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

[Renathras]

Feels like me and others are just repeating ourselves, and others don't listen and don't even give real counter-arguments.

Good gosh, that's my line! I say the same thing all the time and it's like you don't listen and don't give real counter-arguments.

We're talking past each other. You refuse to see a different perspective than your own, and my attempts at meeting in the middle are brushed off by you ad unfair or incomplete. Meanwhile, I'm sure you think "low skill floor, you just can't clear hard content because you don't deserve to" is a "middle" of sorts, so this is probably just as frustrating to you as it is to me. >_<

It's just frustrating to everyone because we're all stuck in this same problem.

For my part, I think I do understand your perspective, I just disagree with it. The only way to be sure would be to put it into words and say "Is this what you think?". "Seek first to understand, then to be understood" and all that. But that's not a bad start - if I do understand correctly, and disagree, there is room to find some common ground.

On the other hand, I don't think you understand the perspective of the people you oppose. You obviously disagree with them, but I don't think you understand what it is they want or why. Your repeated characterization seems to suggest that.

But let's test this, it might be a useful exercise for everyone:

In your own words, attempt to describe what you think the other side wants and feels on the topic. Let's see if we can reach an understanding by first understanding each other.

.

What I think you want/feel:

NOTE: This is written in, and intended to be read in, a neutral tone. There's no judgement passed, nor sarcasm or derision intended. This is , on the positive side, what I think your argument is based around:

I think what you guys want, if your words are accurate representation, is to have Jobs where you can both master them at a high level and push yourselves, and where that high level of mastery is visible in output performance. Not minor or easy to miss, but clearly noticeable and impactful, making encounters shorter and easier in a way that everyone can tell is different than doing them "normally" would be (e.g. with lower mastery levels). You also want achieving victory in difficult content to have some prestige to it, also reflecting the mastery that you have practiced and the skill you have to execute both your encounter and rotation at a consistently high level to clear it. That people who do not have that level of skill should be encouraged by both the content and others to grow and improve in order to clear it, and that those who refuse should just not be able to, and simply be content not doing any content passed the casual offerings like MSQ until such time as they are motivated to improve appropriately. That it is a game, but part of games is improving oneself and seeing visible results of that improvement, of rising to and overcoming challenges.

The skill ceiling needs to be high so you can continually push yourself to attain and maintain this level, where there's always room for growth, and you feel like you should be rewarded for that higher level of competence and capability, as well as continuing to operate and improve at that level and beyond it as Job changes and new encounters come with time. Finally, you want this to be on every Job in the game, because you like various, but specific, class fantasies and aesthetics, and you want those specific ones while also achieving your goal and fulfillment through that level of dedication and mastery you want it to require of you. That you think others are like you, and even though you may not like a Job's aesthetic, they may, so all Jobs, without exception, need this design. You recognize not everyone is as skilled, but you anticipate everyone who applies effort can reach at least a moderate level, and encounters should be designed around that...but that the true mastery should be noticeable above and beyond that, rewarding those who push themselves further. And that by there being no "easy" Jobs and encounters, everyone who truly deserves it can - and will - improve to the level you think is competence, being able to clear most content with time and as they are deserving of doing so.

And those who don't? Well, they refuse to do so, even though they are truly capable if they wanted to - they can, they just don't want to, and are undeserving, and that's fine. They have Island Sanctuary or other content to do that doesn't require it, or they could always try finding a different game to play that is more suited to their engagement level. That is, you don't hate or look down on these people, per se, you just think if they want to do the content, they have it within themselves to rise and do it on any of the high skill ceiling Jobs. If they aren't doing it, then maybe they aren't really motivated to do the content, or it's not really a big priority to them, as it if was, surely they would rise to the challenge, as surely they're capable of doing so, even if every Job was like BLM or DRG or whatever. So if they don't, they aren't really missing out, since clearly it isn't content that they really want to engage in anyway, so no one's hurt by this arrangement, because those people aren't doing hard content anyway, right?

That sound about right?

.

What a nice streak of derailing the whole point of your whole slidecasting argument. What's the counter at, octuple down?

No, I'm not playing your childish feud. I explained it all to you, you rejected the explanation because you just want me to be wrong because you don't like my positions on other topics and so you will insist to your dying breath I'm wrong about everything, it doesn't matter how wrong you have to be to hold that view. I'm done dealing with all the trolls here, and that's troll behavior. Get over it - or don't - I'm going to continue not engaging you on this topic because I gave you a good faith effort and you spit in my face and have been bad faith over the entire thing. The grand irony being, it wasn't even a conversation that involved you to begin with, and you even admitted that my overall position was correct, the wording just confused you and instead of asking for clarification, you jumped on the hate train.

No, I'm done with this petty forum troll clique nonsense.

