job forum monitoring

[Soundwave]

They should at least come on the job section and say "Hey we really like this idea etc. can we get more feed back on this?" instead of multiple wish list threads, we could actually be responding to something that will make a difference.

Granted I'm sure all ideas are considered and then weeded out for balance...

[Greatguardian]

Honestly, there's just no easy way for the Community Team to say "Sorry, but the Devs just don't like this idea/can't implement this idea." There isn't. There are a ton of absolutely terrible/impossible ideas in the Job Forums with huge cult followings. No matter what the Com Reps say, any sort of negative response would be met with extreme hostility.

I also feel like the primary response the Com/Dev teams are getting is different from what they intended/wanted to gain from these forums. I highly doubt they want to hear everyone's ideas on "How to fix Paladin", or "How to make Puppetmaster Awesome". Instead, I think it's far more likely that they simply want to hear the concerns/issues people have with jobs so that the Developers themselves can design and implement fixes/adjustments for them.

Example:
What the Devs want to hear: "We, the players, feel that the Paladin job is focusing too heavily on Defensive abilities that may not be entirely necessary for them. Would it be possible to enhance our melee capabilities in order to allow us to better keep up with the ever-increasing strength of Damage Dealing jobs?"

What the Devs get from the Job Forums: "This is how to FIX PALADIN: Change Defense. Change Enmity. Give Paladin a higher Enmity cap. HERE ARE FIVE DIFFERENT JOB TRAITS AND JOB ABILITIES TO GIVE PALADIN TO FIX IT OKAY. Make it Paladin from WoW please. Take away Paladin's DD'ing, CdC is too strong for a tank job. No, make Paladin a better melee. No, u suck. No u. No u. No u."

(NOTE: All of these are real suggestions pulled from the Paladin job forum, albeit paraphrased to conserve space)

[Seriha]

(also I pity whoever actually has to wade through the Rdm forums though XD)

I can only hope they don't listen to those who think Cure V, Reraise, and Flash are all RDM could use. I still say they're WHMs in denial. :x

As is, I kind of take the "Use a shotgun to swat a fly" approach to ideas. Put out enough of a spread, eventually you'll get lucky. I don't go into a suggestion expecting everything to be taken as is, and at times purposely overpower things if, for any reason, to get people talking about refining it. I'm not really a fan of the baby step approach as too little changes nothing while giving some the fuel to say, "Well, you got that. Shut up, our problem's more important!"

[Soundwave]

Honestly, there's just no easy way for the Community Team to say "Sorry, but the Devs just don't like this idea/can't implement this idea." There isn't. There are a ton of absolutely terrible/impossible ideas in the Job Forums with huge cult followings. No matter what the Com Reps say, any sort of negative response would be met with extreme hostility.

I also feel like the primary response the Com/Dev teams are getting is different from what they intended/wanted to gain from these forums. I highly doubt they want to hear everyone's ideas on "How to fix Paladin", or "How to make Puppetmaster Awesome". Instead, I think it's far more likely that they simply want to hear the concerns/issues people have with jobs so that the Developers themselves can design and implement fixes/adjustments for them.

Example:
What the Devs want to hear: "We, the players, feel that the Paladin job is focusing too heavily on Defensive abilities that may not be entirely necessary for them. Would it be possible to enhance our melee capabilities in order to allow us to better keep up with the ever-increasing strength of Damage Dealing jobs?"

What the Devs get from the Job Forums: "This is how to FIX PALADIN: Change Defense. Change Enmity. Give Paladin a higher Enmity cap. HERE ARE FIVE DIFFERENT JOB TRAITS AND JOB ABILITIES TO GIVE PALADIN TO FIX IT OKAY. Make it Paladin from WoW please. Take away Paladin's DD'ing, CdC is too strong for a tank job. No, make Paladin a better melee. No, u suck. No u. No u. No u."

(NOTE: All of these are real suggestions pulled from the Paladin job forum, albeit paraphrased to conserve space)

We don't know this because they don't really say, so this is just assuming what they are thinking?

[CrystalWeapon]

[...]

SOME sort of feedback from the Devs would be extremely welcome, if for no other reason than to direct conversation in directions the Devs are interested in pursuing. This would also help to weed out requests for things the Devs have decided against or go in directions the Devs are not willing to pursue (goes against their vision/plans whatever) And when they do pop up, the Dev post can be referenced to stop the conversation before it goes too far.

Dev Team posts I'd like to see would come in these main forms:
1 ) (Response) We're looking into something similar to that! (we like it!)
2 ) (Response) We've decided against that concept. (we don't like it) (reasons please?)
And most importantly:
3 ) (Discussion) We want player input on <insert subject here>, with the Dev Team's concept under discussion and background reasoning along with the direction they want to take the subject at hand. (Similar the the post on 2hrs), the posts on Corsair's 11 roll and the post on Craft Skill Limitations. These discussion posts are different from your announcement posts, ideally allowing player input BEFORE too much time has been spent on programming the features and interface, allowing player input to potentially change what is decided upon.

Don't Forget: As you did with the Corsair topic, coming back to us with the Dev Team response to the discussion made that a very encouraging interchange with the Dev Team. (a little more would have been nice - they were still really vague on what was being implemented as a result.)

