FFXIV Job Design Feedback

[Remish]

I'm surprised RDM scored so high and SMN scored so low. I feel like RDM still needs a buff. As a RDM main, I can't ever join a static without being asked "Can you flex SMN?"

[Shinkuno]

I'm surprised RDM scored so high and SMN scored so low. I feel like RDM still needs a buff. As a RDM main, I can't ever join a static without being asked "Can you flex SMN?"

No point in playing RDM in serious content where progression > fun for most people

You put in more work for roughly the same payoff. Its either play BLM for selfish DPS with no reztax, or play SMN cause RDM gets the reztax anyway but isnt as braindead to play as new SMN

[ty_taurus]

I'm surprised RDM scored so high and SMN scored so low. I feel like RDM still needs a buff. As a RDM main, I can't ever join a static without being asked "Can you flex SMN?"

The survey is more about how fun a job is to play and less about how good a job is in savage content, at least, that was what the intention was and what I think a lot of people are going off of. The 1 to 10 range is labeled as "Very Boring" at 1 to "Very Fun" at 10. Balance and effectiveness can play into that on some level, but I think many people really enjoy RDM's gameplay, and while its weaker nature might have some effect on people's scores of it, it may only be by a point or so.

[Rilifane]

I'm surprised RDM scored so high and SMN scored so low. I feel like RDM still needs a buff. As a RDM main, I can't ever join a static without being asked "Can you flex SMN?"

Probably because RDM is more fun and engaging than SMN for a lot of people. Even if they see balance issues that doesn't mean they suddenly dislike the gameplay.
Even at its worst in terms of balance, BLM was still always the most enjoyable caster for me because balance doesn't affect my perception of what is fun. Because balance issues are generally addressed without affecting the actual gameplay so it's not like you have to choose between "fun gameplay" and "good balance". Bump some potencies, done.

I only heard very few people liking new SMN and it comes mainly from people who don't play casters. But since it's insanely mobile, very easy to understand and execute, now they have a "caster light" they can occasionally play; one button macro optional but decently popular.
Most people said they dislike this version, that it feels like a base class and as if they're stuck with a basic framework for an entire expansion before it may or may not get expanded to feel like an actual job. So I'm not one bit surprised it got a much lower rating when the question was about how fun it is.

[ty_taurus]

Probably because RDM is more fun and engaging than SMN for a lot of people. Even if they see balance issues that doesn't mean they suddenly dislike the gameplay.
Even at its worst in terms of balance, BLM was still always the most enjoyable caster for me because balance doesn't affect my perception of what is fun. Because balance issues are generally addressed without affecting the actual gameplay so it's not like you have to choose between "fun gameplay" and "good balance". Bump some potencies, done.

I only heard very few people liking new SMN and it comes mainly from people who don't play casters. But since it's insanely mobile, very easy to understand and execute, now they have a "caster light" they can occasionally play; one button macro optional but decently popular.
Most people said they dislike this version, that it feels like a base class and as if they're stuck with a basic framework for an entire expansion before it may or may not get expanded to feel like an actual job. So I'm not one bit surprised it got a much lower rating when the question was about how fun it is.

At the end of the day, it boils down to, RDM's problems can be fixed with number adjustments. SMN needs new actions, new animations, and a restructured rotation in order to fix its problems. Or at least, that's how I'd describe the general perception.

[Renathras]

I'm surprised RDM scored so high and SMN scored so low. I feel like RDM still needs a buff. As a RDM main, I can't ever join a static without being asked "Can you flex SMN?"

Many of the Jobs are pretty bi-modal. That is, some people love them and some people HATE them. The thing with SMN, specifically, is a lot of old SMNs were pissed they lost their Job, so they're ESPECIALLY salty about it. You have a lesser extent of that going on with Healers.

These are also the ones with the lowest average because the people that hate them are highly motivated to come out and speak against them.

