Wesk Alber's poll on Jobs

[Zeastria]

Idk about you guys
..but i have seen many that play AST lately
( at least on my server(more so than before))

[vetch]

If one were to ignore all the militating factors and look only at how many people have a day job, one would conclude that having a day job was incredibly popular. There exists the possibility that some people play SMN under similar circumstances.

For any other (sub-)role except perhaps NIN, swapping job to something you'll enjoy more is doable. But the two casters competing with SMN are either so weak as to be unwanted (RDM) or so high-skill-required with an outsized impact on group strategy as to be unwanted (BLM).

So if you wanted to play a caster, if all your raid gear is caster gear and/or you're locked into your static's caster slot, and if your static/PFs don't want RDM or BLM, what job do you play?

This is not to invalidate the opinion of anyone who likes the current SMN design, rather to speculate on why SMN play numbers might be so high while job satisfaction polls so low.

[Supersnow845]

SMN is also just way too easy to use as a “this would be 4 times easier on a DPS even though I’m a healer/tank main”

SCH/SGE is my main but if I need to do things like bicolour gem farming or variant dungeons or anything like that I’ll play SMN

It’s hard to measure how transitory SMN’s population is

[Shurrikhan]

I do agree basepoints are important, but you can't limit those to "at highest tiers". That's going to give a VERY biased perspective that's also for a limited amount of content and a limited amount of players.

Then keep in mind that the data will have very, very little to with the gameplay as a whole beyond its ease and power-per-effort-put-in.

If you're not talking to those players who are actually concerned with the relative weight of decisions to be made or the quality of allocated difficulty, you're not going to get data on such things, leaving you instead with answers to questions like "Is my rDPS bar longer than yours (at the degree of effort that I find most worthwhile)?" and "Do I look cool/sexy in these animations?" to somehow take as a measure of whether a job is "designed well" or not.

Or, to put it another way...

I'm more posting this to point out the importance of sample. Who you poll is what's going to determine the outcome of polls.

The one big takeaway for healers - besides the importance of who is taking your poll - is that both groups seem to like SGE.

This isn't so much a matter of sample skew as simply that by itself, asking about "Job satisfaction" is about as actionable or useful as asking "Do you like life?"

Those who actually have ongoing discourse are going to pick out typically more interconnected, actionable, and/or exchangeable/broadly-applicable criteria than those who are starting fresh into such questions, much like a philosopher or psychologist are going to have narrower sub-questions already in mind for that second question.

_____

Finally, one's favorite tool or mechanic that they will praise to seven heavens... may be on a job that is not their "favorite", or some issue (a singular annoyance, the aesthetic, the tuning, some compositional dependence, etc.) may keep the job that one thinks is the best designed in its role from being their "favorite".

But generally, the more one is broadly and deeply experienced with a given set of jobs (and their analogs/adjacent jobs), the smaller that gap between "How well is X designed?" and "How good do I feel playing X? If one likes the Black Mage aesthetic but isn't able to feel like they can play it without holding their group back, they may rate it lower despite thinking it well designed; if one can play literally any job at a decent level, that rating tends to much more closely follow perceived quality of design.

There's still a quite a few conflating factors remaining even to a more skilled, informed, and experienced player, but an opinion that is not offset by timidity or inexperience is always going to be a better measure of how "satisfying" a job is in itself --which is the only data broadly applicable enough to react to.

[Supersnow845]

If you really want a useful survey on healers you would have to do multiple axioms say

-on a scale of 1-10 how important is good healer design in your mind
-when you think of good healer design do you think of modern healers, HW healers, WOW healers, something else entirely
-based on these questions how would you rank the 4 healers

That is the most basic way you could develop plane maps for what people with different tastes like, say people who don’t care that much about healers prefer modern WHM, those who care a lot and have a preference to WOW healers might prefer old SCH etc

You can’t do much with just a basic “rank the 4 healers” because my current favourite healer I still like even less than toilet paper lily WHM so that ranking doesn’t really say anything

Apologies if this has already been said but I don’t bother reading the majority of the healer thread text walls, I’m happy to keep to the post limit

[ForsakenRoe]

>says "I'm not posting this as some kind of "gotcha"."
>starts arguing about what the data means in response to any theories of why the data shows what it does

seems like a real sign to just go sleep huh

but before I do:

The ENTIRE PREMISE behind my "4 Healers Model" is BASED ON THIS VERY IDEA.

