Yet another SMN thread: SMN is the only job that doesn't have a gauge/proc management

[Raikai]

I think that most people simply do not want to be told, "Well, you're doing it wrong, but your performance is still adequate enough to not fail completely" — which is what most of the backhanded assurances given by Discords, etc, tend to sound like to players who are trying to gauge whether they're playing correctly.

That's exactly why I stopped interacting with that Balance Discord quite some time ago. Used to approach them with basic questions of (in the case of BLM specifically) best ways to recover from mistakes during prog. I thought I'd get something like "Save the Swiftcast to reactivate Astral Fire in case you drop it by accident" but in fact all I got from most of their MVPs or something were different variations of "Just plan better", which is obviously not helpful at all and quite a toxic take for someone asking such entry advice. Planning better is always what everybody is trying to do, especially BLM players.

I just don't really understand the fixation with perfection during progression, even in cutting-edge groups, because there's literally no gain. Even the 'mini enrage' phases with adds always have a pretty lenient dps check midway through a fight. To this matter, I really understand (and even appreciate) the lack of supported Damage Parsers on this game, because I'm sure that having them would validate "polite" kicks based on the excuse of someone not pulling their dps weight, even though the party didn't even see the second half of the fight yet. It makes me wonder if Squeenix somehow devised a way to block those damage meter add-ons, and thus invalidated the whole fflogs parsing culture, if the general mindset would change.

I also find interesting how, as a healer, I could experience both that AND the opposite of the point of view at the same time (lol). Healing do matter in prog, because without it we can't move the fight forward, and it's visible when you don't do well healing the fight's script (again trying to solve mechanics) and jarring because people eating avoidable damage in Savage adds more to your bill rather than theirs (again because the damage down debuff is kind of irrelevant until enrage checks) as more healing is required. And YET you also get the pressure of keeping up with your dps uptime even on prog situations - last static I've been a part of in ShB pulled that one on me, and one of the reasons why I got adverse for healing harder modes nowadays, if not a reclear that I have basic mastery of the encounter.

I think most players will gravitate towards Job A, by a significant margin — because they don't care about their actual raw numbers nearly as much as they care about their parse colour (which has been conditioned by the community using things like "gray" and "green" as potent insults

Ah, A is Summoner and B is Black Mage certainly! Another answer on why the former is so popular.

[Renathras]

Let me ask you the same thing, why SMN woudn't benefit from having a skill ceiling?

Not everything needs one. It's fine if there's a Job that's accessible and people can do all kinds of content with.

Which is why in the playermade polls it was rated the lowest out of all casters? and why player have complained about its problematic design for almost 2 years?

That isn't a great argument. The playermade poll was player made and had like 200 responses. Which sounds like a lot until you realize the game has around 2,000,000 players. And people complain about literally everything. People complained about Stormblood the entire Stormblood, yet how act like it was some kind of golden age. People have complained about every Job design in the game's history, at all points of its history, and then complained when it changed. (The trick is realizing it's different subgroups of people that have the different complaints).

If a lot of people are playing a thing, it seems weird to argue that doesn't mean people like it.

BLM got rated super high in that poll players did here, but it had the least responses, meaning the only people giving it ratings were the people who played and liked it, not all the ones who don't like it, giving it a falsely high reading. Meanwhile, everyone rated SMN, meaning people who like and don't like it, so of course it would get a lower grade.

But the thing is, if tons of people play a thing, while you can argue some don't like it and feel compelled for some reason, you can't really know how many those are. It's logical to assume that the bulk of people who play a Job do so because they enjoy it, as this is a videogame not a job. Only some people have a "whatever it takes, even if I don't like it" approach to the game.

You do realize that precisely THAT is a problem? SMN is canibalizing the caster role because its breaks its rule while also having a higher skill floor performance?

It's really not.

The only place this is happening is high end content, and only against RDM because RDM does less damage. Not "RDM is harder and isn't rewarded with more damage" - no, RDM...deals less damage. RDM is dealing less damage than Dancer is. DNC, BRD, and then SMN and then MCH are all dealing more damage than RDM is looking at Kokytos (P9S). It's not "why would people play a harder Job that does the same damage", it's "why would people play a harder Job that does less damage".

