The live letter was a mistake.

The expansion comes out in 2 months!
The way this live letter was done (or at least the first part of it) was a mistake. It is like that every 2 year, and I don't think it is really beneficial.

They reveal either too much or not enough information on how each job is changed, and people immediately jump to conclusion.
As if there was not enough complaints all the time about various job mechanics.


And we have to wait for a whole month for the embargo on the media tour to be lifted (they said mid-October)
One month!
One month with the forum and other places being flooded by "they ruined my job" comments, from players who did not play with the changes and know maybe a good half of the changes based on what Yoshida said and what we are seeing in the trailer.
And then we will see media tour information, and people will complain about potencies or other aspects of the game without playing it themselves for a whole other month.
(for sure some/most of the complaints will probably turn out to be true, but it is still way too early to judge)

I like that we are getting information, but since they don't go in depth on all the changes and just provide an explanation on the direction they chose, it leaves too much room for interpretation.

TLDR: please SE, if you really want to show the job actions this early, give us a job actions PTR after announcing the job changes. If not, then don't try to explain the job changes before the November live letter, because this helps no one.
It's fine if you just want to show the 2 new jobs a bit though. That's OK.

I would much prefer this current speculation both positive and negative than absolutely nothing. People have been utterly starved for information especially as we really didn't get a whole lot from the Fanfest. Now I don't disagree they should also release the tooltips just to let us have fun but I'd still rather this over nothing.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/86...154241.png?v=1


Also, having speculation discussion while waiting for the expansion is pretty fun IMO.

People would say their job was ruined even if they had the information, because some people don't like their job to change or evolve in any way at all.

The changes to astrologian in shadowbringers are a good example. The changes were good and the class was still fun, people just didn't like change so they didn't even give it a chance.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

People would say their job was ruined even if they had the information, because some people don't like their job to change or evolve in any way at all.

The changes to astrologian in shadowbringers are a good example. The changes were good and the class was still fun, people just didn't like change so they didn't even give it a chance.

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True, opinions will always be opinions. But at least it would be based on actual facts.

It is beneficial to gauge reactions though. It helps them figure out what worked and what they misjudged what players want. Getting skills being displayed is a good thing. It gives hype for something to look forward to. That's the entire purpose of the live letter's job actions.

We're basically just enjoying how the new animations will imply and guessing how the new skills interact - this is part of the fun in a liveletter action trailer, to see how you can speculate your job evolving or changing.

We don't know how the specifics of how each skill works in its kit and how potent they are, so people jumping to conclusions are just people who are making speculations based on individual aspects without trying out the job in current content. It's like the equivalent of how DPS and tanks who never played healer expect healers to only heal because they only have one DPS attack skill, when in reality that's not how healers work at all in FFXIV due to encounter design allowing ample downtime (which only increases with better gear, which allows us to be DPSing even more than before). After people try out the jobs at a higher level, generally misconceptions either go away or get proven. This is basically what the media tour is for. Until then, just take those opinions with a grain of salt.

That being said, there are of course valid complaints in live letter job actions. For example, anyone who played SCH knows how terrible it is to use Dissipation vs. Aetherpact vs. Seraph because of how each skill either soft locks or hardlocks other skills. From our standpoint and from previous expansions, we can see Pet AI changing, but SE never really got full success on Pet AI as it felt clunky to use or didn't stop pets from ghosting. It's very difficult to expect something will change without seeing that change.

When the liveletter doesn't demonstrate the change of Pet AI without anything new other than a skill the player casts, it leaves players wondering 'what about all these other issues with the job currently?' We are assured they have adjusted changes for Pet AI, but if the liveletter doesn't demonstrate them in any notable fashion, that's not a good sign. All SCH did display was just one new skill centered on 'themselves' compared to other jobs which got adjusted or had new skills added. The devs tell us they haven't seen anything they felt they have to adjust on SCH, which it immediately tells us they may have misunderstood the issue, so it'd be natural to complain. Whether these complaints are right is still not known, but withholding that information until it's too late will leave people be even angrier since it'll be too late for feedback to adjust gameplay for an even longer period of time.

