Please don't change Viper

[Kalocin]

They stumbled upon a pretty good job design. They shouldn't touch it and instead should analyze why people like it so much and see what they can learn from it to improve other jobs.

I'm guessing the ones who design the new jobs are separate, those people are pretty solid. The problem is the kneejerk reaction changes. They even said they'd stop doing this but it always happens and whatever job is in the crossfire ends up being terrible for a while expansion because said designers can only handle making the new ones.

[AsuraAeon]

100% agree, as a melee main VPR is the breath of fresh air I needed. It is so fast and there are so many fun button presses, it is NOT too busy, it is perfect for what I want out of a class! It feels so good and it is designed so well!

Who even asked for these changes to VPR? Why are we removing fun gameplay mechanics? VPR is perfect as it is!

[Taliriah]

I'm of the opinion that something needs to change. As-is, Viper suffers from a general design problem that has existed even before 7.0, but until now no other class has been held back by it nearly as much. Twinblood/Twinfang don't just encourage double weaving, it's essentially a mandatory part of the rotation. The problem? Unless you have a low-latency connection, you can't double-weave without clipping your GCDs, and should you clip your GCDs, your DPS drops and your rotation drifts, likely causing misalignment of burst phases with party buffs as longer fights drag on. Bottom line: No amount of skill can overcome a problem brought on by a combination of game client limitations and connection latency.

The GCD for swiftskin's coil and hunter's coil is 2.51 seconds (with swiftscale up), ie 2510ms. If your ping is so bad that you can't send two ogcd uses during that time you have much bigger problems than playing Viper.

Or they are doing extremely silly things like waiting for the server to tell the client that the OGCDs are available rather than the client just assuming that they are (since there's no randomness or any particular rule to their activation). But if that's the case then they need to fix this, not change the class.

[-BlueGreen-]

The GCD for swiftskin's coil and hunter's coil is 2.51 seconds (with swiftscale up), ie 2510ms. If your ping is so bad that you can't send two ogcd uses during that time you have much bigger problems than playing Viper.

Or they are doing extremely silly things like waiting for the server to tell the client that the OGCDs are available rather than the client just assuming that they are (since there's no randomness or any particular rule to their activation). But if that's the case then they need to fix this, not change the class.

I did some speed tests to get some more specific data here:
Google speed test, server is 100 miles or so from where I live (central US): 310.5/20.6 Mbps speeds, 11ms latency.
speedtest.net test, server is in Sydney (close to OCE DC): 315.5/4.5 Mbps speeds, 184 ms latency. (I honestly expected worse latency, but 184ms isn't too bad considering the ocean between here and there)

Basically, I can comfortably do the double weaving on an NA world without issue. When I try to do the same on OCE, it fails miserably. The combination of ping and the animation locks creates the problem where double weaving simply doesn't work. Obviously, if I want to play at my best, I should play strictly on NA, but if I want to play with friends I've made, I play on OCE sometimes. For classes like RDM, I simply just don't try to double weave and can mostly play just fine even with the higher ping. With Viper, it'd be a disaster to try. Why should one class be singled out? That said, for the characters I actually plan to level viper on, they're all NA characters anyway.

My point is simply that with cross-region datacenter travel being a possibility between more regions later, an issue like this does need a solution. I play RDM differently between NA and OCE given the fact that double weaving doesn't work at that latency, but simply spreading out the OGCDs doesn't feel like it's really hurting my average DPS, it just makes things like the opener less bursty. Viper doesn't have an option to spread out those to OGCDs after the skills that activate that combo. You either go for them anyway and delay your next GCD by however much it delays you by, or you do something else weird, like making sure swiftscale drops off or simply skip the third hit in each of those combos. In other words, you either have the break the fast-pacing Viper was going for or you break the rotation.

