Samurai changes are unacceptable in the current iteration

[Ransu]

It's very rarely so neatly compartmentalized, and you can always count on players to act based on short-term self-interest above all else.

The problem is that the argument for buffs is always predicated on the claim that 'I' play a more difficult job than 'you', which very rarely has an objective basis in fact. I very rarely see someone discussing job IQR within a role (which is an interesting discussion in itself), and most mentions of complexity are invariably made to freestyle gameplay on a job that you don't actually play. In the short term, this gets players the buffs that they want, in terms of both damage output and utility. In the long term, however, the dev team invariably simplify the jobs in question down to address the 'complexity' discrepancy, which makes this all come karmically full circle.

But it's a nuisance for players on other jobs in the short term as well, because historically powerful jobs are going to also have a lot of vocal backing to keep them that way. All of DRK's problems in Stormblood were a direct consequence of the overpowering debate around making WAR more powerful again. DRK provided low reward for effort despite being dismissed as being easy to play by an overly jingoistic WAR playerbase who had no clue about how the job was actually played. And it's because we were willing to patiently keep silent and watch that we spent the better part of four years at a massive disadvantage to everyone else.

I don't think there would be any significant job adjustments or controversy in the melee dps section this expansion had they not happened to release a new job into the category. And that's really what prompted the turf war around 'complexity vs. performance' at the start of the expansion. Unsurprisingly, we yet again see short term buffs to all melee followed by long term plans for simplification. A lot of heartache could be saved if the devs simply saw through why people have these 'complexity' discussions in the first place and just ignored it. This exact same problem will repeat itself with Casters next expansion if they release a new Caster.

I wish that players could have discussions based on their love for a particular job and talk exclusively about making things more fun without impacting other jobs in the process. But it's very rarely so simple, and everyone in the category ultimately has a stake in the discussion.

I personally don't believe in the complexity argument. RPR for example is pretty brain dead easy to play and I'd have no problem with them doing high dps. My only view point on how much DPS a job should output is based on their kit, not how easy or difficult they are to play. SAM and BLM for example imo should ALWAYS be the top DPS because they offer nothing else to the raid. Their utility is their damage output. If another job is outperforming them then the BLM and SAM should be buffed or the overperforming job should be nerfed. Outside of that, the range of dps output should come down to how much utility you offer. The more raid utility you offer the lower your DPS should be.

Its a simple viewpoint, but that's generally how I believe the balance of the game should be. Like in ARR it was difficult to deal with the double bard meta because bard had amazing raid utility to go along with high mobility to deal with mechanics easily and pretty good damage, especially paired with a dragoons piercing debuff, which lead to the design of adding a cast bar to bards "dps stance" in heavensward which naturally most people hated. Its also why MCH is so low in the damage category because they effectively have 100% uptime and no casting. I do personally think their output is a little too low though, but I agree with the design of them not competing with melee dps numbers. They should be outdpsing bard and dnc easily though.

[Ruminous]

I personally don't believe in the complexity argument. RPR for example is pretty brain dead easy to play and I'd have no problem with them doing high dps. My only view point on how much DPS a job should output is based on their kit, not how easy or difficult they are to play. SAM and BLM for example imo should ALWAYS be the top DPS because they offer nothing else to the raid. Their utility is their damage output. If another job is outperforming them then the BLM and SAM should be buffed or the overperforming job should be nerfed. Outside of that, the range of dps output should come down to how much utility you offer. The more raid utility you offer the lower your DPS should be.

Its a simple viewpoint, but that's generally how I believe the balance of the game should be. Like in ARR it was difficult to deal with the double bard meta because bard had amazing raid utility to go along with high mobility to deal with mechanics easily and pretty good damage, especially paired with a dragoons piercing debuff, which lead to the design of adding a cast bar to bards "dps stance" in heavensward which naturally most people hated. Its also why MCH is so low in the damage category because they effectively have 100% uptime and no casting. I do personally think their output is a little too low though, but I agree with the design of them not competing with melee dps numbers. They should be outdpsing bard and dnc easily though.

I like this line of thinking. Though I don't think jobs should be brain dead easy to play (I don't think reaper is that brain dead, it does have nuance to it because of how it builds and manages its resource), they also shouldn't involve finger ballet either. Heavensward was an example of where jobs had way too much to do in your opener that it might be hard to get it all down if the boss did anything other than just a typical raid or tankbuster. The machinist opener back then was...Something else, and for how hard you worked, the payoff just wasn't that great as the fight wore on.

That being said though, complexity and nuance is nice in a job, as it allows you to sort of think about how you want to approach it beyond simply hitting 1-2-3. But also a job shouldn't be too hard that you're staring at the keyboard or controller because you have to push 15 unique buttons to do an opener and filler rotation. Strike a good balance between the two, I say.

[CelestiCer]

snip

I also agree that the " Complexity " argument is flawed.

More Buttons for the sake of more Buttons can be as equally devastating as Less Buttons for the sake of less Buttons. Same goes if you replace the word " Buttons " with to much or to little - Nuance / Complexity / Actions Per Min etc. Gotta strike a balance that will appeal to the majority, or at the very least? allow it to be good enough to do " Most Content ". And then I started thinking of the other Argument I read in the past...

