Bring Back Kaiten

[Shurrikhan]

But there's no factual difference between Kaiten and Shinten. They both transform gauge into damage. They have minor implementation differences but those would be sanded off by job balancing anyways as they only affect the damage profile. Mechanically they have no difference, you just deal damage.

In terms of total output, yes, it is impossible to differentiate anything from Glare spam. However, that nonetheless doesn't make, even with tuning aside, Reassemble feel identical to Gauss Shot or Life Surge to Jump. They're damn close, sure, but the first in each pair is more co-constrained.

That said...

wouldn't having the flexibility to shift when you boost your damage be more useful if raid buffs came in more varied timings than 2m or when you want an extra push near the end of an encounter?

Between the two, Shinten gives more control over when your damage is dealt, precisely because Kaiten's useful spending depends on the GCD immediately after its uses.

[Carighan]

That is true of course. I find a good litmus test for gameplay validity of multiple similar skills is whether you, as a player, could tell the difference if the information were removed. Imagine a scenario where both the damage numbers above the enemy and the tooltip details of both skills were redacted. It'd be incredibly difficult to figure out what both of these do different from each other. Enemies die quicker and they use gauge. And that's always a bad sign for both existing, IMO. Don't get me wrong though, I'd be fully for removing Shinten again in favor of Kaiten, even though I understand why they did it.

[RyuuZero]

But there's no factual difference between Kaiten and Shinten. They both transform gauge into damage. They have minor implementation differences but those would be sanded off by job balancing anyways as they only affect the damage profile. Mechanically they have no difference, you just deal damage.

I'd say there is: Kaiten boosts All Weaponskills, thus making The Kenki Resource Interact with all Weaponskills of the Samurai. Shinten is just an Ability that you throw out. As well as the Kenki Cost, which might be small but 20 Kenki and 25 Kenki Feel very different! I want to utilize 20 Kenki again.

I mean.. yeah Shinten is an Attack that you can use by using up those Kenki which are generated by Weaponskills, but Kaiten gave the Power back to the Weaponskills which was a nice aspect.. Now there is kinda only Hagakure which just drains your Sen into Kenki.. for what? Shinten?

[BelegErkhten]

The solution to the Kaiten problem is to make it the effect only apply to weaponskills that have a cast time.
No more People doing Kaiten-Yukikaze filler or some other nonesense, Job is fixed, you're welcome.

[Shurrikhan]

No one was ever doing a Kaiten-Yukikaze spam anyways. It's less efficient than Shinten.

???

For that reason, though...
@RyuuZero

No, Kaiten interacts, in the sense you seem to be referring to, only with Iaijutsu. It simply adds a button/timing trap to all else.

While, on the other hand...
@Carighan

It would be plenty easy to tell Kaiten apart even without tooltips.

[BelegErkhten]

No one was ever doing a Kaiten-Yukikaze spam anyways. It's less efficient than Shinten.

Lol
Lmao
And no one ever uses Doton on a single target either

It would be plenty easy to tell Kaiten apart even without tooltips.

Assuming that FFXIV players are Literate is a MASSIVE mistake.

[Jeeqbit]

In my 10 years of playing, with over 2,500 days of playtime, I've not seen a single person have a problem with Kaiten. I didn't see a single person have a problem with it in the stream chats where Yoshi-P claimed he'd met someone that had a problem with it.

This change was when the changes had ceased to just be removing bloat, unused/annoying stuff, stuff that couldn't work anymore, to removing all stress and confusion at the expense of job identity.

in a side scrolling game, if there aren’t any holes you can drop down into if you miss a jump, of course the game would lose its stress, but it would also lose its fun.

[SubmarineAlt]

In my 10 years of playing, with over 2,500 days of playtime, I've not seen a single person have a problem with Kaiten. I didn't see a single person have a problem with it in the stream chats where Yoshi-P claimed he'd met someone that had a problem with it.

