalker Samurai with how the kit was "evolved" or "matured", I'm going to think you're talking about the changes brought in Endwalker, not some previous period that's not under critique.
Really? Let's read it again:Quote:
Now come on, this isn't even fair.
You literally (intentionally?) cut my sentence in half, in order to attack an implication that I was not making:
Is that not equating a job, or its identity, to solely its damage profile... while completely dismissing its differences in gameplay?Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
Else, wouldn't this read something like, "Samurai's damage profile was too similar to that of Black Mage," rather than "Samurai... was basically Black Mage..."?
Call me crazy if you like, but that seems the pretty obvious implication. Therefore, the disagreement.
Sorry, yes, 20. Which would put the cost at 1/3rd of a single positional, and would mean that it'd take less than a 1/10th GCD saved in uptime via that gap-closer to make that a damage increase, etc., etc. It was far from "self-flagellation" unless spamming it from melee range (and technically a still a damage bonus over saving for Shinten if cast at the end of raidbuffs worth 20+% damage and you had a Gekko or Kasha before your next Iaijutsu or Hagakure was coming up).Quote:
Normalising to 12 PPK, that would have put Gyoten's 10 Kenki at ~20 potency loss relative to Shinten, right?
Yes, you didn't use it often, but any use you'd have for it as a gap-closer, it was plenty worth. It was to Samurai's advantage that Gyoten was 10s CD at 10 Kenki's cost instead of just another 30s CD at no cost.
It's not something that would make more sense to further strip away from the gauge.
That space "more or less" between a quickly-refunded action a free action, though, is still a shift in time -- the same kind of thing that previously moved the "Am I making sure I won't overcap Kenki?" apart from "Am I synced for a perfect re-Higan?" as to spread the intensity of a 1-minute burst's worth of actions/optimizations across a slightly larger span of time before every other minute was reduced to solely Higan. It's subtle, but it is impactful.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
They, at the time... ALL did that. All of them. But worse. If you didn't use them on CD, you lost potency.Quote:
I don't think that this indicates anything interesting in specific about its relation to Kenki as a system, and like Onslaught for WAR, it actually resulted in stubborn and counterintuitive behavior — ie, while everyone else is just using their gap-closers to gap-close, you're technically-pressured to find a way not to (or just eating a loss, in which case the Gauge cost is not particularly-interesting, because it 'just happens').
And now? Use more than a single "free" Onslaught per 2-minute as a gap-closer, and you sacrifice your raid buff cycle's portion of 100 potency, commonly exceeding the 20-potency cost of Gyoten.
Except your 1-minute is now solely Higan, instead of TG, IS, and Higan together.Quote:
Samurai isn't even on a strict 120s cycle, because you have a distinct mini-burst at 60s that you still want to build-to, manage, and then adjust fillers around.
And compared to ShB Samurai, you're still performing ~the same sort of filler loop, with the same considerations for counting fillers, adjusting for speed, and "fixing" with Hagakure.
TG alignment now has over 100 seconds for you to sync everything up, greatly reducing the frequency and urgency of that interaction, because you just use both per a fixed string of actions at once per two minutes instead of interacting with that mechanic per minute. Add Ikishoten's CD being doubled and Senei/Guren's Kenki costs being standardized down to Shinten's, and no... it's not going to feel the same. Every other burst loop feels at most only half as involved, regardless of whether one uses the same "filler", with the job just generally seeming less interactive now between bursts.
Primarily, the number of macrorotational elements per minute. They're less now, and the TGs stacked up just feel like they merge together into seemingly one act per 120s.Quote:
Could you elaborate more specifically on what you feel has been lost during the apparently "actionless" 100s that you're referring to?
Syncing only for a rigid sequence once per two minutes into which to spend both TGs just does not feel as good to me as getting those few different CD-based optimizations to prep for --at nearly the same time though they may be-- every minute.
Would I gladly have taken something that alters, per 90 or 120s, the way I actually perform my burst? Of course.
But, in this case that's come at (to me, seemingly unnecessary) cost to the level of activity between bursts, since now we only have a single mechanic to worry about per non-RaidBuffed-minute.
I'm not interested in how the devs reach a given decision if the premises they follow to get there are themselves flawed. There's no need to keep the same difficulty ceiling as in prior expansions (nor, therefore, to squish old elements of difficulty in order to make room for new). Nor do the simplifications to gauges seem to have been considered net positives. (Agreement that some elements of gauge spending were lackluster was not an invitation to gut them.) Nor has creating a gauge just to act as second charge for a given ability or ability pair ever gone without critique.Quote:
This is a cause-effect statement.
A. Because Samurai has matured as a design over time, and added significant additional details and breadth to its rotation,
B. The developers may feel that there is no longer a need to have so much detail or attention focused specifically on its Gauge management,
C. And therefore they may continue to push Kenki towards functioning like other Job Gauges,
D. To the point that I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually normalised Shinten to the generic "50 Gauge cost" that most Gauge-spenders use.
Warrior mains have not seemed particularly happy to have the Beast Gauge reduced to simply a second available charge of Cleave/Decimate, while most DRKs I know considered Blood Gauge somewhere between lackluster and a joke because its interest was propped up almost solely by its CD-based generators instead of any of its spending.
