I'm One Of The Filthiests Of Casuals And Even I Can See How Dumbdown FF14 Has Become!

[ForsakenRoe]

Well, most people disagree with you TC. Players generally like things easier, with the option for harder stuff. Which the game provides.

For some jobs, yes. Not all jobs get that option of 'it can be harder if you want to push yourself', and over time it feels like more and more are having their 'optional maximum' curtailed

[Ivtrix]

Dancer was doing that long before Summoner did it, and still is. Nobody discusses that elephant in the room though.

DNC has levels of skill ceiling optimization that SMN doesn’t have, especially with Tillana.

DNC dps also noticeably lags behind mch and brd, while SMN damage is comparable to RDM which makes absolutely 0 sense

[Renathras]

The statistics of SMN are complicated.

On top of being known for its really low barrier of entry, it's also the only 2-for-1 job in the game with SCH, so it ends up being widely leveled/boosted due to the perceived 'value'. Other 'Easy' jobs see this as well to a lesser extent, as when many players are looking to pick up a single job in a category, they will often pick the easiest one.
...
Notice though, none of these things are really tied to how 'fun' or 'loved' the job is. I know a lot of people who run SMN during Ultimate and week 1 savage prog, and none of them actually identify as a 'SMN main' even though its the job they play the most, which is pretty telling.

I guess this is a question that really needs to be asked - because it really does cut to the heart of the matter:

How do we know people DON'T find easy fun?

The going argument critics of SMN (and other "braindead" Jobs) use is that they're highly played - so we all agree that easy Jobs are highly played - but they try to write this off as easy isn't fun. So everyone playing them is doing so for other reasons, such as easy leading to reliable in terms of raid output and performance. This is very odd way to view them, I think. For starters, they're widely played by people who aren't raiders, too. WHM, WAR, and SMN are the most played Jobs in each category, and DNC seems to be for the Ranged group. These are widely considered the easiest Jobs in each role. Before EW, RDM was the most played in the Caster role, and at the time, was the easiest. Insomuchas Melee has an "easy" one (it doesn't like the other roles do), it would be RPR and SAM...and those are also the two most played.

So we know and agree that the easy Jobs are the most played.

If this meant they were the most liked, it would outright shoot down the argument of people who believe that "harder = more fun = more liked". So in comes this defensive argument "well, they're not liked because they are fun, they're liked because they are easy", which implies that easy gives players a lot of things they want but SPECIFICALLY not fun, and that players AS A WHOLE find harder fun and find easier less fun.

...what is this based on?

How do we know players don't find easier more fun and harder less fun?

How do we know players only play easy Jobs for other things ease gives and specifically NOT for fun or because they find them fun?

How do we know players don't love Jobs because of them being easy and straightforward?

[LittleImp]

I guess this is a question that really needs to be asked - because it really does cut to the heart of the matter:

How do we know people DON'T find easy fun?

The going argument critics of SMN (and other "braindead" Jobs) use is that they're highly played - so we all agree that easy Jobs are highly played - but they try to write this off as easy isn't fun. So everyone playing them is doing so for other reasons, such as easy leading to reliable in terms of raid output and performance. This is very odd way to view them, I think. For starters, they're widely played by people who aren't raiders, too. WHM, WAR, and SMN are the most played Jobs in each category, and DNC seems to be for the Ranged group. These are widely considered the easiest Jobs in each role. Before EW, RDM was the most played in the Caster role, and at the time, was the easiest. Insomuchas Melee has an "easy" one (it doesn't like the other roles do), it would be RPR and SAM...and those are also the two most played.

So we know and agree that the easy Jobs are the most played.

If this meant they were the most liked, it would outright shoot down the argument of people who believe that "harder = more fun = more liked". So in comes this defensive argument "well, they're not liked because they are fun, they're liked because they are easy", which implies that easy gives players a lot of things they want but SPECIFICALLY not fun, and that players AS A WHOLE find harder fun and find easier less fun.

...what is this based on?

