SAM players are quitting

[ThorneDynasty]

Personally, I haven't come across any of those forum threads ... the ones demanding jobs become brainkilling ... the ones created by people barely able to play a certain job.

Are you certain you're reading the same forums that I am?

Or are you referring to 5chan? Reddit? Twitter? Discord?

I've read a lot of complaints in some of those, but never actually found a lot of people asking for braindead rotations to make it easier to perform well.

I'm not saying it's a super common complaint, but the few loud ones that do are being listened to (not hard to find the current resident loud and proud casual SAM who feels threatened by dedicated raiders doing more with the job than them, despite that they never actually take to content that would demand high DPS of them so it's a complete non issue in the first place).

Or I for the life of me can't find any other reason for all this, who else is asking for this.

[Tamaerl]

I'm not saying it's a super common complaint, but the few loud ones that do are being listened to (not hard to find the current resident loud and proud casual SAM who feels threatened by dedicated raiders doing more with the job than them, despite that they never actually take to content that would demand high DPS of them so it's a complete non issue in the first place).

Or I for the life of me can't find any other reason for all this, who else is asking for this.

Even the excuse given for kaiten's removal, action bloat, rings hollow imo because you're pressing shinten instead and are now having to use it more often than before as a result of kaiten's removal. I also don't understand why kaeshi was nerfed, because the auto-crit alone does not make up for kaiten's loss + the sizeable nerf kaeshi received; for me, that was an even more confusing change than kaiten's removal.
I still love Samurai as a whole, but I can't help feeling like a spam attacker now instead of the satisfying burst attacker I used to be, and I really wish kaiten would just come back so I can once again feel those satisfying big hits I used to dish out.

[Ruminous]

Even the excuse given for kaiten's removal, action bloat, rings hollow imo because you're pressing shinten instead and are now having to use it more often than before as a result of kaiten's removal. I also don't understand why kaeshi was nerfed, because the auto-crit alone does not make up for kaiten's loss + the sizeable nerf kaeshi received; for me, that was an even more confusing change than kaiten's removal.
I still love Samurai as a whole, but I can't help feeling like a spam attacker now instead of the satisfying burst attacker I used to be, and I really wish kaiten would just come back so I can once again feel those satisfying big hits I used to dish out.

Technically isn't action bloat if shinten already exists as an ability! - some braindead dev.

They did solve the problem of samurai being 'OP' or too high representation though. Make the class boring to play so people quit playing it or quit the game.

[AsiTsurugi]

Technically isn't action bloat if shinten already exists as an ability! - some braindead dev.

They did solve the problem of samurai being 'OP' or too high representation though. Make the class boring to play so people quit playing it or quit the game.

"Also isn't "weave bloat" if most people can't double weave because of our 80's netcode because we never learnt to code anything properly" - another dev, probably.

[Quor]

Even the excuse given for kaiten's removal, action bloat, rings hollow imo because you're pressing shinten instead and are now having to use it more often than before as a result of kaiten's removal. I also don't understand why kaeshi was nerfed, because the auto-crit alone does not make up for kaiten's loss + the sizeable nerf kaeshi received; for me, that was an even more confusing change than kaiten's removal.
I still love Samurai as a whole, but I can't help feeling like a spam attacker now instead of the satisfying burst attacker I used to be, and I really wish kaiten would just come back so I can once again feel those satisfying big hits I used to dish out.

I made a full post about this actually, basically calling out the concept underlying the Kaiten removal as lazy.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ZY.-Here-s-why

The overall tl;dr being that the Kaiten removal was less about anything balance related and more about making it easier for the devs to iterate on the job in future expansions. Per Yoshi P.'s words, Kaiten was a "restrictive" ability to design around so the decision was made to just get rid of it because it's existence was making it hard for the job balance devs to continue to add stuff on to SAM.

I refer to this in my post as being "lazy" because it is. To be clear, I have no illusions about how difficult it is to design a job in this game, or in any game, but - as I've said elsewhere - the Kaiten removal and auto-crit addition feels like a rookie mistake at best or a bean counters screw-up at worst. I can forgive some inexperienced dev coming in, looking at the numbers and then making a decision that looks good from a theoretical perspective but sucks in practice. That kinda shit happens all the time. I think it's called the Engineers Dilemma or something in the Engineering field, referring to the common problem of Engineering grads going into a practical building role and believing that just because something "works on paper" means it will work in real life. Spoiler alert: it doesn't work that way and many hard lessons have to be learned, hopefully without anyone dying (but sadly, not always). So I could absolutely see something like that happening here.

That doesn't make it ok of course, as the SAM changes are terrible and should 100% be reverted due to how absolutely un-fun they are. But - if it really was just some rookie - it at least is something we could all collectively chalk up to a learning experience. It would be a funny anecdote at some future point in time, but overall no harm no foul because they would revert the change OF COURSE.