That's exactly why I said they give either too much or not enough. Scholar is the best example. Like, they said they did not change things 'significantly'. Then they also said they made it more focused on its barriers instead of healing capacities. And they also briefly said that it will have a very good single target buff. So it says a lot, but it says nothing.

And if they really cared for players feedback before releasing, they would do some sort of PTR. Everything, aside potencies, is probably pretty much set in stone at this point.
Now they said that the media tour is bigger than usual thanks to the travel restrictions making it easier to have more people remotely. So maybe they will get enough feedback from that.

A PTR would allow people to spoil the patches before they happen. It's also not necessary because they employ hundreds of people to test it.

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Originally Posted by Garnix

TLDR: please SE, if you really want to show the job actions this early, give us a job actions PTR after announcing the job changes. If not, then don't try to explain the job changes before the November live letter, because this helps no one.
It's fine if you just want to show the 2 new jobs a bit though. That's OK.

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Its not even that early....and people have been waiting to see & hear this information.
Now we have a base of what to expect, with some information we wont know till the game is fully released.
This isn't a bad thing at all...people are just Drama Queens and will Doomsay their job is ruined no matter what. Even with a PTR

Why would it? They don't need to put every single one of the game's asset on this PTR. It could be a very specific build just to allow players to play the jobs.

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

Its not even that early....and people have been waiting to see & hear this information.
Now we have a base of what to expect, with some information we wont know till the game is fully released.
This isn't a bad thing at all...people are just Drama Queens and will Doomsay their job is ruined no matter what. Even with a PTR

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Yeah I guess that's right...

Media tour coming mid-Octorber. That's when we'll have videos/screenshots of all the changes as close to release as possible. Of course, everything is subject to change.

Yawn this drivel again. If you think peoples complaints are repetitive - so too is the white knight wait and see rhetoric. Because of repeated trends over the years people can make a fairly robust guess on direction. All of that without your approval. People aren't 'drama queens' when they complain about Healer or the statements made about it. They are a s*** show and everyone knows it.

They always trickle out information. It isn't unique to the games industry, nor is it designed as a pointless exercise to frustrate the playerbase. There are numerous executive and business level reasons for doing so. Move along.

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Originally Posted by Garnix

The expansion comes out in 2 months!
The way this live letter was done (or at least the first part of it) was a mistake. It is like that every 2 year, and I don't think it is really beneficial.

They reveal either too much or not enough information on how each job is changed, and people immediately jump to conclusion.
As if there was not enough complaints all the time about various job mechanics.


And we have to wait for a whole month for the embargo on the media tour to be lifted (they said mid-October)
One month!
One month with the forum and other places being flooded by "they ruined my job" comments, from players who did not play with the changes and know maybe a good half of the changes based on what Yoshida said and what we are seeing in the trailer.
And then we will see media tour information, and people will complain about potencies or other aspects of the game without playing it themselves for a whole other month.
(for sure some/most of the complaints will probably turn out to be true, but it is still way too early to judge)

I like that we are getting information, but since they don't go in depth on all the changes and just provide an explanation on the direction they chose, it leaves too much room for interpretation.

TLDR: please SE, if you really want to show the job actions this early, give us a job actions PTR after announcing the job changes. If not, then don't try to explain the job changes before the November live letter, because this helps no one.
It's fine if you just want to show the 2 new jobs a bit though. That's OK.

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There will never be a PTR in this game. PTR is a garbage concept created by lazy developers.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

There will never be a PTR in this game. PTR is a garbage concept created by lazy developers.

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Depends how it is done.
The media tour is basically a very restricted PTR where only a selected few can test things for a couple hours...I don't see how making it accessible to more players would make them lazier...
As someone pointed out earlier, the main reason why there isn't one is probably to prevent datamines and this kind of things.

My only problem with the live letter was the length. I would have preferred if they split it into 3 2 hour letters a week apart instead of one 6 hour letter. Even the devs were showing their tiredness at the end and clearly just wanted it over.