[QUOTE=Deo14;6279422]Now this is good signature material. Gaius don't steal this one from me, you already stole my "server side reshader".[/QUOTE}

I guess. Expose to the world that you don't know what common use terms mean. Have fun with that. Btw, putting quotes of people in your sig to mock them is yet more petty childishness and PROBABLY also against the TOS.

Whole point is that if those two things are not at least somewhat balanced, then SMN will always be preffered to RDM, because you simply get more for less effort.

If your enjoyment of the game comes from putting in more effort, then RDM would be preferred by you over SMN. If SMNis preferred, it's because what your goal is in the game is the path of least resistance, not mastering a difficult Job's playstyle.

And if you want RDM to deal more damage, SMN will be getting out of content.

Nope, that's the point and what you're not getting. BLM does more damage than SMN and RDM. Yet SMN and RDM haven't been pushed out of content. Why not?

BLM clearly does more damage than they do. By your comments, that means no one should be playing RDMs or SMNs because BLM does more damage.

...but also based on your comments, no one should be playing BLM, because it's harder.

Which is it?

Clearly, the answer is that there are different players with different objectives who want something different out of a Job. People who weigh the cost-benefit of the two differently. And there may be some optimum points - like people are willing to do BLM's harder rotation because doing it right gives ENOUGH more damage to make it worth it, but if it only did the same as SMN, no one would play BLM. But the game is balanced around SMN's lower damage, most people aren't doing BLM perfectly anyway so this is still somewhat balanced, and SMN has some extra party utility to make up for the lower damage - the result being both Jobs are still competitive with each other.

Some want to master a Job and will push to do so, no matter how difficult, and the greater damage of BLM matches their greater effort in a way they find acceptable. On the other hand, there are some people that find SMN's damage sufficient and its plystyle matches their needs for complexity and mastery, as they're able to give a consistent performance at the required level which they could not on BLM, and so they find the trade-off acceptable. BLM's output is variable and SMN's is consistent, leading people to pick SMN who value consistency and BLM for those who value the high reward and can manage the high risk.

So: Why can't this work with RDM? A middle difficulty for a middle reward, but with middle variance so that doing it poorly is worse than doing SMN poorly, but doing it better is better than doing SMN better? BLM already does this, and it works. You could say less people play BLM (this actually isn't true in all encounters, but let's ignore that for the time being), but clearly you aren't arguing to lower BLM's skill cap "or it will be left off".

RDM's problem isn't that it's harder than SMN, it's that it's harder than SMN but does around the same damage. We can see this because BLM is harder than SMN, too, but actually does damage commensurate to its difficulty, but its difficulty is also high enough that people uncertain they can do it consistently - that is, who don't want to worry about that high variability and that if they play it poorly know they'll do less damage than they would on SMN - have SMN to fall back on instead if they feel like it. The system works.

Now, you might again note that not many people play BLM, but that's not a balance issue, that's because not as many people value high skill ceiling as people value consistency. In almost all polls of Humans, more people are risk averse than risk-taking, and BLM is a bit of a gamble. The issue there comes down to "apparently the people don't all want a high skill ceiling Job".

And that's okay. BLM should still be there - I believe - for those who do. But it does pretty hard counter your argument that all Jobs should have a higher skill ceiling.

Both RPR and DNC have a lower barrier to entry compared to other jobs in their field, yet both have a surprising amount of skill expression. There are already player perceived “easy jobs” in all dps fields. But SMN continues to be the one without skill expression

I'm sorry, but what? This may be an individual preference thing, but...

...DNC is the hardest of the Ranged Jobs to me. It's got massive amounts of procs and active adaptations, and there's no rotation or routine to get into. It's the single hardest of the Ranged Jobs to play at a high level, imo, because of it. Though BRD isn't much better. Other than the latency thing with Wildfire and Hypercharge BS, MCH is the easiest Job. You have a simple rotation, hit things on CD, the burst is pretty straightforward, and the Job's rotation is consistent and static.

And RPR I haven't played with too much, but reading it, it doesn't seem that easy. From playing around with NIN, it seems a lot easier to me. RPR may have a lower skill floor, but there seem to be more decision points. Then again...I don't really find ANY of the Melee particularly easy to get into.

I haven't messed with it much, but DRG seems easier as well - like MCH, the rotation's consistent and reliable, it doesn't change up and require active reevaluation of priorities.

I think this just goes back to "Individual people think and perceive things differently". For example, DNC is easy if you are great at reacting to procs, but might be the hardest Job in the game to you if you're a person who likes rigid "same every time" rotations like DRG's.

the summoner has a strong visual identity and beautiful spells since the rework but in late game because below level 72 except dreadwyrm trance/bahamut the animations are all the same ruin spell without visual interest,
but on the other hand his spell rotation is totally tasteless and uninspired.

I do agree that the lower level elemental Ruin spells should do at least SOMETHING different. Like...could they not be bothered to make them Red/Yellow/Green, at least?