Results of a reddit job satisfaction poll

[Recon1o6]

Hey folks, was browsing ff14 reddit and came across this poll that was done on it a couple of days ago that got a hell of a lot of responses

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...urvey_results/

It threw up some interesting results that absically confirm a lot of what's being said on the forums for ages now. Even taking into account this was just reddit, its still useful to look at (hell the devs seem to take that into account more than the official forums)


1. The changes and gutting to old abilities and jobs this expansion have not been enjoyed by the playerbase.
More skills than ever seem to have been lost, but the ones replacing them this expansion have mainly been passive upgrades.

The creep of CC removal, enmity being a party wide thing, support actions like goad and mana transer, unique if similar abilities being changed to a single one... all these extra functions being removed are taking their toll

2. The entirety of the healers have suffered immensely from excessive homogenisation, trampling of lore and previous gameplay styles (fairy, synergised tools and dots for sch, procs and druid elements for whm, ast cards and time magic) and removal of downtime abilities. Sch is number 2 most dissatisfied in casual and overall (3rd in hc) and Ast is 3rd most disliked in casual and 4th overall (4th in hc)

White mage by contrast is generally more liked due to the lily system being usable now. But even then its towards the middle of the jobs alongside those that had base breaking reworks like mch and drk because of its other issues.

3. Monk, Bard, Drk and Warrior are desperate for some love.
Warrior hasn't really had anything new for a while that's not been generic tank additions or removed
Monk has been suffering since ARR days with no new skills, only removed ones replaced at higher levels (nin is also notable for this)
Drk being turned into a clone of Warrior has been more favourably received than SB but its likely it would have been placed lower were other jobs changes not disliked so bitterly
Bard is currently in a dire state despite its bandage in 5.1 to make it resemble a bard again

4. Its notable that the support focused jobs are disliked a lot this expansion. The support playstyle jobs (bard, ast, rdm, nin, dnc) are all towards the lower end of hte satisfaction with the exception of Rdm.
Rdm is notable as an outlier as its support is mainly when things go wrong (cure/raise) and it was the job that lost the least during the transition to 5.0. even then though it has very poor damage and its support when groups are performing as intended is dependant on group make up

What this could show is that the devs focus on rDPS and balance has been a bit too much as opposed to fun factor. Support for these jobs is for the most part single digit (bard 1% buff song? Ast 6% card/divination? Ninja trick 5%?) and a lot of players have expressed sentiments that these buffs don't feel like they are doing anything compared ot say Shield Samba at 15% block.

Especially without a parser

5. Shb has introduced some QoL into a lot of jobs, but at the same time it has brought with it other issues that need fixing.

6. The reception of overhauled jobs this expansion has been mixed. Mch and Drk got the most radical ones and they are in the middle of the pack with some that like the changes and others that feel they are completely off from what they are supposed to be.
Summoner and ninja both got some quick fixes and they are middle of the road as well depending on category.

[SamRF]

Would be great if we could get a response from developers letting us know they are at least acknowledging the problems people have. Pretty statistically significant poll.

[Recon1o6]

Aye
a full in depth official poll would be nice, but this one alone is pretty significant

[Deceptus]

Would be great if we could get a response from developers letting us know they are at least acknowledging the problems people have. Pretty statistically significant poll.

A actual response from SE about healer issues? Yeah right.

2866 responses? That survey is absolutely statistically valid. Survey companies would LOVE those kind of numbers.

[TheRealQuah]

I think what's interesting is how you can use a set of statistics to make any point that you want. If something is towards the lower end of the satisfaction, that doesn't mean it's disliked. I'm not disagreeing with any point you make, but you could easily turn round and say the following things and they are technically true:

"Monk is the only job in the game where the majority of its player base are unsatisfied"
People were asked to rate out of 5, every job other than monk has an average rating of over 2.5, which means the majority of the people who play those jobs are happy.

"Only 16.1% of players are dissatisfied with the state of their main job right now"
That's a very small amount, why change what isn't broken?

"The main issue players have is their current jobs position in the meta"
Meta doesn't matter outside of speed runs so the main issue people have right now is a moot point.