Contrast BLM, where most of the people replying to that one are BLM mains or players that enjoy BLM, leading to a high satisfaction rating (the highest of all the Jobs surveyed, I think), even though by the community at a whole, BLM isn't very popular.

I'd say there's a bit of a selection bias problem that's two parts here:

1) People aren't answering for all the Jobs - that is, looking at the respondent numbers, we know that it's not 100% of the people going through and responding to all of them. People are picking and choosing which to respond to, meaning people are probably mostly responding to the ones they either like or hate, not ones they're neutral towards or don't play much. [EDIT: A way to have fixed this would have been to have a single survey for all Jobs where people could rate them all overall, as at least then we'd have a lot more 4-6 ratings where people are "neutral" on Jobs they don't like/play, leading to the numbers being far more normalized than they are. This would have reduced the election bias of people mainly sticking to Jobs they either love or hate.]

2) This has been posted here, in FFXIV and FFXIVDiscussion on Reddit - so the sample is already going to be leaning a bit because of those communities not QUITE representing the whole playerbase. The general playerbase doesn't frequent these discussion boards, so the field is a bit based. Still a useful proxy to try and see what the playerbase thinks, but with the caveat it will typically have a leaning that isn't necessarily as representative as the whole as it should be.

So those are just good things to keep in mind while looking through the data.

EDIT2:

It's not shocking at all to me. Of course the only job that has any form of lateral play and skill expression is rated the highest.

It's probably NOT that, though.

It's probably the people who like BLM are the only ones responding to BLM while the people that like AND dislike other Jobs are responding to their surveys. For example, a lot of people responding to the SMN one very clearly have a different main, many of which were prior SMN mains who swapped to something else like BLM or RDM, but they're still responding to the SMN survey with highly negative reviews. BLM doesn't have that, so it doesn't have its number being dragged down like other Jobs are.

This is also somewhat visible with all the more newly released Jobs. GNB, DNC, SGE, and RPR are all the most popular Jobs in their respective categories as of me posting this, I think. Likely because they've had no significant changes to really upset prior players or generate highly negative feelings. RDM is in a similar situation, with the one complaint there being it's relatively weak (undertuned) in its subrole (Caster) where the other four are not. (SAM suffers from the "bring back Kaiten" crowd, but is still performing well overall.)

I just used the challenging content and overall scores (the solo and casual content scores are not better, trust me). I mean SMN is just getting demolished here, meanwhile BLM is just rolling in perfect scores. The healers are a bit more weird. With the exception of SGE, for whatever reason, it seems outside of the staunch defenders and impassioned critics of the role, most players that are responding feel that the healers are mid (except in the solo scores, the healers are crumbling in their solo scores, which isn't surprising since they have nothing to heal in solo). Despite SGE having a higher average, I'd actually say SCH is doing the best because their scores do lean more positive for overall values despite still being fairly mid.

Looking at those charts, most of the Healers seem...tri-modal? o.O SGE is the clearest example of this with 1, 5, and 10 being their highest values. (I'm using the overall numbers since that's what I'm looking at as more key to how Jobs are doing - not everyone does "challenging" content). AST has peaks at 1, 5, and 7. SCH at 1, 3, 5/6, and 8. WHM is the most level, with "peaks" at 1/2, 4/5, 7, and 10; the only value less than 7 votes being 9, and the only ones higher than 10 being 1 and 5.

SGE seems to be that you either really love it, are entirely neutral towards it, or really hate it. WHM seems to be kind of neutral across the board. AST has no 10s, which is kind of interesting (and it also has not a single "no rework" vote), and SCH seems kind of like WHM, just shifted not quite as level and without that peak on the high end that WHM has.

whats shocking

What's shocking?

In most polls and data, BLM is one of the least played, least enjoyed Jobs in the game. It doesn't flow nice, it has a high skill ceiling (which a lot of players dislike), it has a high skill floor (which a lot of players dislike), and it isn't fun for a lot of people.