And wanna know the Caster most played in that content right now?

BLM.

SMN is only more played per the forbidden site right now in Themis, and RDM is more played in P12S phase 2 (probably for the raising utility and people just stuck with it for their clears)

The irony is, it's casual players, like in casual ol' Euprhosyne, that are playing SMN more. As befits their preferred level of involvement with the game and less min-max disposition. So SMN being easier and doing decent damage isn't even having this massive impact.

Ultimates are always going to lean heavily into Jobs that can hold or push burst when needed and have good mobility and utility, but players still are clearing TOP with all kinds of Jobs. Nothing else is tuned so high, so other than world first players, all other content is going to be kinda what people want to play.

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SMN was my only DPS Job from ARR to late late SB, and then I played it and RDM together through ShB alongside WHM, SCH, and PLD.

I like new SMN far better than ShB SMN. There are a lot of pretty high profile SMN players who've said the same thing.

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Regardless, no one's done a good job of proving WHY a Job needs a high skill ceiling.

Many have said it should be a thing, but not WHY.

People have brought up things like skill expression or people wanting to do more with their Job, but that's not really answering that question, as there are others who don't want that. And no one can really answer the question of why there shouldn't be any Job in the game that doesn't do that other than them insisting it shouldn't.

What's so wrong about having a simpler Job that's still competitive?

"Because all the high end players will be forced to play it!"

No one's forcing anyone to play things. People are choosing to. They can always say no, and no content requires specific Jobs. And even if we ignore all that, if people are forced to pick simpler Jobs, all that is is an argument against implementing any complex Jobs into the game - as people abandon those at the first opportunity - not an argument for not having some which are not.

this is a product for the masses and in those masses there are people who want to squeeze more out of the job design and its fine to give them something.

And they have something.

They have BLM, they have RDM, they have most of the Melees. They have plenty of options to get their fix without robbing the people who don't want that "squeezing" to have to go along with it.

I’m sure square has player numbers and I’m willing to bet the current SMN is a huge success for the overall player base, not just those small numbers invested in the game enough to be on polls. I see more summoners than any other caster which is anecdotal but some 24 mans have 5 of them and no other casters.

Summoner is a clean and unbloated class that greatly appeals to many as is. It has enough decision making to feel rewarding enough to those fans of the class and also has time to enjoy the battle over looking for RNG procs. I often recommend it to new and learning players of those with disabilities as something they can enjoy and still play the game on a generally competent level.

You have other options if this doesn’t rise to your personal standards of class design.

Exactly this. The only other DPS Job seen with a similar frequency is RDM - ironic since it's the least played in high end content.

Almost like high end players that exclusively do Ultimate and Savage content aren't exactly the same people as the rest of the game's players, but regardless, the game isn't, not should it be, designed for them alone.

Obviously you also need to take into account that devs once again forgot that RDM exists and somehow deals less damage than SMN,

This is kind of a big deal to just put on the side like that.

That completely changes the argument. Is RDM being played less because it has a higher skill ceiling, or is RDM being played less because even if you reach the higher skill ceiling, you're doing less damage?

Because the latter of those is significant. Suppose for the sake of argument that a 80-99% SMN and 80-99% RDM were doing the same damage. Then more people would be playing RDM. Playing RDM over SMN right now in high end content isn't "SMN is easier" it's "RDM is actually doing less damage".

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As to your example: It's fine if Bob can do 9k on SMN and 6k on RDM and chooses to play SMN. There's literally nothing wrong with that.

And Bob being able to clear Extremes on SMN is also fine. There's nothing wrong with players being able to clear content on Jobs or having Jobs they have an easier time of than others.

RDM does not do enough damage to justify requiring melee uptime during burst in a 2 minute burst meta catering to melee dps damage. Damage is tanked because of perceived extensive party utility.

RDM also does not have enough tools to keep up with the mobility of SMN and BLM.

BLM has been given zero party utility and needs to be constantly buffed to keep up with melee dps damage because it can’t raise like its other role mates.

I fail to see how SMN is holding this role back by being in the literal middle of two extremes.