Inb4 'The RDM gauge changes were popular': The 50 cost, relative to the old 80, increased available burst complexity. It is not one of those simplifications.
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Tl;dr: Eorzean, I tend to agree with you on most things, but I do not see any sense in defending a removal that shows no signs of replacement, or even in explaining how the developers would have arrived at a bad decision when the steps leading there would require ignoring the broader picture of feedback or insisting on premises not held by the community.
Making room for Namikiri, for instance, did not require axing the majority of Samurai's gauge interactions (however shallow or otherwise one might may think them to be). Such didn't even require reducing our minute-between to solely Higanbana. Such did not require axing our movement during AoE (via conal AoE -> radial AoE).
None of those things were necessary, and while some were at least asked for (just like removing positionals from all melee is incessantly asked for by those who don't play melee anyways and haven't particularly started to even when a given job loses 67% of their positionals), the ways that the developers have responded to that feedback show a sizeable departure from understanding, or even seemingly an intent to understand those concerns.
Finally, though this is fairly tangential, I don't consider simple functional potency to be an acceptable replacement for gameplay components.
Third Eye is objectively more powerful a tool now than when we had Seigan, but is it necessarily better than, say, having it augment one's next Kenki spender (other than Guren/Senei) to cost 10 less potency, change its animation, and maybe guarantee your next positional?
Both versions would generate/save 10 Kenki and take no additional buttons. The difference (apart from that spitball positional element) is simply flavor, but flavor does matter.
Similarly, having two charges of TG is objectively more powerful than having one, yes, but it then means that we interact with it that much less. I'd far rather just have left TG at a single charge but let it available after Iaijutsu until we next generate Sen as to deal with the complaints of TGs lost to packet loss or latency or otherwise being slightly overly constrained (relative to SB Hagakure, for instance).
And that's, to me, the crux of the problem. The developers should be getting themselves at least very nearly eyebrows-deep or they're going to continually reduce the personal enjoyment available to those who fully appreciate the details of the job in question.Quote:
the developers have done things that seem incomprehensible from the perspective of players who were already eyebrows-deep in the system and finding personal enjoyment in those niche details
We've long since known that's an issue; there's little fruit to be born from explaining that again now. And simply lowering our expectations accordingly hasn't born fruit, either. So...? -
07-08-2023, 11:53 AMForsakenRoeThis is what I was trying to get at. I liked SB DRK, once they did some much needed changes to it in 4.3, even if the majority of players thought 'its trash no damage' (they were incorrect). Why were people mad about DA spam, but are seemingly fine with Edge spam? Or as the case is, all the massive OGCD count of current DRK? The only things I can think of is 'pressing one button a lot (DA) Vs pressing like 5 different buttons for burst window (even if total APM is higher)', and the other is 'DA's effect is not instant, so the feedback isn't as pronounced as the instant 500p damage from Edge'. I guess similar applies to Kaiten, where you can't see the effect as much versus an upfront damage number like Senei or Shinten. Which is sad, because it just means that a whole class design paradigm, of 'enchant your weapon to deal additional effects' is potentially lost to us, because people don't like it if there's a skill that 'does nothing on it's own, but enhances the next action in some way'Quote:
Originally Posted by Valence
Oh wait we have that on SGE still. Oh wait we have Continuation, now also on Burst Strike. Oh wait, people pine for the Royal Road days of AST. Oh wait we have Kaiten threads still, 3 patches of radio silence after it's removal. Maybe people DO like that kind of gameplay, and the devs removing it was a mistake they refuse to accept they screwed up on, for whatever reason -
07-08-2023, 04:43 PMValence
I think edge is just a lot more mindless than DA since you can use them a lot more freely, where DA was literally constrained to immediately come before the skill it needed to enhance most of the time, and on top of it it also enhanced a lot of oGCDs (like Carve and Spit), because it was HW/SB after all, which were oGCD wonderland.
But I don't disagree at all mind you. I don't even disagree with the general mind behind the thread/OP, they just delete things whenever something doesn't prove satisfying (?), but offer nothing in counterpart. It's been the literal litany of the battle system since the start of ShB. They just don't care anymore about RPG mechanics, they want to focus on hectic encounters ala XVI. -
07-08-2023, 06:39 PMRoxusI'm sorry but I take issue with the way you are discussing this with other people, because from other threads I've seen you have only been throwing assumptions as fact while trying to downplay points. No, it wasn't exaggerated and there are clear reasons to push yourself below 20 at times. I'd have to think a bit more carefully when I'm not getting ready for bed but off the top of my head you have boss jumps, seigan correction, kb/jump cancels.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
You are misremembering. If you could theoretically hit every Seigan you would gain roughly 16-18% over what Shinten would have gotten you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
You don't need to trivialize who utilized the mechanic to further your point. Seigan was never to save more resources for buffs, it was a reward for using Third Eye correctly throughout the course of the fight.
The Third Eye change is a straight increase comparing it to Seigan, but it essentially amounts to the same thing Kaiten changes did. That and if you weren't very good at using it before, now it is a clear loss.
