RIP SAM - no reverts planned for 6.2

[KurenXIV]

Wow, Imagine my surprise to see this thread still going!

Fun fact: You can't sign into the forums after you haven't logged in to the game for 14+ days, and even after that it takes days to register that you did log in so you can post on the forums . . . amazing lol.

Anyway, there's plenty of folks here who have outlined why we're upset and CelestiCer and many others have done a great job surmising the issues we have with what happened.

I only signed in to say goodbye to some FC mates and virtual friends and my 6 month sub will soon be up but I figure a farewell post is in order here.

I feel what some folks here don't understand is this is a death by a thousand paper cuts scenario for XIV. It has happened with many other MMOs as well. As CelestiCer mentions, players like us who have been around the genre long enough know the signs to look out for when this is happening.

Some background on me: I jumped ship from WoW to FFXIV once ARR launched way back when (almost 9 years ago, I think?). I made as many friends as I could play XIV to get them on board with the experience. I've sang the praise of XIV and did everything I could to get people to get through all the trials that XIV throws our way (sign in debacles, account sign up difficulty, 'just get past ARR and you won't regret it!', you know all those things).

I have bought all the OSTs, spent plenty of money in the mogstation, I've leveled every combat job to max (sans drg). I was in love with the lore, the world and the game and yet here I am, leaving what I love behind.

There's plenty of players like myself, and I'm not trying to say anyones voice matters more than others but when you have someone like myself saying "nah . . . this just isn't for me any more", that's really bad. It's what happened to WoW and players hit this point at different times, but when it does and the devs clearly don't listen, you get WoW. You get what Blizzard as whole is now, a shell of its former self losing millions of players.

So why am I leaving if I love so much about the game?

Simple: It isn't fun to play any more.

It's not one move, or one job. It's overall the game isn't fun or satisfying to mechanically play. Having leveled all the combat jobs the one I found most interesting was Samurai. I've mained it since it came out and it was always fun.

Removing Kaiten, removing our cone AoE finisher, removing the chance of crits and flattening the damage . . . it's all the changes that make it feel worse.

And sadly, all the other jobs that were neutered over time just aren't fun either. Short of Ninja which is . . . fine . . . but it's very busy and quite frankly tiring to play for myself.

Additionally, even if I found something I loved, what's to say that won't also change for the worse? The direction of the game as a whole is just not really appealing.

Ultimately, if I'm not enjoying the actual gameplay then why bother paying to play?

To draw a bit of a parallel here; in the time I've been not playing XIV I got my XIV friends to play Monster Hunter: Rise. For those who haven't played MH, the game revolves around killing monsters to make gear + weapons to kill bigger monsters. Rinse and repeat. Simple and fun. The game has weapons that have been around in the franchise for a long time, and while the core part of the weapons remain the same, each entry in the series changes some fundamental part in how they play.

There's a weapon called the Long Sword in the game, I played it in MH: World and in Rise it was different. They abilities were there from world though to execute them they changed a bit. I didn't LOVE it, but it wasn't bad and still fun. Then along comes Rises' expansion: SunBreak. This adds a whole bunch of new moves to Long Sword that completely changes its play style.

And guess what? I freaking loved it. I learned the new play style and found it even more fun than the older style.

All the while I was thinking of XIV and how, once again, if they had just REVAMPED SAMURAI into a wholly different experience (if it was so damn problematic) in 7.0 or even 6.0 this wouldn't have been an issue.

Instead it just feels neutered, weak, and not fun to play.

I guess that's my long winded way of saying this decision isn't about a simple change, or one ability being removed. It's about the game stripping away the elements of fun that players have and not replacing it with other things players can have fun with. It's about how the experience is being watered down to a degree that's simply not going to retain players in the long run.

This is why I said it's a god damn shame, because what they've built is incredible and they only seem keen on destroying what they built.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. For those who choose to stick around and fight for change, I wish you luck.

To those who stick around because they enjoy the game and heck even those who love and welcome the changes: I hope you get as much enjoyment as I did over the last 9 years out of it. I wish I could share in the same enjoyment but it just isn't there any more.

Take care forum folks.