Samurai just want their feedback to be aknowledged

[Winefaye]

So here we are, 6.2 dropped, samurai remain unchanged. Worse than that, nothing has been said or aknowledged by the devs regarding the unmissable feedback we gave, after they requested it.

I've been playing wow since Mist of Pandaria (2012), and what's happening here right now just reminds me too much of the beginning of wow's gameplay downfall. (dumbing down classes by removing skills, not listening to the playerbase)

Moreover, joining FF a year ago, I had heared plenty of times that Sqeenix devs were actualy listening to the community.

So I'll speak again, not because I find delight in whining, but because I care, and find comfort in the knowledge that I'm not the only one.

Bring back kaiten.
Bring back high potency skills.

Kaiten ;

1 - Felt great
2 - Looked great
3 - Added ressource management
4 - Was not the cause of button bloat
5 - Was great game design
- Justified laijustu cast time (big number)
- Added rythm to the gampelay (ogcd)
- Fitted perfectly with the class fantasy
6 - Was either liked or not cared about

No one asked for its removal as far as I know, and definitly way less people than thoses who asked to keep it.

Also, I'd like to stop seeing people saying it was useless cause only and always used before laijustu. It's just like any 2s in 123 combos, excepted than most of them don't do anything more than being 2s, refer to points 1 and 3 and even 6)

Without kaiten :

1 - We still have true "button bloat" abilities
2 - Laijutsu feels bad
3 - Spaming shinten feels bad

High potency skills felt super great, excepted when we had bad luck. They caused issues with too much damage output variability, maybe.

So the devs made them autocrit and do half the previous damage (so in the end the same as never crit..)

Why not make kaiten be that autocrit buff ? And remove the excedental damages from our numerous low potenty skills ?

It would have reduced the damage variability even more than the devs solution, without affecting neither the gameplay or the feeling.

In fact, it would have felt even better because we would have had bad luck protection as a reward for a little kenki management.

Flatened damage are uninteresting and boring, as anyone can easily understand.

That's just a solution heared many times elsewhere, between tons of other great ideas. I won't even speak about the "button bloat" issue. There is a clear AND better solution than removing kaiten. I know it, you know it, the devs knows it.

Anyway, love the game, still love the job, will still play. I just wish the devs could at least tell us something about this issue. Even if they don't plan to fix it. And if they do, well it can't happen too soon.

Kudos to all the Samurai still fighting in a constructive maner. Keep studying the blade.

[Deithwen]

I can't upvote this more ^
Except I am not playing Samurai anymore, it just feels too bad. Having to drop my main since the job was released feels awful.

[Quor]

Bring back kaiten.
Bring back high potency skills.

Kaiten ;

1 - Felt great
2 - Looked great
3 - Added ressource management
4 - Was not the cause of button bloat
5 - Was great game design
- Justified laijustu cast time (big number)
- Added rythm to the gampelay (ogcd)
- Fitted perfectly with the class fantasy
6 - Was either liked or not cared about

No one asked for its removal as far as I know, and definitly way less people than thoses who asked to keep it.

Also, I'd like to stop seeing people saying it was useless cause only and always used before laijustu. It's just like any 2s in 123 combos, excepted than most of them don't do anything more than being 2s, refer to points 1 and 3 and even 6)

A very succinct, accurate list. Big emphasis on the fact that no one asked for Kaiten to be removed. It's still the most mind-boggling part of all of this, why they would remove such a well-crafted ability. Tone down? Sure. But remove? Madness.

[xAFROx]

Yes, yes, all the yes, this is just about what everyone has been saying about kaiten and the problem caused by removing it. As they had to shift potencies around to 'compensate' the loss of 50% more potency to any weaponskill... and they put it to our gcd combos instead of the big burst hits that we constantly build to.

It has indeed become flat, and it leaves much to be desired, as basic as the change was. Like a jenga tower done wrong, but of course all the numbers people say it's just fine since nothing actually changed there.

I miss the smooth flow it offered, and am likewise equally miffed about the other changed from 6.1 like the shape of tenka goken.

They really should address the amount of backlash they've gotten. Cultural differences aside, they should be able to admit when they've messed up if so many reacted the way they have up to now.

[Picker]

You did not start playing WoW at “the beginning of the downfall”, that was Wrath. Peak WoW was BC. That’s like saying “I started watching the Simpson at season 20 when it started going downhill”, ie, you don’t have all the information/insight to claim such things.

That aside I agree with everything else and stand with my samurai brethren!

[Ransu]

You did not start playing WoW at “the beginning of the downfall”, that was Wrath. Peak WoW was BC. That’s like saying “I started watching the Simpson at season 20 when it started going downhill”, ie, you don’t have all the information/insight to claim such things.

That aside I agree with everything else and stand with my samurai brethren!

Peak WoW was NOT BC and you're crazy to even say that....Wrath was peak WoW and the game absolutely started to decline after wrath. Cata was horrible, MoP was ok outside of the whole panda thing and it was all downhill after that.

[Quor]

Folks, please. Leave the internecine MMO discussion for elsewhere. We are all united in our love for SAM. Let that be our guiding light.

