Hissatsu: Kaiten

[LackOfCreativity]

Yes. I've been worrying about the state of job design in this game for a while now. It was glaringly obvious during 5.x that a lot of shit that made some dps jobs as well as tank jobs interesting just isn't important to the job designers.

This is one of my favorite games of all time, but I'm extremely worried about the direction of it. The content in this expansion has been very fun, but when you make jobs more bland and less unique in the name of accessibility or balance, you lose the fun those jobs had. This game has a button bloat issue, I understand this. But removing Kaiten is not the way you could very easily solve this issue on SAM. Just combine guren/senai as well as shoha/shoha 2. It's literally that easy, and it frees up one more slot than removing kaiten and turning the kenki gauge into the shinten/senai gauge. That's without even finding creative ways to solve this problem the game has, I just pulled that straight out of my ass, much like the devs did with removing kaiten and giving SAM some incompatibility with crit raidbuffs. Scholars, Dancers, Bards and Dragoons rejoice.

And this isn't even getting into the horrible state of drk and whm. Absolutely dreadful to play either right now. They've been shit to play for a long time, but it's been magnified so much in this expansion that it's too much to ignore. The sheer amount of screaming into the void the Drk playerbase has done in the time I've been a part of it is just fucking depressing when you contrast it with what little consolation we've been given. "Yay, maybe Living Dead will be useable! Thanks Yoshi-P!" The fact that we even got that much surprised me, honestly. Sure, we're still being completely ignored in the way of TBN still being tied to our DPS while being shittier than tools other tanks got this expansion, and blood weapon STILL does not have stacks like they decided to give delirium and they refuse to acknowledge that it's even a problem, but we got LD to maybe not be a "gee I wonder if I'll even survive after my invulnerability skill has ran its course" situation, so surely none of that other stuff matters.

Malding aside, I really really really love this game. I do not want it to end up like WoW but in a different way. But with recent events, SE can only be described as out of touch and/or tonedeaf. Two criticisms very often levied at Blizzard.

[Ransu]

Samurai has way too many buttons

Stop. No they do not.

[GaleMex]

Stop. No they do not.

Imagine being this wrong. Can't be me. Ignore that samurai has 33 buttons and controllers can only fit 32 and that's not including limit break. Samurai and scholar are over the cap.

[Rilifane]

Homogenization of buff windows is, again, not in the service of hardcore raiders. "Hardcore" raiders would easily be able to line up buffs with different cooldowns (IF that's something that would deem to be useful. They would be able to easily go through the math of the buff and see whether holding a 90 cooldown for 30 seconds is worth it to stack the buff with 120 second buffs. That is stuff that "hardcore" raiders LOVE to do. The change to buff windows was squarely done to lower/remove the large DPS difference between midcore/lowcore raiders and hardcore raiders. I'm sure hardcore raiders dislike the change because it removes skill expression and puts them closer in performance to those midcore raiders.

I agree.
Changes that make it easier to calculate something or get the maximum beenfit from something are bringing the skill floor up so the difference between low skill and high skill players becomes smaller. Parsers, high skill players, hardcore raiders etc. don't ask for such things because they don't need them.
They know when to delay buffs to align naturally misaligned raid buffs according to kill times, they know how to play around different burst windows without losing potency during the big 2min windows or even reopener. They largely enjoy it because it gives them more options to squeeze out that last bit of dps by thinking about it instead of just getting it handed. TA is the last remaining buff that isn't on 120s but with the Mug change, it will be.
Now the only thing left to play around with are AST cards and longer raid buffs to snapshot as many buffs as possible with each GCD/ oGCD which isn't much.

Imagine being this wrong. Can't be me. Ignore that samurai has 33 buttons and controllers can only fit 32 and that's not including limit break. Samurai and scholar are over the cap.

And what about all the skill merge proposals made in this thread that would free up to 5 buttons while keeping existing skills?
If it was really about button bloat, they have more than enough to merge without affecting a SAM's rotation or making it job gauge a pointless spam-meter. Merging mutually exclusive skills would be the first priority if button bloat was truly their only concern.