I'm also going to address one thing I saw in another thread from you. Shinten was never this bad even during Hagakure days, exactly because Seigan existed and Kaiten was still there when you wanted to use Iaijutsu. Let's not forget Guren was 50 back then as well. If you question credibility you can look me up when I was actually playing if it matters. I never tried maintaining my positions but I was one of the first to invent SS tiers and have always tried to optimize for every fight. -
07-09-2023, 07:42 AMAlex1337
Good post, took me 90 years to read it but good post.
SAM has felt atrocious to play since 6.1.
The truth about this and, you're right this isnt SAM exclusive; every job in 7.0 will have their big hits be Gcrits. Stardiver (lol), Communio, Hyosho, Phantom Rush, Xenoglossy, Resolution, Ahkn Morn, Tech step, Apex arrow, Afflatus.
This crusade to get the 2 min meta under control by trying to actively control RANDOM number generation is ludicrous. RNG is a part of MMOs, its something most people know they are signing up for when they play this genre of game. And the statement of "we wont make everything 2 min because that would be boring", please. It feels like they just arbitrarily made certain CDs NOT 2 min just because of that statement and in doing so have actually made jobs which have 40/45/90/110 cds just annoying because of the 2 min meta, who the hell feels good about popping riddle of wind 30 seconds before any buffs? Or using a lifesurge outside lance charge?
I'm under no illusion though, despite the tone deaf changes to SAM in 6.1 it performs relatively well and is still the best job to sink buffs into, but, irrespective of this perceived performance it is nowhere near as fun to play as it was before that time and, the MOST heartbreaking thing about the removal of Kaiten is that such a graceful animation was replaced, in effect, by Shinten which has a dreadful one. I actually unironically feel bad for the animator that made the Kaiten animation and its just... gone now. Like imagine they remove Midare and wer'e left with Hakaze.
It boils down to this and, looking at it purely from a cosmetic standpoint pressing Shinten DOES NOT FEEL GOOD, pressing Kaiten did. -
07-09-2023, 11:22 AMvetchBodes really well for BRD too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex1337
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07-09-2023, 03:33 PMForsakenRoeThe best part is, the reason for those 'weird timers' is BECAUSE of the 2min meta. If you had jank spellspeed/skillspeed, you'd get to your 'burst moment' slightly too soon or too late, being misaligned from 2min because of your gear (which, when you're in full crafted for prog, is not exactly fixable). For example, your Drill would come up slightly before Reassemble when it was 60s CD, and it felt jank to have to hold onto it for a GCD, to get it Reassembled. So they made Reassemble a weird number (55s) so that regardless of your speed, you'd always get a charge in time to use on the 3rd Drill every timeQuote:
Originally Posted by Alex1337
Just hilarious that they tried to fix a 'problem', and in doing so, have to fix the problems that arose from that fix being implemented. Next up is, as you say, the problem that 'oh damage variance in that tiny burst window is massive because of crits, so we need to make the hard hits all be guaranteed crits'. All of this, so that less skilled players can keep their buffs aligned easier. And despite the changes, said skill level of players not only can't keep buffs aligned, some of them forget to use the buffs at all. We're getting all these bad changes, for the sake of players who, in some cases, quite literally cannot perceive the benefits
Last thing in the rant, yes. Shinten is competing for 'absolute most dogwater animation in the game', on any job in the game right now. And I'm including how goofy Flying Sardine is. 'Onehanded lunging stab with katana' is rivalled only by 'slashing motion with a rapier made for thrusting motions' Zwerchau, and that one's double-goofy because it's named after a longsword technique. If you wanna keep the Shinten spam, at least let us change the animation (with a first-party system, none of that TOS breaking crap) to Seigan -
07-09-2023, 04:20 PMShurrikhan...If Lifesurge, for instance, was only ever meant to be popped inside of Lance Charge or Riddle of Wind inside of Riddle of Fire... they'd have that much less reason to be separate buttons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex1337
I'm not exactly going to feel pained that every other hit of Riddle of Wind won't be affected by Riddle of Fire; we're balanced accordingly, after all.
No, I take that back -- it not only doesn't pain me that they're not the same CD; I prefer that they're not each just yet another 60s|120s CD.
I like that Life Surge is a 40s CD, so at least I see one use that's independent of Lance Charge. I prefer that I have something more to be hitting as a rhythmic mile-marker (Riddle of Wind) between Riddles of Fire. -
07-12-2023, 02:54 AMPostI think can answer that one. I didn't like StB DA spam compared to edge spam because of the doubled (relative) consumption of DA in StB when compared with its consumption in HW. Edge doesn't compete for any of the rest of DRK'S toolkit other than TBN, and it's much easier to hang onto 3kmp for that than working with DA was on the whole in StB.Quote:
Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe
Often in StB DRK you could get locked out of applying DA to an oGCD because they not only reworked the only GCD combo finisher that did not consume DA (Delirium), but applied the same flat DA bonus to a second hit in the combo (Syphon Strike), which you also HAD to press to generate MP given the constant drain from Darkside if you were between Blood Prices and Weapons.
