FFXI Job Direction?? Dev Team, Please Respond.

[AyinDygra]

These forums are as close as we'll get to a direct line of communication with the developers. These are exactly the topics we should be hearing back from them on. SE has been far too secretive in regards to future planning in relation to jobs in particular. We get about 2 weeks notice before changes occur with major version updates. Maybe we'll get a sentence or two at a Fanfest developer panel. Perhaps it's Japanese culture or something, about saying they're planning something that they later decide against, and end up scrapping it... that they think it would be embarrassing? I think it would show good sense if they can either discard bad ideas, or run with good ones.

Keeping everything in development a secret until it has been fully developed, programmed, and then unveiled to the public before getting feedback, will continue to lead to "issues" with implementation that could have been avoided with community input. Some elements that, once programmed, are "too difficult to change" due to the extensive revisions necessary, even if they wanted to, become impossible (or not cost effective) to change.

Such posts would also drive community conversation in directions that are compatible with the vision of the development team. We've seen this in several threads on this board (too few so far, but good examples are: the crafting skill cap increase thread, the revised 2hour abilities thread, and Corsair 11 rolls thread) If players feel that the development team is taking the jobs in undesirable directions, they can get that feedback too. Without posts stating the direction and vision of the development team, players have to "assume" the direction, and make plans accordingly. They may think "Past FF games (the most logical frame of reference) have shown 'this job' to do 'this', so that's where SE must be headed. I'll play 'this job', because I enjoy that style of play. That's the direction I want to go too."

For some jobs, (like White Mage,) that's a pretty easy trend to look at... best healers in the game. Some are "balanced" already and don't want to see changes, but know they're coming anyway as the level cap keeps going to 99, (like Monk.) Some jobs have needed certain "fixes" (some small, some quite large) for a long time with no resolution within sight. (like Puppetmaster's automaton AI)

What are the developers thoughts? What are they thinking/planning? Do they acknowledge the issues at hand? (We don't even have to know what they're really "doing", but what direction they're headed would be nice.) The more detail the better. Also, the more interaction the better. Clearly it's best for them to be working on getting things into the game, but maybe they should schedule some meaningful time each week for community interaction. For all we know, maybe they already do this, but the amount of feedback that we're getting on these (English) boards leads one to think they're mainly using the boards to release "twitter-like" advertisements about upcoming version updates while giving lots of "that's too difficult/time consuming to change" answers to feedback threads, which, while quite possibly is the honest reason for the dismissal of the idea presented, makes us wonder what IS worth the time and effort? What direction ARE they going in?

Saving these revelations for version updates isn't the best idea, in my opinion.

[Duelle]

These forums are as close as we'll get to a direct line of communication with the developers. These are exactly the topics we should be hearing back from them on.

You'd think so, but save for a topic on the DRG forums, I don't think the devs have actually said much of anything. Those of us with ongoing discussions *coughredmagecough* are curious to see if anyone from SE is lurking in our threads.

[Greatguardian]

You'd think so, but save for a topic on the DRG forums, I don't think the devs have actually said much of anything. Those of us with ongoing discussions *coughredmagecough* are curious to see if anyone from SE is lurking in our threads.

If they actually reply positively to the RDM subforum's melee crowd, I will gladly toss my Duelist's Chapeau. Destroying the most powerful mage in the game, one Accuracy buff at a time.

[Duelle]

If they actually reply positively to the RDM subforum's melee crowd, I will gladly toss my Duelist's Chapeau. Destroying the most powerful mage in the game, one Accuracy buff at a time.

I'd probably be so happy I'd make a tribute video. Then again, like almost everything in FFXI, there would be a "but" attached to it.