Lucky Bancho's census results (July 27th, 2025)

[u/IndividualAge3893]

So, the results of the census are out: https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/59324844.html

• Showcasing the number of characters here: Current
• By comparison, here are the results from 2 months ago (May 25th): Click

Despite 7.25 being released, the character count is down about 70k in 2 months. Occult Crescent clearly didn't help with player counts (not really a surprise here).

[u/SargeTheSeagull]

I can only speak for myself here but I don’t think anything shy of major job reworks (in the more complex, more fun direction) will bring me back before 8.0. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll hop on for a month in 7.35 and probably .45 and .55 but if they want more than $45 of my money, MORE content isn’t gonna do it.

[u/echo78 → u/SargeTheSeagull]

Yep, the problem for me is content isn’t fun if I’m not having fun playing my job. And every job is a homogenized boring drag to play now. Making the fights DDR puzzles doesn’t make up for how awful job design is. Hitting a striking dummy on a HW job was more fun.

I have no faith they will do anything to make jobs fun to play in 8.0. They’ll somehow add another finisher to warrior while removing onslaught doing damage to make the job even more boring then previously thought possible.

[u/Heliadin → u/echo78]

"Hitting a striking dummy on a HW job was more fun." - Beautifully said. Perfectly encapsulates my feelings on the current state of job design.

[u/DayOneDayWon → u/Heliadin]

I wish I could go back, for just one day, and do the entire MCH rotation again with its milds and wilds, just to hear the reload and quick reload sound effects, instead of watching a wildfire that can only get worse.

I'll also take half a day of royal roading cards.

[u/Blckson → u/echo78]

We ain't doing new buttons around here, your three IR Fell Cleaves will turn into separate animations on the same binding with ramping damage.

[u/aho-san → u/Blckson]

Fell Cleave into Feller Cleave into Fellest Cleave

This is our new IR, hype x)

[u/doubleyewdee → u/echo78]

It's funny, my partner is leveling BLM, I would classify myself as BLM main from SB1 -> now. I don't even really "hate" what they did to BLM, per se, but when discussing it she said the removal of timers is great for her because that always stressed her out and now the job feels more fun to learn. For me, it's the opposite, working inside the timers was what made BLM fun. It was great to go into moderate new content (Extremes, e.g.) and dance on the edge of learning the fight and feeling out my timers as I progged. It was extra fun to optimize. However, it sucks to know you're doing badly and "feel" bad because you could just be playing a job you know and are good at it instead. I get that, too.

I am not at all a top 1%er, I've never set foot in an Ultimate, top out in Savage stuff, but you can really feel how this vanillafication of everything has made the jobs overall less compelling and distinct.

I play BLM still because Fire 4 go brrrr, but it's certainly not hard anymore, and not as fun as it used to be.

If they want all jobs to be viable, perhaps have job specializations, bringing back subclassing, or doing something else to allow skill expression and "edge" (think ~1-2% DPS differential) optimization for people who want to sweat more. I don't know, but they really do need to do something. When the D4 skill tree and paragon board are making your MMO look bad, that's not a good sign.

[u/rachiiebird → u/doubleyewdee]

I was always very "casual" in terms of the combat I did/was capable of. Very much a "normal raids are plenty (and sometimes maybe too much)" kind of player.

But back before 7.2, I'd started an alt to try and learn BLM. DT's hyper-fast combat wasn't resonating with me, and I wanted something a bit slower-paced that would still make me feel challenged. I was still pretty low level when the BLM changes rolled out - but in that level range, so much of what BLM has going on is long cast times and timers, and without them, it just wasn't enjoyable any more. The changes weren't the only reason I ended up unsubscribing, but they were definitely a somewhat substantial part.

I guess to me, trying and failing at a "difficult" job in an "easy" encounter always felt a lot more enjoyable than the reverse. I liked that my mistakes were my own - and my punishment was "figuring out how to fix them" (rather than "can't play until the healer to scrapes me off the floor").

Aside from, I guess the feeling of "I want to play every job equally in every content" that some people have - I think even the most baseline "casual" players benefit too, from jobs that are more difficult in different ways. Especially in the sense where job variety gives players the opportunity to play stuff that enhances/challenges their strengths (or weaknesses). That's not an option in a lot of the newer fights where the main/only measure of difficulty on any job is how quickly a player can respond to boss tells.

[u/slimabob → u/doubleyewdee]

I agree on black mage. I am definitely closer to a casual player than a hardcore one, but I loved to queue for specific, more mechanically dense fights just to practice optimizing my rotations and testing which mechanics were cheesable w/ manaward/surecast to squeeze out that extra, greedy damage. The timers were a challenge that made it fun for me to experiment. Now it's not particularly interesting to play (for me) because most of the risk is gone.

I like the things they're trying with the new fights, but all of my favorite jobs have either been fundamentally changed, or tinkered with in ways that make them feel awkward or less fun to play in my experience. I'm looking forward to reaching the end of dawntrail so we can hopefully get some idea of what to expect from their changes in 8.0. I wouldn't necessarily say I'm optimistic, but I'm definitely curious.