My vote would be to use this opportunity to address the animation locks or whatever that cause issues with double weaving on any class with latencies in the 100-200ms range rather than to "dumb down" the rotation to remove the double weaving. Personally, I'm more in it so that RDM can feel the same no matter which server I play on, but Viper makes a better poster child for this since double weaving is (at least currently) a feature of its designed rotation. My fear is that SE will take the "easy" way out and change Viper's rotation. I can accept this possibility myself (the class becomes playable with such pings either way), though I recognize that many of the voices here obviously don't want this to happen.

100-200ms latencies shouldn't be outright disregarded as "you shouldn't play this game". For a decent chunk of NA (and even in other parts of the world), the reality is that pings in this range will be the best you can expect. The reason is simply that nice connections aren't available everywhere, and recently Starlink is shaping up to be the only real viable ISP for gamers in such areas. At present, the technology is extremely impressive at managing pings of ~125-150ms from what I remember measuring at my parents' place and Starlink is trying to get federal approval for even lower orbits to reach pings as low as ~100ms. It's easily the most expensive ISP serving most of those areas with your only other options being things like dialup (no joke) that can reach 50ms ping, but good luck with those 0.04 Mbps speeds, lol, traditional satellite and its 350-500ms pings (when this was my only other option, I literally signed up for dialup to play the MMO I was playing at the time using the Satellite for nothing more than downloading updates to overcome dialups bandwidth limitations), and cellular hotspots which also only manage 100ms or so latency and make absolutely terrible gaming routers (these hotspots also come so close to costing as much as Starlink that I don't see them lasting long as competition given how soundly Starlink beats them). Also bear in mind that the fastest of those alternatives vs. Starlink are having a great day if they can even reach 5% of Starlink's speeds.

Given the huge amount of coverage Starlink has (at least potentially) worldwide, I'd say SE's goal should be that all classes should be playable just fine on a Starlink connection to their local DC. There will still be some players/situations that won't be catered to at that level, but I'd expect that the few still not able to comfortably play at that point would just be too hard to make work to be worthwhile.

[Ariablueberry]

Seems like there are a few camps that are complaining about viper.

1. The casual player who likes viper's aesthetic (two swords, leather fantasy) - but finds it very difficult to play the job comfortably. They're staring at their hot bars + wondering about positional + high Actions per minute.

2. People who enjoy playing jobs at midcore to higher levels but have a habit of "memorizing" where they are in their rotation by which button they're pressing. (if my 1-2-3 combo is spread into different buttons, I know exactly where I am in my rotation without looking at anything else other than the boss and mechanics)

Viper's consolidation of the basic combo to 2 buttons that branch out to multiple combos means you're probably going to pay attention to either your buff icons/vipersight/hotbars to know where you are for your positionals/pre-burst window.

the consolidation gives them less ability to "memorize" where they are and that's uncomfortable.

3. a subset of players who just have general issues with trying to map hotbar/crosshotbar setup that makes their OLD logic of "oh this is how my logic is of hotbars/controller is setup for ALL my melee jobs -- then suddenly they have to do things a bit differently for viper and that makes them feel uncomfortable.

It is also the poster job of Dawntrail, so these subgroups want the job to match them because they're attracted to the job.

Given that Viper is the MOST PLAYED DPS JOB by a HUGE margin, it is natural that higher players = more complaints.

but alas:

"A JOB for everyone is a job for NO ONE"

We can always say they just need to get better at the game, but it doesn't change the fact that if so many of your players LOVE a job, that means they're playing the game and paying $$$$$ because they love the job.

so there's business pressure to do something about it if it's the most popular job you have or else you risk a buttload of people getting disappointed.

Talk about suffering from your marketing success at selling a game by selling a job fantasy.

No one is going to win this. They will make changes somehow to the job to make it more accessible to retain $$$$ subscribers.

it's a business decision ultimately.

[Gilihere]

Seems like there are a few camps that are complaining about viper.

1. The casual player who likes viper's aesthetic (two swords, leather fantasy) - but finds it very difficult to play the job comfortably. They're staring at their hot bars + wondering about positional + high Actions per minute.

