Samurai: Iajutsu and Tsubame-gaeshi have identical potencies… Wrong description?

[Hezhi]

We have it really good in FFXIV, the devs are not lazy and I really wish people would stop repeating that based on disagreements or not getting the specific thing they want.

The devs aren't lazy, they clearly spent a lot of time and resources messing up SAM!
Brilliant engineering is fixing a complex problem with a simple solution. They did the exact opposite there, and messed up a lot of things in the process. Their time and good intentions were completely wasted on trying to flatten SAM's damage profile (I assume) withj like 20 potency changes and pruning where it could have been addressed by a simple fix such as changing Kaiten into an ability that makes your next ability into a guaranteed crit for example.

[Quor]

I fail to see what it has to do with laziness..

I made a post about this actually.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ZY.-Here-s-why

The tl;dr is that the devs are making changes to the jobs - of which SAM is but the first in a series according to what Yoshi P. has said - with the intent of making future iteration and innovation easier. Addressing SAM specifically, Kaiten was removed because it was "restricting" future skill/ability creation for as-yet-unreleased expansions. So, in order to make the lives of the job devs easier, the decision was made to just remove Kaiten. This isn't to say that job design and balance is an easy task, as it's not. But the underlying thought process behind it is one of laziness. It's a laziness that led to the current state of tanks and healers and it's now spreading to other jobs. The devs are no longer designing something with "fun to play" as the primary focus, but rather they are concerned about "upcoming issues that may or may not arise in the future."

This is a lazy way of doing things, as it's the easiest possible thing they could have done. Instead of altering Kaiten in some way that preserves it's role while simultaneously making it less restrictive, they chose to remove it outright. They could have done any number of things to reign in the supposed power that Kaiten has. The best option would be to abandon their ridiculous focus on two minute burst cycles. Of course SAM damage is going to be nuts in 6.0. It was bad enough that we got second charges on Meikyo and Kaeshi, but with every raid buff also leaning into a two minute burst cycle plus the insane damage of Ogi/Kaeshi Namikiri, it's only natural that SAM - as a heavily raid-buff-reliant job - would see bigger damage spikes. It's like they didn't think the 6.0 changes through and realize that SAM's would be dumping all their charges under buffs. If SAM was still locked to it's old 60s cycle from 5.X then the damage variance "problem" wouldn't exist and any alleged problems that Kaiten brought to the table would be drastically mitigated.

[Hezhi]

the intent of making future iteration and innovation easier.

Didn't they say exactly that when they gutted every single healer, and now 3 years later they're still in the same pitiful state?

[Quor]

Didn't they say exactly that when they gutted every single healer, and now 3 years later they're still in the same pitiful state?

I don't know. Maybe? It's been awhile. All I remember specifically was the devs noting that one healer (SCH) was simply too dominant and that it was locking the other healers out of a slot (or more specifically, running anything without a SCH - which is to say as WHM+AST - was avoided like the plague). It was a similar reason given for the removal of damage-type debuffs. Much of the job balance that happened in ShB came about as a response to the hard-locked six-job setup that arose in SB. WAR/DRG/NIN/BRD/SCH/AST was so dominant at the end of SB that SAM, WHM, BLM and MCH (to a lesser extent) were actively being excluded from parties due to a lack of synergy. SCH was so dominant because of it's crit rate boost, the power of shields and it's ability to do so much damage while simultaneously covering so much healing via the faerie and it's oGCD's. AST was there for the stupid good Spread Balance openers (and hopefully re-openers), while DRG provided a further crit buff, single target damage buff and piercing debuff for BRD (who also buffed the party) to take advantage of. Then of course NIN brought the aggro control that let the tanks stay in dps stance along with the ever-valuable TA, while WAR brought the slashing debuff to boost themselves, the other tank and the NIN (allowing them to exclusively use their highest damage combos).

Looking at it through that lens, it's easy to see the path the devs took in terms of ensuring that every job is equally viable so therefore no one will be excluded. Because exclusion happened quite a bit in SB. This is a noble goal in and of itself but it's being taken too far, and the result is the even-further homogenization that we have today. Whether or not this was done with making future iteration easier in mind is something I can't say, nor do I remember anything being said about it specifically. But I also haven't seen every PLL or read every interview, so it's certainly possible, and given the state of things now in Endwalker, more than probable.

[Kolsykol]

Snip

Yoshi-P explained their reasoning behind it and acknowledged the negative reactions towards it and even apologized for it and took responsibility for it.
And told us to keep giving feedback, I dunno what else people want and it's probably not getting changed until the next major patch.
You disagreeing with the changes doesn't mean that they're lazy or incompetent, his reasoning does make sense even if it was tone deaf and a bit out of touch with the SAM playerbase at large.
However the SAM playerbase is not a monolith and sometimes they can make calculated decisions that may seem right and from certain perspectives are correct but miss the mark entirely.
That is my point.

The issue on this forum and online forums in general I find is that it's impossible to have a mature and adult conversation about any of this because it just turns into people screeching about how devs are lazy or stupid etc.
It's not a serious conversation and it's completely one-sided and unwilling to see the other perspective and why these changes happened to begin with.
If all people do is screech about this then there can be no learning from past mistakes because what the actual mistakes were aren't even being discussed or it gets drowned out by the screeching.
If all that happens is that people keep screaming about how the devs are stupid and lazy then no long-term changes will ever happen to their thought process because people are not actual having a good faith conversation and listening or even trying to understand what they're saying and why they're making these decisions.
And how then are you going to be able to have a conversation with them at all?