I agree with you on how they should post, but I would like to add something. For ease of play, ui, cosmetic, job suggestions, etc... (minor updates), it would be nice to receive something other than the "Too costly to do atm, we're too busy with what we have planned" response. I understand that major updates should always come before things of this nature, but it would be nice to get a definitive response over vague ones to know whether or not to expect any kind of action in the distant future.

"We will see what we can do to impliment these changes."
(Will try to work it into the game within a handful of updates.)

"This is a good idea, unfortunately we cannot impliment it at this moment. We may look into it again in the future."
(We're too busy right now, but this idea isn't getting brushed under the rug. May look into it again in half a year or so.)

"This update would be too costly to impliment, unfortunately we have no interest in persuing it."
(Would be far too much work to program, we will not look into it any further.)

[Octaviane]

It would be nice to see some kind of acknowledgement from the Developers that they are indeed reading the job forum posts. Players are not expecting everything asked for/suggested to be implemented and some posts are just plain nonsensical, but, there are some very good ones that could be further explored/discussed. I like the idea of seeing a counter that shows how many times posts are read by Developers.

We know that there aren't many Developers/Moderators checking the forums plus they take the weekends off, and, Monday is update time, so I am certain they have their hands full at the moment. However, please let people in the jobs forum know that you are looking. Thanks.

[Greatguardian]

We don't know this because they don't really say, so this is just assuming what they are thinking?

It is an assumption, but an educated one. Every single time the Development Team has responded to player feedback before the implementation of these forums, it has been in the format I presented above. They are smart guys, and they have a unique outlook on the game that differs from that of us players. They have generally shown a propensity for introducing their own solutions based on the problems we present them in the past. Sometimes, this does lead to a bit of frustration because the Devs may or may not understand what exactly it is the players have a problem with, and thus fix something unrelated to the original issue. However, this does not mean that they want their hands to be held throughout the development process.

[Glamdring]

That was why I suggested focusing on the threads with high reply/view counts. Quite simply, this is an indicator that-good or bad-the post has touched a nerve with the playerbase, and is something we feel strongly about. Then you take a cursory look at the like responses, but don't set anything in stone off that; something might be liked by 14 people, but there are 400 posts in the thread about why the idea sucks or should not be a priority.

Some things are ok to leave vague in our suggestions. Noone I know of asked for anything remotely like Abyssea before it was implemented, the devs came up with that on their own and it has clearly been successful. Therefore, simply requesting that the 90-99 content take place outside the Abyssea system and leaving the devs to do as they wish is a valid request, as is asking that the new content be in Abyssea. Suggestions for job abilities, as the post above mentioned, were actually requested, although I lost that thread ages ago, those should actually go into some specifics. A Generic "fix paladin" however doesn't do anything except communicate a player's angst. Talk of revising or adding abilities and such is a bit more enlightening.

The biggest problem I see for the devs/mods (aside from the sheer volume of posts to go through) is to anticipate the direction that players will actually take jobs in if such-and-such content is added. I remember a mod at one point made a comment about how some jobs were taken in directions that the developers never envisioned by the way players used them. That is an unenviable task. Another poster here mentioned how a buff to 1 job can amount to a nerf to another, not intentionally, but still... The fact is, there are alot more of us than there are developers and so we have the capacity for more thoughts than they can anticipate and address implementing anything. Example, if they raise the hate threshold of a paladin/nin and give them the tools to reach that, all of a sudden it is free for blm, drk, rng and any other big DD to rain down maximum damage without fear of any retalliation except an AoE, since paladin can self-heal (and blm can /rdm to help him) all healer main jobs are suddenly excluded from party builds, something I guarantee you noone playing healer wants. And that was just a mild example...

All we ask for is a "we're considering it," "not a current priority," "not possible under the current combat system," etc. type of response. Yes, a negative response may not please people, but "you can't always get what you want"; at least if we know which way the wind blows we can learn to live with it, and hopefully stop harping on it. If you do make a positive response, we can give intelligent input into whatever it is if the devs need it to help "flesh out" the idea. Or we can just say "Thank you" and get out of your way...

[Seriha]

Simply judging an idea's merits by replies to a post isn't a good way to judge things, especially if later replies just break down into petty bickering or people trying to prove they know more about the game than the next guy.

In general, conversation can be improved, even if it's a simple question like, "How do you feel about Blue Mage's club selection?" Actually give us some topics to focus on and we'll hammer them down one way or another. You can pretty much do similar for all of a job's combat and magic skills, which could leader to timer reductions, duration boosts, tweaks to WS, or whatever. No single person will have the exact same ideas or goals for a class, but to use BLU as the whipping boy of examples, most of their magical damage spells prior to the cap increases stunk. Reworking them could give the job a better diversity and enrich the leveling experience... assuming you don't just key whore it to 90+.

[Soundwave]

It is an assumption, but an educated one. Every single time the Development Team has responded to player feedback before the implementation of these forums, it has been in the format I presented above. They are smart guys, and they have a unique outlook on the game that differs from that of us players. They have generally shown a propensity for introducing their own solutions based on the problems we present them in the past. Sometimes, this does lead to a bit of frustration because the Devs may or may not understand what exactly it is the players have a problem with, and thus fix something unrelated to the original issue. However, this does not mean that they want their hands to be held throughout the development process.

Fair enough