2. People who enjoy playing jobs at midcore to higher levels but have a habit of "memorizing" where they are in their rotation by which button they're pressing. (if my 1-2-3 combo is spread into different buttons, I know exactly where I am in my rotation without looking at anything else other than the boss and mechanics)

Viper's consolidation of the basic combo to 2 buttons that branch out to multiple combos means you're probably going to pay attention to either your buff icons/vipersight/hotbars to know where you are for your positionals/pre-burst window.

the consolidation gives them less ability to "memorize" where they are and that's uncomfortable.

3. a subset of players who just have general issues with trying to map hotbar/crosshotbar setup that makes their OLD logic of "oh this is how my logic is of hotbars/controller is setup for ALL my melee jobs -- then suddenly they have to do things a bit differently for viper and that makes them feel uncomfortable.

It is also the poster job of Dawntrail, so these subgroups want the job to match them because they're attracted to the job.

Given that Viper is the MOST PLAYED DPS JOB by a HUGE margin, it is natural that higher players = more complaints.

but alas:

"A JOB for everyone is a job for NO ONE"

I agree with all you said, specially with the last part, this is not a job for everyone, and sure some people in all listed groups won't fit in the category viper is, that on itself doesnt mandate change

[W00by]

It's interesting, isn't it? For the most part, I understand a lot of the complaints with Viper from a subjective standpoint. There's nothing wrong with disliking a busy rotation or doing positionals. In my own case, I dislike Dark Knight's mana management and low impact "random stuff, go!" burst phase.

But if I dislike DRK, then why would I play it? I accept that people do like it and play GNB when I want to play Tank.

Viper, however, is in an interesting position because it doesn't have a core audience yet. Like every DPS launch, it's the most popular Job in the game, but it's hard to say how much of, and what part of, its audience will remain in 2 or 3 years when it's no longer shiny and another DPS comes in to steal the limelight. Will it be a job carried by aesthetic, left hyper approachable and simple for the casual player like RPR or SMN, or will it be a moderately difficult job with a highly dedicated midcore/hard-core audience like NIN or MNK? Both those audiences are playing the job, and as unfortunate as it is, it will be up to SQEX to decide which audience they decide to maintain. As midcore and up players, all we can do is argue our desires and pray.

Similarly unfortunately, the "a job for everyone is a job for no one" argument is historically not accurate. SMN is lambasted as incredibly boring by a mid core audience, but it has been the most popular caster for years despite RDM and BLM being more iconic and popular fantasies. WAR is the same for tanks, though you could argue part of that is carried by a popular class fantasy. Ultimately, player data suggests that easy classes are the most popular.

Whether or not they want to make Viper an incredibly popular job remains to be seen. Personally, I'm not sure the regional huntsman job will have long-term popularity, especially compared to things like Reaper and Samurai, but we'll see. I for one think skill expression is indelibly linked to it's class fantasy, but I'm a drop in the bucket.

Please keep arguing in favor of Viper retaining complexity, though! We will see if the devs have any comment on Tuesday.

[Ariablueberry]

It's interesting, isn't it? For the most part, I understand a lot of the complaints with Viper from a subjective standpoint. There's nothing wrong with disliking a busy rotation or doing positionals. In my own case, I dislike Dark Knight's mana management and low impact "random stuff, go!" burst phase.

But if I dislike DRK, then why would I play it? I accept that people do like it and play GNB when I want to play Tank.

Viper, however, is in an interesting position because it doesn't have a core audience yet. Like every DPS launch, it's the most popular Job in the game, but it's hard to say how much of, and what part of, its audience will remain in 2 or 3 years when it's no longer shiny and another DPS comes in to steal the limelight. Will it be a job carried by aesthetic, left hyper approachable and simple for the casual player like RPR or SMN, or will it be a moderately difficult job with a highly dedicated midcore/hard-core audience like NIN or MNK? Both those audiences are playing the job, and as unfortunate as it is, it will be up to SQEX to decide which audience they decide to maintain. As midcore and up players, all we can do is argue our desires and pray.

