Homogenization and Simplicity in Tank Roles

[Shin96]

Countering anecdotal evidence with even more anecdotal evidence, that's cute. Care to take a guess of the % of the playerbase frequenting community Discords (which are obviously totally not echo chambers either themselves)?

As I have said my friend, if I were to say that tanks are generally disgruntled because of the statements I heard, that would count as anecdotal evidence. I never claimed that. As for the percentage ruminating Discord server; I wouldn't know and truth be told, saying they're echo chambers is just as useless of an argument to make because your presence is not overreaching. I sincerely doubt you're a scientist discovering data to work with, so we leave it at that.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have some conspiracy theories to make. They won't create themselves.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

As I have said my friend, if I were to say that tanks are generally disgruntled because of the statements I heard, that would count as anecdotal evidence. I never claimed that. As for the percentage ruminating Discord server; I wouldn't know and truth be told, saying they're echo chambers is just as useless of an argument to make because your presence is not overreaching. I sincerely doubt you're a scientist discovering data to work with, so we leave it at that.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have some conspiracy theories to make. They won't create themselves.

At the end of the day, only Square has the statistics that they make decisions based on. Anything we can say is merely speculation.

But there are fan statistics that let you catch a glimpse into the vocal minority the DRK complainers fall themselves into and that the vast majority are at least satisfied, outside of minor gripes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1392521529

TL : DR, Roughly 76% of DRKs are satisfied with the job in SHB. 1/3rd gave it a perfect rating, a little over another 1/3rd only have minor gripes (a sizeable amount of which literally comes down to how DRK is doing in the meta and not job action based.). Another 10% isn't satisfied or dissatisfied, and only 14% have large dissatisfaction. While it's clear from the statistics that DRK & WAR are both more polarized than PLD & GNB are, the complainers on DRK are vastly outnumbered by those satisfied by current DRK's design. if Square's internal statistics produce a similar trend, it's extremely easy to see why they're going in the trend they are. It's appealing to majority.

At the end of the day, unless Square does an official poll anything we say is nothing but speculation based on anecdotal evidence. But in reality, only the people dissatisfied with the job will be speaking out, so going into discords, you'll tend to only hear people voicing gripes. Since those satisfied with the job will just yknow, be playing the job. Or not have anything interesting to add to discussions.

[AziraSyuren]

snip

I take issue with the sample size and lack of clarification on what they mean by high end. Is it a self report? I bet a lot of players would fancy themselves as high-end raiders when all they do is clear weekly.

The fact that high-end tank players are literally more satisfied with their role than any other in the game except casters checks out, though. Tanking is the best it's ever been and it's vindicating to see that that's not even a particularly uncommon opinion.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

I take issue with the sample size and lack of clarification on what they mean by high end. Is it a self report? I bet a lot of players would fancy themselves as high-end raiders when all they do is clear weekly.

The fact that high-end tank players are literally more satisfied with their role than any other in the game except casters checks out, though. Tanking is the best it's ever been and it's vindicating to see that that's not even a particularly uncommon opinion.

In the absence of official statistics, fan statistics is all we can go off of. Hence why I said it lets people catch a glimpse since its an interesting insight even with a limited sample size. It was a google form people filled out, and one of the tabs was a dropdown indicating if you were high end or casual.

There was also similar surveys done near the beginning of 5.0 asking people what they thought about the updates SHB did to their job coming from SB which give similar results, where DRK sits at a 70% positive rating: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=991492593
And a JP one of the same survey that was done which also reports DRK at about ~74%-ish satisfaction. https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...dark_red_most/

The sample sizes aren't amazing, but there's a clear trend emerging across them. For every 1 person that has issues with new DRK, there's 3 that are satisfied with it. Hence why I made the observation that if Square's internal statistics are showing anything even remotely similar to this, it shows a clear bias in favor of moving ahead with current DRK design.