I'm grateful for all their hard work but that was a marathon stream.

Ptr need not apply here
The. End.

Speculation is fun, though, and miring everything in "it needs to be backed by facts!" is just being a party pooper imo. Sure you have drama queens but their world falling apart is part of the fun.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

Sure you have drama queens but their world falling apart is part of the fun.

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That's actually a good way to see it! I love it! Thanks for the advice! :)

No wonder SE doesn't talk to us on the forums anymore with topics like this.
Communication is a good thing.

"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the job reveal, wait for the media tour!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the media tour, wait until expansion launch!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, the expansion's barely started, wait until 6.1!"
"Sometimes they rework classes ...maybe. It'll be fine!"
"You can't expect them to fix an entire class mid expansion, wait until 7.0!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the job reveal....!"

And so the cycle continues.

Personally I spent an entire expansion playing watered down blue melee dps and pressing 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, as a healer and now we're getting ready to go into another expansion of the same, with some nonsense "pure" and "barrier" tags thrown in the mix. Sure I'm looking forward to Endwalker, I'll probably have fun, but some parts suck, I've waited 2 years and I'm tired of being told to wait more, so I'll continue to provide feedback that I think it sucks.

Of course communication is a good thing...when it is clear. All I am saying is that some of it was too vague.

Like, what does it mean that I need to use my tank cooldown at the optimal time for greater benefits? Is it just like TBN for all tanks? Are we going back to a shield swipe type of thing? Or is it purely defensive?
What are those single target buffs for healers? Is that going to change healers playstyle a lot? Casting offensive buffs on party member instead of just spamming glare? Or are those another long defensive oGCD cooldown to cast on the main tank? They gave basically no information on that aside from the fact that it exists. I think it was more needed to explain this rather than the new fancy white mage AoE HoT...I did not need to know that Fluid Aura was gone either. It's the only action that they said they removed. Does that mean it is actually the only one they removed?...Or did they just put that line in their slides for the meme?...
And everybody complains about Scholar, mostly because nothing was said about it (and because nothing flashy was shown for it in the trailer, which is fine IMO)...

As I said, they give either too much information or not enough.
It's like "We give you X,Y and Z, but we will just explain you what Y and Z are. We don't want to tell you what X is yet."

I agree with the sentiment it needs to either be an all or nothing thing either give us all the job details with tooltips or say nothing till you are ready to do this

The issue they have created is two fold -

One group is all doom and gloom and writing off jobs such as scholar and bard and maybe they are right but we don't know cos insufficient info was given

On the other hand we have the people praising things like summoner but again based on insufficient info so when it actually releases people will be annoyed it doesn't play like they thought it was gonna

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Originally Posted by Garnix

Depends how it is done.
The media tour is basically a very restricted PTR where only a selected few can test things for a couple hours[...]

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That's an interesting comparison, but I'm not sure it's an accurate one.
Journalists/Influencers main purpose in the media tour isn't to rigorously test the expac and report bugs to SQEX, but to gather material for news articles and videos.

Who cares if people want to complain about it? There are always going to be people not happy with the job design but that shouldn't mean the rest of us don't get a preview of what's to come. As a MNK main I'm very happy with the direction they're going. I'm also excited to play a real SMN finally, and most of the others jobs seem fine.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the job reveal, wait for the media tour!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the media tour, wait until expansion launch!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, the expansion's barely started, wait until 6.1!"
"Sometimes they rework classes ...maybe. It'll be fine!"
"You can't expect them to fix an entire class mid expansion, wait until 7.0!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the job reveal....!"

And so the cycle continues.

Personally I spent an entire expansion playing watered down blue melee dps and pressing 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, as a healer and now we're getting ready to go into another expansion of the same, with some nonsense "pure" and "barrier" tags thrown in the mix. Sure I'm looking forward to Endwalker, I'll probably have fun, but some parts suck, I've waited 2 years and I'm tired of being told to wait more, so I'll continue to provide feedback that I think it sucks.

