Black mage changes are probably my breaking point with this game

[Yeonhee]

If such a captivating and popular theme is held hostage and made into a niche job(objectively true when you look at the number of black mage players pre-rework) because of mechanic design, then honestly the entire concept of the job has failed the fantasy of the game entirely and needs to be reworked. The level of entitlement the oldheaded black mages in this community had is insane and honestly, thank god they finally betrayed their interests.

I don't care what you think or what your perspective is because what you desire is against the nature of mmorpgs entirely when you think about them the right way.

Hopefully you get something like chronomancer in the future that can be based entirely around managing timing and timers, dots, whatever it is. You can get a raid buff called hastaga, and you can stop complaining about mechanics again. It can have a fast phase and a slow phase, and you can constantly worry about a timer running out, because stress is good right? We all play games to be stressed out right? The job gauge can literally be the sands of time running out, which can be fleshed out even further by one side being fast, one side being slow, with hastaga buffing both sides and making the slow fast, the fast instant. That way people will know what the job is really based on and never get it confused or worry about it changing. At least chronomancer is thematically related to timers and also wouldn't have mainstream appeal so they have a lot more freedom to play with the job design.

Black mage is not that job and should have never been that job. Your opinion is bad and wrong. The fact that you equate themes to visuals too, you're just out of touch with RPG. I don't think you care about the RPG part of mmoRPG at all. You're just here for the gameplay.

It's kinda funny talking about entitlement when you're pretty much saying that all jobs(at least, all "cool" jobs) should be made braindead to appeal to you specifically while people wanting more complexity in their job should just go screw themselves.

[HikariKurosawa]

It's kinda funny talking about entitlement when you're pretty much saying that all jobs(at least, all "cool" jobs) should be made braindead to appeal to you specifically while people wanting more complexity in their job should just go screw themselves.

Awh go cry about capitalism in hasanabi's chat.

[Yeonhee]

Awh go cry about capitalism in hasanabi's chat.

Lol. Sure, kiddo.

[HikariKurosawa]

Lol. Sure, kiddo.

To address your entitlement angle though, yeah, the majority are entitled. We keep the game alive lol. If they pandered to people like you there wouldn't even be a game to play because you couldn't keep an mmo afloat.

[Rithy255]

To address your entitlement angle though, yeah, the majority are entitled. We keep the game alive lol. If they pandered to people like you there wouldn't even be a game to play because you couldn't keep an mmo afloat.

Data shows that people are getting sick of ff14 though, play rates aren't exactly doing well it would seem to me, maybe the peak is some complexity but nothing silly like bringing back TP. I don't know I remember shadowbringers being popular despite having some complex designs and some "jank" associated with it. I've had friends slowly leave this game and some who stay so what I see from that is the data at least backs up things from my perspective that this game has been going downwards, with new job design direction playing a part in that.

Moderation is generally good, Shadowbringers was a decent middle ground at least for DPS job design. It shows actually that people like you don't keep the game alive and that there would be people who would have stayed if SE kept a more moderate approach to simplification. I doubt most casual players even cared about having perfect on a DPS like black mage but I do suppose you speak for all casual players or something like that.

Edit: (replying to your other comment)
Plus yes I'm here mostly for the gameplay when playing games I know that might be wild to understand. Though I like RPG elements I love being a paladin!

[HikariKurosawa]

Data shows that people are getting sick of ff14 though, play rates aren't exactly doing well it would seem to me, maybe the peak is some complexity but nothing silly like bringing back TP. I don't know I remember shadowbringers being popular despite having some complex designs and some "jank" associated with it. I've had friends slowly leave this game and some who stay so what I see from that is the data at least backs up things from my perspective that this game has been going downwards, with new job design direction playing a part in that.

Moderation is generally good, Shadowbringers was a decent middle ground at least for DPS job design. It shows actually that people like you don't keep the game alive and that there would be people who would have stayed if SE kept a more moderate approach to simplification. I doubt most casual players even cared about having perfect on a DPS like black mage but I do suppose you speak for all casual players or something like that.