Because of this, it actually exacerbated the floor of using MP for mitigation when they threw in TBN and more double weaving required so you didn't eat your DA on a flat 140 potency buff to your next GCD if it wasn't Hard Slash. Not to mention, TBN, DA and Dark Passenger all costed the same, so that was like 60% of your MP bar if you used two in conjunction, and saving that amount meant overcapping was not so hard to do when you were in Blood Price/Weapon.
DA went from "enhances your strong actions" to "applies 140 potency to probably your next action" and became more like a chore at best or a hindrance to using my enhanced dark mind or passenger at worst. It had the same treatment as AST cards got going into ShB, and the fewer amount of free time to use it (no scourge, no pre-syphon strike oGCD, more time spent in blood weapon with new Delirium) and less MP to work with (no Blood Price out of Grit, higher cost on all spells and TBN competing for MP now) just made it feel more like filler than a feature.
Not to say I don't miss DA. I just think it worked a lot better in HW when its cost was lower and it wasn't consumed by 2/3 of your basic GCDs. Maybe if they untethered DA consumption from one of the only actions always available to build MP, and used, I dunno, THE MP BAR for DRK's gauge in StB instead of Blood it woulda been received better. That's basically how it works today, except it has WAR fell cleaves slapped on there cuz everyone loves Fell Cleave. Bloodspiller could just have been a high MP cost big attack, maybe costing "up to" like Flare, or like Eventide does in PvP. -
07-12-2023, 06:00 AMShurrikhanInteresting. I preferred that filler-DA did compete with more non-filler MP expenditures than just TBN. I didn't particularly like that we had to double-weave in order to avoid spending DA on our next GCD, but I liked having the option of at-offensive-cost sustain via DA-AD (as it didn't add potency, only its capacity to heal) and having rotational milestones like CnS or potential DM/DD to retain MP margin for.Quote:
Originally Posted by Post
Granted, we could as easily support that even now by just... say... adjusting CnS slightly --splitting it truly into a three-hit attack, so that for each 1000 MP you have above 3k, it consumes 1k MP to augment one of its "threefold strikes" to deal (a third of an Edge's) additional damage-- and perhaps turning AD into a no-CD, pitiful-damage lowish-duration debuff that causes the DRK's strikes against its victims to heal that DRK for ~25% of damage dealt. Not that we particularly need to do so; just food for thought.
Agreed. Losing the ability to avoid spending it made it feel far, far clunkier.Quote:
DA went from "enhances your strong actions" to "applies 140 potency to probably your next action"
Granted, I'd prefer to have avoided the issue the altogether by making it a follow-up skill, almost as if every weaponskill had a shared one-step Continuation button that they could spend MP on. Each would have their own Dark Arts: [Conditional Name] action, complete with their own effect and animation (though quick, somewhat self-similar, and not overly flashy). Abilities, on the other hand, would simply turn into their second steps, again at optional MP cost.
Souleater: Does Souleater. Hit Dark Arts after: Appears to yoink the enemy's soul out, dealing an additional (60% of Edge's) potency of damage and healing for 100% of damage dealt. Damage and healing both increased by 1% per the lower of your or your target's %HP missing.
Carve and Spit: Strike 3 times, generating 600 MP each. Hit that same button again (for its "Dark Arts" effect), and you spend that 1800 MP and up to 3000 more atop it for some pretty massive damage.
Dark Mind: The normal effect. Hit it again to, say, heal for 30% of magical damage nullified over the last 5 seconds.
Its relative cost was still pretty similar even in HW, tbf. It was 25% of maximum MP, as compared to... 30%. And, ofc, its impact on total potency was much lower in HW than it was in Shadowbringers (for EW, I would have to calculate again for Shadowbringer and the additions to Living Shadow). So... /shrug.Quote:
Not to say I don't miss DA. I just think it worked a lot better in HW when its cost was lower and it wasn't consumed by 2/3 of your basic GCDs.
Sure, I guess. You'd then effectively have two separate abilities for 'DA for sustain' and 'filler DA for mere potency' and removed the latter half, giving that instead to Bloodspiller/Quietus (with an efficiency, and therefore priority, below that of Dark Passenger and Carve and Spit). I don't know whether I'd have preferred that, necessarily --as I kind of liked the fact that jobs would more noticeably ramp up back then-- but it'd be less clunky, yeah.Quote:
Maybe if they untethered DA consumption from one of the only actions always available to build MP, and used, I dunno, THE MP BAR for DRK's gauge in StB instead of Blood it woulda been received better. That's basically how it works today, except it has WAR fell cleaves slapped on there cuz everyone loves Fell Cleave. Bloodspiller could just have been a high MP cost big attack, maybe costing "up to" like Flare, or like Eventide does in PvP.
But then... that's also effectively just GCD-Edge, with the option to bring back a Darkrasia for our oGCD skills (that is, if tanks were ever again allowed to make trades between sustain and offense). /shrug -
07-24-2023, 12:42 PMEorzean_username
Shinten/Seigan digressions
Can you translate this into an actual % Total Damage or % Total DPS difference over an X minute encounter, rather than just the difference between Shinten and Seigan in a vacuum?Quote:
Originally Posted by Roxus
And then compare "theoretical every Seigan" to "actual average number of Seigans per encounter from a skilled Samurai" ?