The answer is PROBABLY as I've said, most of the BLM responses are just from people that main and enjoy BLM and you aren't getting a lot of responses from the people that don't like it as they're just not answering that Job's survey. You can see that by the Job's bar graphs posted above.

[fulminating]

I'd say there's a bit of a selection bias problem that's two parts here:

1) People aren't answering for all the Jobs - that is, looking at the respondent numbers, we know that it's not 100% of the people going through and responding to all of them. People are picking and choosing which to respond to, meaning people are probably mostly responding to the ones they either like or hate, not ones they're neutral towards or don't play much. [EDIT: A way to have fixed this would have been to have a single survey for all Jobs where people could rate them all overall, as at least then we'd have a lot more 4-6 ratings where people are "neutral" on Jobs they don't like/play, leading to the numbers being far more normalized than they are. This would have reduced the election bias of people mainly sticking to Jobs they either love or hate.]

2) This has been posted here, in FFXIV and FFXIVDiscussion on Reddit - so the sample is already going to be leaning a bit because of those communities not QUITE representing the whole playerbase. The general playerbase doesn't frequent these discussion boards, so the field is a bit based. Still a useful proxy to try and see what the playerbase thinks, but with the caveat it will typically have a leaning that isn't necessarily as representative as the whole as it should be.

So those are just good things to keep in mind while looking through the data.

I think it's better that people aren't forced to answer for jobs they don't play nor care about - I haven't touched the machinist quiz for example because I hardly touch it and thus cannot give any sensible data. This is naturally going to lead to people invested (ie those who play said job) answering the relevant questionnaire. Whether or not this kind of selection is good is debatable, but I reckon it boils down to whether or not you believe every job has to be for everyone.

[ty_taurus]

In most polls and data, BLM is one of the least played, least enjoyed Jobs in the game. It doesn't flow nice, it has a high skill ceiling (which a lot of players dislike), it has a high skill floor (which a lot of players dislike), and it isn't fun for a lot of people.

I think the thing with BLM is that it is extremely apparent to most people whether the job is or isn't for you at a glance. We know it's a low-mobility, slow APM nuke style job either because we're told so by other players, we read that in FFXIV guides, or we gauge that from its aesthetic which is consistent with many other wizard/sorcerer archetypes. People know if that is or isn't for them, so anyone who's not interest in that playstyle is just not going to play BLM and probably isn't going to submit their opinions on it because, why would they? They aren't the market for the job, but the audience that is gets exactly what they're expecting, and while it's challenging to play correctly, it's also extremely rewarding to do so. BLM players take a lot of pride in playing hard fights very well.

Meanwhile, SMN has a couple issues. SMN's gameplay is almost nothing like how it played before, so the audience that was once familiar with and adhered to its playstyle lost that playstyle. The rework was not designed to cater to them. Its trailer was also very bombastic and eye-catching... the longest of all the EW job trailers, and it looked amazing. So it drew in a lot of people who wanted to try it, and likely pulled some amount of people who weren't a fan because the job didn't meet their expectations in practice. Then there's also the argument of convenience. SMN is a 2-for-1 job, making it the prefect job to pick up for melee, tank, and ranged players who want to complete all the role quests. So it makes sense that SMN's playerbase is so much larger, but it also makes sense why not all of that playerbase actually likes or even actively plays SMN. The Census data is quite limited as well in what it will tell you. I count for every job technically on the census, but I really only play a few. That may not be the majority of players, but it goes to show that it doesn't paint the whole picture.

[NullPointerException]

I'm surprised RDM scored so high and SMN scored so low. I feel like RDM still needs a buff. As a RDM main, I can't ever join a static without being asked "Can you flex SMN?"

The issue with red mage can be fixed with number tweaks or even mini-reworks that don't change its game-play loop, which is very enjoyable. The issue with SMN is the class design itself and no matter how good it is, it's fundamentally not fun.