"67.2% of the player base class themselves as hardcore players and are active in high end content (EX and above)"
Okay so in that case, we should put a lot more effort into making more end game raids and really hard content.

The survey was completed by an absolutely minuscule amount of the player base (2700 or something), was completed on reddit (r/ffxiv is an absolute cesspit), and the main thing you get out of it is "SE are doing a fantastic job, make monk better, and develop less casual and more endgame content"

(oh and some of the responses in the spreadsheet actually had me in stitches)

[StriderShinryu]

"The main issue players have is their current jobs position in the meta"
Meta doesn't matter outside of speed runs so the main issue people have right now is a moot point.

This is such an interesting point to me. As someone who plays and follows a lot of fighting games, I often see a very similar perspective amongst fighting game players. The vast majority of the player base is not playing at any level in which the meta or a standardized tier list matters at all. Yet, because of social media and the viral nature of metas and tier lists everyone is now aware of them and feel, often wrongly, that the lists apply to them. The reality in FF14 is that any content, even the most difficult content, can be cleared by any combination of classes. Sure, if you're a super hardcore raider who pushes for day one completions and world firsts, it may matter to you but the vast majority of players are not in that niche. And yet, for pretty much every player, the fact that their class may not be completely up to snuff is common knowledge and it's just human nature to see the class you play as not being good enough (even if you can do any content you try to do). And there are players who will essentially weaponize the meta to hold it over the heads of other players in all content.

Anyway, I play SAM and RDM and am largely very happy with both, despite one being considered strong and the other not so much. I've never felt that either class has kept me from doing what I've wanted and I find both really fun (which is why I play and like them).

As for the changes that have been made, I really am not a fan of what they did to DRK. Technically I'm sure it doesn't play poorly, but it just doesn't feel like it has the anything of the flavour that it used to.

[Deceptus]

"The main issue players have is their current jobs position in the meta"
Meta doesn't matter outside of speed runs so the main issue people have right now is a moot point.

All that this really shows is that the "casual" players on reddit aren't that casual. They're EX level players or better who think that's casual content (it's not. It's mid tier)

Casuals don't care about the META. Hell, most of them don't even know it exists.

[SpeckledBurd]

To the surprise of absolutely no one who's payed attention for the last three expansions, Monks are unhappy with their job.

Who'd have thought that if you don't fix the problems players have their job for literal years, they're unhappy with it.

[EtherRose]

To the surprise of absolutely no one who's payed attention for the last three expansions, Monk's are unhappy with their job.

Who'd have thought that if you don't fix the problems players have their job for literal years, they're unhappy with it.

Mmmm, no. MNK was great up until ShB. See, this is where the community stands in that reddit post. Everybody has different preferences. And a small amount of what 2700 replies isn't that big compared to the actual player base. Also, unless someone went through and read every single reply, how would we know if all of them are disappointed or they find no problem at all? In conclusion just because a small part of the community finds their job not like how it used to be or lame doesn't mean the rest of us think the same.

[Sylve]

Mmmm, no. MNK was great up until ShB. See, this is where the community stands in that reddit post. Everybody has different preferences. And a small amount of what 2700 replies isn't that big compared to the actual player base. Also, unless someone went through and read every single reply, how would we know if all of them are disappointed or they find no problem at all? In conclusion just because a small part of the community finds their job not like how it used to be or lame doesn't mean the rest of us think the same.

I mained Monk through all of ARR and loved it for the simplicity in its 'dance' of positionals and buff upkeep.
Could never work Chakras and TK into my rotation in a way that felt organic to my muscle memory.
Stormblood didn't change that lol. The riddles were just .. weird to me. The core rotation of Monk is still very much the ARR monk i remember, Its all the stuff floating around it that led me to abandon it because it just never felt right to play.

Shadowbringers feels a bit better but still can't enjoy it the way i used to in ARR and I'm really not entirely sure how they could bring that back, short of turning Tornado Kick and SSS into DRG-esque combo extensions to the basic DK/BS - TS/TS - SP/Demo.
As an aside though .. They really need to change the Fist buffs into something meaningful.