Then further break it down by "actual average number of Seigans used by, say, 75% of the entire Samurai player population (rather than just 95+ Savage parses)" ?
...I'm not trying to be a git — I'm trying to clarify why Seigan was seen as expendable from a development perspective.
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You're imagining an agenda that isn't there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roxus
Pointing out that very few people really interacted with a mechanic in a meaningful way does not trivialise their existence — it's just pointing out that the broader relevance of the action was dubious at best.
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Yes, and it was a very underwhelming reward that most players could completely-ignore and never notice any tangible difference.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roxus
As well, you absolutely could use Seigan to carry more Kenki into buffs because you only needed to drop 15 instead of the full 25 from Shinten.
Obviously this as niche as any other micro-optimisation like that, but for example, you could hypothetically end up in a situation where spending 25 to avoid overcapping would then have a cascading effect of just-missing having enough gauge for another Shinten under buffs, whereas using Seigan to bleed instead would provide the extra bit you needed to catch the window.
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Yes, but that's a problem with Shinten and overall design, not the generation of Kenki itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roxus
ie: The Third Eye change to generate Gauge directly is "neutral", and not directly related in any way to the Gauge itself being poorly-utilised.
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Yes, but that was in fact exactly the point I was making.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roxus
Someone said Seigan was "skill expression", but removing Seigan could be argued to have actually increased the gap of "skill expression" by putting much more incentive on snagging (and weaving) as many Third Eye hits as possible.
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Okay, but at no point have I ever claimed that the current state of Samurai is exactly equivalent to a prior state, and if it seems that way, it's a misinterpretation of my intent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roxus
I've simply said that (in my opinion) Shinten has always been a pox upon the Samurai Job, that Shinten spam has always been a design issue, and that I think Shinten's design is and always has been the real problem / boogeyman afflicting the Kenki gauge.
That the issue has become more exaggerated now is obviously true, but what I was saying is that "it was always an issue, now it's just been magnified even further".
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I know some posters are obsessed with "street cred", but I don't personally think that you need to flash a license in order to disagree with me or present your opinion on any topic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roxus
I don't personally care if you were World First DSR Samurai or you've only ever used Samurai in Expert Roulette, I'll consider whatever you have to say at face-value because I'm not laboring under the idea that skill at execution automatically translates to good design sense, nor vice-versa.
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I think you're just not understanding what I actually mean by "exaggerated" in this case.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roxus
I'm not saying "Kaiten never did anything productive for anyone, ever", I'm saying that what Kaiten added is being somewhat-overblown in retrospect, especially from a broader design perspective.
Unless a Job feature does literally nothing (which would be strange), there will always be situations in which it can actually be useful — I'm sure that someone, somewhere, somehow, found a productive use for 4.00 Lilies or the current Plunge CD reduction from Unmend.
Likewise, some segment of a Job's players will always find ways to push or squeeze as much as possible out of every option available to them, no matter how small. These players tend to appreciate small details or nuances that the broader playerbase is either oblivious to, or uninterested in.
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So I'm not arguing that Kaiten actually did or provided such refinements or nuances to more detail-oriented Samurai players.
What I'm saying is "exaggerated" is how significant the broader effect of that was on Samurai gameplay, in general, and for very likely "most" players approaching the Job.
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I think there's also some confusion that, just because I'm not on my knees daily, chanting to an idol of the Kaiten icon in my basement, I'm automatically advocating for or supporting the removal of Kaiten.
To clarify, then:
I think that the entire flow of Samurai and Iaijutsu was very clearly designed with the extra "beat" of Kaiten being part of it.
Transitioning from Sen generation straight to Iaijutsu feels "awkward", like when a video buffers wrong and suddenly skips a frame; Iaijutsu somehow feels too "blunt" and "naked" without the "prelude" of Kaiten setting it up.
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Furthermore, whether it was rational or not, spending 20 Kenki to empower Iaijutsu simply "felt good" to me from a play-experience perspective.
But then, I'm someone who also enjoyed HW Dark Arts and, in general, prefers spending Gauge on functional tools rather than direct Potency vomit, so I'm probably coming from a biased perspective here.
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Also, while this is technically completely off-topic, I can't resist mentioning how utterly naff circular Tenka feels, and how godsawful it looks with the Tenka animation glued into a circle.
...Actually, while I'm here, the drop in Iaijutsu potencies to now feel like slapping the target with a pool-noodle also completely-undermined the entire "slow, steady buildup → debilitating strike" that is inherently supposed to characterise the Samurai archetype and which XIV SAM previously captured (sans Shinten spam).
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...So what I'm actually trying to point out is not that I personally think the 6.10 SAM changes were good (because I do not), but that there were actual reasons behind the changes from a development perspective — it wasn't as arbitrary, impulsive, random, or [insult to developers's intelligence] as I keep seeing thrown-around here.
ie: Kaiten was specifically-targeted because, from a broader design evaluation, too many points added up against it, and too few in its favor.