Similarly unfortunately, the "a job for everyone is a job for no one" argument is historically not accurate. SMN is lambasted as incredibly boring by a mid core audience, but it has been the most popular caster for years despite RDM and BLM being more iconic and popular fantasies. WAR is the same for tanks, though you could argue part of that is carried by a popular class fantasy. Ultimately, player data suggests that easy classes are the most popular.

Whether or not they want to make Viper an incredibly popular job remains to be seen. Personally, I'm not sure the regional huntsman job will have long-term popularity, especially compared to things like Reaper and Samurai, but we'll see. I for one think skill expression is indelibly linked to it's class fantasy, but I'm a drop in the bucket.

Please keep arguing in favor of Viper retaining complexity, though! We will see if the devs have any comment on Tuesday.

On job audience profiling - has there been information out there outlining who the current jobs were targeted at/catering to? Your take on whether or not Viper will have long term popularity compared to RPR/SAM is something I'd like to hear more about if you would care to explain more.

[Amenara]

Viper has single-handedly ruined the game for me.

I can't play anything else after Viper because of how fun the rotation is to me with lots and lots of button presses. I will be very sad if it loses positionals and/or ogcds because people who probably don't enjoy the job are complaining that they don't like how it plays.

[W00by]

On job audience profiling - has there been information out there outlining who the current jobs were targeted at/catering to? Your take on whether or not Viper will have long term popularity compared to RPR/SAM is something I'd like to hear more about if you would care to explain more.

Sure, I'd love to talk about it! I don't think there's ever been official information about it, but having played the game since early HW and paid attention to things like job popularity, I've noticed a few trends in how job popularity tends to go. The statistics I mention here are a combination of anecdotal experience and historical log data from repositories like Lucky Bancho Census and FFLogs.

It's always a little hard to say because different audiences look for different things for jobs -- for instance, Samurai's current popularity seems to be a synthesis of three things: the appeal of the katana-wielding fantasy archetype, its mechanical strength in raids, and the appeal of having some of the highest potency single target nukes in the game. But it wasn't always so well loved! In Stormblood, when SAM had come out, it was insanely popular. But by the end of the expansion, it was considered a niche, weak job that not many people ran with, because it was a weird job with strange 35 and 40s timers, and using Midare if Hagakure was up was bad actually, and it didn't have raid buffs or fit that great into them, et cetera, et cetera. It still had the massive single target nukes and the katana-wielding fantasy archetype, but that wasn't enough to carry it above the likes of Dragoon and Bard (which were some of the most popular jobs that expansion).

Compare that to late EW, after SAM had its complexity shaved down to fit into the two minute meta and be more approachable to the casual audience, and suddenly SAM has become the most popular melee among raiders and nearly the most popular among the casual audience as well. What happened? Well, simplification happened, and players seem to have responded well to it. SAM is way more popular than it ever was before, barring the 4.0 launch patch. Now, this is also partially because the addition of Dancer made Samurai way better, but still, when the only jobs competing with Samurai for popularity are jobs like Reaper, which was weak throughout nearly all of EW and still insanely popular, raid strength seems to take a back seat to approachability and appeal.

You can see this effect in something like SMN, too, which was a weird, wild, wacky DPS with clunky pet mechanics, a magic vuln up tied to Garuda Egi's weird cast times, and a Bahamut phase that involved weaving Addle because it made Bahamut attack. Both BLM and SMN were considered difficult jobs to play, and RDM completely siphoned all of their popularity from the casual audience at pretty much all times. And now, post-EW's absolute genocide of SMN's complexity, it's the most popular caster. RDM is considered awkward in comparison with tricky mobility despite not having changed really at all since its introduction, and part of this is because RDM has held onto a lot of its complexity, between things like avoiding Fleche drift, proc management, double- and triple-combo burst windows, etc. When RDM is such an insanely popular class fantasy (who doesn't love spellswords), how does it lose out to SMN in terms of playerbase representation? Well, it certainly helps that anyone and their mom can play SMN practically without friction.

