Summoner feels really, really dumbed down now

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

Devs SHOULD have a look at the feedback by themselves. No matter how it´s written down unless it´s just a "fck you" or similar insults. There is no other way to get behind what ppl actually think and feel about their game, content and any changes. CM´s often don´t bring the message as its given to the devs, maybe they don´t even understand everything, because they´re not confident with gaming / the game or developing at all. Maybe they do even play the game by themselves and give feedback, they agree with, more meaning and pretty much ignore everything else.
A serious dev would check out what´s gonna happening across the board. I would take care way more about raw feedback about my "baby" i developed than all the hidings behind kind words or just hyped thumbs ups from fanboys.

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I've seen it said before that developers should look at the end users complaints, but not their suggestions. For example, if someone says "I think X is boring" and then lists off their own ways they should fix X, the developer would only consider "Well the users think this is boring" and then come up with their own fixes. Because let's be real, the average forum person's ideas are terrible.

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Originally Posted by tearagion

I don't really understand what else you'd expect people to try. A 200 page megathread of complaints and criticism, like the DRK one they have already ignored? Maybe we make a scrapbook of everything wrong with the job, giftwrap it and mail it? What's the maximum impact here?

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Oh I don't expect people to try anything effective. I expect threads complaining that the new summoner isn't a summoner for arbitrary non-summoner related reasons, I expect threads complaining about the lack of dots, I expect threads complaining that summoner has few buttons, and I expect players to complain their job has gotten 'ignored' despite the opportunity to do fixes other than potency adjustments literally hasn't happened yet.

Because complaining you're being ignored when no opportunity to show you've been ignored has occured is not a part of conducting effective feedback. Barking in frustration is not how to communicate effective feedback.

Taking the time to reason out issues, put them in a clear and concise manner, and produce something that actually can be actionable, and presents a problem to be solved, is how to do so. Creating ten threads of 'summoner is one button now' doesn't.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

I've seen it said before that developers should look at the end users complaints, but not their suggestions. For example, if someone says "I think X is boring" and then lists off their own ways they should fix X, the developer would only consider "Well the users think this is boring" and then come up with their own fixes. Because let's be real, the average forum person's ideas are terrible.

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Honestly, this. Especially when suggestions are mutually exclusive or counter productive to other design goals.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

I've seen it said before that developers should look at the end users complaints, but not their suggestions. For example, if someone says "I think X is boring" and then lists off their own ways they should fix X, the developer would only consider "Well the users think this is boring" and then come up with their own fixes. Because let's be real, the average forum person's ideas are terrible.

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I think they should even look into suggestions, atleast overfly them.

Of course there is a lot of crap flying around. The most ppl just don´t think in larger spaces, don´t care for balancing, other ppl or how it might effect everything beyond. But a bunch of ppl do and there are some good suggestions, which could be either implemented as they´re given, or might be a solid base for further ideas / implementations.
Devs are mostly retracted in their work aswell. While doing nothing but the same thing over and over again, they´re going to be blind within some time. They lose their binding to the users end, their inspiration and creativity. That´s why so many game systems are nothing but copy & paste and noone invents a new wheel. (Away from the costs-factor...)

I highly doubt YP comes here and checks out what´s going on, otherwise things would probably look different. Even in livestreams he seem to care more about positive feedback and hype-posts in the chatchannel than everything else. That´s why FF14 stucks with the same stuff for ages now and things classes are going to be more braindead. The only new thing we get is the island... but even that seems to be copy & paste from AC and nothing SE developed by themselves.
Nothing against a solid base... but to copy & paste even the same bad things over and over again each expansion isn´t great.

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Originally Posted by Gruntler

Taking the time to reason out issues, put them in a clear and concise manner, and produce something that actually can be actionable, and presents a problem to be solved, is how to do so.

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Good thing it isn't your job to comb over the threads, because otherwise you'd have done it poorly. This has happened on multiple occasions. However it is SE's apparent policy to not respond to any issue bar those that could not conceivably be construed as negative. No opportunity to show we've been ignored has occurred, yes (unless you count feedback prior to release, which was ignored though I'm sure for the very reasonable purpose of not delaying a release any longer), but neither has any acknowledgement of opinion. I obviously understand why they don't respond to such contentious topics directly or prematurely, but considering their response to previous reworks alongside no acknowledgment I don't think it's reasonable to expect opinion to be relayed once and then left to hope it's received by a development team, let alone acted upon.

It'd be unrealistic to expect them to respond to any one single comment, no matter how much merit it has. The world is just too big and it would be a literal drop in the ocean. What you can bet on though, would be someone whose job is to read the 'mood on the street' so to speak, pick up on trends and convey that to their superiors. A quarter of the frontpage threads being summoner related would certainly get their attention - what conclusion they would draw is a separate matter.

