RIP SAM - no reverts planned for 6.2

[IllyaPrisma]

snip

That's all reasonable.

The recent surge of SAM feedback on Kaiten encouraged Healers to post in DPS forums, mainly because the removal of meaningful skills is something we know better than anyone. My hope is that if enough attention is garnered around the removal of Kaiten, it will shed light on Healer feedback as well. (And I have no shame in saying that I would personally find it unfair if Kaiten is returned to SAM and no abilities were brought back to Healers).

The Healer Forum also feels like a "Forum to Ignore" marker has been placed on it...

[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.

[Ransu]

Good to know. I tried just posting it under advanced and it still dinged me with 3k characters. Honestly, I don't see why there's a limit that small.

Same reason why there's an idiotic daily post limit of 20 posts. They don't want people having real conversations on the forums. Its basically a feedback only type system to them....one they pretty much ignore lol.

[Deithwen]

Some flat insult with no foundation or explanation. Okay.

Here are just a few examples:

Bio
Bio II
Miasma
Miasma II (all lost and consolidated)
Shadowflare
Bane
Virus
Rouse
One Whole Fairy
Aero
Aero II
Aero III (all lost and consolidated)
Divine Seal
Fluid Aura
Cleric Stance (5% damage buff removed)
Combust
Combust II (all lost and consolidated)
Stella
Time Dilation
Sleeve Draw
Royal Road
Nocturnal Sect
Disable
All card effects reduced to generic damage buffs



Each of the abilities listed above made healers feel unique, fun and impactful, just like Kaiten.

Feeling insulted won't make it true. I did not insult you.
Bitching about other skills being removed just shows you have no clue how the 6.1 changes affected samurai nor will validate your point in any way. Get back to your hole, where you belong or actually try to understand things a bit without dismissing others.

[Deithwen]

Snip
Take care forum folks.

And I can't get more behind such a post. I have seen many of my favourite classes being gutted, like Monk in Shb, or Bard in HW. Sam in Endwalker was far from perfect but it worked.
Now it doesn't, it feels awful, gutted and lost all its identity. It's a step too far, way too far. Never before have I stopped completely playing a job like this, and I've been around since the Beta.

[Deithwen]

That's all reasonable.

The recent surge of SAM feedback on Kaiten encouraged Healers to post in DPS forums, mainly because the removal of meaningful skills is something we know better than anyone. My hope is that if enough attention is garnered around the removal of Kaiten, it will shed light on Healer feedback as well. (And I have no shame in saying that I would personally find it unfair if Kaiten is returned to SAM and no abilities were brought back to Healers).

The Healer Forum also feels like a "Forum to Ignore" marker has been placed on it...

I thought you didn't understand how people could be so vocal about the removal of a skill? Or maybe you're just an hypocrite because you actually cared?

[IllyaPrisma]

Feeling insulted won't make it true. I did not insult you.
Bitching about other skills being removed just shows you have no clue how the 6.1 changes affected samurai nor will validate your point in any way. Get back to your hole, where you belong or actually try to understand things a bit without dismissing others.

Referring to my opinion as uneducated is an insult, and was clearly meant as an insult. Instructing me to go back to my hole is an additional insult. Me "bitching" about the numerous skills healers have lost is exactly what the entire Samurai community is doing currently. And before you throw out the "this is the DPS forum", every single Job is a DPS. A blue DPS. A green DPS. Every single one.

Samurai lost the ability Kaiten due to aspects of their burst damage being changed to guaranteed critical damage. Guaranteed critical damage has historically had poor synergy with Battle Litany, Chain Stratagem and other Crit percentage type buffs. This change created uproar from the Samurai community. So far, it appears Square's solution is to change how Crit buffs interact with guaranteed critical damage. Astrologian, White Mage and Scholar collectively have had a significant number of their actions removed. While incredibly unlikely, if Square actually addresses the removal of Kaiten, they should acknowledge the years worth of healer feedback as well.

[Deithwen]

Referring to my opinion as uneducated is an insult, and was clearly meant as an insult. Instructing me to go back to my hole is an additional insult. Me "bitching" about the numerous skills healers have lost is exactly what the entire Samurai community is doing currently. And before you throw out the "this is the DPS forum", every single Job is a DPS. A blue DPS. A green DPS. Every single one.

Samurai lost the ability Kaiten due to aspects of their burst damage being changed to guaranteed critical damage. Guaranteed critical damage has historically had poor synergy with Battle Litany, Chain Stratagem and other Crit percentage type buffs. This change created uproar from the Samurai community. So far, it appears Square's solution is to change how Crit buffs interact with guaranteed critical damage. Astrologian, White Mage and Sholar collectively have had a significant number of their actions removed. While incredibly unlikely, if Square actually addresses the removal of Kaiten, they should acknowledge the years worth of healer feedback as well.

Wrong, Kaiten was initially removed to tackle action bloat. Which was invalid from the start since it did not impact APM and they were better skills to remove or merge.
If you feel insulted because I called you out on that post of yours, then it's on you. I'm stating facts. You're bitching about us being unsatisfied and then do a 180° when called out. Just swallow your pride and bring something interesting to the table.

You're also missing the Tenka goken change, which did not have potency adjustments to reflect the loss of Kaiten, nor the cone removal. You also failed to acknowledge how losing Kaiten affected Kenki management.

Don't feel insulted for being called out for your words. Unless you have issues with your own comments.
Pick a side, you're either against some skills being removed or not, whatever the role or job. But if so, be consistent.

[Ransu]

Referring to my opinion as uneducated is an insult, and was clearly meant as an insult. Instructing me to go back to my hole is an additional insult. Me "bitching" about the numerous skills healers have lost is exactly what the entire Samurai community is doing currently. And before you throw out the "this is the DPS forum", every single Job is a DPS. A blue DPS. A green DPS. Every single one.

Samurai lost the ability Kaiten due to aspects of their burst damage being changed to guaranteed critical damage. Guaranteed critical damage has historically had poor synergy with Battle Litany, Chain Stratagem and other Crit percentage type buffs. This change created uproar from the Samurai community. So far, it appears Square's solution is to change how Crit buffs interact with guaranteed critical damage. Astrologian, White Mage and Scholar collectively have had a significant number of their actions removed. While incredibly unlikely, if Square actually addresses the removal of Kaiten, they should acknowledge the years worth of healer feedback as well.

They could have made the garbage auto crit change and kept kaiten in play. The backlash would have been way less if kaiten was still available and didn't turn us into shinten spammers.

[Deithwen]

They could have made the garbage auto crit change and kept kaiten in play. The backlash would have been way less if kaiten was still available and didn't turn us into shinten spammers.

Agreed, They could have kept the potencies a bit higher and make Kaiten trigger the auto crit. It would still have been a bad change but far less impacting.