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Forgot the best one.

"It's just pre-lim patch notes".

Isn't PTR just used to generate hype by giving influencers something to talk/speculate about and not to actually test anything other than like server stress tests?

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Originally Posted by hobostew

Isn't PTR just used to generate hype by giving influencers something to talk/speculate about and not to actually test anything other than like server stress tests?

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Pretty much...

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the job reveal, wait for the media tour!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the media tour, wait until expansion launch!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, the expansion's barely started, wait until 6.1!"
"Sometimes they rework classes ...maybe. It'll be fine!"
"You can't expect them to fix an entire class mid expansion, wait until 7.0!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the job reveal....!"

And so the cycle continues.

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You act like it's never a good time for feedback, but there is a rather large and rather sweet spot between the first Savage tier (where everyone gets to try the jobs fully geared up in endgame content) and early info about the next expac about a year later.

I am not trying to discourage you from giving feedback, and constant feedback is still important and valuable and you should totally be giving it, but that year-ish period I highlighted seems to be when the devs are more receptive to feedback if anyone wants a big target ; )

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

No wonder SE doesn't talk to us on the forums anymore with topics like this.
Communication is a good thing.

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In my opinion square enix approach of making these live letters are much better than blizz, that make news of game much more vague, if they have something to say. Yoshi team is very polite and friendly, much different than blizz, wen a player are unsatisfied with cellphone game, blizz ask: "don't you have cellphone?"

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Originally Posted by ItMe

That's an interesting comparison, but I'm not sure it's an accurate one.
Journalists/Influencers main purpose in the media tour isn't to rigorously test the expac and report bugs to SQEX, but to gather material for news articles and videos.

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If it's anything like Shadowbringers (honestly the only media tour I ever payed attention to) it will be SE dropping these journalists and influencers into a zone with a maxed lvl 90 job to mess around with and that's basically it.

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Originally Posted by Mindiori

Yawn this drivel again. If you think peoples complaints are repetitive - so too is the white knight wait and see rhetoric.

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In short...No Matter what happens, there is a Side A and B. nothing new.

Naw OP, the Liveletter was great and the best expansion related content we've gotten. It's really cool to see the new abilities and hear the producer talk about their design goals and other changes. They don't give specifics because the numbers are going to be in flux for awhile still, but the numbers also don't matter right now. It was hype to see the new actions (well... rip sch and drk) and it was fun to listen to them talk at length about development. It also has pretty much helped me decide that I will continue to main SAM and won't be switching to reaper almost assuredly. Which is nice, means I can spend the next couple of months not actually playing this game since I've gotten all my pre-expansion goals out of the way.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the job reveal, wait for the media tour!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the media tour, wait until expansion launch!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, the expansion's barely started, wait until 6.1!"
"Sometimes they rework classes ...maybe. It'll be fine!"
"You can't expect them to fix an entire class mid expansion, wait until 7.0!"
"Don't jump to conclusions, it's just the job reveal....!"

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I mean most of these are simply saying "wait and see." As opposed to "stop complaining and just deal with it" which is sound advice, the Media tour will give us better insights as to the changes, launch will allow us to see any possible "last minute" changes. The X.1 patches are typically when high tier raiding comes about so that definitely gives us answers to many questions and as someone else said is possibly the best time to give feedback, though in all honesty you likely should be providing any and all feedback after each milestone, post launch amd possibly pre-launch or honestly whenever the hell you feel like it regardless of what people who would reply with these say.

Do you...not play video games? People are gonna doom and gloom. People are gonna be hyped. It is how it always goes. The live letter gave us a nice sneak peak. The media tour will give us a more complete picture and we'll have a few weeks to chew on that info as we go into getting our own hands on it. To which people will still complain, sometimes rightly often times for no reason balance changes will happen and the cycle will repeat 2 years from now.

I think you're just taking it all way too seriously and getting all bothered by something that really is not a thing that matters at all. Why does it matter if people run around memeing "SCH dead" for the next 2 months or whatever? it's just people having fun, not that serious.