FFXIV Job Design Feedback

[Renathras]

I think it's better that people aren't forced to answer for jobs they don't play nor care about

I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm saying it's creating somewhat less useful results since it's going to create abnormalities in Jobs that are less played or have a niche audience. Niche audience Jobs will score very high because they appeal to a narrow band of people, and those people (to whom the appeal) being the only ones answering them are going to give them high scores. On the other hand, more "mainstream" Jobs will have a lot more variance since they are played at least semi-frequently by players of all stripes, leading to some people loving, hating, and being neutral on them, as we can see, for example, with the Healers.

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?

Exactly my point and completely agreed.

The people that answer the survey for BLM are largely the people that love BLM, which you can see in its bar graph. Is there even a single other Job with that curve?

BLM

Conversely, SMN's...

SMN

...has a lot of people that dislike it (the 1s and 3s), but also has 10s at both 5 and 8, and 9 responses of 9 (again, looking at overall enjoyment). This implies a cadre of people that REALLY hate it, but then a good deal of people that are neutral towards it and that like it. And notice SMN has 133 responses (as of right now) vs 86 for BLM, which is 50% more than BLM (or BLM having about 1/3rd less than SMN, if you want to look at it from that side of the coin).

I think the way to see this is what you say in your first paragraph - that people who love what BLM offers play BLM and love BLM, and people who do not, do not play it. For most other Jobs, it's not quite as clear, so you have a lot of people pick them up and then get disappointed in the results later. For example, some people pick up CNJ and enjoy the nature themed elemental spells, then become disappointed when they get to ShB/EW WHM and no longer have those.

The single worst case of this, though, is SMN, since you have the people who HAD a Job they liked lose it, and who are very vocal with their disdain. It would be interesting if the SMN page had a question for people who loved old SMN vs those who did not and see if there's a difference in how the two groups view new SMN. What is telling to me is that only 12% say they picked up SMN in EW, but 22% say they like the EW iteration the best. Meaning there were some people who played old SMN who enjoy new SMN better. Further, a bit over 20% recommend no change at all to the Job with a further 23% wanting only a minor rework. That doesn't exactly speak to high levels of dissatisfaction on par with the number of people who say the Job is unfun to them. The implication being that around 45% either like the Job or are fine/okay/neutral with it. It's just the ones who hate it REALLY hate it.

The question to me is, all the people who know BLM isn't for them, how would they rate BLM? Probably not the resounding 10s we see.

Adding to what ty said, being among the least played jobs does not equal "least enjoyed"

That...is...kinda what it means.

What it means is it is the least enjoyed/least enjoyable playstyle. This doesn't mean it isn't enjoyable to people who love that playstyle. A lot of people didn't like old SMN being a DoT mage, which makes no sense with Summoner lore or what a Summoner is, but some people enjoyed it immensely. That's what things that appeal to niche audiences are. They're things that the majority of people don't like, thus they are the least enjoyed. But they are highly appealing to their niche audience, which is why they're able to be successful.

BLM is peculiar specifically BECAUSE people who don't enjoy it don't play it.

In all other Job and role cases, this isn't true. Many people play at least one Tank Job and at least one Healer Job (often WHM), not because they enjoy it, but because their party needs them to play it - as you say as well in your post. They find these Jobs unappealing because they'd rather be playing something else. It's one reason GNB was made more like a Melee DPS; specifically to appeal to such players who were "forced" to play a Tank so they'd actually enjoy it. And it's somewhat telling that GNB has the highest rate of approval, meaning the effort was at least somewhat a success. 7.58 out of 10 is a pretty solid rating no matter how you look at it.

But when it comes to DPS in general, this is less true (with the exception of some RDM players "asked" by their parties to play SMN instead). Generally speaking, people playing BLM are choosing to, they don't feel pressure or force to do so. So you don't have any really disgruntled BLMs. The people who WOULD be disgruntled BLMs aren't playing BLMs. This gives BLM an unusual skew in the data, which was kind of my point. It's unique in that MOST people playing it WANT to play it, and thus are going to be people more likely to enjoy it. Hence why I was saying if people had to answer all the Jobs at once (instead of separate sheets), BLM would probably have much lower marks since a lot of people would be rating it 3s or 5s.

DNC is a particularly odd case since a lot of Ranged have been "encouraged" to play it, but it seems to be genuinely enjoyable enough that they don't feel TOO angry/put out for having to do so. 7.43 out of 10, the most approved of Ranged. The only Jobs more approved of are GNB (7.58), DRG (7.92) RPR (7.57), RDM (7.81), and BLM (8.57).