" Stop Gate Keeping by keeping Jobs to difficult! "
Valid opinion. Some games genuinely have content locked behind very difficult content as a secret bonus, just to name 1 example. Imagine for FFXIV that all mounts are locked behind Savage content as 1 awful example.

So! Imagine a Pizza Diagram, with High-End Raiding content making up " 5% " of the slice, then Most Content would make up " 95% " of the remaining Diagram of which does not require mastery of a PvE combat or a Job to truly clear.

Kind of reverse psychology. Cause if the argument was gate keeping due to Job complexity? it must mean content that's to difficult which would be Raiding which barely makes up 5% of the game. Well then what is the other 95% made of that isn't gate kept?

• MainStoryQuest
• Most YellowQuests
• JobQuests
• Most Dungeons
• Glamour
• Gold Saucer
• Crafting
• Gathering
• Fishing
• Sightseeing
• Jumping Puzzles
• Gold Saucer
• Housing
• Obtaining Most Mounts
• Obtaining Most Minions
• Triple Triad or Any Mini-Game honestly
• Playing Instruments
• All BeastTribes
• All Fates
• Hildebrand
• Venues
• Heck any RP of any Kind
• Squadron Barracks
• Firmament
• Deep Dungeons
• Every Cutscene ever
• Every Seasonal event
• Most Achievements
• Most Titles
• Bluemage Content
• Any Trial before Extreme difficulty
• Any Raid before Savage difficulty

The list can go on... of which Job Complexity does not get in the way. I would even Argue high-end raiding isn't gate kept by Job Complexity, since the Enrage requirements overtime gets reduced with available iLvl... it's GateKept by players who are afraid to fail, but that's my opinion.

Even so... it shows that Raiding truly barely makes up 5% of the game. How much of this tiny piece of Pizza slice? needs to be catered to the rest of the player-base? How much easier do we need to make jobs or even compromise making the Raiding difficulty easier?

This is where I just Hard Disagree with the complexity argument. 6.08 Samurai or Kaiten or any difficult Job execution does not stand in the way of clearing most content, which outside of raiding makes up a lot. And even then? it doesn't stop anyone before from clearing any Raids.

However... if the argument is they enjoy Simplifications, Homogenization? Okey, but I would say that's also flawed justification to the changes because that's equal to just never performing or learning Jobs properly, until it's watered down to a point it is " Tasteless without Flavor ", without some identify. Feeling different in Gameplay, none-stale that ruins gameplay designs

As much as Kaiten meant so little to many? it meant a lot to a lot of us. And you can name any lost Skill from any Job. I do not agree with the changes. Even if we never get 6.08 Samurai back, that's just a standpoint I will not change from until they present truly something that is better and improved which is an expectation I won't dare to hold from a Company that willfully acts silent to the feedback they requested.

[Lyth]

...

Jobs have been balanced around rdps for a few expansions now, so that is a non-issue. On Endwalker’s launch SAM was consistently leading in terms of rdps. After players complained about how ‘complex’ jobs didn’t have enough of an rdps advantage over ‘simple’ ones, we gradually moved to where we are now. Which is ironic, really.

The reason why the discussion around ‘complexity’ is flawed is because your awareness of a job’s nuances depends on your level of game experience. Someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time in raid content and plays a job that doesn’t bring its own raid buffs isn’t going to have much awareness around when to offload their pooled resources. So if you give them a job like RPR, they’ll press buttons as they light up like they do on their main job and then dismiss it as easy, blissfully unaware of how bad they are at it.

But I also think that this is a mark of good job design. You can play freestyle when you’re just starting out and are just learning the basics of the game, and if you want to improve your performance by pooling your resources and correctly setting up burst windows with double/triple Enshrouds, you can. It’s great seeing perceptions around a new job gradually change as people start to actually understand and refine their gameplay around it.

Players rarely admit to underperforming. If they’re good at a job that they main it’s ‘complex’, if they don’t it’s a ‘design flaw’. If you actually want to assess job difficulty, you’re better off looking at the IQR, which is a robust statistical measure of spread. That shows you how much variation in performance exists within that specific job. Ideally, all jobs within a specific role should have a similar IQR. Which is true for every role outside of caster dps, really.

[CelestiCer]

The ' Complexity ' argument is so... it only applies if the execution requirement is to difficult for most players which newsflash, during 6.08 or any time we had Kaiten? it didn't stood in the way of Samurai's clearing any Content at any difficulty.

• Did people complain about Kaiten when we had Kaiten? No
• Did people requested Kaiten to be removed? No
• Did people even requested any of the other negative changes from 6.1? No

It literally dumbed Samurai down further, there's no beating around the bush with it. The promise of something new from SE is as empty as the feedback they would respond to. This argument is also overused that I tend to read often...

It's like the repair man punching a hole in my roof and saying " yeah we'll replace it with something new in 6 months or 1 year or so. " And when we even dare to request what that new is or even why that hole was punched in our roof in the 1st place cause it didn't fix anything? we get no response, while being told by our neighbors " It's the norm/It's for balance/it's totally oke ", Amazing logic...

[Vencio]

No but I am & some others decided to go with the flow with it nonetheless.