Also throwing the mechanical disadvantages aside, if a job is harder to play and does more damage then that is a skill issue for the player and not one of job balance. You can approach your prog in raiding however you’d like and being able to choose an easier job vs a harder job for consistency vs damage output is a good thing.

as a former smn main that plays current smn i would say yippee, i love the new smn, i have nothing to prove to anyone about skill floors/ceilings, im playing a game, the class is fun, its not all rng and procs, boo hoo, if its not something you like dont play it, but dont try to diminish the opinions of people that do like it, its fine, it doesn't have to be anything but what it is. your gold standard in not mine, everyone here is arguing opinion but for some reason think it fact.

Both of these posts. ALL of this in these two posts. That's the answer.

Not the best example, since the broader playerbase very clearly continues to generally avoid BLM, because it's considered too difficult to manage and play correctly.

So in BLM's case, it absolutely is "invalidating" players — in this case, those who would like the "I'm a Wizard pew pew" classic "mage" fantasy, but cannot wrap their heads around how much anticipation, slidecasting, and plotting BLM requires to not become a completely-collapsed and near-useless mess in a real encounter.

However, that's championed as "okay" and a "gold standard Job" by skill-fixated players, because their needs are being met, so they think nothing is wrong — and thus react with hostility to the idea of changing anything about it.

I'm not trying to attack anyone, and I'm not saying anyone is wrong for appreciating BLM's more demanding, methodical, and subtle gameplay. I'm just stressing that it's very easy to become biased about, so to speak, "whose ox is being gored" — the reality is that someone is going to be unhappy in any outcome or scenario, because you're dealing with people who approach FFXIV in diametrically-different ways, and for diametrically-different reasons.

Also agreed with all this.

I've said this for a while about Healers, and expanded it to Tanks and DPS (ideally within each sub-role, but not necessarily): The best solution is to have different Jobs that have different skill caps - including some with low ones - that way, everyone has at least one Job in each role they can enjoy playing.

People who love complexity love BLM and tout it as the gold standard. That's great. This game has BLM right there just for them.

...it's also the least played of the Casters by the general playerbase and in casual content, and not by a small margin, indicating that they are probably not the majority and that a lot of people enjoy something that isn't that. A lot of people really hate BLM. And that's fine, too. As long as they have something that isn't like BLM.

BLM is there for people like you guys who want to squeeze every ounce out of your skill and a Job's capabilities.
SMN is there for people not like you.

This is the way.

The number of people in here who take the postings as a personal attack “WELL I AM ENJOYING SUMMONER AND I DONT WANT IT TO CHANGE” is staggering and just shows the fundamental lack of understanding on job dynamics.

If your response to people disagreeing with you is to look into their history to decide if they have or haven't done things for you to listen to them, and to be shocked by the number of people disagreeing with you, you might should consider what they have to say more instead of trying various ways to discredit them.

Some people like different things than you. You're shocked people enjoy SMN?

That's like the mythical story of the reporter who said after the 1980 she was shocked that Ronald Reagan won because she didn't know anyone who voted for him. Sometimes, that doesn't mean you're right, it means you're speaking from a very insular position that isn't aware of how many people hold contrary positions.

As for your example:

Sounds like your argument isn't that SMN's too easy, it's that RDM is too complex.

Also, no, healer forums are always riddled with complaints

To be fair, you could just stop there. People lately about this game have been complaining about everything, and the Healer forum is particularly bad. But there are also people holding the contrary position.

The problem with Healers is that all four play identical in content once you've worked out healing and players have the mechanics down. There's not "the easy one" and "the hard one", they're all the same. They have an identical main DPS rotation of a 30 sec DoT and a filler nuke with some extra button related to their Job (WHM has Lilies/Misery, SGE has Plegma and charitably Toxicon, SCH has Energy Drain which isn't even a GCD, and AST has...cards I guess?)

If one Healer was as complex as BLM, one like RDM, one like SMN, and one like current Healers are, there'd be far less complaints since the people who want more complex would be able to play the BLM/RDM-like ones. They might still complain because they want to play the other Job's aesthetic and get their playstyle - have their cake and eat it, too - but they'd have their BLM/RDM-like fallbacks, so there'd be far less complaints. It'd just be like SMN now with the people playing the BLM/RDM-like ones belittling the ones who play the SMN-like ones; but they already do that - relentlessly - so that really wouldn't be a change anyway.

