New Missaphenchair video makes great point about the direction of job design

[Raikai]

I'm still trying to find who asked for DRG QoL since ShB.
I also remember very clearly SAM feedback about Drifting the double midare, which was fixed with the charge system. But I can't remember anyone asking for kaiten removal.

In fact, who asks for free space on their hotbar? As far as I know there's 1 controller player out of 20 who's complaining about not having enough space.

To me personally, the issue is not just about space, but how that space is organized. Sometimes there's enough space for everything but not always the keybinds will be able to be placed in a situation that is intuitive to use or to make easier for muscle memory.

[Rilifane]

He made some great points and I agree with his critique on job changes being made for people that don't care about the job to that extend.
If you're making adjustments to a job for people that don't care about that job while alienating players that do, you're doing something seriously, seriously wrong.

[Lyth]

Not everyone likes playing a job for the job's own sake. Some people want to only play the best job. DPS balance within roles has been fairly close from Shadowbringers on. But such people are willing to quibble over a couple hundred dps if it means that their job is viewed as the best (irrespective of what their own numbers are). And if a job is consistently on top, these FoTM players invariably start to nest within said job, and will do anything to preserve the status quo. This is one of the reasons why the balance really needs to be dynamic, and you shouldn't let one job stay on top for too long, even if it's by a small amount. Because then being the 'top damage dealer' becomes an identity, and there's a massive resistance to change and backlash when you mix things up again.

Any time that you add a new job into the mix, it creates a disturbance within that role because players aren't sure how it will match up to the others. More recently, with the addition of RPR to melee dps, players wondered whether it would be bringing big numbers or big buffs. These sort of things make FoTM players nervous and defensive because they see an emerging threat to their position. So you see the usual tired arguments laid out on how their job is 'supposed always to be the highest dps' because it's the 'most complex' or 'best designed'. Oh, and why is this easy job getting to do almost as much dps as my oh so difficult job? Honestly, I've seen this play out more times than I can count in this game over the past 10 years. And there were a lot of these posts in 6.0.

But thankfully, the playerbase defines the design problem, but not its solution. There are two ways of interpreting this statement. Either you make said job do more damage in order to reward its supposed difficulty (i.e. what you expect the devs would do when you inflate the supposed 'complexity' of your job), or you simplify that job to bring it in line with the others. Which solution do you think the devs are going to pick, hmm? Unga bunga, every. single. time. You want to know who these changes were intended for? Nobody, because the complexity was a lie.

I'll say this as well: you don't want to enter the job rework roulette unless you're truly desperate. If you're happy with your job's playstyle and you find its impact satisfying, keep your head down and let others squabble about who gets to be the best dps. It honestly isn't going to affect you and you'll only make your life a whole lot worse. The reason why BLM has been relatively consistent is because they haven't engaged in this sort of turf war politics for a long time. I'm calling it now. If you threw in another contender job for 'top dps' into the caster arena next expansion, I would not be at all surprised to see this same mummery that's happening now with melee dps play out with BLM and the casters.

If you want to safeguard your job, don't let the FoTM players ruin it for you. If you see someone clearly being too greedy, just take a step back yourself and ask if it's going to actually make the game better for you to have that unnecessary advantage.

[cjbeagle]

I think the most important point he makes is that new players need something to aspire to.

Dumbing down jobs at high levels doesn't help anyone - the people who are already high level aren't new and don't need the hand-holding, and actual newbies have hundreds of hours to grow into jobs as they go through MSQ.

Granted, some people boost to get into endgame raiding asap, but those aren't the kind of people who need hand-holding either.

All they're doing is dumbing down jobs for people who don't need it while simultaneously removing future satisfaction from those who haven't even unlocked that complexity yet.

[iiTzSeb]

I think the most important point he makes is that new players need something to aspire to.

Dumbing down jobs at high levels doesn't help anyone - the people who are already high level aren't new and don't need the hand-holding, and actual newbies have hundreds of hours to grow into jobs as they go through MSQ.

Granted, some people boost to get into endgame raiding asap, but those aren't the kind of people who need hand-holding either.

All they're doing is dumbing down jobs for people who don't need it while simultaneously removing future satisfaction from those who haven't even unlocked that complexity yet.

Nobody picks SAM because it's challenging, the job was already straightforward and "dumbed down" from the get-go. Let's not act like removing Kaiten did anything substantial to make the job even easier than it ALREADY was.

The ONLY reason you lost Kaiten because Square designs jobs' skillcount with PlayStation crossbar limitations in mind since they're limited on how many slots they can map, and since they couldn't be bothered to combine buttons like Shoha/II into singular buttons, you lost Kaiten instead. Every single job will get this treatment eventually, yours was just sooner than others because you have a lot of unnecessary button bloat that can be reworked much easier than other jobs' skills can.

[cjbeagle]

Let's not act like removing Kaiten did anything substantial to make the job even easier than it ALREADY was.

If you honestly believe this, you're a moron. I normally try to be more civil, but unfortunately I recognize your name from another idiotic/rude/uninformed take I read earlier this morning. I'm all for second chances, but you're laying out a pretty clear pattern.

