SAM gaeshi change severely cripples rotational flexibility and ruins the job for me

[HikariKurosawa]

The last time I heard or read this line was some Blizzard dev saying it about players wanting WoW classic. It bit him completely in the ass because players in fact have shown how much they wanted it.

I do not think Standardization of job skill expression is a good thing if the way it is achieved is by reducing flexibility and neutering non-intuitive designs. All it does is narrow the already small performance gap between high-end and average players, which the average player didn't care either way for and only really comes as detriment to those who wish to strive for greater excellence.

It's funny how you can just go on some irrelevant tangent and ignore the bigger picture concepts my post made while continuing to tunnel vision on one aspect of the game acting like it is the end all be all. If you want to engage with me, do it with reason.

Rotation complexity holds back encounter difficulty. You wanna strive for greater excellence? Maybe you'll have to get good at boss fights to do so now instead of just grinding away on a target dummy to make your rotation muscle memory. This is a win.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

It's funny how you can just go on some irrelevant tangent and ignore the bigger picture concepts my post made while continuing to tunnel vision on one aspect of the game acting like it is the end all be all. If you want to engage with me, do it with reason.

Rotation complexity holds back encounter difficulty. You wanna strive for greater excellence? Maybe you'll have to get good at boss fights to do so now instead of just grinding away on a target dummy to make your rotation muscle memory. This is a win.

First of all, I will engage with your post however I please, you are not a main character in this forum. I went on a tangent here to take a jab of the way you used this line when it has been associated with game devs being tone deaf to what players want. I also intentionally did not want to go deeper in this discussion and only leave my bit, but if you insist...

Second, your comparison to Fromsoft games is a weird one that I could hardly even compare to an MMORPG, but even those games have a lot of skill expression in individual builds and executing your inputs of those builds. Yes their encounter difficulty and by proxy how you have to engage fights is higher and different, but that is because if that game's genre and reactive combat, at least from my experience.

Third, encounter difficulty becomes solved at some point and is omni-role, while individual skill expression from nuanced job kits and utilizing those in combat, especially with unique cases like TOP phase change setups like mentioned earlier, have higher satisfaction tied to it. That said, encounters have become aomewhat formulaic and until they actually do something about that I will forever be in favour of job skill expression. if I was forced to choose, leading into:

Lastly, individual job skill expression/difficulty and encounter difficulty are only at odds with each other because devs think they are. We had an expansion with a great balance between both of these with Stormblood. Jobs had many nuances, role mechanics were not trivialized and encounter difficulty was in a decent spot, neither too simple nor too difficult.

[Silhart]

The other problematic part about all the difficulty being in the input half of the design is that, it eventually becomes total muscle memory even with all the nuanced tricks you guys are using to optimize your rotations. When that happens, all you experience is easy encounters which also go more or less into muscle memory over time. Once you know the mechs of a fight, it just happens naturally. What you are claiming you want is a mindless experience with trivialized difficulty in the content. What standardized rotations lead to is more complex encounter design that actually ends up feeling dynamic and constantly engaging. You can't have it both ways, and it is better for the difficulty to come from the encounter more than the inputs. It leads to more engagement from newer players on top of more enjoyment from veterans who have already mastered their rotations.

This post is utterly nonsensical. How can you argue that rotational complexity is taking away from encounter difficulty, yet claim in the same breath that difficult rotations don't matter since they become "mindless" with muscle memory? If that's the case, then rotational complexity should have no problem existing alongside encounter difficulty; if it becomes "mindless", then you're not expending any cognitive load on your rotation, therefore you should have no problem focusing on difficult fights.

I truly do want difficult fights, I really do. People argued near the beginning of Endwalker that raids can be more difficult now that they've simplified a bunch of jobs. Yet all we got were savage fights with 0% downtime, and the most insultingly easy Alliance raid series since the beginning of this game. I was expecting Pandaemonium to be E8S levels of difficult, and Myths of the Realm to be three times as hard as Ivalice with how much the jobs were neutered going into Endwalker. Yet, they couldn't even deliver on that. It beggars belief how someone could make the claims you're making after three of years of getting the exact opposite. May I make a suggestion? Before you make your next post, I would advise logging onto the game and this time to try playing it with your eyes open.

[Mogred]

The encounter difficulty of from software games is way higher and more dynamic than games like ffxiv as a result because the inputs are so simplified. This is the most extreme example of difficulty contrast between inputs and encounters, and it's not how I want ffxiv to go, but the way ffxiv is currently is too much complexity in the input department and too little difficulty in the encounter department.

The other problematic part about all the difficulty being in the input half of the design is that, it eventually becomes total muscle memory even with all the nuanced tricks you guys are using to optimize your rotations. When that happens, all you experience is easy encounters which also go more or less into muscle memory over time. Once you know the mechs of a fight, it just happens naturally. What you are claiming you want is a mindless experience with trivialized difficulty in the content. What standardized rotations lead to is more complex encounter design that actually ends up feeling dynamic and constantly engaging. You can't have it both ways, and it is better for the difficulty to come from the encounter more than the inputs. It leads to more engagement from newer players on top of more enjoyment from veterans who have already mastered their rotations.

