Controversioal Changes to Monk

[dezzmont]

The math has repeatedly showed that missing all positionals EXCEPT for Bootshine resulted in a negligible DPS loss. So, ignoring the vast majority of your positionals wasn't punishing for the vast majority of players.

I agree that positional on monk essentially don't matter and are weirdly less emphasized than other melee outside of Bootshine.

Positionals actually add to the job, its just the way they are implemented is real darn bad and they should feel 'better' to hit. Again, accessibility of a job and it being easy are not the same thing, part of why monk is so inaccessable is so many of its mechanics are 'hidden' or obfuscated and it 'demanding' something more visibly and offering a reward more visibly would actually probably help it a lot.

GL loss was the closest thing to "punishment" the job threw at players, and to be frank, if you were dropping GL at any point before a cutscene completely robbed control of the encounter away from you, you were either dead, or actually bad at the job.

It's sorta inarguable that GL was a punishment mechanic, sorta like dropping Enochian, but it lacks any of the charms of Enochian and you can instantly get Enochian back if you did it for long enough or if you died. GL's affect on death is REALLY bad, and that is a common occurance among new players in new content, and that definitely should matter in a job design.

Like imagine if Bard couldn't cast its dots for a full 45 seconds after doing its dots, so if you died or let them drop at any time you suddenly just weren't able to play Bard. It doesn't matter that this shouldn't happen unless your making mistakes on Bard, it is just way too punishing and doesn't actually make Bard better. If a skilled player barely notices a mechanic and an unskilled one is just finding it frustrating, it isn't a good mechanic, and keeping it in just so that it is harder to learn Monk isn't good design. It isn't 'dumbing a job down' to reduce dead weight like GL (at least in the form it was in, later on you have a really interesting idea of what to do with it I like!).

Chakra RNG has been a problem for the job since 2.0

I didn't mention Chakra RNG because I don't think it is really a 'punishment' so much as a bad design for the job, but fixing Charka RNG would be nice. Its something I have heard monks complain about forever and its so weird that their 50 capstone is so lackluster.

We should have gotten something that rewarded aggressive Monks for maintaining GL over a set period of time, even if that something was as simple as "press this, get max GL again and do some ogcd damage."

That would be a good mechanic that makes GL actually have a positive purpose for the job rather than kicking players while they are down, yes. That is baaasiiically how Enochian works: You can force reset it after dying (or if you hold it for long but make a mistake) even though you technically can upkeep it forever, and holding rewards you with a big attack. Still rewards agro monks, but makes the act of dying way less feels bad for newer players learning the job.

Enochian is basically 'not bad GL' so making GL more like Enochian does make a lot of sense. I think this would have been enough to 'save' GL. That said, I suspect this would make a lot of Monks unhappy because it basically makes recovering GL trivial so I didn't personally suggest 'make GL more like Enochian.'

[IruruCece]

It's sorta inarguable that GL was a punishment mechanic

Hard disagree, again. GL wasn't a punishment mechanic in the least. It was incredibly easy to maintain even under duress, to the point where even some loser like me could do it more often than not, and by my own standards that means it's accessible as heck. Honestly, cutscenes that robbed control from the players were more of a punishment mechanic than GL ever was, and ever those don't count as punishment. They're flaws in a game filled with flaws. Just like how SE's insistence that dropping GL at all, for any reason, whether it was your fault or the fault of being forced to watch an underaged naked girl get cuddly with a dragon for the umpteenth time while trying to prog a hard fight, meant that you had to start from scratch EVERY TIME. The "punishment" side of things has nothing to do with the idea of GL, if you want to insist it was a punishment of some sort, and more to do with the fact that SE doubled down on bad design decisions at every possible crossroad they could have zagged instead of constantly zigging.

Realistically, even taking new player difficulties into account with new content doesn't make GL a punishment mechanic either. Everyone dies on hard stuff the first (few dozen) times they run it. That would be like me, a TERRIBLE black mage, claiming that cast times are a punishment mechanic, or that dropping Enochian before I can maintain it long enough for my big special button is a punishment mechanic. That would be like me, a TERRIBLE and VERY INEXPERIENCED summoner, claiming that losing my trance before I could get off my big attacks is a punishment mechanic.

I disagree with calling the result of failing to accomplish something a "punishment mechanic", especially in the case of GL, and especially for new players, because everyone is new at some point. You have to practice to get better at something. Dropping GL isn't because the devs were necessarily being mean to the player, you either died or failed to maintain your combos. Both of those are on YOU the individual, and with practice you learn to get around those things.

What IS punishment, if you can call it that, is losing the self-buff because of things that are 100 percent outside of your control, or having to start over from scratch every time... and even then I'd still not call it punishment.