How do we know players don't find easier more fun and harder less fun?

How do we know players only play easy Jobs for other things ease gives and specifically NOT for fun or because they find them fun?

How do we know players don't love Jobs because of them being easy and straightforward?

There are no answers to any of this in either direction without a job satisfaction survey with public results.

It is a completely pointless conversation because it's just going to be anecdotes being pitted against anecdotes.

Also, "harder=more fun" is an unfair oversimplification of a much more nuanced conversation about skill expression and job tuning.

[Bonoki]

DNC has levels of skill ceiling optimization that SMN doesn’t have, especially with Tillana.

DNC dps also noticeably lags behind mch and brd, while SMN damage is comparable to RDM which makes absolutely 0 sense

It's skill ceiling optimizations are so meaningless that even parse runners don't even do some of it because of how annoyingly obtuse they are. The options are there for those that care but I've met very few that do. Most pick up and play and call it a day; and walk away just fine by dance partnering the right party member.

[Snorky]

Whilst you cannot make them look like Carbuncles, you can 100% make them smaller;

/petsize "all" "small"

Replace small with medium or large (large is default, small makes them carbuncle sized). You can also change individual ones (info here: https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...d/ded8f6e43d6/).

Thanks for this Mikey, I knew the old ones could be changed but the last time I played my smn was when I returned and CGI command wasn't working. I will give this a try when I go back to playing her

[Renathras]

There are no answers to any of this in either direction without a job satisfaction survey with public results.

It is a completely pointless conversation because it's just going to be anecdotes being pitted against anecdotes.

So why mention it raise it as a point, then?

Also, "harder=more fun" is an unfair oversimplification of a much more nuanced conversation about skill expression and job tuning.

I'm trying to make shorter posts these days. But this is also true of almost everything. It wasn't intended as a slight or bad faith unfairness, just a shorthand. The short upshot of it is "less easy = more fun", however one wishes to define those things. Fair enough? The words will be a complicated collection of thoughts and ideas, but typing out the entire body of what constitutes that in any post discussing it would have people capping the character limit right and left. You seem to have understood what I was getting out, so it seems to have been a functional shorthand.

If you have another of similar brevity, please share it, but that's missing the forest for the trees as far as the discussion goes.

It's skill ceiling optimizations are so meaningless that even parse runners don't even do some of it because of how annoyingly obtuse they are. The options are there for those that care but I've met very few that do. Most pick up and play and call it a day; and walk away just fine by dance partnering the right party member.

Also this. It's similar with RDM. We also have to consider that RDM and DNC both got harder in EW vs their ShB selves (to fully optimize). SMN now is similar to RDM an expansion or two ago. Quite a few Jobs in ARR were simple compared to modern ones, and a lot of the optimizations weren't known (since parsers hadn't become widespread at the time to analyze) and difficulty was generally more related to mastering clunk than it was the Jobs having a lot of nuanced, complex, and interesting kit interactions and fight optimizations to make. The bar is always moving.

[Supersnow845]

In general I’m in favour of optimisation being there if people want it but modern DNC is probably an example of when it really doesn’t work

DNC has two levels of optimisation
-Intuitive optimisation such as dance partner swapping during downtime and saving feather for Tech step (does that even count as optimisation tbh)
-completely unintuitive messy optimisation that doesn’t actually add almost any meaningful damage- the biggest one here is using tilana to alter your standard step timeline

If optimisation of a job is that unintuitive and can be covered by a lucky crit on a random skill then there is an argument to be made it’s not really good optimisation design (still better than SMN), it’s why BLM is such a good class; because like optimisation can actually massively increase your DPS

[ValkyrieL]

So if 60% are now playing summoner....than the *dumbdown* was a fantastic change....si the majority are playing the dumb down version lol

[Ivtrix]

So if 60% are now playing summoner....than the *dumbdown* was a fantastic change....si the majority are playing the dumb down version lol

I don’t understand why “it doesn’t work in the content where game balancing matters” doesn’t make sense to you.