Wasn't it Misshapen Chair's 'model' a few months ago? What happened, did he decide it needed a bit of a rethink and dropped his support of it? Wouldn't blame him if it were the case

[Renathras]

Except I didn't say "no one actually likes Summoner or Healers"

...but you seem to be highly resistant to accept that people do, which is what I'm saying.

I think people tend to play what they like. If people really don't like a thing, they aren't going to play it unless they have some strong reason that overwrites their dislike. While this is true of some people, this likely isn't true of the general population. This is a video game, and while some people play it like a Job, many play it...for fun. Which would mean not forcing themselves to play a thing tey dislike.

I agree we could ask why. But no one's asking why, so drawing presumed conclusions about that isn't useful. Especially since it's VERY reasonable to assume that IN GENERAL people are driven to play things because they do, in fact, like them. But what I notice is always missing from your proposals is "Because people enjoy the Jobs". Look through your list of reasons people are picking SMN. Notice that you didn't say anywhere as a possibility that "people like SMN". Perhaps you feel it unnecessary, but if you're listing general possible interpretations, it seems you should include it. Not doing so would leave someone to suspect you don't hold it as a likely answer.

If that's the case, then that information is even less reliable in my eyes.

Probably less than you think. A lot of players are not omni-mains, so when doing harder content, they only do it on one or two Jobs, not a half dozen or more.

For that, we can look at the forbidden website. Look up the number of results for some common content - I think 24 man raids are a good metric since so much of the playerbase runs those. That's probably the best general metric for the relative popularity of Jobs in a general sense.

Note the key term - relative.

Are you on something? The video you shared showed values out of 100%,

Yes...?

That wasn't what I said. Look ABOVE that. In the top left of each box where it says "This poll has received A,BCD votes"

If a poll was all the same people answering all categories - that is, where maybe a Melee main who hates Healers still was "forced" to pick the one they like best of the choices - then all those numbers would have to be the same. Say there were 5,000 Melee responses; there would also have to be 5,000 Healer responses.

Now look at them all: 5,471, 4,082, 4,576, 4,542, 4,616 for Melee, Ranged, Caster, Healer, Tank, respectively.

What that means is no one is being "forced" to pick a "like" in a category where they don't like any of the options and they're merely picking the one they dislike the least. This counters your argument that this is happening. Note this doesn't mean people could be voting in the categories they dislike all members of, but it means there's no force of that happening, so if anyone's doing so, they're doing so by choice, not because the poll is making them do so.

That they all add to 100% is irrelevant, to the point I have to think you didn't read or didn't understand what I was saying there...

I do agree that all polls are limited to the poll. So it is true that it's "of the people who voted in the Healer category". But that's a limit of literally every poll. No poll is including people who didn't vote in the poll.

I am saying that Scholar and Astro are likely so far below White Mage and Sage because of their pain points.

Except we can't draw that conclusion, because that question wasn't asked. It could be that people just LIKE WHM and SGE better in general. Moreover "their pain points" may be the things people dislike. So it's not "SCH would be more popular but for...this key thing that is intrinsic to it". You'd have to have a poll of the same people asking them to say what they do or don't like about the Jobs in order to answer that question.

ou have seen many a player actively complain about both Scholar and Astro. You cannot deny that plays some effect into their overall popularity.

...yes, but these same people incessantly complain about WHM and SGE and Healers in general. So that doesn't really change much. A person who hates AST and hates WHM isn't going to say they like WHM, generally speaking.

It means there are annoying aspects to playing as Scholar and Astro which undoubtedly has some effect on their low popularity.

...yes? Which are what make SCH and AST what they are.

I'm confused what you think the distinction is here.

