Dawntrail Media Tour Wishlist Survey

[Renathras]

or nuSMN is just a badly designed, boring job and most people who are invested enough in the game to respond to a niche community survey can recognize that, seems more likely to me than armchair psychology about ego and superiority complexes

It's possible, but if that was the case, they'd also hate on the other Jobs in a similar situation.

Ask yourself, aside from SMN, what is the most hated, braindead Job in the game.

Then look up that Job and see if it has 16 0s.

No other Job does, and Jobs like MCH and the healers are routinely reviled for their ShB changes and EW "braindead" nature. WAR is also "braindead" but doesn't have 16 0s. At the present time:

PLD: 0
WAR: 1
DRK: 7
GNB: 0
WHM: 1
SCH: 3
AST: 4
SGE: 5
MNK: 2 (note this is one of the least played/most hated Jobs in the game right now)
DRG: 0
NIN: 0
SAM: 3
RPR: 0
BRD: 0 (note this is ALSO one of the least played/most hated Jobs in the game right now, and one where a lot of players used to like it but have drifted away from it)
MCH: 2
DNC: 0
BLM: 2
SMN: 16
RDM: 0

Though it stands to reason that there will be differences, we all know that brigading is a real phenomena that exists. Not only is SMN the most there, but it's the most by an order of magnitude. The only one at all close is DRK, a Job pretty much everyone says is terribly designed right now having been utterly gutted of its former identity and turned into a worse WAR. Yet you're telling me that despite all that, it's more loved than the most played DPS Job in the entire game?

What I'm saying isn't outlandish. Pollsters, surveyers, and statisticians are aware of these things, which is why they attempt to correct for them. Refusing to even acknowledge the possibility isn't rationality, it's out of a desire to see what you want in the data (confirmation bias) and not any considerations that might call that into question.

.

I won't say more on it, but find some statistician or pollster and ask them about it. See what they think. Selection bias is going to be a big issue here, but brigading also seems to be. The tale-tell sign is just HOW antagonistic the results are towards SMN. In short, the phase "overplaying one's hand" applies.

Anyway, continue in bliss if you wish. o7

[ForsakenRoe]

I wonder how many people have to fill in the surveys, or how many surveys have to be done, or if it has to be an official run SE survey, before all the accusations of 'there is some sort of trickery afoot with the results' dies down

[Aravell]

I wonder how many people have to fill in the surveys, or how many surveys have to be done, or if it has to be an official run SE survey, before all the accusations of 'there is some sort of trickery afoot with the results' dies down

It feels kind of like nitpicking at this point. Especially since we don't have any way to be certain one way or another. But given the fact that MNK is in the same boat as BLM (lower playerbase and praise for higher skill ceiling) and the fact that they both have roughly the same scores (generous spread of above average score), I'd say everything looks fine to me.

I will say though, SMN being rated with so many 0s is very likely due to the fact that they deleted the entirety of the old playstyle and a lot of people who used to main it are dissatisfied. Is their dissatisfaction invalid? Are they to be reduced only to "votebombs"?

[AmiableApkallu]

Yeah. Even supposing that trickery is afoot... is that not itself an interesting data point? Why is it that only SMN is subject to it? Healers also don't exactly get a lot of love here on the forums, and yet they don't engender the same "trickery," apparently.

[ForsakenRoe]

I will say though, SMN being rated with so many 0s is very likely due to the fact that they deleted the entirety of the old playstyle and a lot of people who used to main it are dissatisfied. Is their dissatisfaction invalid? Are they to be reduced only to "votebombs"?

I also wonder how much of it is the perceived lack of 'room to grow', that is, we have one single Ruin 3 as filler in each 60s loop. All that can really be added to change up the GCD loop is something that replaces that Ruin 3, or VFX reskins (eg using the other 3 summons after Phoenix). Beyond that, it's just going to be OGCDs, presumably. The rework's been here for only one expansion and it's already painted into a corner on what can be added to it

It will be interesting, I think, if the new caster is effectively '5.0 SMN without pet jank (because it has no pet)', because I'd like to see how many people ditch the current SMN and play 'the old SMN'.

[TheDustyOne]

MNK: 2 (note this is one of the least played/most hated Jobs in the game right now)
BRD: 0 (note this is ALSO one of the least played/most hated Jobs in the game right now, and one where a lot of players used to like it but have drifted away from it)

Not only is SMN the most there, but it's the most by an order of magnitude. The only one at all close is DRK, a Job pretty much everyone says is terribly designed right now having been utterly gutted of its former identity and turned into a worse WAR. Yet you're telling me that despite all that, it's more loved than the most played DPS Job in the entire game?

I do have to ask how you came to the conclusion that being least played = most hated, and vice versa. I've seen my share of people who aren't fans of Monk, but it's rarely "hate", more just "not for me". The ones who stick around and main it tend to love it. Bard I at least see discontent amongst people who main it.

