when will this lazy devs fix the alliance roulette?

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Originally Posted by Erzaa

I mean, at this point, it's just getting ridiculous to read these threads.

Community complains about balance of jobs, SE balances jobs, homogenising them in the process, community complains about homogenisation.

Community complains about difficulty spikes in MSQ, SE makes MSQ easy and more approachable, community complains about braindead easy MSQ.

Community complains about CT raids and ilvl cheese, SE institutes ilvl lock (hurting other players in the process, but that's besides the point), community still complains about CT popping (as if we didn't know this was already going to happen).

Community suggesting changing CT into a 4 man now, likely removing a good introductory 24 man raid with unique mechanics for new players in the process, and also likely making it even harder for new players to get used to the later 24 man raids, while also increasing the chance that players might not even unlock them. Also, will have the consequence of moving the most common raid popping up to Void Ark.

Meanwhile, a poster asks for something completely innocent and inconsequential, such as more hotbars, the entire community jumps down their throat, telling them they're not being efficient and playing the game wrong.

At this point, SE really needs to stop listening to player feedback and just make the game they want to make. The playerbase really don't know what they're asking for and just throw out half-assed ideas with no thought to the consequences.

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Have you considered SE doesn't listen to actual feedback but makes sweeping extremes to the other side which only elicits more complaints?

Take, for example, job balance. You can balance jobs without homogenizing them. All that needs to be done is make them play differently while still achieving them same numerical end result. Unfortunately, that takes considerably more time and effort. Likewise, they cling to stubborn philosophies such as insisting healers would have a panic attack if they, ya know, actually needed to heal. On that same front, they won't add new damage options because that's both "too complicated for newer players" and "will be expected!!!"

Perhaps one of the better examples of the devs making changes no one really asked for which wound up being a massive detriment is Bard. Once the most popular DPS in the entire game throughout Stormblood, it's tumbled so far down the popularity chart after being completely gutted since Shadowbringers that even Black Mage at the Savage level, a job notorious for being the least played. Only now has Bard sort of recovered nearly four years later, and that's after years of them slapping desperate potency buffs on it just to get people to play it again.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

...SE doesn't listen to...feedback...

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Judging by the list of things they've tried to fix to assuage player complaints, I feel it's safe to say, they do listen to feedback.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

...job balance. You can balance jobs without homogenizing them. All that needs to be done...play differently...takes considerably more time and effort.

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Time and effort are finite resources on a project. A project needs a way to streamline their processes in order to achieve all their features. The game has alot more to deal with, than just jobs. It doesn't help matters when they're feedback is thrown around willy nilly from just anyone, without proper requirements, needing to spend time filtering out the noise and find the root cause of an issue.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

...cling to stubborn philosophies... insisting healers would have a panic attack if they, ya know, actually needed to heal...won't add new damage options..."too complicated for newer players" and "will be expected!!!"

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Tank and Healer anxiety is a very real thing. So much so, that many players who might gravitate toward those roles can avoid playing them for fear of being called out and labeled. The homogenisation and simplification of those jobs serves more than just balancing. It also ensures that more players will play those roles, reducing queue times in the Duty Finder for everyone else. If the jobs were more complicated, a DPS' queue time might be even higher than it is now. It's one of those consequences that the community brings on itself.

They do listen to feedback and they do try and keep the playerbase happy. But the playerbase is never happy. Fixing a problem the one group complained about, makes another group angry who saw no problem with it before. SE tried to make jobs unique, which caused job imbalances. People complained that they were being excluded, so they balanced the jobs while streamlining the process. Now another group complains that everything is too streamlined.

If the FFXIV community wants something specific, all the groups need to reach a consensus. And that's not going to be some magical problem fix, it's going to be finding a middle ground that SE can implement and that the playerbase as a whole can agree that this is the best we're going to get and accept it.

There's a clip way back when of Jeff Kaplan discussing Overwatch meta. When one meta comp that made the community angry was fixed by the team, only for another meta comp to immediately take its place, and the community started complaining about the new one. He just exclaims, exasperated, "What the hell do you people want?"

Maybe it's time we decided what we want and then structure it in such a way that SE can turn it into a well defined feature requirement that they can implement? Instead of one group shouting over another into the aether and the one that screams loudest gets to have their moment of glory?

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Originally Posted by Erzaa

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SNIP"

Maybe it's time we decided what we want and then structure it in such a way that SE can turn it into a well defined feature requirement that they can implement? Instead of one group shouting over another into the aether and the one that screams loudest gets to have their moment of glory?

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Let's look at this point "Time and effort are finite resources on a project. A project needs a way to streamline their processes in order to achieve all their features. "

Streamlining, or optimizing, of Square's development processes - is not (the player's community's) problem. This should is typically not visible to any customer, we're talking about software development, but it would be no different if we were discussing car manufacturing or any other industry. it's on the manufacturer.


"The game has a lot more to deal with, than just jobs. It doesn't help matters when they're feedback is thrown around willy nilly from just anyone, without proper requirements, needing to spend time filtering out the noise and find the root cause of an issue."

True, however this again is just 'a day in the life" of a community manager and, in turn, a product manager. This is real life. Requirements will be often be ambiguous, contradictory, poorly formed, and chaotic. These people spend their working lives filtering and refining them.