I want to talk about Reaper a little, too, because while it has a good deal less history than these other jobs, it nonetheless provides insight into how Square tends to try and make popular jobs approachable, and vice versa. Now, Reaper has never been "hard" (non-standard stuff aside); if you could do Double Enshroud under burst (which involves getting two Communio casts into raid buffs), you could pretty much play the job in any scenario. This, combined with its incredibly appealing class aesthetic (scythes are cool and popular) made it the most popular melee in EW. What's interesting about this is, during Dawntrail, the devs seem to have tried to kill Double Enshroud. It's a complex subject, but the buffs to Gluttony and the addition of Perfectio seem to have been designed to make a standard Enshroud phase too long to fit 2 under raid buffs. Now, they failed, and 2 Enshroud is still quite doable, but the intention makes it clear that, seeing Reaper's popularity, they wanted to make it even more approachable to cement that popularity. I mean, in the Job Action Live Letter, they described their Reaper changes as designed to "improve ease of use" to one of the easiest jobs, which says a lot about their intent.

As for who the developers design jobs to cater to, we can't tell what comes first between the chicken and the egg: Do they make jobs they think will have popular class fantasies simple on purpose? Or do they simplify the most popular classes so even more people will be able to play them? In my opinion, the answer is probably "both," but it puts us in a weird position.

Job fantasies like "the avatar of death," "far eastern/Vergil samurai guy," "monstrous battle rager too angy to die," etc. are obviously more appealing than more niche things like "magic casting Ninja" and "half bowman half bard," so we see a lot of popularity in those jobs. And, perhaps because they are less popular, jobs like Ninja and Bard are able to retain their complexity--because not enough people care enough to pick up and main Ninja in the first place, let alone start complaining about how it plays, it has retained a position as a complex, burst optimization job pretty much since its conception.

But Viper is weird, because its job identity, to me, is one that potentially falls into this "more niche appeal" category. Tural will not be the setting of the next 10 years of FFXIV, and while dual swordsman is a very popular weapon fantasy, XIV-original hunter/ranger/rogue hybrid with explicit links to a particular setting may not be as much in Final Fantasy, where legacy jobs tend to have a huge draw as well. In 2 years, when Viper is not a brand new job, the flagship in the trailer, and the only job associated with the current setting, will its class fantasy be enough to endear it to people? I'm not sure.

If its class fantasy is extremely appealing to a wider audience, then player data suggests that the objectively correct call from SQEX is to eliminate as much friction within the job as possible and make it for babies. That's what worked for everything else on this list. But if Viper's appeal is more like Ninja's, where it will appeal to a core (and largely gameplay driven) audience, the right choice would be to maintain depth and complexity and give those players something to dedicate to. We won't know which one was right until a couple years out, because any argument about Viper's popularity right now is stained by the fact that it's the brand new flagship job and literally everyone is playing it, but we can speculate.

In my opinion, Viper was initially designed to be targeted to midcore, dedicated audiences. The fandom response when it was revealed was very much so "That's it?/I wanted Corsair," and it was described as a fast-paced, technical-but-stylish job. Many predicted Picto would be more popular. But after seeing the absolute inundation of Vipers in the PF (for EX1 and EX2 clears, there are literally twice as many Vipers as there are Dragoons, Samurais, and Monks COMBINED), Square realized that the job has massive casual appeal and that's where these changes are coming from They want to eliminate friction for a sudden and unexpected cash cow. I think this is a risky move on their part, because in 2 years who knows how many people will be itching to play Viper, but the intent seems clear. I hope they dial back and wait longer to see what the "right call" is (and as an Ultimate Raider and hardcore player, I hope they choose to keep it more complex), but existing precedent scares me a little.

Thanks for reading!