This change was when the changes had ceased to just be removing bloat, unused/annoying stuff, stuff that couldn't work anymore, to removing all stress and confusion at the expense of job identity.

Kaiten added no additional depth to SAM. It was a button that had no nuance. No gray area. It had 1 specific use case, use it before a sticker spender. That's it. Because of Shinten's existence, you had a very clear, strict barrier where its use was either more efficient than Shinten (correct use case), or not more efficient (incorrect use case). It was a worthless, pointless filler button that acted as a gauge spender. It introduced a fail state that never occurred in actual gameplay because of how old SAM flowed. That fail state being "I used Shinten the GCD before Iaijutsu." A fail state so rare that you have to intentionally trigger it to get it to happen.

Of all the buttons Square has removed, Kaiten is one of the few that was actually justifiable. It was just worthless button bloat. It's ONLY benefit was thematic and rhythmic. But SAM's identity isn't just fucking Kaiten. And, if you were legitimately stressed or confused with Kaiten's use case? I'd tell you to play something simplistic like Warrior, but you've beaten me to it.

[Shurrikhan]

There is only one use for Midare: to spend it before your next Sen. There is only one use for Tenka: to spend it before your next Sen while in AoE. There is only one use for Shinten: to spend its Kenki before you'd overcap until dumping under raid buffs. Even Higanbana, Yaten, and Gyoten barely have two use cases.

Does that make all those skills, likewise, degenerate bloat?

Or perhaps, just perhaps, might things work rather more interdependently as a complete system, with the likes of only our 2-Sen being AoE, or Kenki originally desiring certain variable margins mindful of upcoming Higan, Guren/Senei, etc. timings, and the like actually make a difference overall even if not skill by individual skill?

Inb4 "Kaiten-simp" or the like: Kaiten can stay gone for all I care, but could we please consider the implications of our warrants evenly when (or ideally before) arguing whether something should or should not have been removed? Else, in giving ammo for anything alike to be removed in the future, we may find far more taken than we first posted...

[Carighan]

There is only one use for Midare: to spend it before your next Sen. There is only one use for Tenka: to spend it before your next Sen while in AoE. There is only one use for Shinten: to spend its Kenki before you'd overcap until dumping under raid buffs. Even Higanbana, Yaten, and Gyoten barely have two use cases.

Does that make all those skills, likewise, degenerate bloat?

Yes, actually. These are all "bad" buttons. You're getting close to a core problem with most DPS class designs in FFXIV (and in fact tanks and healers too but in different just thematically similar ways): They are mostly button bloat.

The core underlying class identity and design is incredibly minimal, and does not at all translate well into the main gameplay loop. The fact so many oGCDs exist in itself hints at this, as it shows a need to find "between the cracks"-space for more buttons to give people more to "do", as their core gameplay holds no mental attention as there's nothing to it.

So yeah, correct, virtually all such buttons are pointless for their respective jobs. And once you take them away, the static rotation exposed beneath the thin veneer shows how utterly simplistic it is, and that in turn shows just why static-rotation-type jobs just don't work well, at least for FFXIV. They really ought to be moving away from them more.

Take for example the core visual/lore/operational identify of Samurai. Casted melee attacks. How often do these actually even impact your gameplay feel at all nowadays? They do not. They are too fast, they aren't important enough, they are too variable in their placement specifically. They ought to be extremely restrictive moves, but go with the lore have huge payoff when you pull them off - in fact not being able to do should probably be expected to happen sometimes to account for the burst in power. Instead, Samurai has the same static-rotation GCD flow that autohotkey could play optimally for you, with the same filler oGCD spam as everyone else.

Those buttons you mention only exist to make you feel more busy while playing an incredibly mind-numbingly boring core gameplay. It's the equivalent of constantly having to tap on buildings to collect currency in mobile games, nothing more, nothing less. To a very small degree this is not problematic or unexpected, but in FFXIV these non-player-interactive filler buttons have become the vast majority of skills and hence hotbars are so bloated that this is noteworthy when people discuss the game to non-players.