Is designing by detached pro/con lists in an Excel spreadsheet shared with the local office intranet "healthy"?
Maybe not, but you can still see that there was a clear process involved in why Kaiten died and other actions didn't.
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That Kaiten has subsequently remained MIA, with radio-silence regarding it, is probably an indicator that the developers don't see the removal as having had serious repercussions, and may even consider the effect positive, based on their own overall data / evaluation.
This actually shouldn't be too surprising, when you consider that Samurai participation numbers remain quite high — in fact, even the most rabid Kaiten advocate around here continues to play Samurai.
Which is... Let's say that Starbucks removed an ingredient that you liked.
And every day, as you buy your morning coffee, you make sure to strongly-complain to your barista about how much you liked the flavor of that removed ingredient.
Meanwhile, up at Starbucks Galactic Headquarters on the moon, Starbucks Corporate doesn't hear your complaints to the barista — they just see that you keep spending the exact same money that you've always spent, and determine that changing the ingredient had no actual negative effect.
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From the developer perspective, the fact that everyone keeps playing Samurai even while some players complain about Kaiten means that the Kaiten change couldn't have been too bad, since there was no mass exodus from the Job.
In fact, the continued high play rates would probably be seen as reinforcement that they actually made a good choice.
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Is a philosophy of, "Well, it looks like no one quit, so it's probably fine", actually a good way to design?
Maybe not.
But from the designer perspective, who cares?
You're still buying the product, you're still playing the Job, and so are a lot of other people.
Why should they worry about it?
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Don't misinterpret this as me trying to invalidate your personal complaints about how your own gamefeel was genuinely damaged by removing Kaiten.
I don't think that you can possibly be "wrong" for making an honest claim about what you did or didn't like about a Job, and I don't personally think that's irrelevant feedback.
So I'm not trying to antagonise you — I'm trying to be blunt about why things happened, and why they are probably going to continue happening.
I think that refusing to understand why an action like Kaiten is seen as expendable under the current design philosophy is only going to cause you to become increasingly-frustrated over time, and then be blindsided by even more changes in the future. -
07-24-2023, 03:11 PMShurrikhanAnd I think discourse is getting confused on this particular tack. I'm not seeing many refuting that Kaiten did relatively little, noncontextually, in itself; rather, their interest seems to be on its outsized contribution towards a particular gestalt: Samurai's Kenki gauge and its usage, which was crippled almost irredeemably by losing that keystone component. It was a very simple mechanic that contextually did a lot of good.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
(Yes, other losses had already hurt it badly, but losing that base margining, even if less noticeable after Yukikaze's being Slashing debuff being turned into further gauge generation, means there's virtually no baseline to build from anymore to make it anything more than a Shinten or Double-Shinten counter +/- the 10 gauge of a Gyoten or Third Eye.)
Which seems a problematic approach if not assessing what a given mechanic may contribute outside of its own internal nuances, etc., and addressing the shortfall that would be caused by the removal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
And I think the devs refusing to understand why it wouldn't be considered nearly so expendable by their playerbase, within the context of their current design philosophy or otherwise, will only cause them to become increasingly frustrated over time, and then be "blindsided" by similar criticisms to further such changes in the future.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
Agreed. But, then, I think the typical Samurai player would expect that'd make it all the more urgent to address that. Yet that clearly hasn't been the thought among the devs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
I've played SAM all of twice since, after it having been a top 2 job for me from 6.0 to 6.1 and my most played job across 5.x.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
Aye.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
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07-25-2023, 01:02 AMWyssahtyni'd say a fair number stopped playing or only picked it back up after 6.2 since the developers' behavior since 6.1 has made it plainly clear that they're solely developing for their own vision or what have you. since the developers give absolutely zero shits about feedback, one's only options are to either quit outright or just get what little enjoyment is still possible while one can.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
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07-25-2023, 04:48 AMCelestiCer" Rabid Kaiten advocate... " ( that's a new one... )Quote:
Originally Posted by Eorzean_username
If it was aimed at me? Firstly, you're to kind... Secondly, PVE Samurai made me fall in love with XIV's combat of which I now do 100x less of after the 6.1 changes cause shocker? I like it a lot less. What was the Nr.1 reason to play for me? became the 5th after now Housing / Gposing / Community-Service / Hanging-out. Speak of not antagonizing, yet you're throwing wild assumptions in your posts, written with lies as the supposedly popular opinion... with little to nothing to back it up. Whole paragraphs of essentially boiling down to " I am talking out of my *biep* ", all the offense, I'm just being blunt...
Back on Topic, " Kaiten removal " fixed absolutely nothing, improved absolutely nothing, tackled absolutely zero issues while making the gameplay absolutely dumber and replaced its removal with absolutely nothing - That's it.
