Quote Originally Posted by Memoranda View Post
I don't really play SAM myself, but I've always felt that folks were salty over the removal of Kaiten because the animation is now gone. I feel like they need to find a way to add that animation back and folks would be happier.

That said, as someone who's played Warcraft for years, even long before the mass WoW Exodus, having an ability that you press before every big weaponskill to increase its damage (or potency, whatever) is bad game design in every sense of the phrase. I don't care how hard you try, you're not going to successfully argue this fact. It just is. Ultimately I don't play SAM enough to determine whether or not they increased potencies enough to offset Kaiten's removal, but I would wager that its removal is going to lead towards better game design in the future, regardless of what every other player personally believes.
Having gauge that you use only for one ability is much, much worse design (I don't count movement skills, since they're situational and cost just 10 kenki + you use Senei always after Ikishoten). Especially if said gauge was made with Kaiten with mind, but they didn't adjust kenki generation/or give another way to spend extra kenki after they removed it. Also, I've played a little bit of WoW long time ago, but doesn't it have GCDs only? I could see Kaiten-like abilities being bad there, but here it's oGCD, so it doesn't really interfere with anything.

And yes, they increased potencies to adjust its removal, obviously. Problem is, they put more potency in basic GCDs and nerfed all the big attacks. Which, you know, is straight up contradictory to the core SAM design. Having cast times for Iaijutus is unjustified now, since they deal maybe like 2-3 times more damage than regular GCDs. Considering the amount of negative feedback even after 4 months, both in JP and EN communities, it's really foolish to try to claim that changes were in any shape or form good.