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

[Enjuden]

To be fair, we don't KNOW the reasons. Anyone using this argument you are assumes the reasons, but has no proof to support them,

Yes, because the proof definitely isn't there that summoner beats red mage in all levels of play. That summoner is clearly the winner over black mage in many statics due to ease of use, res, and the damage is good enough for the dps caster to not matter. That there's nearly double the amount of summoners in savage compared to red mage, and more than triple of black mage is more than enough proof. We have proof, we just can't mention the forbidden site else we get banned for it despite being the only way to have data on how to play the game, and how others play the game.

A summoner has a stranglehold on caster role because they simply do everything too well and they have the best utility in the game: a battle res. They're the best caster prog class by a mile and deal far too much damage with how easy they are to play. If the damage between red mage and summoner was swapped, they would still perform more, and better on average? Why? The class is too simple and too effective in what it does. If people want the class to be so simple, they need to lose the battle res. Unless SE makes the job harder (they won't), then it is the only way to balance it even though people will lose their minds over it.

[Renathras]

Yes, because the proof definitely isn't there that summoner beats red mage in all levels of play. That summoner is clearly the winner over black mage in many statics due to ease of use, res, and the damage is good enough for the dps caster to not matter. That there's nearly double the amount of summoners in savage compared to red mage, and more than triple of black mage is more than enough proof. We have proof, we just can't mention the forbidden site else we get banned for it despite being the only way to have data on how to play the game, and how others play the game.

That's proof it's most played. Everyone agrees with that.

That's not proof it isn't most played because it's fun and people actually enjoy playing it.

"It's too good" is also only an argument that describes a possible use among high end players (hyper-min/maxers who don't actually care about "fun" and will play what is "the best"), not for the rest of the playerbase, where the Job is also highly played.

Also: RDM is still better for prog since it has better Raise potential. But that's a different argument. SMN's raise is FAR weaker than RDM's since they don't have access to Dualcast.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Using raw player counts in this instance is pretty silly. It's the simplest job in the game even including tanks and healers. Obviously the lowest common denominator job will have the most people. Not to mention you get it for free with Scholar.

And the "lowest common denominator job" will always have to be something. In this case it's Summoner.

I'm not understanding the real point here. If SE has a class that is so accessible it increases engagement with the game, then it's a win for them. If all classes were challenging to engage with, they'd probably lose some players.

Even higher level PVP games have the braindead champs that a novice can pick up as they play the game a few times a year. LOL has Sona for example, where you just press buttons and barely have to aim or worry about anything other than positioning.

[Enjuden]

That's proof it's most played. Everyone agrees with that.

That's not proof it isn't most played because it's fun and people actually enjoy playing it.

"It's too good" is also only an argument that describes a possible use among high end players (hyper-min/maxers who don't actually care about "fun" and will play what is "the best"), not for the rest of the playerbase, where the Job is also highly played.

Also: RDM is still better for prog since it has better Raise potential. But that's a different argument. SMN's raise is FAR weaker than RDM's since they don't have access to Dualcast.

I'm sure people find it fun, but again, you'd need an official poll, which SE is hilariously intent on never having for whatever reason. I can't even remember the last poll they did for jobs that are currently played. 2.X era, maybe? I wasn't even using clears as a data point, just attempts on 'Summoner most popular'.

I'd still argue there's way too many ways for a Red Mage to mess up their rotation and cratering their dps that the double res isn't worth the trouble of having a summoner who has nearly zero chance to mess up their rotation and have a single res. If you're ressing two it's a wipe anyway more than likely. Simply too many ways for a red mage to get lost within their own hot bars compared to 'Just press the shiny button and win'. Still, different topic.

"It's too good" is an argument that can be used in non MSQ/24 man levels of play whether you like it or not. Plenty of other companies use this argument regardless of the level of use. Any moba that's still around, for instance.

[Supersnow845]

^there was JP job satisfaction surveys that went till about 5.3, after the response to the healer changes came back terribly unpopular they seem to have dropped even though

[Ivtrix]

^there was JP job satisfaction surveys that went till about 5.3, after the response to the healer changes came back terribly unpopular they seem to have dropped even though

They need to do one for endwalker

[Renathras]

I'm sure people find it fun, but again,...

Ah, I see. Maybe you misunderstood my prior post? But that was my point as well. Often people say everyone just plays SMN because it's easy/"good" in terms of the meta, but that people don't actually like playing it. They just play it for the performance or whatnot.

I was arguing against that, saying the only way we could know that would be if we asked all the players. All that we DO know is that it's widely played. So I don't think we're in disagreement?

As for RDM: I specifically was referring to where you said for prog: "They're the best caster prog class by a mile". For prog, SMN is not the best Caster by a mile. You aren't going for clears, you're trying to see additional mechanics, so people dying and being chain raised IS the best way to do that. This includes more than two people dying. "It's a wipe anyway" is what prog is all about. The point isn't to get the clear (right off), it's to see more mechanics and work out how to survive them. Damage isn't relevant until you get to add phases (or Ultimate phases) where dealing a certain amount of damage is required to move on to the next part. But even there, RDM is still simpler than the other competitor in the role (BLM) and offers the Raise, so for things without SUPER tight damage checks (or any at all) on the individual phases, RDM is the superior Caster for prog.

The transition is made from RDM to SMN once the party thinks they have a handle on all the mechanics of the fight (or phase) and are ready to push for a clear of the fight (or phase).

So I was talking about the specific case you mentioned - prog - not more general when I said that.