[Ransu]

Imagine being this wrong. Can't be me. Ignore that samurai has 33 buttons and controllers can only fit 32 and that's not including limit break. Samurai and scholar are over the cap.

16 slots on each cross bar and 8 pages is 128 slots.

[GaleMex]

16 slots on each cross bar and 8 pages is 128 slots.

Tell me you've never played on a controller without telling me you've never played on a controller.

[snip]

[snip]



And what about all the skill merge proposals made in this thread that would free up to 5 buttons while keeping existing skills?
If it was really about button bloat, they have more than enough to merge without affecting a SAM's rotation or making it job gauge a pointless spam-meter. Merging mutually exclusive skills would be the first priority if button bloat was truly their only concern.

Sure, I'll admit to this, it probably wasn't a top priority if it was a priority at all.

[Ransu]

I played on controller back in HW when there was way more "bloat." Its literally not a problem, especially now with all the new shortcut options added to controller/crossbar. It sounds to me like you just don't know all the settings to fully utilize the crossbar correctly.

[BaconBits]

Tell me you've never played on a controller without telling me you've never played on a controller.



Sure, I'll admit to this, it probably wasn't a top priority if it was a priority at all.

I'll take "What are Expanded Hotbars" for 500 Bob.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I half want a limited Mime job that lets me use all the cool abilities that have been stripped away.

* Old AST Cards (or at least Diurnal Sect)
* Old Dark Arts
* Kiss of Viper/Wasp
* Bishop Turret
* Bane/Miasma/Virus
* Stone/Aero
* KAITEN

[OdinelStarrei]

Which, in a similar vein, I have been hearing a lot of people whinging for Blood Weapon stacks on DRK along with Delirium and it is something I just don't agree with. I don't want *every* ability on a job to be a stack. I *like* weird buff windows. It's not efficient but it at least keeps gameplay interesting.

I agree with you on the Blood Weapon/Delirium stacks; I enjoy knowing what buffs need to be done in the second OGCD window to ensure that you get all of the GCDs you need into them. But I think the people whining for those stacks are just wondering WHY they went ahead and streamlined it for jobs like WAR, but didn't for DRK (and they typically bring it up as "proof" that DRK is largely neglected).

Hi, I'm the person who has spent almost three years of his life on this forum trying to get Blood Weapon adjusted after the changes. I was among those making bug reports about it. I was the one who was writing up dissertations on how blood weapon inconsistency is bad game design, both here and ingame. It was my question in the QA thread that got over 150 likes regarding an issue that SE DELIBERATELY ignored, despite multiple content creators going to Yoshida directly to explain why it's bad, only to be told, "lmao have you checked your internet connection? We haven't received any feedback on Blood Weapon" Except that they did, both in JP and NA. I'll nest the proof of being ignored from JP alone right here, you can look at my post history if you want NA, naturally I had nothing else to do with my pathetic life. Just search the term "ブラッドウェポン" if you don't believe me.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5069443 - Blood Weapon extension

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5067642 - Blood Weapon extension

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5065250 - Blood Weapon extension

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5689497 - Blood Weapon extension

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5683173 - Blood Weapon stacks, also suggests Blood Weapon could be similar to Infuriate.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5683064 - Big post, 50 likes. Mirrors EN complaints. Asks for Blood Weapon stacks.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5683983 - Blood Weapon stacks.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5705067 - Blood Weapon stacks.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5683043 - Blood Weapon stacks.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5682973 - Another big post, 40 likes. Mirrors EN complaints, and links to EN megathread. Blood Weapon stacks.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5683020 - Blood Weapon stacks, responds to the above post.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5680557 - Blood Weapon complaint.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5681485 - Another big post, 53 likes. It's a translation of an EN megathread post, mirroring EN complaints. Blood Weapon stacks. (They translate the correct post, but accidentally link the post below the translated post)
-Thanks OkorOvorO, I know you waste your life here as well-

Do you even remember this complete garbage from the Media Tour?