People got over their hate for blizzard after blizzard reformed their public image. Endwalker numbers are never going to happen again. You can't draw trends from stuff like that it's really disingenuous. Plus covid is over.

[Rithy255]

People got over their hate for blizzard after blizzard reformed their public image. Endwalker numbers are never going to happen again. You can't draw trends from stuff like that it's really disingenuous. Plus covid is over.

you tell yourself that. loads of people who joined from covid/wow now those very same people are leaving because they're seeing the flaws with this game.

Though enjoy, only time will tell who's wrong I suppose, but I don't see SE doing any better the way they are carrying on

[HikariKurosawa]

you tell yourself that. loads of people who joined from covid/wow now those very same people are leaving because they're seeing the flaws with this game.

Though enjoy, only time will tell who's wrong I suppose, but I don't see SE doing any better the way they are carrying on

They're leaving because they enjoy real life or WoW more and now have nothing holding them back from real life or WoW. It has nothing to do with the "flaws with this game".

It will be pretty funny when you see black mage become a commonly played job that has healthy levels of engagement in PF after these changes though. It was proven to be a failed concept just by the fact that it only had minority level engagement despite having such a strong and desirable fantasy. Why would anyone take a pre-7.2 BLM over a SMN/RDM/PCT in PF?

[Yeonhee]

To address your entitlement angle though, yeah, the majority are entitled. We keep the game alive lol. If they pandered to people like you there wouldn't even be a game to play because you couldn't keep an mmo afloat.

Yes, casual players represent the majority of players. But contrary to what you seem to think, being a casual player doesn't mean that you are utterly unable and/or unwilling to learn and play a job with more complexity. Casual =/= braindead. There's what, 21 jobs at the moment ? Could we not have both easier and more complex jobs ? Do people who want everything to be braindead really need to have all 21 jobs for them ?

By the way, raiders are also a minority. Should SE just stop making Savages and Ultimates ? Do you think it would be good for the overall health of the game ? When you keep giving the middle finger to parts of your playerbase because "It's just a minority", at some point all those minorities start to count for a lot of players.

[Rithy255]

They're leaving because they enjoy real life or WoW more and now have nothing holding them back from real life or WoW. It has nothing to do with the "flaws with this game".

It will be pretty funny when you see black mage become a commonly played job that has healthy levels of engagement in PF after these changes though. It was proven to be a failed concept just by the fact that it only had minority level engagement despite having such a strong and desirable fantasy. Why would anyone take a pre-7.2 BLM over a SMN/RDM/PCT in PF?

I'm enjoying real life myself, doesn't mean I got ff14 holding me back but it would be cool if I had more to learn and master in this game on my time off when I wanna enjoy myself, people are leaving because flaws with the game, you may not see any flaws your entitled to your opinion, but they for sure see the flaws and frankly it's hard not to see the flaws if you actually enjoyed some of the older designed jobs.

You may not know this but Black mage was actually pretty popular in Endwalker more popular then red mage in raiding, black mage has been a semi popular caster consistently the only reason your seeing less engagement with Black mage is because Pictomancer did everything it could (aka big damage) but better and with added utility.

The answer kind of speaks for itself people didn't wanna pick black mage because it was awfully underpowered you almost always wanted to bring a pictomancer over any other caster, Summoner also went down in play rate you know why? because people follow the meta.

If black mage had a actual place to be good then its pick rate wouldn't be as bad, maybe not as much as pictomancer because its the new fad, but it wasn't a strong viable option, you'll likely see some a few people move over to black mage, but a lot of players will just pick whatever is the best meta like they always have done.

I don't think it's good to appease a small amount of people who somehow found black mage too hard in dungeons or whatever so that the dedicated players to the job essentially lose that playstyle and have nothing else to look forward to.

I guess you'll keep making excuses why numbers show changes like this aren't good for the long run of the game even if the numbers keep getting worse then they already are.