As for the "It's too good"; what I mean is that a lot of people don't level tons of Jobs. They don't have RDM and SMN and BLM all at level 90 and geared and swap between them to whichever one is "good". They do the one they like best. You might also know, if you look at the forbidden sight for 24 man engagement, RDM is still very popular in them. Meaning it's very popular with the general playerbase. The place it isn't popular? High end raiders. Which is...kinda what I'm talking about.

EDIT:

Specifically, the order (by total number of submitted runs for Nophica as an exaple), is SMN, DNC, RPR, RDM, MCH, SAM, BRD, BLM, DRG, NIN, MNK. RDM is about 3/4rds of what SMN is (28k vs 36k, or about 78%), and BLM less still than that, but a decent 50%/18k. The Job getting clobbered is MNK, though, with the least by far.

Note also that DNC and RPR are more played than RDM, so it's not just SMN beating it out.

They need to do one for endwalker

Honestly, I agree.

I'm not sure they'd make it public, but they really should do one of the playerbase (like from the launcher/with your account so people can't cheese the system). Even if they didn't reveal the results, it could be useful for them to get info on what people want, like, and don't like about things. They could do it for Jobs and also for Roles since the two might help them best parse how to proceed and what players do and don't like and want.

Most anything else, like us here or a Reddit thread, etc, is going to have selection bias and be more anecdotal. But SE (and SE alone) has the power to poll the entire playerbase if they wanted.

[VentVanitas]

They need to do one for endwalker

player made surveys are the closest you're gonna get for the time being. ty_taurus made one a few months back and though the sample size is pretty small compared to the usual ShB job satisfaction survey, it's still worth checking out in my opinion.

[Zairava]

player made surveys are the closest you're gonna get for the time being. ty_taurus made one a few months back and though the sample size is pretty small compared to the usual ShB job satisfaction survey, it's still worth checking out in my opinion.

for those who don't want to go through the effort of searching, here's the thread mentioned: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...esign-Feedback

If you haven't given your feedback in this thread yet I'd recommend it.

[TheRealMadruck]

Ok...I have seen and looked over many of the comments from this initial post I did a few days back. I want to mention a few additional things:

1. I use a alt toon for posting on these forums. I have done this for over 7 years now stemming from a situation that occurred in the beginning of 2017 with a very large FC I ran. Players on these forums dogged members of my original FC so bad because of a take that I had that it made the FC go into shambles. You can believe me that this happened or not, that is up to you. But from that experience going forward, I learned to never use your main toon as highlight to your posts because as IRL, there are sketchy/unhinged people everywhere.

2. I don't like the direction they took Summoner what so ever. I enjoyed Summoner being a "dot" job as it made it unique amoung all the other casters in comparison to what we have today. If you doubt this, let me explain.

BLM: Hard caster who does massive high damage spells.
RDM: Utility caster who has 2 dynamic modes of play, one being phase prep at range to make 50-60% meter charge for either AOE/single target rotation in melee.
SUM(Pre-EDW): Semi-Hard Caster who does Dots to debuff a target either single target/AOE. Uses different summon based on type of target they are facing. Ifrit: Single/Melee, Garuda: Range/AOE, Titan: Single/Tank.

If you cannot see how dynamically different these caster jobs were from what they are now, I do not know what to tell you. This is what made Summoner unique. Yes, BLM was always considered supposedly the "hardest" caster role, but even BLM can be easy depending on skill and muscle memory over time. But Summoner was considered the go between of BLM and RDM. This dynamic worked. Yet it is totally gone to make Summoner today nothing more that a laziest caster to play with semi RDM movement/BLM damage dynamics. Even with the new caster job coming in 7.0, unless SE does something to Summoner to make it in someway more challenging to play other than only need to spam 3 buttons in 4 phases...it destroys a balance of dynamic in each Job which makes them all unique.

3. I respect the effort SE made to make Summoner feel more like the Jobs historic signature. I have played FF1 to FF16 with FF2-FF6 being my personal favorites. I understand precisely how the "Summoner" type job/position is suppose to feel stemming from Espers in FF6 to summons in FF5 so on and so forth. I remember all to well also FF11 Summoner. But in my opinion, FF14 made Summoner unique. It took aspects of previous Summoners in past games and mixed into a job that used spells that were historically key to past FF games. Miasma, Bio...these Dot spells have been a cornerstone to FF history. Yet they are gone with only SCH or healers in general having a Job variation of them. I believe that SE could have kept some aspects of what made Summoner unique while including the newer aspects they added. I.E., they could have kept the dots, Ifrit Phase could have had its dot that it had from the original design, then Garuda had Miasma and Titan had Bio(alot of fantasy games have earth type spells/abilities tied to poison/disease type spells). But these are merely my thoughts.

Bottomline, FF14 needs a harder to play Summoner. I know alot of you will disagree with me here or be vitriolic for this opinion. No one Job should be so massively over represented as we have seen with Summoner in Endwalker because of dumbdowned design. Jobs in my opinion are supposed to speak to a individual player based on the dynamics that job provides to them when they play FF14. I ask you...do you play Summoner because you enjoy its aesthetics, the sound of its abilities, the style of how it plays, the utility it provides...or do you play it for a minuscle amount of considerations I have mentioned and mostly because its easy, because you know you will do top dps with a minimum of skill in comparison to other jobs that take at least 2x the effort to be comparable to in damage/utility? If your answer is the latter, then you will drop Summoner in the drop of a hat when another Job pops up that is the new "easy mode". And for myself even if you massively regard me with negativity for this opinion...I find it incredibly sad and pathetic!