Yeah, this is interesting to point out — it's certainly the sort of thing that a lot of the more "skill-fixated" players try to argue, and to a degree, it's a legitimate point: many players worry more about the perfection of their rotation than is, objectively, numerically-necessary just to "win the game".

This opens up a bit of complex commentary, so I'll spoiler-tag it to prevent creating scroll-clutter.

Wow.

THIS is a good post. And I don't mean I agree, I mean...you broke down a pretty complex psychological issue and presented it concisely and in an easy to understand way.

...I kinda want to take this post and cross-post it to the Healer forum. You wouldn't mind that too terribly much, would you? Because they make that argument a lot in there, and this is...an amazing deconstruction of that argument and why it's not a good argument. I'd ask if you'd want to post it in there but they can be a rather...abusive...bunch, and I wouldn't want to wish that on you.

Regardless, thank you for this!

[Ayche]

Inter-role competition is a misconception created in the heads of players, since obviously there is no real benefit for game developers to create meritocracies inside (almost) purely cooperative games.
Even games that desire to be seen as sports, aspirational competitions where being the best is celebrated shy away from gameplay as nothing but rigorous testing. Fighting games are among the most strictly designed video games in this regard, but even there you will run into "grapplers are cheap!" or "projectile spam is cheap!" arguments.

I don't like the new summoner, I dropped the job. Let people who like it keep it. But it does not need to be intentionally hamstrung just because you don't respect it. And drop all ideas of treating the job like "babywheels on a bicycle", people are sharp to recognize when they are being patronised to and will resent you for it.

[Deo14]

That completely changes the argument. Is RDM being played less because it has a higher skill ceiling, or is RDM being played less because even if you reach the higher skill ceiling, you're doing less damage?

Because the latter of those is significant. Suppose for the sake of argument that a 80-99% SMN and 80-99% RDM were doing the same damage. Then more people would be playing RDM. Playing RDM over SMN right now in high end content isn't "SMN is easier" it's "RDM is actually doing less damage".

.

As to your example: It's fine if Bob can do 9k on SMN and 6k on RDM and chooses to play SMN. There's literally nothing wrong with that.

And Bob being able to clear Extremes on SMN is also fine. There's nothing wrong with players being able to clear content on Jobs or having Jobs they have an easier time of than others.

Check last tier for example, both in 6.2 and 6.3. RDM dealt slightly more damage than SMN on higher percentiles, and slightly lower on lower percentiles, while RDM also has better ress, so people will obviously pick RDM, since it's marginally better, even though it's harder, right? No, 6.2 Savage had 31K RDM parse, SMN had 52K, in 6.3 it's 4.4K RDM, 8.3K SMN.

So people played SMN over RDM even when they were on more equal ground, current desperate state of RDM merely amplifies it.

As for my Bob and Greg examples - yes, it's wrong that Bob deals 6K on RDM and 9K on SMN, difference is obviously hyperbolic for this example, but the point is that you cannot have too big of a variance in skill and complexity of job and make them deal similar damage. You obviously should not base DPS of difficulty, because you don't want to lock jobs with lower max potential damage out of content, but it's still unfair that some jobs need to do more for similar damage as simpler jobs.

As you can see, this results in people dropping RDM, even in previous patches. This means that SMN simply needs to have higher skill ceiling, which again, won't affect Bob in any way, he will keep mashing his little buttons as his heart desires, he will just deal less damage doing so, but he won't even notice. He might notice in EX or Savage, but that content is meant to be harder and you're supposed to do it if you at least know your job good enough.

[Ivtrix]

@ren

You just continue to prove that you just are so confidently incorrect that it’s honestly depressing.

Filtering opinions on higher levels of play and optimization is necessary and required in discussions on the topic. While it is possible that players who do not partake in content that challenges and requires you to play above the core mechanics of the job may be undertaking the journey of self improvement on, it is much easier to assess opinions from those who play in content where that simply is the bar and barrier for entry. That being said I never immediately dismiss someone’s comment outright, but doing some digging into questionable responses just confirms that the player may not be engaging in content which automatically sets the bar on a higher degree of play. It’s not rocket science.