Dio and many others already debunked the crap out of everything through the ground... But when it comes to the arguments of what Dev's need to handle... newsflash? they are paid a salary, thus the caring for the Dev's of a billion dollar company argument is so honorable ( if you even actually cared... ) Yet, who cares? I care about gameplay. We don't pay a sub to feel sorry for the Dev's... Just keep my Job fun or don't make it worse, that's it. And all I see are excuses on how a Job should be less fun for the most stupid reasons that makes absolutely no sense. Anything that makes gameplay worse? makes the game worse - it's that simple. ( It's not rocket science btw... )
Also, for the hundredth time? is anyone defending Shinten spamming yet as in-depth/amazingly/improving/complex/satisfying gameplay over Kaiten execution? Cause that would be the day... Every time its someone trying to reason Kaiten's removal, never ever is Shinten spamming ever taken into question on how terrible that is now in comparison... Has anyone ever noticed that pattern? ( Crazy observation, I know... mhm... ) -
07-27-2023, 07:39 AMShurrikhan
Pipedream Adjustments (Spitball-ish) Wishlist Incoming...
Goals of Changes:- Starting from reversion to (imo) better days...
- Smooth out pain-points without reducing skill-ceiling.
- Revitalize the value of managing Fuka & Fugetsu.
- Add opportunities for further nuance to accentuate timing of certain actions beyond just preparing for this or that upcoming positional opportunity (e.g., why might I want to use Shifu in this order over that), and maybe give a bit more to do with Kaiten.
- Give a bit more to do with Kaiten.
- Give more fun stuff to do with Gyoten and Yaten, even if only situationally / as a bonus.
- Generally increase APM / more zoom-zooms.
- A bit more rate-of-actions variance.
- A bit more Kenki interplay.
- More use cases for otherwise less used skills.
The Actual Suggestions:
First, revert to pre-Endwalker, with some small fixes.- Background Change: Conal and linear AoEs no longer require a target to use. If an enemy is targeted, the game will check both lines of attack and use the one (character facing / camera-facing or to-target facing) that will strike a greater number of effective targets.
- Background Change: A new class of actions called Techniques has been added. These may be used even in the middle of other animations. All pet skills, Sprint, and certain other actions have been moved into this category.
- Fuka and Fugetsu reverted to 30s per application. [Given the added 3% Haste given in the same period, the 40s durations were overcorrections to Shoha being on the GCD that were excessive even before Shoha was taken off said GCD; Namikiri is less frequent and though it may act back-to-back, there is still room enough to optimize around that.]
- Most AoE actions now deal 30% (Tenka, Guren) to 50% (Fuga, Mangetsu, Oka) greater damage to their first enemy struck. [Tenka is therefore better made a net gain in 2-target combat and more obviously worth using in single-target before gaining access to Yukikaze, while Mangetsu and Oka main gain some additional use cases.]
- Range of Fuga and Tenka's conal AoEs extended by 2 yalms. [This gives Tenka a bit more leeway on hitting targets moving away from the SAM and giving Fuga a bit more of value during gap-closing.]
- Tsubame-Gaeshi (again) no longer grants Meditation stacks, and Shoha's damage has (again) been buffed accordingly, though to just 540p this time. [The one mostly good Endwalker change; 540 [180p/stack] used instead of 560 [186.67] for divisibility and internal balancing.]
- "Meditation Stacks" renamed to "Honed Blade" or the like, because the prior sounds stupid.
- Meditate now supercharges existing Honed Blade stacks with each tick, causing them to count as two each, if it would otherwise overcap. Its cooldown has also been reduced to 40s, and it now also reverses the drain of Fuka and Fugetsu, causing them instead to gain a second of duration with each second channeled.
- Meditation is again oGCD, but it does not begin to tick until the GCD has cooled, and now ticks per half-GCD's time (thereby more than doubling its rate and improving GCD-sync) but alternates between granting 10 Kenki (odd ticks) and a stack of Honed Blade (even ticks). If within .5s of a tick, it will hold other GCD actions for the tick, thereby keeping GCD-synced and allowing for proper queuing. [This makes Meditate more fluid without being an obligatory weave; every odd tick is worth 120p, every even tick 180p, for a total of 300 ppgcd. Compare against SAM's ~460 ppgcd from weaponskills (not accounting for CDs, including TG and Namikiri), and Meditate's former value of =<217.5 ppgcd.]
* The buff lingers faintly, allowing oGCD actions not to break Meditation for almost a second, giving it a bit more fluidity; again, though, it can't tick while under the global recast delay, and it makes sense to keep the GCD synced.
- Base cast time of Iaijutsu reduced from 72% to 60% of a GCD (1.5s baseline); its enhanced version instead allows one to start Iaijutsu at up to 20 yalms' range if possessing at least 10 Kenki and allows Gyoten to be queued as a technique, causing it to automatically be used at the end of Iaijutsu's cast to gap-close and reach the target to complete. [While this does simplify gameplay faintly, the cool factor and the ability to fine-tune GCD sync despite adds and gap-closing should make this worthwhile.]
- Tsubame Gaeshi is now available for 5 seconds after using Iaijutsu -OR- Tsubame Gaeshi replaces Iaijutsu when off cooldown and until a new Sen is generated; while Iaijutsu is shown, a cooldown ring for Tsubame-Gaeshi shows over Iaijutsu without replacing it or greying out its icon (similar to when cooling holding at least one charge but also cooling an additional charge).