If I wanted to play a from software like game I would play a fromsoftware game. I would NOT want another succesful game, with players who enjoy it, to become like a fromsoftware game.

Also have you ever stepped foot into an ultimate as a Sam? Because I can assure you that between downtime mechanics, bosses that jump away, and variable kill times for each phase that a sam's inputs are anything but muscle memory from training dummies.

[HikariKurosawa]

That said, encounters have become aomewhat formulaic and until they actually do something about that I will forever be in favour of job skill expression. if I was forced to choose, leading into:

Lastly, individual job skill expression/difficulty and encounter difficulty are only at odds with each other because devs think they are. We had an expansion with a great balance between both of these with Stormblood. Jobs had many nuances, role mechanics were not trivialized and encounter difficulty was in a decent spot, neither too simple nor too difficult.

1) they've become formulaic because job skill expression has become extremely complex and contrived, which is why they changed it to make it more standardized. To make room for more difficult encounters.

2) "only because the devs think they are" that's the reality of game design, the devs have a level of difficulty they want to aim for, and they balance input complexity with encounter difficulty. You can pretend this balance doesn't exist but it is 100% a part of game design. You'll have to go to a different company's product if you want a different balance or a higher level of difficulty. They are not inept and they know exactly what they are doing here. You don't, you don't even know what you want. Yet you actually do, because you say you only want the difficulty to be in favour of job skill expression because encounter design has become "somewhat formulaic". This is only the case because it has to be in order to be what the devs consider a fair and balanced challenge. You are not the one who decides how difficult the game should be, they are.

How can you argue that rotational complexity is taking away from encounter difficulty, yet claim in the same breath that difficult rotations don't matter since they become "mindless" with muscle memory? If that's the case, then rotational complexity should have no problem existing alongside encounter difficulty; if it becomes "mindless", then you're not expending any cognitive load on your rotation, therefore you should have no problem focusing on difficult fights.

It's easy, you still have to go through the complex motions. Even if you don't have to focus on what you're doing, you still have to do it and this takes away from what you're able to do in other aspects of gameplay. I don't think you understand what the word mindless means in this context. Mindless execution =/= free execution. Just means you're doing it without having to think about anything.

If I wanted to play a from software like game I would play a fromsoftware game. I would NOT want another succesful game, with players who enjoy it, to become like a fromsoftware game.

Also have you ever stepped foot into an ultimate as a Sam? Because I can assure you that between downtime mechanics, bosses that jump away, and variable kill times for each phase that a sam's inputs are anything but muscle memory from training dummies.

"This is the most extreme example of difficulty contrast between inputs and encounters, and it's not how I want ffxiv to go, but the way ffxiv is currently is too much complexity in the input department and too little difficulty in the encounter department."

Nuance please.

[Dysvalence]

but flow-wise that doesn't make anysense at all^^;
here's a Macro that makes more sense:

It doesn't though, you want to start burst with midare+gaeshi as your first two GCDs, and use meikyou for squeezing in more combo finishers and another midare into burst. Even if you pop meikyou before gaeshi, you likely won't use the stacks until after. If anything it's backward.

The other problematic part about all the difficulty being in the input half of the design is that, it eventually becomes total muscle memory even with all the nuanced tricks you guys are using to optimize your rotations. When that happens, all you experience is easy encounters which also go more or less into muscle memory over time. Once you know the mechs of a fight, it just happens naturally. What you are claiming you want is a mindless experience with trivialized difficulty in the content. What standardized rotations lead to is more complex encounter design that actually ends up feeling dynamic and constantly engaging. You can't have it both ways, and it is better for the difficulty to come from the encounter more than the inputs. It leads to more engagement from newer players on top of more enjoyment from veterans who have already mastered their rotations.

You think you know what you want, but you do not.

You do realize those same optimization techniques are invaluable for mistake recovery and adjusting to dynamic situations right? In addition to raising the skill ceiling it makes the job much more approachable to players without insane muscle memory. If you make a mistake you can adjust for it. If you find that your positionals are out of order you can adjust for it. If you die you can reapply your buffs quickly and adjust for it. All of that goes out the window.


You mention From Soft games- it's not the simplicity, it's the flexibility that allows for dynamic encounters. This change reduces that flexiblity and thus constrains encounter design. If you rotation is set in stone, the encounter has to make that possible, and it makes difficulty changes hurt newer and less consistent players more.


And we do know what we want, we have literally every other melee DPS in the current game to show us what forcibly standardized rotations feel like.

[CelestiCer]

The irony... Of players bashing " Hissatsu: Kaiten " for being restrictive? Only to use the same argument to promote restrictive Job design...