This goes both ways too. If you scoff at the notion of them taking notice of particularly spirited complaints, don't expect them to pause their efforts on account of your inspired complaints about complaints either. This isn't a contest or a debate, you won't be winning any points, and all you're doing is adding to the noise.

The one equalizer on these forums is that by design, it is impossible to reply to a thread without bumping it. So love or hate summoner, know that any thread you bump, any argument you drag out will serve only to make its parent more visible. For those trolling and arguing in bad faith, consider that for all your efforts, you might inadvertently be aiding the opposing party with your participation.

I've said it before, but I think they took the Summoner in the right direction in terms of class fantasy; a DoT mage does not a SUMMONER make. However, once the spectacle wore off, I quickly realized how boring the class was. It definitely needs work on the gameplay front.

Not to mention the Summoner never felt like a proper DoT mage to begin with. It always felt like an amalgamation of two different classes. As far as I remember, the DoTs and summons were always separate systems that never played off of each other. Now that the Summoner focuses more on the summoning perhaps we'll get a real DoT class later, especially since a lot of the others classes are clearly going to lose their DoTs as well. I like DoT mages, so here's to hoping.

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Originally Posted by Adonan

I've said it before, but I think they took the Summoner in the right direction in terms of class fantasy; a DoT mage does not a SUMMONER make. However, once the spectacle wore off, I quickly realized how boring the class was. It definitely needs work on the gameplay front.

Not to mention the Summoner never felt like a proper DoT mage to begin with. It always felt like an amalgamation of two different classes. As far as I remember, the DoTs and summons were always separate systems that never played off of each other. Now that the Summoner focuses more on the summoning perhaps we'll get a real DoT class later, especially since a lot of the others classes are clearly going to lose their DoTs as well. I like DoT mages, so here's to hoping.

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What tied DoTs to summons is that every time you summoned Phoenix or entered Dreadwyrm Trance, Tri-disaster CD would reset and you could refresh the DoTs without having to actually keep track of them for the whole rotation, only having to reapply them manually every 2 minutes.

True, but I was talking more along the lines of Fester and Painflare growing more powerful for each DoT you had on the enemy. Maybe the Egis could have gotten an attack speed increase for each DoT, or maybe each tick of the DoTs could have added an extra half second (1 in total) to the duration of your Phoenix and Bahamut. Ooh, or maybe a summon off the global cooldown that grew slightly more powerful for each tick of the DoTs the current target suffered throughout the battle. It would have been pretty awesome to end the fight on an explosive finish from...Borgrund: Avatar of Pestilence.

Honestly, people often compared the old Summoner to the Warlock of WoW so I was just doing the same thing, albeit with every MMO, not just WoW. When I look at all the DoT mages I've played in other MMOs, the Summoner can't compare. The DoTs worked off some of your spells, but that just made the summoning part feel supplementary.

I can only imagine that whoever ultimately put their foot down and came up with the rework was probably new blood in the team or someone already there with a longtime love of Summoners from the series who for a long time wasn't in a position of power high enough to enact the changes they wanted and was forced to watch the job spiral out of control until it was clear there was no way forward. Again, just my speculation.

If this is the case though, because it's at least clear to me that a lot of love went into the making of this iteration after what I can imagine must have been long deliberations, maybe just maybe the criticism could have been a lot more constructive if the goal was to get through to them instead of scaring them off?

The people who are able to say, "I like this and I wish there were more of it" have the right idea. The people whose takes and phrases I'd rather not repeat, have the wrong idea of how to go about things. Whoever it is decided they were going to base new Summoner off Rydia/Garnet/Dissidia Yuna and at this point it's unlikely that they'll entertain ideas that are directly contradicting their design philosophy as opposed to meaningful additions that build off the work they already did. "Bringing back dots!" and their interactions are probably at the bottom of the list of things they're considering at the moment. Again, an express goal of the rework was to get rid of the Warlock stigma.

In my case at least, I appreciate and consider their work thus far amazing, and I look forward to new summons and whatever other new stuff they have planned. At this point it would be pretty difficult to turn me off from the job. I could not have asked for a better job to experience these first months of Endwalker with, thank you.

It's easier to add DoTs back.

Instead of Bio and Miasma, add elemental DoTs that are related to each summon.

Garuda applies wind-based DoT.

Ifrit applies fire-based DoT.

Titan applies earth-based DoT.

If you use the summons correctly you unlock a "Tri-disaster" ability that does unaspected damage and applies the 3 DoTs at once, to be used during Bahamut/Phoenix.

Now it's not poison anymore, right?

/shrug