I usually lurk the forums and scroll posts every now and again, however I've decided to finally make an account just to give the devs their feedback they asked for. I've played the game for around 18,000 hours and I'm worried about the direction the game is taking so I guess it's time to start trying to speak up.

Issues with the 6.1 changes:

1. Kaiten removal
Why? It has a functional purpose as a kenki spender and it's a cool wind-up leading into a powerful attack. It requires some player input to achieve and it gives you a fantasy feeling of being able to unleash more power. I'm now no longer in control of making my hit powerful anymore, and it sucks. I liked the interaction it had. There was some form of thought needed to keep 20 gauge to use for Kaiten. Now all we do is just spam Shinten 5 times in a row brainlessly. The ability has existed for such a long time and has never really been an issue before... It is ingrained in my muscle memory from Stormblood, and I've still yet to remove it from my hotbar because I'm pressing it every time I would have pre-patch, regardless of it being gone.

Ogi Namikiri doesn't need to be its own button... why doesn't it replace Ikishoten? Guren and Senei could be merged into one (I thought the addition of Senei was silly from the beginning, although the animation looks pretty badass), and Shoha & Shoha II could be combined and turned into an ability similar to PLD's Expiacion, or straight up removed. I never cared for Shoha ever since it was introduced.
2. Guaranteed critical hits
I understand there have been concerns with critical hits on big damage abilities giving large fluctuations in DPS, however I don't think this is how to fix the issue. Giving a guaranteed critical hit is pretty much equal to preventing it from ever critting. The excitement from landing a crit and seeing the large number is completely removed, and replaced with a dull "meh" when that predictable number shows up. I feel the same with every other job which has a guaranteed crit+/dhit button. It doesn't bring any excitement, the dopamine hit is gone.
3. Tenka Goken as a circle AoE
I'd like to see Tenka Goken reverted to its conal shape. The circle iteration of it just feels plain wrong. The animation sucks, the damage sucks and there is no longer any thought or planning needed anymore as to how to position yourself when using it other than sit inside the enemies and press the button (noticing a pattern here...). It's okay for some jobs to retain their non-circle AoE abilities, job homogenisation is going way too far and the game is starting to get stale because every job's beginning to feel like a re-skin of each other.

TL;DR:

SAM changes feel bad, revert all of them and please stop stripping job identity from the game.
Thanks!