It’s amusing since your cute little analogy could be flipped right back onto you. I believe that your perspective is actually far more insular than mine as people I’ve spoken with ingame, in various discords including both the main XIV discord as well as the balance, and across other social media like Twitter and other platforms and the general consensus on SMN is it fits the theme, it’s fun for a bit but eventually it gets a little stale. Maybe if you spent less time responding to every minute detail on these forums and more time talking to people you could broaden your understanding.

Finally, your assessment to my example is just flat out incorrect. RDM mechanically in EW is the best it has ever been, taking a very solid core build from SHB and adding some interesting changes to the kit which allows for a lot of fluid design choices in combat that allows you to really separate yourself from the average player and show that you have a complete understanding in how to maximize your kit. What I described is far from impossible to pull off <taking for granted you are actually good at the game> and requires you to be somewhat decisive in handling the RNG from the encounter in handling potential annoying tower spawns during program loop, and is a good serotonin release when you pull it off successfully. SMN just doesn’t have that.

To quote a RDM with far more blunt crass than I; “You are dismissed”

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

Summoner is fine as is. I see no reason it needs button bloat added in just for the sake of it. We all know what happens when a job has too much busy work or rng. Less people will play it.

Astrologian has that issue, so no surprise it's played less than the healing jobs that aren't complicated or rng focused.

Let summoner players be happy and enjoy their less complicated and busy work job. Since clearly that's what Summoner mains, the majority that is, enjoy as Summoner is played far more now than before its rework where the job had no identity and was full of busy work that just wasn't fun nor flashy.

[Deo14]

snip

Who are you talking to? You can use "Reply With Quote" to generate quote tag of that specific person, and you can even copy paste it to edit your message.

It's hard to tell what are you talking about, when we don't even know who are you responding to.

[Deo14]

Summoner is fine as is. I see no reason it needs button bloat added in just for the sake of it. We all know what happens when a job has too much busy work or rng. Less people will play it.

Astrologian has that issue, so no surprise it's played less than the healing jobs that aren't complicated or rng focused.

Let summoner players be happy and enjoy their less complicated and busy work job. Since clearly that's what Summoner mains, the majority that is, enjoy as Summoner is played far more now than before its rework where the job had no identity and was full of busy work that just wasn't fun nor flashy.

But RDM, for example, is suffering directly because of SMN. Is it fine that one job makes other redundant, as long as that one job is "having fun"? And again, popularity doesn't mean that job is good, there are people who don't care what job they play, they will just play the easiest available job. I don't even think anyone suggested that we should add button bloat to SMN, but that we should add more nuances, which again, won't affect people that don't want to learn them, they will merely deal less damage for their less effort they put in, which is fair.

[Ivtrix]

Who are you talking to? You can use "Reply With Quote" to generate quote tag of that specific person, and you can even copy paste it to edit your message.

It's hard to tell what are you talking about, when we don't even know who are you responding to.

Ren, but I cba with formatting on mobile. I’m not going to trim his world salad thesis when he chooses to reply to 60 people per post.

I edited the post clarifying it was a response to him.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

But RDM, for example, is suffering directly because of SMN. Is it fine that one job makes other redundant, as long as that one job is "having fun"? And again, popularity doesn't mean that job is good, there are people who don't care what job they play, they will just play the easiest available job. I don't even think anyone suggested that we should add button bloat to SMN, but that we should add more nuances, which again, won't affect people that don't want to learn them, they will merely deal less damage for their less effort they put in, which is fair.

Why should Summomer be punished for that?

Buff rdm or make it more appealing for players to want to play it over Summoner. No reason to bring Summoner down just because more players prefer the easier to understand job.

A lot of players find easy jobs fun. It's why they play them. Only hardcore players, the minority, actually care about the skill ceiling. Most players just want a job that they can enjoy, do decently as, and not get stressed out.

It just so happens that Summoner isn't bad either. Not the best, but good enough which makes it appealing to a lot of players.

It does affect players if more is added to a job. No player wants to play a job with a ton of extras that they will feel obligated to learn as it exists.

It's why a lot of Tanks prefer Warrior over Gunbreaker. It's simple, good at what it does, and isn't held down by a lot of extra nauces to it and easy to track its systems.