The solutions to GL loss, to Tornado Kick being worthless, to our Chakra generation, have literally been proposed for years by players who are FAR more experienced and hardcore than I ever was, am, or will be, and SE actively refused to take any feedback about the job seriously until player numbers for it dropped off the cliff. I'm not even the first person to say "make GL like Enochian is now", I stole that from someone better at the game and if I remembered who said it first I'd absolutely credit them. That players can sit down for maybe five minutes and think about the very game they are playing and come up with something more engaging than turning GL into a TRAIT really shows how little care has gone into the job at this point. I think some cynicism about things at this point is warranted, lol.

[dezzmont]

Hard disagree, again. GL wasn't a punishment mechanic in the least. It was incredibly easy to maintain even under duress...

How easy or not it is to maintain isn't what punishing means.

Burd sumarized it way better than I could though: It isn't that you can lose GL that makes it punishing, plenty of jobs have that. It is because the options for Monk to recover GL are really bad (and they need to be because its sorta part of the identity of GL compared to every other job buff). Losing GL is about as intense a punishment as losing Enochian (about 40% of your DPS), but losing Enochian may affect you for as little as one cast if you didn't make too many mistakes in the fight: You can recover from whatever mechanic sent you to scatter and get right back into it with full potency. Meanwhile, GL is out 40% of its DPS for about 15-20 seconds no matter what you do, and you need to maintain uptime to get it back. Not to mention MNK has an actual complicated rotation while BLM is basically 4 buttons. There is just a really good reason people don't whine about Enochian (which is nearly identical to GL besides the fact it forgives you once every 30 seconds and actively downgrades your rotation to really tell you that you mucked up) and GL.

PLG is a starter job, and I suspect the reason they nuked it so fast is because the sheer willingness MNK has to dumpster you with no recourse (even if it is in theory easy to avoid) probably isn't great for retention. The decision to gut Monk without a plan to replace GL with anything was a pretty extreme one, and that speaks pretty heavily to it not being a 'forum dweller bellyacher' problem and way more a 'We are noticing a LOT of players who started as PLG quitting without subbing by 50 on the Free Trial' problem.

[ssunny2008]

'We are noticing a LOT of players who started as PLG quitting without subbing by 50 on the Free Trial' problem.

If that would be the case, then it´s not a MNK or PLG issue, it´s a game issue.

A lot of ppl come from different MMORPG´s caused by game changes or content lacks. They try FF14 and get fast bored. There is not even near a challenge involved in the MSQ and the progress takes ages. Until lvl 30 you´ve like 3 skills to use on any class and it doesn´t get better with level 50. Even the dungeons are no great experience when you´ve played similar games.
At the end you´re going to reach castrum, which shows a clear middlefinger to the gameplay experience.

I´ve had a couple of friends trying this game with different classes. All of them had the same experience and the exact words have been: "Well, it´s ok, but i don´t get warm with it."
Melees bring atleast something to the gameplay with their positionals even on low level. But the rest? Spamming 1 - 4 buttons pre level 70 without taking care about ressources or anything else?! Cutting Tanks, healer, cards or GL didn´t make things better, it made them even worse.

[dezzmont]

Snip

No, it would 100% be a Monk problem if people who started PLG/MNK switched jobs or stopped playing at a disproportionate rates. Like that is about as objective proof that 'there is a problem with monk' as there could be. If you think the devs seeing say... a 30% higher quit rate on one job doesn't indicate a problem with that job, but rather the entire rest of the new player experience, despite the fact it isn't affecting other jobs, you are basically saying no evidence could convince you there is a problem with monk, which means your arguing on belief rather than facts.

At the end of the day this is settled. You can shout about how Monk was fine and they should have done any other number of changes to GL, and some may in fact make a lot of sense, but there clearly was enough of a measurable problem to warrant truly dramatic measures mid-patch that indicate this is not, in fact, 'new player whining' and no amount of nostalgia for GL will bring it back. It is already been settled, the verdict was GL was guilty of the crimes people accused it of, and it is a bit late to turn back time on its execution.

If you continue to insist there were not problems with it, or that they were fixable, or something people could work to overcome, that is your right. Opinions are subjective, I wouldn't dare say 'People who enjoyed old Monk are liars.' However, 1: We have actual data, not just random forum posts that show this isn't a widespread belief (ex: The Stormblood Job Satisfaction Survey) and 2: Insisting that it was a minority of uninformed whiners complaining about GL who just needed to 'git good' runs counter to every bit of evidence we have on how Monk was perceived by the majority of the community who does not participate in the forums.

[ssunny2008]

snip

There is much more data and knowledge about circumstances needed to be sure about such claims and changing classes is somehow different than calling "lvl 50 bye bye".