We can run into the issue of Dungeon Mobs dying upon casting Tenka Goken and us being stuck with Kaeshi Goken cause we casted Meikyo with the inflexibility to cast anything else until we hit the next mob pack? or of course worse case we encounter next boss and its a feels bad. Open-world encounters can also be worse like Fates/Eureka/Bozja where Mobs die by Tenka Goken and you're in a wasted Tsubame state for no Kaeshi: Goken. And were going to have assume Square takes this into account... Could say just don't use Meikyo now forehead, sure... or how about just don't make Samurai clunkier with unnecessary changes that doesn't tackle/fix anything. It doesn't even make the Job more difficult either, just more restrictive to solve nothing. Were arguing more for the benefit of accessibility for newer players or players new to Samurai...

Threads like these shows me that there players who don't wish to understand Samurai or adamantly happy in turning Samurai more face-roll then it is, without knowing to suggest how to do that? And the changes shows me that the Dev-Team has no Samurai main on it, mhm. There's also the Senei/Guren trait that we still have to see how that works, although it probably will boil down to casting Senei instead of a Shinten so we can finally not have our 1/5th of our gameplay be Shinten spam but... maybe 1/4th...

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

The irony... Of players bashing " Hissatsu: Kaiten " for being restrictive? Only to use the same argument to promote restrictive Job design...

We can run into the issue of Dungeon Mobs dying upon casting Tenka Goken and us being stuck with Kaeshi Goken cause we casted Meikyo with the inflexibility to cast anything else until we hit the next mob pack? or of course worse case we encounter next boss and its a feels bad. Open-world encounters can also be worse like Fates/Eureka/Bozja where Mobs die by Tenka Goken and you're in a wasted Tsubame state for no Kaeshi: Goken. And were going to have assume Square takes this into account... Could say just don't use Meikyo now forehead, sure... or how about just don't make Samurai clunkier with unnecessary changes that doesn't tackle/fix anything. It doesn't even make the Job more difficult either, just more restrictive to solve nothing. Were arguing more for the benefit of accessibility for newer players or players new to Samurai...

Threads like these shows me that there players who don't wish to understand Samurai or adamantly happy in turning Samurai more face-roll then it is, without knowing to suggest how to do that? And the changes shows me that the Dev-Team has no Samurai main on it, mhm. There's also the Senei/Guren trait that we still have to see how that works, although it probably will boil down to casting Senei instead of a Shinten so we can finally not have our 1/5th of our gameplay be Shinten spam but... maybe 1/4th...

Just confirm this for me if you can as I kinda learned Samurai without guides - due to the 55s recast outside of the opening burst you essentially only used one Meikyo for 2min bursts and the other was drifting around and used to keep the cooldown rolling for optimisation, no? Because that's how I thought about it since you naturally build 3 Sen for Midare + Tsubame 1, build 1 for higanbana after and meikyo for the Midare + Tsubame 2, right?

[CelestiCer]

Just confirm this for me if you can as I kinda learned Samurai without guides - due to the 55s recast outside of the opening burst you essentially only used one Meikyo for 2min bursts and the other was drifting around and used to keep the cooldown rolling for optimisation, no? Because that's how I thought about it since you naturally build 3 Sen for Midare + Tsubame 1, build 1 for higanbana after and meikyo for the Midare + Tsubame 2, right?

Like if we exclude freestyle Samurai where you just faceroll your keyboard... What you mentioned is ( sorta ) correct.

Lets take the format of Extreme / Savage where a fight lasts 9 minutes. This means generally you get to execute four 2 min burst phases and try to fit them into Raidbuffs. Aside from Opener and the final Burst at 8:10 min ( give or take ) you generally will want to enter it with maxed out resources and 3 Sen for Midare and due to your rotation only 1 Meikyo for a Midare + Tsubame ending. Player error can be a factor, were not perfect AI were humans... Raid Buffs and your Burst can for whatever reason be misaligned from each-other even by a second.

With the introduction of this change? Technically nothing changes about the rotation... you can enter burst with Midare and Tsubame, it's just that you now need to weave Meikyo before you cast Midare if were to assume they are adding a Tsubame buff State just like how Ikishoten activates an Ogi state to allow us to cast Ogi Namikiri. Meikyo buff currently only lasts 15 seconds, which makes casting everything before even using 1 stack of Meikyo into Gekko/Kasha very tight unless we trust Square to account for this and also how long the Tsubame buff state lasts. It makes it unnecessarily rigid, more timers for new players to account for possibly and this is only in the vacuum of single target Extreme / Savage raiding...

We also don't know what else is being changed other then the Senei / Guren trait that can affect what I just stated... All I know for sure and its not rocket science... this makes as far as we know it? Samurai more rigid.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I see.

On a bright note, I noticed Shoha I in the trailer doing line cleaves, thank god. Shoha II on a separate button was a mistake.