[Reese_Clairdale]

I would say WoW discussion is somewhat relevant in this context, not in terms of "X expansion was my favorite" but "SE is repeating some of the primary mistakes that caused WoW to become a parody of its former self."

FFXIV's 2.0 reboot was a fairly strict WoWclone. It has long since taken on its own identity and developed even further polish on the formula, particularly in the design of boss fights, but if you strip out all of the FF flavor, the fast-paced WASD + tab target + hotbar MMO still remains, which is something that Blizzard took from slightly older MMOs at the time and then polished to a mirror finish itself.

The disruption and dumbing down of jobs which never needed adjustments beyond some obvious QoL touch ups needs to stop; This was one of Blizzard's mistakes as well. Not only do these QoL issues not get addressed, but each job seems to be treated with entirely different standards instead of being regarded as equally important elements that comprise a well-rounded selection of play styles.

The mystery is, why does SE seem intent on repeating these mistakes? Have they forgotten the absolutely ludicrous gamble that was required to salvage the FF franchise from FFXIV 1.0? Do they see the game as bulletproof now that they can rely entirely on the compelling MSQ, lore, visuals, and music?

I'm fairly certain Creative Business Unit III received the message from SAM mains in some capacity, but of course they have not answered yet for whatever reason. I can only wonder if there's something else preventing them from acting on any requests to restore some semblance of complexity and identity. One thing I can imagine is suits that are higher up are insistent on maximizing short term profits by drawing in as many new players as possible even at the expense of veteran players. But if that is the case, there's been further changes made outside of anything SAM related that don't align with that agenda, like restoring DRG's Jump / Mirage Dive split.

There's also the possibility of FFXVI's development being a drain on developer resources and attention for FFXIV as well. It's absolutely insane to me that a studio already tasked with scheduled updates to a live service game would also have the responsibility of creating the next main entry in the franchise. However, this doesn't explain why they would put in extra hours just to ruin SAM - Kaiten didn't remove itself and that circular Tenka Goken VFX didn't create itself.

It could also be as simple as new employees not familiar with job design suddenly having the authority to make changes like this and are now imposing their vision on us. If that is the case they need some kind of overseer that understands the flavor of every job, as defined by people who main those jobs.

In any case, SE has nearly 20 years of hindsight generated by Blizzard in order to make the right decisions for long term MMO maintenance, which makes this situation even more confusing and frustrating.

[Quor]

I'm fairly certain Creative Business Unit III received the message from SAM mains in some capacity, but of course they have not answered yet for whatever reason. I can only wonder if there's something else preventing them from acting on any requests to restore some semblance of complexity and identity. One thing I can imagine is suits that are higher up are insistent on maximizing short term profits by drawing in as many new players as possible even at the expense of veteran players. But if that is the case, there's been further changes made outside of anything SAM related that don't align with that agenda, like restoring DRG's Jump / Mirage Dive split.

There's also the possibility of FFXVI's development being a drain on developer resources and attention for FFXIV as well. It's absolutely insane to me that a studio already tasked with scheduled updates to a live service game would also have the responsibility of creating the next main entry in the franchise. However, this doesn't explain why they would put in extra hours just to ruin SAM - Kaiten didn't remove itself and that circular Tenka Goken VFX didn't create itself.

It could also be as simple as new employees not familiar with job design suddenly having the authority to make changes like this and are now imposing their vision on us. If that is the case they need some kind of overseer that understands the flavor of every job, as defined by people who main those jobs.

You summed a lot of it up for me, but these reasons in particular are what I've long suspected. A combination of Yoshi P. being more concerned with FF16, leaving the handling of some stuff to junior members who don't have the same level of experience, with his trust in them resulting in only a cursory glance of approval at what amounts to a paint-by-numbers, committee/spreadsheet-based set of changes that ultimately kill what makes a job fun. Yoshi's own surprise at the reaction to the 6.1 live letter chat is a major tell that, in this instance, the dev team did NOT have their thumb on the pulse of the player base.

How they could have fucked this up is beyond me. Why they have continued to double down is just as mind-boggling.

[Hezhi]

It could also be as simple as new employees not familiar with job design suddenly having the authority to make changes like this and are now imposing their vision on us. If that is the case they need some kind of overseer that understands the flavor of every job, as defined by people who main those jobs.

The popular theory is that the same 4 guys have been in charge of job design for a while, going by the credits of the game. So while I wish we could attribute all the asinine design decisions we've seen since 5.0 to the workload getting shoved onto inexperienced interns (because it feels that way), it looks like that isn't the case.

I don't know what's going on behind SE's doors but it just feels that they don't care about any of this anymore and don't even play the game, they just look at spreadsheets and aim to keep dps at 3% of variance within each role across all fights, and how different jobs play or feel isn't even on their radar anymore. And that's how you get tone deaf changes such as Kaiten getting removed, SMN getting "reworked" losing every shred of its old identity or Healers randomly getting gutted, just to make their own balancing work easier, because they'd rather have everything play the exact same way on a 2mins loop rather than actually try working with what they got.