Yoshi P in a nutshell

[Deo14]

But plenty of gamers don't want that, which is why it's not actually objectively bad. Some people want their game time to be chill and easy; Yoshi-P recognizes that and is trying to make a game that all these different kinds of players can enjoy.

Thing is that content lower than EX never forces you to be good. In fact, devs implied that it's fine that half a party sucks, if there are few people who can carry them. Skill ceiling is for these people effectively irrelevant, nothing changes if we lift the skill ceiling, at worst they'll deal less damage, but they should if they don't put in the effort. Misshapen Chair said this in one of his video:

Who are these changes indented for? Super casuals who don't want to play the game correctly anyways? It can't be, because they're going to mash whatever button their little heart desires. Is it for hardcore players who are going to maximize their job no matter how stupid it is? That doesn't seem right either because usually those are the players that are most in the love with the small amounts of complexity the game offers them.

People who want to chill can, nobody is forcing them to parse 99 in Sastasha. But if people want to get better, they should have a space to express themselves. Celesti gave good example how did circlifying of Tenka affected her regular dungeon experience. It was something along the lines that people were praising her when trash mobs were dying noticeably faster. But now? If you're SAM, you just stand in the middle of the trash pack, do all your circle AoEs, and you hit all mobs without any effort. You just spam Fuka-Oka-Fuka-Mangetsu-Gyoten-Tenka, rinse and repeat, while standing in the middle of the pack. People are not surprised if you do good job, because frankly, it would take more effort to do a bad job.

I get the impression that you and I may be talking about different things when we talk about "action bloat", because actions-per-minute doesn't need to come into it. The controller and UI have a limited amount of space with which to contain all the actions a job has access to. The more actions there are, the less comfortably they fit in that limited space. It sounds like you play with keyboard and mouse, and if that's the case it makes sense that you wouldn't experience this problem in the same way as controller users. There are band-aids like macros and bar-swapping that can technically give players access to all of these actions, but these solutions are generally either clunky or less accessible. There's an argument to be made that the design of the game's interface would be improved with fewer action buttons so that they could more comfortably fit on the crosshotbar. And I say "arguably" because like most game design, this is subjective.

Funily enough, in standard Midare opener, you not only do exact same numer of buttons, but exact same number of distinct buttons. You would end you burst with 10 Kenki, so you want to use gap closer to spend that last bit of Kenki.

Here's standard Midare-first opener, 6.08 vs 6.1.

What devs might see as problematic part are weave windows in GCDs 6 to 8. You do hardcasted Higanbana and then you should weave in another Kaiten, which I suppose can be problematic for some. But guess what, this opener was published and many people think this is only way to do it. You ideally want to do that so you maximaze chance that Ogi will be under buffs, but you can just swap Kasha with Ogi so you won't need to weave after hardcasting. But it seems like people would rather remove Kaiten as a whole instead of that.

Then in 2min burst phase, you should have pooled all med stacks and Kenki. You would do same with meditation stack in both 6.08 and 6.1+, and in 6.1+, you should theoretically do 1 or 2 less Shintens.

So yes, this is subjective, but you tell me if these minor changes were worth removing whole skill for, and creating another problem with a shinten spam.

I think you may be getting something confused, because when it comes to extrapolating data, that is exactly what it means. You get a large enough sample of users, get their data, and then provided that there aren't any confounding variables, you can safely assume that the data you found proportionately generalizes to the overall population. That's how researchers get statistical data for everything.

And in this case, we have a really great sample size of over 100,000 players. The call to action is put out, and of those players, less than 400 care enough to express negative feedback. If we generalize this data to the overall player population, those 400 players represent more than just 400 players. But the same is true for the 999,600+ players who weren't bothered enough to provide negative feedback; they too represent more players. Which is why the percentage of 0.4% generalizes to the rest of the player population.

So if you believe this is not enough, what job currently do you think is getting enough feedback to justify listening to it? I'm not going to disprove the math, both of us would work with just estimates, but compared to any other individual job, SAM just seems to get most feedback by far. Do you suggest none of the job feedback is worth listening to?

With respect, it seems dishonest to pretend that the players who RP and play dress-up aren't also doing content. MSQ gates everything and it contains mandatory combat. The fact that they have different preferences than you does not make them any less players who do combat in FF14.

Same applies like in first part of this essay. Nobody forces them to play perfectly. Higher skill ceiling will not hurt them, if they would care that they're underperforming, then they can start learning their job (even though they'll rather complain that jobs are too hard). If they don't want to improve, it will not affect their experience.

I'm surprised that even without Kaiten you still enjoy SAM. What is it that you enjoy about the class? I've got it leveled to 80 and while I enjoy some of what it has to offer, I think the 3 different combos to gain "stickers" just wasn't my style.