DRG LIKELY has a similar situation going for it to BLM, honestly...so it kinda sucks they're looking at it for a rework since it seems to be generally well liked and has (like BLM) had a lot of consistency over the years. Honestly, it seems their focus should be elsewhere than on DRG, which likely just needs some minor work instead of a total redesign. SCH and AST (AST they've confirmed I suppose, but not SCH) need one much more (probably the entire Healing role in some way or another), and probably DRK and BRD. I'm not sure why they want to touch DRG so badly in the first place. They can always just add upgrades to existing abilities instead of needing to outright change it.

I do agree: Not every class has to be popular. This is one of the things I most support in terms of Job design - that not every Job NEEDS to be for everyone (in fact, none do), and that having different kinds of Jobs for different player tastes is good for the game. It's why I am so big on the "4 Healers" idea, because I think that addresses the needs of the disparate players and reduces people having to play something they don't enjoy.

I don't think BLM is well received overall. It's well received specifically by the kinds of players that like BLM and actually play it. I agree that IS, indeed, fine.

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Another weird one to me is Healers, but specifically the sub-breakdowns.

WHM has a lower approval than SCH (5.03 vs 5.24), but is more (as I said before) even across the board. That is, people feel less strongly about it in general in that it has no really lopsided "super high" and "super low" response values. It's kind of the "vanilla" of Healer Jobs; few people hate it, few people love it, most people find it acceptably un-obnoxious. Everything is in a pretty narrow band. But what really gets to me is the preferred version. 41.2% think Endwalker is the best iteration with 15.3% preferring ShB. The two were more or less identical, with the only significant changes being (a) Thin Air is now a 2 charge ability rather than a 15 sec duration CD, (b) Misery is now damage neutral instead of a minor DPS loss, (c) Assize has a slightly shorter CD of 40 sec instead of 45, (d) WHM now has Aquaveil as a targeted Rampart and Lilybell as a strong oGCD tool that is MOST useful (though not ONLY useful) for mulit-hit attacks that don't happen often. Overall, it was one of the least changed Jobs from ShB to EW, with most of the changes being well received.

Regardless, taken together, the post-SB/5.0 and on paradigm version of WHM (also perhaps known as the "post Aero 3 removal" versions) have a combined 56.5% approval. Further, "No Rework" (20%) + "Minor Rework" (37%) has a total of 57%, so on par with that.

But then look at SCH and AST.

SCH, in stark contrast to WHM, has 41.4% preferring SB (vs 15.3% for WHM) and a further 29.9% preferring HW. Taken together, that's a resounding 71.3% that prefer the HW/SB era. Only 2.3% preferred ShB, on par with the amount that preferred ARR. 46.8% want a "Major Rework", and when "Total Overhaul" (14.7%) is added in, that's 61.5% that want large changes to the Job, and clearly the SB iteration is VASTLY preferred. Only 9.2% want no rework and only 24.1%, a respectable minority but still a minority, prefer EW's incarnation of the Job the best. And unlike WHM, it can't lean on ShB's numbers to shore that up into a majority that like the post-SB paradigm.

AST is even more stark, and has the lowest approval (4.74). The prefer-SB version is ALREADY an outright majority of 55.6%. Adding in HW's 12.3% brings this up to 67.9%. Not quite SCH's 71.3%, but pretty high. Tellingly, there's not even a SINGLE vote for "No Rework" at this time, with "Major Rework" (45.0%) + "Total Overhaul" (29.0%) being a whopping 74% together.

It's pretty clear, despite SCH having a slightly higher approval rating than the "vanilla flavor" WHM that there's a strong desire for it to receive a significant rework back to something resembling the SB era, and AST's are desperate for a major shakeup as well.

WHMs, by contrast, seem to be relatively content, with a majority preferring the post-SB world (granted, SB WHM and the initial iteration of the "Lily" system...was pretty bad (the only era WHMs absolutely preferred less than SB was ARR; SB and ShB being tied at the moment) and wanting to see only minor changes to the Job (a lot of people seem to want Aero 3 and some mention more mitigation/party utility, but much beyond that is kind of vague).

And SGE, as a kind of "control group"(?), is oddly also the most popular (5.47), with 29.3% wanting "No Rework", 32.0% wanting a "Mini Rework" (together, these sum to 61.3%, a clear majority), vs 30.7% wanting a "Major Rework" and 8.0% wanting a "Total Overhaul" (taken together, 38.7%)

Which also kind of agrees with a lot of responses from those long-form question survey responses, which often said WHM and SGE people enjoyed as-is and only wanted no or minor changes vs SCH and AST, where people seem to be pretty consistent on wanting reworks. AST seems to be the Job most in need/desired of a rework in the game right now.