Lastly, the piece de resistance "Tank and Healer anxiety is a very real thing. So much so, that many players who might gravitate toward those roles can avoid playing them for fear of being called out and labeled. The homogenisation and simplification of those jobs serves more than just balancing. It also ensures that more players will play those roles, reducing queue times in the Duty Finder for everyone else. If the jobs were more complicated, a DPS' queue time might be even higher than it is now. It's one of those consequences that the community brings on itself."

Sure, some players do have anxiety when they pick up these roles. getting "called out" may happen, however both tolerance of sprouts and the TOS generally prevents this. However, it is entirely possible to balance jobs without homogenizing them. In addition, if we look at queue times before some jobs were simplified and post simplification, there doesn't seem to be any complaints. Not to mention, I would say that it is unreasonable to expect that by level 90, a healer or tank job design cannot expect to have more complexity than at (let's say ) Satasha.

I've only gotten the 80s raid when queue 80 or higher.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

Let's look at this point "Time and effort are finite resources on a project. A project needs a way to streamline their processes in order to achieve all their features. "

Streamlining, or optimizing, of Square's development processes - is not (the player's community's) problem. This should is typically not visible to any customer, we're talking about software development, but it would be no different if we were discussing car manufacturing or any other industry. it's on the manufacturer.


"The game has a lot more to deal with, than just jobs. It doesn't help matters when they're feedback is thrown around willy nilly from just anyone, without proper requirements, needing to spend time filtering out the noise and find the root cause of an issue."

True, however this again is just 'a day in the life" of a community manager and, in turn, a product manager. This is real life. Requirements will be often be ambiguous, contradictory, poorly formed, and chaotic. These people spend their working lives filtering and refining them.

Lastly, the piece de resistance "Tank and Healer anxiety is a very real thing. So much so, that many players who might gravitate toward those roles can avoid playing them for fear of being called out and labeled. The homogenisation and simplification of those jobs serves more than just balancing. It also ensures that more players will play those roles, reducing queue times in the Duty Finder for everyone else. If the jobs were more complicated, a DPS' queue time might be even higher than it is now. It's one of those consequences that the community brings on itself."

Sure, some players do have anxiety when they pick up these roles. getting "called out" may happen, however both tolerance of sprouts and the TOS generally prevents this. However, it is entirely possible to balance jobs without homogenizing them. In addition, if we look at queue times before some jobs were simplified and post simplification, there doesn't seem to be any complaints. Not to mention, I would say that it is unreasonable to expect that by level 90, a healer or tank job design cannot expect to have more complexity than at (let's say ) Satasha.

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Alright. I've said all I had to say. Let's just keep going as we are, it's clearly worked for us so far. *shrug*

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Originally Posted by Erzaa

Alright. I've said all I had to say. Let's just keep going as we are, it's clearly worked for us so far. *shrug*

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You stated your opinions on a a diverse number of topics and decided to walk away, which is always your right. I have no idea of which subjects you have any experience with, nor in which context, however what I can say is none of them are simple, some of them aren't necessarily quick to resolve, but none of them will get resolved by avoiding them.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

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Well, no. I've brought up various points to assert my argument that SE does listen to feedback and do try to make us happy. But, our feedback is scattered, with vague examples of what's wrong and often times with poorly thought out solutions. They'll do their best to address the issue a group is being the loudest about in the moment, then inadvertently cause issues for another group. Reason being, one group only thought of how the problem affected them, while the other group probably hadn't been suffering from any issues so they didn't have any reason to complain. When the new group suffers, they come and scream the loudest now about new problems.

We're giving them mixed signals about what the problem is because we can't decide what the problem is, only that there's a problem.

Example: CT is the most common raid that pops, it needs to be locked to the job's ilvl. They added an ilvl lock and wouldn't you know it, people who never complained before now can't queue because they're overleveled. Enter a 40 page thread. And being drowned out by people telling them to just go buy gear off the MB. Players who had no reason to complain in the past had something taken away from them that was working, and the response from another group is, well it works on my machine.

Is it possible to make classes distinct while maintaining balance? Probably, of course it is. But what kind of change does the community want? Do we even know?

Personally I'd like it if they trimmed abilities down to a single hotbar or less and every job played differently. I'm also not a fan of the memorise fight design with insert weird symbol here I've never seen before that FFXIV has, it makes things artificially hard in the beginning and then a joke once you know what those weird new symbols mean. That's just my own opinion and preference. I'm not going to force it down someone else's throat though.

Is that what everyone else wants? What if a player wants additional complexity and more things to press? What about player really likes the way FF fights are designed? For that matter, how should each job play? How do you balance all the different numbers so that no job ever falls behind?

We as a community need to reach a consensus on what we want, keeping in mind many of us are casual players and many of us are hardcore players and find the middle ground and propose it to SE.

But it doesn't seem like we're willing to do that. We'll attack and jump on each other for proposing something we don't like or disagree with, even if it has merits.

If we can't reach a consensus on what we want the game to be, how will SE make a game that makes us all happy.

There's not much else that needs to be said. Clearly the way things are going now are causing aggravation for alot of people, but we're unwilling to reconsider how our complaints and suggestions impact others, exacerbating the problem.