Just some short brainstorming:

We´ve different groups of gamers: Experienced players on PC, non - experienced players on PC and PS players, where the most are probably not familiar with MMORPG´s. Now we start the game, while non experienced players will look a bit around and choose a class based on the background and own expectations, the experienced ones will choose on old preferences.

For example:
- There are only 2 melee starter classes for experts left. The most other MMORPG´s don´t have MNK´s in their list of classes and it´s probably more like the standard dual swinging warrior class than a DRG. Here we would need data about it, but MNK might have been picked more often than DRG to start the game.
- Other players, who´re familiar with the FF series might even pick MNK because of given characters like Tifa or Cell since Squall or Cloud are no option here.

As next we could compare the starting zones. Gridania and Limsa are way better to get into the game. Uldah is a cool town, but it´s aweful to keep the overview if you´re new into the game.

Then you play 50 levels or so in your free trial. Why would you do that with a class, you don´t like? The games offers you to change your class pretty fast, but ppl stay on MNK, just to leave the game 100h later? Does it make sense too you?

And again i can just recommend castrum. It´s a mess especially for experienced players. "Oh wow, 8 man raid, cool." might be the expectation. But the truth is, you stuck in the queue for ages, then you just follow and watch some cuzszenes. The first one might be "ok", but the 2nd is a gamekiller. You spawn, you start to move, and apparently you die at the first elevator before you mention "what´s going on". While lieing dead on the ground, you´ve to watch a cutszene, then you´re getting ported, just to do 1-3 skills on a halfdead boss. This continues until you miss the key to use the mech´s, etc.... 100 of hours just to get slapped into your face over and over again.

Even if you´ve gone trough castrum and come to the enjoyment from the first EX content, it´s a mess. It takes ages to find ppl to play them, then you finally join in, just to see a handful of Mentors quitting immediately or calling something like "go unsynced, bye". The game-experience until 80 is overshadowed by a lot of negative aspects SE clearly ignores on purpose. Atleast they were able to shorten the pointless MSQ walking simulations.

And if we´re talking about unexperienced players or even PS players at this point, then we can be sure, that the most of them don´t read the skills properly, that they don´t take care about GL or positionals anyway, until someone is trying to teach them. There are more than enough of them on Level 80, who don´t even know how important DoT´s are on BRD or that you don´t re-use them with 20s left. It´s just simple button spam, a thing you can´t do on MNK with being in Courl or Raptor Form.
Not to mention that playing positionals might be somehow harder with controller or atleast the "will to get used to it" must be larger than on PC.


On the other hand, yes, ppl are able and might change their classes. It happens with any class and everyone who stays will play more than 1 class anyway.

Here we´ve a lot of circumstances to take care about. There is a lot of given content where ranges are just a better pick and easier to play. Since the most of the players here are casuals, it´s normal to see more than enough RDM´s in content like bozja / eureka where you get punished for dying. On the other hand DNC has become one, if not the most favorite pick. It´s super easy, has no punishment like Mudra has and you can rely on better players. Melees overall and especially MNK are somehow harder to play in any content and not all of them are as broken as SAM is with the damage output.

So of course we can claim and agree, that MNK is the least played class. But is it a bad thing or does it has a problem? NO!

Again some references:

- So many ppl claim that BLM is perfect designed, but it´s not more picked than MNK. Why? The reason seems obvious, it´s special to play as much as MNK is special to play.
- Another thing is a personal experience. The most MNK´s i meet, know what to do and learn / play their job. It´s the same with BLM´s. There are enough players who take that little challenge on purpose instead of relying on classes like DNC. To have such classes and challenging content is a must have for any MMORPG out there.

That said again, it´s not a bad thing to have some classes for a minority. We´re part of the game as others are and it doesn´t matter if ppl call something perfect or filled with issues. All classes are playable, only 1-2 are broken when we talk about damage.

So where is actually the problem of MNK?
They got ride of GL, but the popularity didn´t changed. After 5.3 a bunch of threads even appeared like "Wuhu, no GL anymore, can we get ride of positionals?"
It´s a fat joke. Ppl don´t main a job, don´t know how to play their jobs, but want changes here and there, because they failed or are just too lazy. And this with 17 jobs in the game, where everyone can find 1 to fall in love with it, for sure.

Not any of the jobs has a real issue, they´re designed as they´re and has been loved from different players at each patch. And again, what´s with the perfect BLM? Why isn´t BLM even near as popular as DNC or SAM´s are? How could it be as THE PERFECT class? (Yes i want an answer!)

It´s not all as it shines and fact is, that the most players are just lazy and prefer to claim something is bs or unbeatable than to practice and to get better. It´s like ppl claim "positionals are so easy, but i don´t want to play them." It´s not like once you got used to them, you´re going to play them blind. So what´s the issue to play them, when you´re going to play them automatically anyway?