- Shoha II replaced by a trait just causing Shoha I to launch red arcs of energy (a la Guren), dealing additional linear (or narrow-conal) AoE fall-off damage.
- Hissatsu: Senei is now a trait that causes Guren to swap instead to Senei when its line of attack would strike only a single enemy.
- Third Eye's Third Eye Opened proc now replaces your next use of Shinten or Kyuten with Seigan or Soten (new), respectively; Seigan deals an additional 100 AoE potency in a narrow cone and Soten deals an additional 100 potency to its first enemy struck, and both heal for damage dealt. [In this way, we have more animation variety without button bloat.]
- Enhanced Ikishoten replaced with Art of the Swell II - Tsubame Gaeshi grants a stack of Namikiri, to a maximum of two stacks. Each allows the use of Ogi Namikiri or Kaeshi: Namikiri. (Generally, you'd hold these to save 20 Kenki, since Kaeshi: Namikiri can only be used within 5s of Namikiri and includes Kaiten's modifier for free.) [Because people like their big swishy-thwoom skill, even if it's pretty braindead.]
- [Very Optional] Shoha can now be spent at any number of stacks and is now an oGCD mobile channel, striking every quarter-GCD so long as you are in range of your target; number of animation steps now varies with number of Honed Blade stacks consumed. (This animation cycles; if using for just 1 stack's worth each across three separate GCDs, you'd see each third of the animation, in order.) [I just want to be able to see the whole animation, without losing fluidity.]
Then some leveling changes...- Hagakure and Kaiten moved to a far earlier level; base skill potencies can be reduced in compensation to be returned at Kaiten's original level, and Hagakure now grants 15 Kenki per Sen after <some level as early as 58 and as late as 80>, making it less of a trap.
- Gyoten moved to level 40 or so.
- Ikishoten moved to level 58 or so.
And then some new stuff for fun (spitball):- New Trait: Art of the Storm (lv64) - Every 20 Kenki spent reduces the cooldown of Ikishoten by 1 second. Fuga and Enpi increase your movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds. Iaijutsu reduces the global cooldown incurred by your next Hakaze or Fuga by 33%. [This just adds some pacing variance and decouples Ikishoten from rigid sync.]
- New Trait: Art of the Swell (lv68) - Ikishoten and Meikyo Shisui now randomly (or based on current Sen count / combo progress / whatever) grant either Swell: High Tide or Swell: Low Tide.
High Tide - The next 3 casts of a random Kenki skill to consume 10 less Kenki and deal 100 more damage to their primary target if AoE or 50 more AoE potency if single-target.
* If the random skill's recast times are fully consumed, a new skill we be selected.
Low Tide - Your next 3 Sen consumed by Hagakure within the next 10 seconds grant an additional 10 Kenki and automatically grant Kaiten.
- New Trait (~lv74): Art of the Sword - Gyoten and Yaten gain a third shared charge and their recharge time is reduced by 3 seconds (from 8 to 5). Using Yaten duplicates your latest non-Iaijutsu single-target weaponskill in a cone facing towards you from your target for partial damage to other enemies. Using Gyoten causes your next non-Iaijutsu single-target weaponskill to additionally deal a portion of its effect to other enemies in a line.
- New Trait (~lv78): Art of the Storm II [replaces Enhanced Fuka and Fugetsu] - The effects of Fuka and Fugetsu are now initially enhanced, beginning at 14% before fading to 10% over their duration. [Drops to 13% at 24s left, 12% at 18s left, 11% at 12s left, 10% at 6s left, thereby averaging 12%.]
Additionally, using Kaiten on a skill which grants Fuka or Fugetsu will cause it to instead grant Shin Fuka or Shin Fugetsu, which increases its effect to 20%, likewise fading to 10% over its duration.
Only one or the other may be active at the same time; activating either while the other is active will degrade the other to its normal/unenhanced effect.
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07-28-2023, 07:34 AMFairyDJ
Yes Kaiten for me just help me to remember to not overcap on my gauge that was the bulk of it for me. But tbh it's one less button I need to press and I feel no real difference in not having it. Its just more of a manual thing for me to be like hey don't forget to spend your gauge.
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07-29-2023, 05:11 PMRyuuZeroKaiten also boosted Ogi^^ aswell as boosting all Weaponskills, basicly labelling Kenki as Weaponskill Boost ResourceQuote:
Removal of Kaiten, an oGCD ability that did cost 20 Kenki and increased the next Iaijutsu's potency by 50% (technically all weaponskills except Ogi).
Now it's just the Shinten Gauge. There also is Kyuten for AoE and I'd say without Kaiten the AoE Rotation is more fun than the Single Target Rotation.. The Single Target Rotation is just lvl50+ Shinten and cool stuff every 2 minutes..
There also are Senei and Guren but imo their Kenki Cost are covered by Ikishoten
That Tsubamegaeshi takes up it's own Button but doesn't generate Meditation Stacks anymore is kinda baffling. Tsubamegaeshi should get the Ogi Treatment and be merged with Iaijutsu.