To me, that's like saying "GNB is defined by it's DPS-like playstyle. And if it didn't have the DPS-like playstyle, it might be more popular." That's like saying "If GNB didn't have it's GNB, it would be more popular". If AST didn't have its AST, it would be WHM. So if AST without its AST is more popular, that would make it not AST anymore.

I'm genuinely confused how this distinction is relevant to you. Maybe you could argue that those things aren't intrinsic to the Jobs but...for all of its history, AST has been a high APM, very busy Job with lots of target swaping and oGCD weaving. That's what it is. If you took that away, it wouldn't be AST anymore. It's like people that insist current SMN isn't SMN because it is such a departure from old SMN. (My position is that it isn't old SMN and is a new Job; the new Job IS _a_ Summoner, but it's not old SMN.)

If one were to ignore all the militating factors and look only at how many people have a day job, one would conclude that having a day job was incredibly popular. There exists the possibility that some people play SMN under similar circumstances.

Again, this isn't a good counter.

People have day jobs because not having day jobs means being homeless and starving to death. Not playing SMN doesn't mean being homeless and starving to death. Moreover, there are more free alternatives. Not having a day job but having a job based on commissions is a thing many people do, or people that are housewives/husbands, etc etc. Indeed, "day Job" is like saying "Disciple of War or Magic", not "SMN". So in no way is this a valid counter or parallel.

You're also trying to talk about EXTREMELY high end raiders as if they comprise the entire game population. RDM's damage is entirely competitive in 4 man dungeons, 24 man raids, 8 man normals, 8 man Extremes, and even 8 man Savages outside of week 1 clears. So that's a REALLY poor rebuttal. Moreover, the "high-skill-required" may be WHY people are picking SMN over BLM. That would indicate people who WANT a Job like SMN. I'm a bit confused how you reach the opposite conclusion. "People don't want to play BLM because it's hard; no one's playing SMN because it's not hard.", "What? You're literally saying people are playing SMN because it's not what BLM is - hard."

Do you have any supporting data on the amount of people that are specifically in the situation where they are being forced to play SMN?

SMN is also just way too easy to use...

And yet, it seems that's what a lot of players WANT.

Note that SMN isn't even alone in this. WHM, DNC, and WAR are all highly liked Jobs (and highly played ones). The one thing they all share is that...well...they're this easy to use.

It’s hard to measure how transitory SMN’s population is

This is a fair point...except it's true of literally every other Job as well.

I main WHM while sort of dual-maining SCH, SGE, PLD, SMN and frequently also playing AST, WAR, GNB, RDM, and less frequently MCH and NIN.

Then keep in mind that the data will have very, very little to with the gameplay as a whole beyond its ease and power-per-effort-put-in.

What makes you certain of this?

Are you saying that lower skill casual players don't care about how their Job plays? That's pretty unlikely. Casual players still hit buttons and tend to at least try playing their game at a base level of what the game tells them is "correct" (note that the game never mentions terms like "oGCD", "weaving", "uptime" or so on). They very likely care about how those buttons feel when they press them. That's also writing off the midcore, who are people that very much DO care about the gameplay, they just don't play at the level of, or don't have Statics with which to do, hardcore content (Savages/Ultimates).

You act like no one else cares or even understands Dualcast. That seems extremely unlikely.

Indeed, it's odd you go to it must be about rDPS, when that is a thing that casual players don't care about, or likely even know exists. (I'm talking the Limsa dancing, do MSQ dungeons only level of "casual" here).

Those are still considerations of design. As are, btw, things like animations.

Writing off the views of large swaths of the playerbase is NOT a good way to get a feel for what the playerbase thinks - for reasons that should be obvious - nor is it a good way to determine how Jobs should be designed.

Finally, one's favorite tool or mechanic that they will praise to seven heavens... may be on a job that is not their "favorite",

When asking what Job is someone's favorite, it seems self-evident that people would be saying which JOBS are their favorite, not which MECHANICS are.