Nobody is claiming samurai was hard. Nobody said they picked samurai because it's challenging. Removing Kaiten did make samurai "even easier than it already was". You can say samurai was a 2/10 difficulty before - fine - but if so, now it's a 1/10.

Samurai did get even easier, and if you can't articulate how off the top of your head, that's just further proof that you haven't read the samurai threads that your MCH thread claims are just samurai mains doomposting because NIN's dps is as high as SAM's now.

[Sylvain]

I'm still trying to find who asked for DRG QoL since ShB.
I also remember very clearly SAM feedback about Drifting the double midare, which was fixed with the charge system. But I can't remember anyone asking for kaiten removal.

In fact, who asks for free space on their hotbar? As far as I know there's 1 controller player out of 20 who's complaining about not having enough space.

And that controller player out of 20 controller players probably didn't check the UI option and realised he has access to more than 1 bar.

If you honestly believe this, you're a moron. [...] Removing Kaiten did make samurai "even easier than it already was". You can say samurai was a 2/10 difficulty before - fine - but if so, now it's a 1/10.

Samurai did get even easier, and if you can't articulate how off the top of your head, that's just further proof that you haven't read the samurai threads that your MCH thread claims are just samurai mains doomposting because NIN's dps is as high as SAM's now.

If easier was the only problem it wouldn't be a problem. It's also quite dull now. I mean, at this point they might as well remove the whole Kenki system. I'm not a SAM main, currently finishing my leveling and the change is just baffling. While it wasn't hard in ShB, there was at least a bit of gauge management. Things to look for. Now it's basically a mindless Shinten spam fest. You can argue there's some management in holding some gauge every 2min for burst window.. great

Kaiten removal was a mistake. But if they're to never add it back (or another substitute), keep Shinten almost feel like a mistake because it is not only boring, but annoying. it fills so fast and requires no management at all. it's just "I have 25 kenki, bap i pressed :3"

[Ruminous]

If easier was the only problem it wouldn't be a problem. It's also quite dull now. I mean, at this point they might as well remove the whole Kenki system. I'm not a SAM main, currently finishing my leveling and the change is just baffling. While it wasn't hard in ShB, there was at least a bit of gauge management. Things to look for. Now it's basically a mindless Shinten spam fest. You can argue there's some management in holding some gauge every 2min for burst window.. great

Kaiten removal was a mistake. But if they're to never add it back (or another substitute), keep Shinten almost feel like a mistake because it is not only boring, but annoying. it fills so fast and requires no management at all. it's just "I have 25 kenki, bap i pressed :3"

It's what I've said, the kenki gauge is meaningless. They could remove it, tie shinten to a 7 second GCD, and literally nothing changes about the job. I'd turn the gauge off in my hud if I played samurai...But I haven't since the first week of 6.1 and actually using it in savage. Changes were again, poorly thought out and implemented by a dumbass who apparently seemed to think that removing buttons makes a job more balanced. Balance achieved, but at the loss of at least something interesting about it. So I'll go with the video's question of "who are these changes for"? I still don't know.

[SiriusBreeze]

Video is so good. Give me back my cone aoe on Sam! Give me back Kaiten! Stop lowering the floor!

[Rika007]

He made some great points and I agree with his critique on job changes being made for people that don't care about the job to that extend.
If you're making adjustments to a job for people that don't care about that job while alienating players that do, you're doing something seriously, seriously wrong.

I think the big problem is when people are dissatisfied with how a job is we as a fan base are never very concise about what we want. He mentions the Summoner rework and the problem is, many of the things many summoner players asked for is in there. A more identity centered around summons and not around the poison mage/warlock identity, removing the carbuncle/egi's as a primary rotation mechanic, for the demi primals to no longer follow us around like lost puppies, a rotation that doesnt literally hurt our fingers, etc etc.

The problem is they went overboard on a few other things as well. Summoner is one of my two mains and while I do preffer the endwalker version over how awful Shadowbringers Summoner was, it's a pale shade to the greatness of Stormblood Summoner due to it's rigid and barebones rotation. This where having players give feedback via ptr of some kind BEFORE a rework is finalized would be a very beneficial thing.

Most changes they've done (outside of trick attack/mug rework for Ninja and the rumored upcoming changes to DRG, those ones im with everyone, who the heck from the NIN and DRG communities asked for those?) are in someway a response to player feedback. It's just many times they go so drastically in the opposite way of what we ask for that you wonder how they could have understood it that way.

SAM players have too much button bloat! Remove Kaiten! Huh?

Bard players say Foe's Requiem is a bit wonky in the current rotation! Remove Foe's Requiem! What?

Healers don't like the double negative gameplay of Cleric Stance! REMOVE IT, and make their rotation two buttons! Uhhhhh....

Summoners say their rotation has gotten too full of different mechanics! Gut the whole job of the majority of its mechanics! EH!?

Now of course I doubt how these conversations actually went, but it just SCREAMS for a need of, yo before we launch this rework to the public maybe we should show it off a bit to some select players on an NDA, from all different skill levels and see what they say.