But if it's the bean counter excuse? That doesn't fly. And given Yoshida-san's explanation in regards to how the job team finds Kaiten "restrictive" my own feeling is that it's less a rookie mistake situation and more a "let's just make our jobs easier" situation. As it stands now, many people are in disagreement with SE about the direction that jobs are going (and in the case of healers and tanks, have been going for some time now). This "accessibility uber alles" approach of theirs is a huge negative in the long run as jobs need depth to them in order to keep people engaged and interested. A player shouldn't have to go into savage or ultimate content to find true engagement with their jobs; the jobs should be engaging just via their baseline kit.

DNC is a good example of this imo, as there's enough proc-based and combo-based actions interspersed with the various dancing mechanics (Standard, Tech, Fan) to keep things interesting. Kaiten used to serve that role for SAM; just as a DNC would see Tech Step counting down and they would mentally prepare themselves to "perform" their burst, so to would a SAM know that in the next 1-2 GCD's they needed to be in a place where they could safely cast their Iaijutsu after using Kaiten, because using Kaiten was tantamount to committing to an Iaijutsu. Each of those approaches provides a nice mental "speed bump" of sorts, something that forces the player out of their muscle memory habit into a more active cognitive state, even if it's just for a moment.

RDM is another good example where you have a good baseline engagement with the kit that is enhanced by difficult content but doesn't need difficult content in order to feel good.

So if we're to believe Yoshi P.'s own words, the underlying reason behind the Kaiten removal was because the job balance devs found it too restrictive to build future stuff around. Instead of addressing Kaiten in a way that preserved the engagement aspect of it, they opted instead to flat out remove it, which is the laziest possible thing they could have done. I honestly believe that if Yoshi had sat down with the players and said "look, we've tried a lot of stuff but Kaiten as it stands is just too difficult for us to innovate around, so we need to tone it down. It'll be a nerf to Kaiten yes, but we'll balance the numbers out elsewhere while still keeping Kaiten around because it just makes the job flow so well" then the SAM player base would have been like "ok bro, we get that, looking forward to what you're cooking for us."

But we didn't get that. We got a laundry list of excuses that were so easily and quickly solved by the players that it made each subsequent excuse feel even more hollow, up until finally Yoshi said "yeah, it's a future design problem that we're solving in the present by gutting the job" and left it at that.

Or, in other words, laziness.

[AndreasSolaria]

Since the 6.1 changes, I know a few SAM players who used to play with me leave the game due to the feel of the job diminish over time, with Kaiten being the final straw. It dawned on me today that I haven't logged in since the 6.11 update, which caused me to think about why this was.

I used to enjoy doing PvE but since the changes, I was only really logging in CC, and that couldn't hold my interest to keep me logging in consistently. Other SAM mains that I know of are in the same position. To be honest, I only really noticed this today since I was receiving emails for SE asking me to refresh my sub, that I hadn't logged in for a while now. Considering I've been down the slow hemorrhaging of classes before in WoW, I don't really want to experience it again, so I most likely won't resub until the next expansion and then only stay subbed for the story from now on - playing on an expansion to expansion basis for however long it remains good.

Edit - I didn't expect this thread to blow up as it did. I posted a reply detailing why many of us are disgruntled with SE's recent job management philosophy that I shall quote below.


Edit 2 - For those who think the issue is going to ebb-away with some SAM players quitting, I want to share some statistics.


This JP player showed that on their forums, feedback has rapidly exploded following the 6.1 proposed changes, with players leaving the same amount of feedback as the total feedback between 4.0 as 6.1. That is 2~ years worth of feedback over one patch. Despite how much other players (after scanning accounts, that do not even have SAM 90 if a 90 at all) in this thread wish to dismiss this issue, it is definitely a change that has troubled players across all data centers.

I've been playing as samurai for 3 years i spend my time and effort most of all my love for this job.
Removing kaiten it's one of the worst ideia i have seen
He was close to perfect on 6.0 why change now? Nobody asks for removal, now kenki gauge is spam shinten
They bring nothing to replace kaiten..
Aoe is nerfed
Rotation became boring..
I respect your opinion about unsubbed ff xiv, for me? I gonna stay and not give up until they fix samurai..
And the job is good? Yes
But for now i gonna play with another job like dragoon or reaper (i kind enjoy reaper btw)

[Martynek]

Playing Samurai without Kaiten feels like playing without a job stone. It's an empty, soulless experience.

[Absimiliard]

The only thing Kaiten's removal accomplished was decreasing the amount of MP being used to rez SAM players. Unfortunately it came with an increase in MP used to rez NIN players.

[TofuPenguin]

I've been making a transition over to mnk recently because it shares gear with SAM (and I don't have to regear.) Thinking about trying blm. I used to love sam. Now I don't. And it's not even a numbers issue. It feels boring now.
I want kaiten back.

[Foraet]

Gotta drop some abilities when you add some new ones in. I don't think dropping a potency modifier is a bad choice. I mean, it's kind of fun but certainly not very high on my list of interesting rotation mechanics. Not sure what they would have dropped instead. Maybe Ikishoten; never really found gauge shortcuts all that compelling. Or maybe Meikyo Shisui, it circumvents Sen Gauge building and I'm not a huge fan of anything that ignores the core of a job's identity. But they had to drop something, SAM is pushing three full bars.

But what do I know? I'm not a game designer.