If one likes the Black Mage aesthetic but isn't able to feel like they can play it without holding their group back, they may rate it lower despite thinking it well designed;

This actually seems to be untrue. Even among people that say they're bad at BLM (but like it), they tend to say it's well designed, despite not feeling like they aren't holding their group back to play it.

.

At the end of the day, this is a game played by lots of people. Changes to a given Job affect everyone playing that Job. It's not like the changes only occur when you zone into a Savage or Ultiamte fight.

Therefore, the views of those other players is, in fact, relevant.

If you really want a useful survey on healers you would have to do multiple axioms say...

I'm actually not sure those are good questions for "a useful survey on healers".

They're decent questions to include with others, but they have a lot of problems and don't lead to useful answers.

"how important is good healer design" - who is saying no to this? Moreover, what is "good healer design"? Bu not defining the term, it leaves it up to the responder to define it, meaning you can't draw useful conclusions. What if you mean "frequently has need of using all its tools and has a deep and compelling downtime rotation when healing isn't needed" but to someone else it's "has strong powerful heals that make it easy to keep my party members from dying so we can clear encounters reliably"? So if both rate it a 10, is that saying the players want downtime rotations and need to use all their tools or is it telling us that players want powerful and straightforward heals and don't care about damage or damage rotations at all?

The "when you think of good healer design" question is better, except mentioning other games is an example of priming. You'd have to ask them what they think of and leave the question open ended...but this makes the results difficult to tabulate.

"based on these questions how would you rank the 4 healers" isn't really a good question at all, since (a) it's contingent on (and has the problems of) the above questions, and (b) it doesn't consider that players may rank Healers via other metrics. For example, I like buffing people and I like mitigation. But my favorite healer is WHM, the one that has none of the former and the least of the latter of any of the Healers. So figure that one out.

I do agree with your point about how little we can draw from a "rank the 4 healers" is. This is a problem of a lot of polling.

My point in posting this thread, though, was to point out the two things I summarized early on:

1) That the results of different samples is different - a point I've been saying since Ty's survey and people were trying to ignore or insist wasn't relevant,
2) Both results seem to like SGE, indicating SGE is doing something right, though we may not know what exactly that is.

EDIT:

>says "I'm not posting this as some kind of "gotcha"."

Because that's the truth?

>starts arguing about what the data means

No, that was Ty.

Wasn't it Misshapen Chair's 'model' a few months ago?

Far as I know, it still is and he does still support it. (At this point, he seems to be playing the game far less, at least partly due to annoyance with Kaiten removal.) But I first posted about it...what, 2 years ago? Year and a half? Whenever I started posting here frequently. I was posting about it before I ever saw his video on the topic.

You can look at the posts yourself, and you've been replying to me since early on, so I'm not sure how you're trying to propose some change or duplicity here since you know better (or should).

Idk about you guys
..but i have seen many that play AST lately
( at least on my server(more so than before))

I have, too. Not a huge spike - SGE and WHM still seem to be the ones I see the most, with SCH in a fairly distant third - but I have been seeing more ASTs of late. Not sure what the possible cause of that might be, if any, or if it's just anecdote and that's all.

I am glad AST exists for people like you who like it. <3

[Supersnow845]

Anecdotal evidence of distribution of healers is basically moot

I could say that for the last 9 days of alliance raids I have seen 0 AST and 2 WHM but that stat is meaningless

[Sebazy]

I'd wonder if the results are down to a newer or more casual minded viewer base? I've never heard of this channel before so that's purely conjecture on my part OFC.

WHM has always been the goto pick for casual healers even when it was at it's worst towards the end of HW. Now it's still pretty simple and straightforward to play and is actually in a good spot. If Sadge wasn't the new expansion job I'd wager WHM would be in first place TBH.

[Shurrikhan]

Therefore, the views of those other players is, in fact, relevant.

Never said they weren't relevant to whether a job is broadly appealing; I said only that "How well do you like X on a scale of 1-10?" is going to have different, more constrained, and less contextualized constituent sub-questions (the only things remotely actionable) by which respondents will reach their answer when asking players who only play the single job and/or play only at a basic level.