Nobody knows, because we need way more data and circumstances. Not just an opinion, self-made issues or even lies to confirm the own argument.

[dezzmont]

So of course we can claim and agree, that MNK is the least played class. But is it a bad thing or does it has a problem? NO!

You are right! Low play rate doesn't alone indicate a problem. Low play rate because niche (like BLM) is different than low play rate because of an unfriendly job design! Play rates should not be the only metric we care about.

- So many ppl claim that BLM is perfect designed, but it´s not more picked than MNK. Why?

Black mage has a lot going for it design wise. The main things that jump out are the clear 'goals' of the class that you can understand, with excelent, frequent feedback on how well you are doing in the rotation, lacking severe punish elements that make the job fall apart for more than a few seconds, while still having lots of room for mastery and for players to display skill.

Enochian and GL are very similar designs, but work to different ends. Enochian rewards you for aggression, but does so positively rather than negatively, and managing it is non-trivial. You will need to figure out yourself when to 'abort' to resetting rather than doing your optimal rotation, a skill even good players need. A good monk never really thinks about GL, but a good BLM has to think about Enochian.

On top of this, the abilities getting lots of visual updates or replacements means BLM has very good feedback. You want to earn abilities in the Black Mage rotation and play black mage well not for its own abstract sake, but because executing well on Black mage feels REALLY good, and losing out on casts is very noticable to the player and feels bad, without feeling like a punishment.

Monk doesn't need to become like black mage obviously, but there is a very good reason Black Mage is considered a well designed job despite it not being super popular: Black Mage knows what it is, tells you what it is, and you know pretty damn fast if you like black mage or not. Most players don't like turret mages and that is fine, but it is very 'honest' in what it is about to the point even non-black mage players know a lot about how black mage plays and sees the game (heck, people who I know don't play XIV send me Leyline AOE memes! The job is THAT well designed its influence extends outside of XIV!).

Monk meanwhile basically requires you to read a balance guide to 'figure it out.' So many abilities have unclear or confusing uses, or have overlap that make you wonder what the heck is going on (ex: PB vs Form Shift. Their actual uses are very different but if you are starting out Monk you will have no clue what you are supposed to use either of them for). This, combined with terrible animations and the lack of any 'reward' style attacks, combined with a lot of 'bad' outcomes like dropping debuff or GL or buffs, make it very disorienting and stressful despite not being hard.

Monk is in the worst case scenario where it is complex, but not deep as a job at all.

[Sqwall]

If you continue to insist there were not problems with it, or that they were fixable, or something people could work to overcome, that is your right. Opinions are subjective, I wouldn't dare say 'People who enjoyed old Monk are liars.' However, 1: We have actual data, not just random forum posts that show this isn't a widespread belief (ex: The Stormblood Job Satisfaction Survey) and 2: Insisting that it was a minority of uninformed whiners complaining about GL who just needed to 'git good' runs counter to every bit of evidence we have on how Monk was perceived by the majority of the community who does not participate in the forums.

I great comparison.... NIN vs. MNK playstyle. NIN and MNK have been very close in playstyle since ARR, but I would say NIN has gone in the right direction. While MNK has most definitely gone in the wrong direction. Now if we think about those players that changed to NIN after it launched and stuck with it, I would say that they feel WAY better about their decision then those that stuck with MNK.

To that point....I regret my decision on sticking with MNK due to the terrible decision making for MNK over the years. It's not the games fault at all otherwise EVERY job would be horrible. I have played nearly all the jobs (sch never wowed me), and I can say this. MNK can't hold a CANDLE to NIN as far as job gameplay design. NIN job design compliments it's identity COMPLETELY.

MNK completely misses the mark as a gameplay design, and gradually lost it's identity over the years. NIN kept it's identity and I hate to say it, but I have way more fun on NIN then MNK.

From a new player stand point? No crap those that pick MNK are turned off to the game, and it doesn't do well to keep the job in it's current state. It only harms the new player experience and can drive new players away if they make the first judgement. "Wow MNK sucks, are all jobs like this?" "Free trial is up and MNK sucks, no sub" These are actually questions I have heard from IRL friends, but I simply tell them....MNK just sucks lol, pick a different job. BUT then they say "But I like punching things!" Which brings up the same argument again. Why did you decide MNK in the first place, "Because I like fast gameplay and punching things, so I choose MNK"

SE has an obligation to new players and old players to fix this class and bring it back on track. A track that serves the new players to stick with it and have a good pay off, rather then a wet fart it is now. And for those that have stuck with it (raises hand), to make it not such a complete mess of a max level mediocre ARR 2.0 MNK.

This person is 100% correct in saying the job is the problem....not the game.