Reaching out to the Development Team about Feedback & Suggestions

Hey everyone.

I just wanted to ask: other than theorycrafting and bantering back and forth on these forums, how else are you providing feedback to the development team?
I ask, because, unfortunately, I don't believe in their ability to come in here and extract suggestions from us like they claim they do, considering YoshiP's repeated admittance to a lack of awareness about player desires or issues. After so many years of being neglected, I think that it's important for us to now find additional ways to let the development team know what our grievances are, and our suggestions on how to improve upon the role.

For example, although it's not exactly intended for this, I tend to submit feedback in-game through the Suggestions link in the systems > support > contact us menu. It's a small, open-ended suggestion form, so I've been sending suggestions as they come to me. But, while this suggestion form isn't necessarily for this purpose, I think it would be difficult to ignore our suggestion and we might see them passed over to the development team if it happens to be a consistent wave of similar requests/grievances.

At this point, I'm wondering about what other avenues you think would be available to us to submit our feedback? I'm thinking it's time we try a little harder to be seen and heard if they're going to actively take a blind eye to us.

It doesn't feel as if there are too many official avenues to send our feedback to. Forums are as official and direct as it gets, since the messages are far more permanent than social media and they can take their time to comb through the numerous threads. Regardless, the only other alternatives to relaying feedback I can think of are Twitter (whether by direct reply to the official account's tweets, or just @mentioning them in a tweet) and using the livestream chats during Live Letters.

The forums are the place to do it, generally. There's also an in game "Suggestions" button as you note, but, that obviously won't give the devs a meter on how popular an idea might be (or might not be), doesn't give a chance for spinoff suggestions in discussion, and so on.

The devs have demonstrated they do read the forums. Certain things they'll respond very quickly to.

The issue with healers is, simply, the devs are not on board with many of the sentiments here. And since the communication is almost always one way, we don't really know what they're thinking or what compromises they might be open to, if any - other than what we can infer from the directions they take with patches which sometimes align with suggestions on specific abilities (eg Misery, Energy Drain, Neutral Sect) but almost never on overall direction. So, here we are, essentially deadlocked.

A secondary/contributory issue, is, I think: Healers are almost never talked about in the media, both in formal interviews with publications and by youtuber/twitch types. Now, with the lead up to Endwalker we did see a bit of change there - compared to the usual total lack of discussion on it at all, there were a few questions and some small segments in influencers' videos occasionally. But it's still very underrepresented - no one of import/influence really wants to spend much, if any, time discussing healers. So... here we are.

This is the best way, unless you have notable influence on social media platforms or the press perhaps. But SE holds the reins and disagrees with much here, and even using the best avenues won't get around that.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

The devs have demonstrated they do read the forums.

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Can I be honest?
I don't believe this to be as true as the simple statement of it. After all, we've had times where YoshiP would say something along the lines of "I had no idea people were saying this" or "I didn't know this was an issue" when asked about specific feedback, not to mention the few times that they have addressed feedback after mistranslating it or misconstruing it and, therefore, missing the point.

I suppose I'm asking about this because I just don't trust that they're actually looking at our grievances and feel a need to take this a little further than just passively providing them feedback in a format that I can't trust is being looked at. Furthermore, if it's just an issue of public outcry, I then also wonder, who are we talking about this to, and are they talking to anyone else? Surely we're not the only ones who have grievances, so I wonder where those who do have their grievances go to air them, if they do; and, if they do not, would they if they knew that there were places to do so?

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

Can I be honest?
I don't believe this to be as true as the simple statement of it. After all, we've had times where YoshiP would say something along the lines of "I had no idea people were saying this" or "I didn't know this was an issue" when asked about specific feedback, not to mention the few times that they have addressed feedback after mistranslating it or misconstruing it and, therefore, missing the point.

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Tbh, and this may or may not be copium, but I like to believe that was the case with the 'go play ultimate' fiasco. It's not that most healers want complex 15 button rotations and deal as much damage as the lower DPS jobs, we just want to press more than a single button, for most of the fight, of every fight, at every level, FROM LV 4 TO 90.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Snip.

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I believe they don’t want stacking shields because massive shields can nullify mechanics.
But at that point, they could always just have the smaller shield deactivate while a larger one is in effect. Something like - ‘galvanise effect is disabled while target is under the effects of a larger eukrasian prognosis/diagnosis’.

At that point, you could just give everyone GCD shields and regens. Then get rid of the designation of shield/regen healers. Let them stand on their own merits and playstyles instead of competing for arbitrarily segregated slots.

I think reaching out via the in game suggestion box is a good idea; continuing to post on the forums is good even if they don't read them. If we cede any bit of proverbial ground, it just lets them feel and say that they're going in the right direction. It's definitely demoralizing to have not been heard or ignored for as long as healers have been, but I'm still of the opinion that as long as you're paying to play the game, you should voice your discontent here.

Outside of that, I'm not really sure what other avenues are good. Social media like Twitter seems like a crapshoot to get any traction and the EN XIV account really only interacts with fan art, and when I've googled some of the issues that people have in these forums, people on sites like Reddit echo the sentiment as well. There aren't many good places to feel like you're being heard, and it's only exacerbated by how many times they ignore healer questions in Live Letters and the like. I would definitely be willing to go where ever would be the best way to get the devs attention, be that Twitter or somewhere else.

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

At that point, you could just give everyone GCD shields and regens. Then get rid of the designation of shield/regen healers. Let them stand on their own merits and playstyles instead of competing for arbitrarily segregated slots.

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I posted in the wrong thread but to address this single point:

All healing roles already have both shields and regens, the Shield/Healer dichotomy is a pretty major failure in FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

just give everyone GCD shields and regens.

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SCH and SGE have more access to Regen than AST and WHM do...

The forums feel like talking to a brick wall at times. Healers hardly ever get any Q&A time during interviews or live letters, and the response is usually short sighted or inconsiderate. "Go heal ultimate". Continued feedback and the falling percentage of healers in the community eventually have to cause some reaction.