The Removal of Kaiten Ruins The Game Feel of Samurai

[RushBee]

I know that the development team doesn't read these forums so this is more for a sense of closure on my part versus any hope of getting Samurai to not feel terrible.
Like many people I REALLY don't like the removal of Kaiten from the Samurai skills. Some people have came out and started mischaracterizing Samurai players for "oh look they're crying about not doing as much damage as before". Well, personally I'd much rather have 6.08 Samurai's skills whilst doing the worst damage out of the whole party (including tanks and healers) versus 6.1 Samurai even if 6.1 Samurai was stupidly broken by doing 3x the damage of the next best DPS whilst having the survivability of WAR.

What I'm most upset about is how the "game feel" of Samurai feels terrible post-Kaiten removal and how it ruins the job fantasy of Samurai.

Now, I'm under no delusion that FFXIV accurately depicts samurai as they were historically (which were predominantly noble classed, horsemen fighting with a variety of weapons who can murder any peasant they want as long as they feel disrespected by said peasant) but rather from what I gather from the weapon skills and the job quests etc. is that FFXIV seeks to portray the "mythologized" samurai which draws from both the modern mythology surrounding samurai as itinerant avengers and works from the master director Akira Kurosawa (notice how virtually every Samurai artifact set has been robes of variation vs the actual armour they wore in real-life combat, we’re definitely drawing from the mythology of the samurai versus the actual historical samurai that fought on the battlefield).

And part of this mythology/fantasy is the idea of the Iaido fighting techniques which are based around drawing the sword from the scabbard for an attack. Whilst the HEMA enthusiast in me questions the practicality of such techniques, there’s no denying it is cool and oozes style. And this was what Kaiten was, it was a digital version of this act of sheathing the sword for a decisive strike. Whilst I don’t really care about the DPS numbers, I do care about the game feel. And the removal of Kaiten removes part of this Samurai job fantasy of being a wandering badass who sheathes their sword in preparation for a decisive strike.

>>>SEE MY NEXT POST FOR PART 2 OF OP<<<

[RushBee]

“But Ace Le’Fay! Square Enix might not see this as a part of the job fantasy! You might just be making stuff up!”

I fundamentally disagree. Let me prove it to you.

In the Shadowbringers trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tyuIh12_HU&), we are treated to a duel between the Warrior of Light and Zenos (our archnemesis). The opening builds up to the duel between the WOL and Zenos, the music pauses when both Samurai sheathes their blade, the camera focuses on the action of the blade being sheathed and drawn for both Samurai and the camera angle of the “decisive strike” shows both Samurai charging at each other. Whilst you may disagree with Kaiten being removed or not, I think it’s impossible to deny that even Square Enix thinks the act of sheathing the sword and drawing it is a cool thing to the point where they put it in their big marketing material to sell one of their biggest products to the public.

1/6 of a promotional trailer for one of the biggest releases in Square Enix's line-up was devoted to building up to that Iaido style sheathing and drawing of the sword. To me, that says Square Enix thought this would contribute to copies of the game being sold and therefore is cool, flashy and awesome etc. or be perceived as such.

“But Ace Le’Fay! It’s just an animation! Who cares?!”

I do and the Internet does. Let me prove it to you. Part of “game feel” is the audiovisual side. Your attack might do the big numbers but if the audiovisual feedback feels bad, you’ll get players saying “this feels weak/bad etc.” Want me to prove it? Just look up something along the lines of “satisfying game animations” and you’ll get visual examples. Stuff like satisfying reload animations and sounds (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvH-RMfyrxE) in modern day shooters which sell you on the fantasy of being a soldier/special forces/operator of firearms, this video has around 3 million views which to me signals that people care about satisfying animations. Or even the incredibly satisfying glory kills of Doom where even though when you boil them down, they’re canned QTE animations. They feel so satisfying that people have compiled a collection of them and millions have watched them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5e_DrInRs0). Why? Because they sell the fantasy of being this demon killing badass that Hell is terrified of. That is why “but it’s only an animation” sounds really odd to me, yes it is an animation but audiovisual feedback is what >sells< the fantasy.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I don’t really expect any changes to happen. Samurai will probably continue to have its job fantasy ruined all for the sake of “balance” and “button bloat" (even though there are MANY better choices for this, like who even uses Guren outside of dungeons?) And I’ll probably have moved onto another MMO.

Tl;dr Kaiten was more than a do damage button, it’s audiovisual feedback was an essential part of the class fantasy and Square Enix seems to think so along with the fact that audiovisual feedback is important.

EDIT: It has been brought to my attention that you still sheathe the sword for Midare. And whilst this is true, it IMO doesn't answer the problem that there is a lack of audiovisual feedback before that "decisive strike" meaning that the "decisive" strike doesn't feel anywhere as good. There is an objective subtraction as NOTHING has replaced the sounds and visuals of Kaiten before doing an attack. You may disagree with how much this matters but it is impossible to say that "nothing was taken away" (unless you count spamming yet another Shinten as a valid replacement for Kaiten in which case I'd say Shinten's animations don't play in that "decisive strike" fantasy of Samurai as it's a sword stab preceding the action of Midare/striking).

And I don't pretend to be an expert on Iaido techniques as I am more familiar with Western European weapons and fighting but I'm not saying that "FFXIV tries to imitate historical Iaido" but rather it draws from Iaido as part of the mythological samurai fantasy that Square Enix IMO is drawing from when designing the Samurai job hence why Samurai can fire energy bursts via Enpi rather than using a variety of historical Japanese ranged weapons that were actually used by historical samurai on the battlefield including but not limited to the Yumi or Tanegashima.

[RushBee]

Just a clarification on game feel and what I mean by audiovisual feedback.

If I took FFXIV with all its cool animations, great sounds and special effects and replace them with animation from 70s CGI, fart noises and Ed Wood special effects BUT left the gameplay intact. People would turn around and say "hey this game plays like crap" even though the gameplay (pressing buttons and killing bosses) is exactly the same.

This is because the audiovisual feedback is so important in selling the game as a fantasy. To the point where the two big publishers (Sony and Microsoft) put hundreds of millions of dollars into making cutting edge graphics in their games like TLOU2, God of War etc. and to the point where gamers are willing to splash thousands of dollars just to get the best audiovisual experience even though it doesn't actually do anything to the gameplay as the gameplay of a game still remains the same (a third person shooter still has you shooting in third person no matter if you're doing it in 480p or in 8K ultra settings).

Hell, look at what messing up on the audiovisual experience gets you. A video mocking the flawed audiovisual experience of Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles got >>>8.7 MILLION VIEWS<<< (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omyoJ7onNrg). Mass Effect Andromeda's audiovisual mess was so bad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KWkao73HuU 10 million views) that the higher-ups in EA made it a point that they would not repeat this controversy and mandated for Anthem to be "unmemeable" and therefore have good audiovisual presentation (https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anth...ong-1833731964)

If people didn't think the audiovisual experience is important, then why do so many companies and people invest so much money into getting the best audiovisual experience and why do we absolutely pan and mock developers that have a glitchy audiovisual experience?

The audiovisual experience is important in videogames. Whether you like it or not.