Mrhappy1227: I have a question in a similar vein - many skills have been adjusted over time to make them more friendly for high ping players such as Warrior's Inner Release in the Media Tour build and the Perfect Balance stacks that were added to Monk. Some skills such as Hypercharge, Wildfire, and Blood Weapons still have tight buff windows that can be punishing if the player’s connection is even just a bit slower. How does the team decide which skills receive these kinds of adjustments and which ones do not?

Yoshida: I think a lot of it depends on player feedback, there are certain actions we decide to switch over as like a charge action with the stacking to alleviate some of the frustration and stress players are experiencing. It also depends on what kind of stress players as experiencing and what we identify. Sometimes it is a matter of changing a certain skill to become a charge action or something we that adjust the recast timing on to be a bit shorter in its cycle.

Those are some of the elements we would look into. If we're talking about latency here, and apologies for repeating myself, we would need further data in order for us to analyze it properly to see what is causing it and recreate the issue on our end. If it an issue with latency I would recommend going to the forums and setting up a thread so the developers can see what kind of issue you're having and glean the information needed so we can analyze it properly and make adjustments so it becomes a bit more comfortable.

This is the response we get after years of feedback that anyone who plays DRK at even a somewhat competent level would notice almost immediately if they didn't play Dark Knight in the server room basement, like how I did on ShB launch week.

The duration on Blood Weapon isn't even right. It says 10 seconds, but unlike old Inner Release and Delirium where the duration was closer to 10.6 seconds in order to provide some leeway, Blood Weapon is ABSURDLY strict at 9.97 - 10.0 exactly, depending on timing the server receives the input. This doesn't seem like a huge deal, until you realize that Unmend/Unleash/Stalwart Soul are all spells that are LOCKED at 2.50 GCD. This means it's outright impossible to get all five hits of Blood Weapon in most AoE situations without Blood Gauge stockpiled or Delirium (remember, old Delirium didn't always line up with BW). You can go test this yourself right now, because Square Enix obviously didn't, hence the bafflement and anger of DRKs around the world. And god forbid you clipped, or had to move the boss or disengage for any reason, because you can just kiss those resources goodbye for the upside of having a significantly worse version of Infuriate. Even when you put BW in the second oGCD slot, it still remains incredibly inconsistent to this day, and I live on the West Coast. Someone who lives on the East Coast, or really, anywhere that isn't in really close proximity to the servers physically was recommended to invest in a VPN or other tunneling service to boost the connection just so this cursed buff doesn't randomly screw them. It's not interesting, it's stupid jank. Give me back Scourge, or make Darkside an actual mechanic instead of being literally not relevant, or even another GCD outside of 123+gauge spender.

And regarding "whining" or "wanting DRK to be interesting", you know what we actually would've preferred over stacks? GIVING US BACK ORIGINAL BLOOD WEAPON THAT WASN'T BROKEN.The one that didn't fall into the same 60/120/180 window that everything else in the game does at 40 second cooldown, the one that actually had a gameplay impact from increased SkS, the one that actually provided a substantial amount of resources, the one that had interplay within it's own kit thanks to old Delirium, the thing that made SkS DRK viable instead of mashing all your materia slots with Crit/Direct Hit, basically, the one that was unique to Dark Knight. SE would never do that though, return what was lost, so we have to beg for stacks instead.

If they are going to ruin DRK, at least make it consistently awful, instead of a variance between "I hate this" and "the game hates me".

And if you want proof that DRK is the "ignored" one, explain to me why we had to suffer with Living Dead for six years while every other invulnerability skill that it could possibly have an advantage over got buffed, on top of the absolutely dreadful treatment the job has gotten after mid-SB. I'm so distrustful, I don't think they are capable of fixing it on Tuesday without mucking something up. We don't have a 300 page megathread and Tank Roles essentially becoming the "Grand DRK Complaint Archive" for no reason, even if some of those takes are "questionable" at best. If it wasn't for SCH and AST, DRK would be the gold medalist for "Most misunderstood and watered down job."

God I hate Blood Weapon.