SAM is not in a bad place currently, and they didn't '' mess them up '' in the way you're implying.
They made an unpopular change that did change how they play but solved a problem they were seeing, and it's okay to think that it was a bad change that should be reverted I agree with that too.
However there are also people who do approve of the change this isn't a totally black and white issue with just no upsides to the changes at all.

I think that people need to drop this mentality that everything the devs do that we disapprove of are done out of spite or incompetency or whatever.
The truth is that they're juggling a lot of problems and a lot of different views of how things should be at the same time, and sometimes they're going to either disagree and decide to move ahead with something that is unpopular or they'll miss the mark in some other way.
If we could have a more adult conversation about this then maybe we could solve this long-term and build some bridges so that they can see our perspective on things.
But when they try to see our perspective on things a very significant portion of what they see is just the screeching about them being lazy etc.

[CelestiCer]

snip

They asked for " Feedback ". Perhaps the frustration of players seeing their BS and voicing it? and having radio silence is a form of yes " Feedback ".

Defending a Multi-Billion Dollar Company with the argue point of " stop screeching " and the customers being " one-sided " as you put it? When Square is clearly one-sided. Look at how they overtuned BLM, apologized for it and then readjusting it instantly in a short time vs any other Job change issues... but we are biased or " one-sided " as you put.

3 Months time to fix our issues or even acknowledge ANY of it btw vs BLM instantly in barely a week or 2. But we are Onesided btw.

Unless that's your take on an adult conversation, being an company apologist. I wont kink shame.

[KurenXIV]

They asked for " Feedback ". Perhaps the frustration of players seeing their BS and voicing it? and having radio silence is a form of yes " Feedback ".

Defending a Multi-Billion Dollar Company with the argue point of " stop screeching " and the customers being " one-sided " as you put it? When Square is clearly one-sided. Look at how they overtuned BLM, apologized for it and then readjusting it instantly in a short time vs any other Job change issues... but we are biased or " one-sided " as you put.

3 Months time to fix our issues or even acknowledge ANY of it btw vs BLM instantly in barely a week or 2. But we are Onesided btw.

Unless that's your take on an adult conversation, being an company apologist. I wont kink shame.

Bingo. They took away something that was fun and impacted a lot of players in the process.

It sucks, I lost my favorite game to play because of the changes and I know many feel the same.

Say it with me folks: SAMURAI WAS NEVER AN ISSUE PRIOR TO THIS.

The devs are indeed lazy and going about making changes in the wrong way. They didn't change the kit to be more fun AND to make future designs easier on them. No, they simply stripped the job of its core rotational fun and called it a day.

But that's fine. All the apologists can keep paying to play but I won't be taking part in giving a company my money that doesn't listen to feedback. That is to say, if they don't address this/roll things back in 6.2 I'm quitting the game I've played for nearly a decade.

[Hezhi]

snip

I didn't call the devs lazy, I truly believe they put a lot of resources in these changes, but what they did was still completely, as you said, out of touch and in my opinion that is echoed by hundreds of SAMs across the forums, unwarranted. They absolutely messed up SAM from a gameplay perspective, if they didn't you wouldn't see such a big outcry. The brief, puzzling reasoning they gave was laughable and didn't really explain anything. They did this to "make the job more accessible". But SAM was already a popular and beloved job, what's the issue here?! For who were these changes for if nearly every single SAM main I talked about it hated it? People who don't care about this job, or this game, and don't want to invest any time into it trying to get better at it, I guess.

The way they've been designing XIV as a whole recently extremely confusing and, as far as I can understand, quite stupid. They keep dumbing down the sh*t out of everything and dragging everything around the lowest common denominator so everyone and their grandma can pick u p the game... But why? You can already clear MSQ spamming 2 buttons because its too easy. People who aren't already interested in savage aren't going to jump on endgame content because a job is slightly easier to play. Why???? I would trust them more if my expectations for job design weren't lower than dirt after all the idiotic changes they made, proving that whatever reasoning they entertain only made the game feel worse and worse to play over the years across every job I tried.

[Roxus]

Abbreviated.

What people want is acknowledgement after all the feedback that has been given so far after the changes people knew beforehand would be a poor gameplay experience were "given a try". Or denial. Any reaction really, that isn't a hard ask. Do people want the actual changes sooner? Of course. Not sure what the hell you're talking about regarding a monolith, though.

We had civil conversations aplenty at the start of 6.1. There is only so much you can say before you parrot the same thing waiting for some sort of response without fearing that you were ignored or viewed as silently accepting the changes after some time. You're also bound to see many people becoming upset because they feel like they are being ignored while a plethora of other issues are addressed thoroughly. We've had plenty of people try to explain why we think this happened. That still isn't official confirmation. That's speculation. That's why we ask for a response. The only people that have been screeching are mostly people speaking against those who don't want the game to turn into a browser game. I won't say you are arguing in bad faith, but you are disingenuous at best, ignorant at worst if this is your take on how the feedback has gone.

They are not in a bad place in terms of purely numbers. The enjoyment has been stripped away, the thing we play games for. Yes, they did mess them up.
It did not solve a problem because they were simply replaced by the next best thing. The problem is still there, just not on Samurai.
There are very few people who approve of the change and those that supposedly are for the changes can't even reason why they like it without being refuted on how the changes have only subtracted from the player experience.

I think you need to drop this mentality that this is how everyone responded to the issue, because it isn't and most people wanted a simple answer as to why this was needed on this specific patch and how it was going to solve what problem.
That is fine if it weren't for the fact their communication regarding job balance was one sided, not just for Samurai but for other jobs too.
You can go see what the Healer and Machinist player situation looks like and tell me again that they communicate well.

[RobynDaBank]

NPCs having old Job mechanics is a bad unusual thing that's not been done before? Don't step into Squadron content... you'll get a heart attack.