Well, I guess that I'm simply opposite of you - 3 different stickers is my style. After that, it's just elimination process. I always liked healers, but healers in this game are just bad, minus 4 jobs. I'm not a fan of casters except RDM, BRD feels like support that cannot support, don't like DNC and I hate job fantasy of MCH, that's minus another 5 jobs. MNK seems to have interesting gameplay loop, but martial arts are the just incredibly boring for me. RPR is smooth, but I feel like my brain is becoming smooth while playing it, same as WAR. DRG is kind of fun, but not fan of that many buffs and it feels like just throwing bunch of oGCDs, similar to DRK. So now I'm down to 5 jobs, and one of them is PLD, which I still like, it's just not that interesting anymore, after physical and magical phase are all in one. From the rest of the jobs, I just like SAM the most, even without Kaiten.

SAM is still most interesting for me compared to other jobs, it's simple as that. I haven't stopped playing it after EW, even though ShB SAM felt more engaging. But I'm realistic, which is why all I'm asking is to go back to atleast 6.08.

[LilimoLimomo]

Thing is that content lower than EX never forces you to be good. In fact, devs implied that it's fine that half a party sucks, if there are few people who can carry them. Skill ceiling is for these people effectively irrelevant, nothing changes if we lift the skill ceiling, at worst they'll deal less damage, but they should if they don't put in the effort. People who want to chill can, nobody is forcing them to parse 99 in Sastasha. But if people want to get better, they should have a space to express themselves.

I agree with a lot of the philosophy here, but unfortunately the fact is that even in non-EX content, less skilled players are criticized frequently enough that for some of them it creates an unwelcoming environment. I'm guessing it's because not all high-end players are as understanding as you; many see someone doing only half the damage they could be doing and they feel like that player should be doing better, without thinking about the needs and wants of that player. That issue got big enough that the devs made their controversial post a few years back about how it's basically against the ToS to tell players how to play. There are a lot of different angles from which to tackle a problem like this, but one of them is to try to reduce the gap between the skill floor and ceiling. To be clear, I think there's both good and bad to this approach.

I'll also add that in terms of accessibility, more buttons can translate to more overwhelming, which can be discouraging for players, even the ones who are trying to get better. So there's that angle, too.

And I guess I should also just sort of restate my intent! My goal isn't to say that Yoshi-P is finding the ideal solutions; I myself disagree with that! I'm just saying that the solutions he is finding have a reasonable basis relative to the often conflicting goals he's trying to meet as best he can, so even when I disagree with his solutions, I trust that he's genuinely trying.

So if you believe this is not enough, what job currently do you think is getting enough feedback to justify listening to it? I'm not going to disprove the math, both of us would work with just estimates, but compared to any other individual job, SAM just seems to get most feedback by far. Do you suggest none of the job feedback is worth listening to?

I mean I think it's all worth listening to. Even if your feedback on Kaiten doesn't achieve the specific goal of bringing Kaiten back, it will undoubtedly play a part in shaping how the devs develop content in the future. The devs are trying to make a game that a dozen different types of players will all enjoy, and you're definitely one of the types of players they want to please. It's just that they're trying to please all those other kinds, too, and that requires that they compromise on what every kind of player wants. But your feedback helps them get closer to what you want in the future.

So I wouldn't look at the devs not doing a rollback as them not listening, as rollbacks just one of many ways that devs act on feedback. And rollbacks are perhaps that most extreme kind of dev response, and thus one that requires a very extreme backlash to elicit. Your feedback will shape the game in other ways, though!

Well, I guess that I'm simply opposite of you - 3 different stickers is my style. After that, it's just elimination process. I always liked healers, but healers in this game are just bad, minus 4 jobs. I'm not a fan of casters except RDM, BRD feels like support that cannot support, don't like DNC and I hate job fantasy of MCH, that's minus another 5 jobs. MNK seems to have interesting gameplay loop, but martial arts are the just incredibly boring for me. RPR is smooth, but I feel like my brain is becoming smooth while playing it, same as WAR. DRG is kind of fun, but not fan of that many buffs and it feels like just throwing bunch of oGCDs, similar to DRK. So now I'm down to 5 jobs, and one of them is PLD, which I still like, it's just not that interesting anymore, after physical and magical phase are all in one. From the rest of the jobs, I just like SAM the most, even without Kaiten.

SAM is still most interesting for me compared to other jobs, it's simple as that. I haven't stopped playing it after EW, even though ShB SAM felt more engaging.

Thanks for telling me so much about the jobs you like and dislike; it makes sense, you're someone who really likes trying to achieve a meaningful skill ceiling, while also caring about the aesthetic vibe of the class you're playing. PLD is may main tank and I do feel ambivalent about the consolidation of the physical and magical phases. On one hand, it was neat to go between those phases. On the other, there's something about having magic spells basically be the 4th step of the 1-2-3 combo that I enjoy, and the overall rotation does feel a bit more relaxed now that there's just that single primary burst window. As for DRG, I feel similarly, so I'm really looking forward to seeing the DRG rework that will be released with 7.0; I'm hoping it will feel a bit more distinct, a bit more focused towards regularly jumping in ways that feel meaningful. And with luck, the job updates in 7.0 will be something that gives all players something they find even more enjoyable than what's already out there.