Just because less people play something, doesn't mean that thing is bad. Dragon Quest isn't bad because more people enjoy Final Fantasy. Likewise, BLM and MNK aren't bad because they're the least played in their roles, what it means is they've carved out a niche that attracts the kind of players that enjoy those playstyles, and the high ratings of those jobs are indicative that they find them satisfying to play. There are a lot of reasons that people don't play something, from perceived difficulty, aesthetics, and personal preference, not necessarily that it's bad.
The same is true in reverse; just because more people play something, doesn't mean that thing is good. Lots of people bought and played Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, but they'd be right to criticize it for poor performance and lack of craftsmanship. The same is true of SMN, people pick it up because it's visually impressive and it does good damage, so it feels good when you first try it, but over time they notice that it's not satisfying to play. People continue playing it because it's easy, they don't want the tedium of leveling another job, or they're sticking with it in the hopes it'll improve.

[ty_taurus]

Regardless, the point stands: If people are votebombing Jobs they dislike to make them look worse than they otherwise would, that does taint the result unless everyone is doing it to all the Jobs they dislike so that it washes out. I feel like there's no way we're going to get that, which is why the SMN results are pretty much invalid on that question, just as they were the last time.

Or maybe the people who are former summoner players, who used to play summoner and enjoyed it prior to its rework, are valid in saying their enjoyment of the job has dropped to a 0? Even if you want to say that summoner is being vote bombed, why on earth are black mage's votes considered "artificial"? Dancer's votes are still pretty low, but has a very oddly united acceptance that the job is an 8 out of 10. Is that "artificial" because it doesn't have enough votes from people who don't like dancer?

[Connor]

Every survey inevitably has limitations, but that doesn’t also mean it has nothing to say. Even a small sample size can still reveal something interesting. Generalising that to a whole group is much more difficult, but that doesn’t make smaller samples less valuable.

As for ‘review bombing’, I feel like in most cases it’s important to consider every angle. That is to say, there’s always an underlying reason behind that decision, wherever it comes from. And understanding / identifying that reasoning can be just as important as understanding the ways it may have affected the data. Like, is it a protest because of the loss of old summoner, a protest about the job’s identity itself, gameplay, all of the above, etc.

I’d say potentially the best option to avoid ‘disingenuous’ posts is to try looking at the values of 0 and 10 points chosen compared to 1 to 9. We know from general ‘surveying knowledge’ that in giving survey responses people naturally gravitate away from extreme ends of an answer (rating something 0 or 10). So if there’s a significant amount of people choosing 0-10 compared to other values, we could then say that there’s definitely something there. If it didn’t show as significant, I’d assume that the responses were more likely to be extraneous (i.e mistakenly gave wrong rating somehow, ‘trolling’, etc) than indicating something else.

[remiff]

Meanwhile, the 3rd division doesn't conduct any real investigations, and the only survey they did for the 10th anniversary was filled with entirely useless questions.

That's why these kinds of surveys will always come from amateur sources.

[Renathras]

Yeah. Even supposing that trickery is afoot... is that not itself an interesting data point? Why is it that only SMN is subject to it? Healers also don't exactly get a lot of love here on the forums, and yet they don't engender the same "trickery," apparently.

They do, but to a lesser extent.

Anyway, I'm not going to go into it further. If people want to believe this at face value, that's fine. It's probably incorrect, but it's hardly the first time Humans have chosen that option.

I just hate explaining why I think a thing is true and, instead of an actual reply addressing that "I see what you mean, but what about..." or "Fair, but counterpoint...", and instead it's just some hyperbolic strawman.

EDIT:

Every survey inevitably has limitations, but that doesn’t also mean it has nothing to say. Even a small sample size can still reveal something interesting. Generalising that to a whole group is much more difficult, but that doesn’t make smaller samples less valuable.

I agree with this, and it's my point.

I have said this whole time I think the survey is useful despite this, have I not? I've even been one cross posting it to other threads with a similar topic to get more responses.

I also agree with the "why" of it. The problem is, you have to match the responses to the written answers at the bottom (not sure if it does this on the backend or not) to see what that is. For example, if a lot of 0s had as their long form answer something like "I loved old SMN and hate this one <insert negative adjectives like "braindead">", then we might conclude that it's vote bombing by people who want its average to look low in the hopes SMN gets changed. On the other hand, if it's people posting about specific things they dislike about it and why, that might be more useful. We need a way to parse out the people angry at losing old SMN from the people that legitimately dislike the mechanics, since those are two different arguments and different potential solutions. e.g. if new SMN had been an entirely new Job and old SMN existed, that hate wouldn't exist, thus it isn't "useful" in that sense other than "These people need/want a DoT Job". Which IS useful information, but doesn't tell us anything about whether new SMN is bad ON ITS OWN MERITS or not.

But as you say, most people don't rate things 0 or 10, much less that many 0s. For example, I dislike a lot of Jobs, but I still will rate them a 3 or so.