Copium or Hopium: Jobs will get individuality in Dawntrail instead of 8.0?

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/fin...implification/

As the Final Fantasy 14 community expresses concern about the oversimplification of jobs, director Yoshi-P reveals that he's aware - and that yes, Dawntrail's future updates will remedy this.

While attending the recent Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail preview event, GamesRadar+ spoke to director and producer Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida regarding controversial job changes like the removal of Kaiten from Samurai's rotation in 6.1. Among the MMO's fanbase, there have long been concerns now about classes becoming too simple - with SAM being just one of many. For example, one Reddit poll asking players whether they're worried about Dawntrail further contributing to the "oversimplification of jobs" revealed that largely, the community is indeed afraid.

From the various changes made to Astrologian's card and sect systems (much to my own dismay) to DPS class ability nerfs some fans remark that they "don't think it's possible for them to make jobs any simpler than they are." Thankfully, Yoshi-P is well aware of this sentiment, as is the rest of the Final Fantasy 14 team. In our interview with the developer, he promises that jobs like SAM "won't be simplified any further," explaining that he's still "really torn" about job tweaks like the removal of Kaiten. At the time of the skill's removal, Yoshi-P says "There were more people requesting Kaiten to be removed than there were that we're happy with it."

He continues, describing how "there's no answer" in situations like this as "there are always going to be some people who prefer more difficult mechanics, and then others who prefer simple mechanics." He's not wrong - the removal of skills like Kaiten always sparks varying responses, with many missing an ability but others disagreeing. This doesn't mean Square Enix doesn't take overwhelmingly negative feedback on board, though. Yoshi-P states that right now, he's also "concerned" about "the simplicity" of jobs - just as a majority of fans are.

The beloved dev wants each player to have the ability to "showcase one's own technique or expertise," but says that "we're not in a good situation for that" due to the jobs' "simplicity as it is" right now. Yoshi-P then reveals that the team will remedy this as Dawntrail and its future updates roll out, "working towards a more fulfilling playing experience" in patch 7.2 and beyond: "We will look to the jobs and we will focus on providing more individuality in the jobs."

In an attempt to curb multiple updates' worth of simplification, Yoshi-P details how Square Enix "will be incorporating various changes" post-Dawntrail, some of which will be "related to the skill rotations." He even jokes that Kaiten could return as "Kaiten 2" and reiterates his earlier promise - come such changes, classes "will not be more simple." I doubt I'll ever see the intricate AST card system from years past make a comeback, but I'm hopeful for others as the director stresses how well he understands "that a lot of players want to be able to think for themselves."

Let's be real, job feedback is currently all over the place. A cacophony. I hope the devs are actually committed to not kneejerking on feedback and actually analyze and understand why the feedback exists and find an elegant solution out of all the myriad, often contradictory feedback that the community is giving.

I'll believe it when I see it but I dont expect massive job reworks mid expansion for basically the entire roster.

At the time of the skill's removal, Yoshi-P says "There were more people requesting Kaiten to be removed than there were that we're happy with it."

What absolutely insane reasoning. Is that what players need to do? Constantly post about how they love X skill or Y rotation so they don't remove it? Of course they aren't going to get feedback from people who enjoy the skill prior to it being removed!

The large outcry post removal should have been the immediate indicator that it was the wrong move to make.

It's one thing if a poll was put up and the majority voted to remove it but that's not what happened.

As a player who no longer plays Samurai after the changes that were made in 6.1 I'm absolutely floored . . .

It's another 4 years of
https://i.imgur.com/IRLwOZC.jpeg

Just like viera/hrothgar hats which we'll get as a "new expansion feature for 8.0!"

The individuality: job-specific emotes, available on Mogstation starting Patch 7.2!

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Originally Posted by HighlanderClone

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Yeah... I'm gonna take what Yoshi P says with a grain of salt. Until we see at least some plan of action these are just empty words to me.

Show, don't tell. But I hope they start with physical ranged DPS, and healers as those two roles seem to be in the worst state in terms of where they fit in the game. Also please buff BRD, and give it PVP style walking casts!

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

Yeah... I'm gonna take what Yoshi P says with a grain of salt. Until we see at least some plan of action these are just empty words to me.

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cease your signature at once

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Originally Posted by HighlanderClone

cease your signature at once

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I refuse, brother. Welcome back. This forum needs you.

When I read that they do "kneejerk over corrections to feedback", part of me wonders whether the developers understand and factor "negativity bias" into their interpretations at all.
Happy people don't leave much feedback, neutral people don't leave much feedback, angry people leave lots of feedback.
And as a species we have a tendency to overly focus on bad and negative things.



Because of said bias, a 95:5 negative to positive feedback ratio more accurately represents a 50/50 split in the playerbase, and not a playerbase that is overwhelmingly negative.
A 95:5 split will also feel more like 99:1 if you don't keep a clear head.

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Originally Posted by LeiyaAwandah

When I read that they do "kneejerk over corrections to feedback", part of me wonders whether the developers understand and factor "negativity bias" into their interpretations at all.
Happy people don't leave much feedback, neutral people don't leave much feedback, angry people leave lots of feedback.
And as a species we have a tendency to overly focus on bad and negative things.



Because of said bias, a 95:5 negative to positive feedback ratio more accurately represents a 50/50 split in the playerbase, and not a playerbase that is overwhelmingly negative.
A 95:5 split will also feel more like 99:1 if you don't keep a clear head.

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On the other hand you can’t just assume that because someone didn’t leave feedback they are happy

For example NN on jenova for like 5 years has been basically nothing but “does healing ever get more fun” and “why is healing so boring”

How much of that feedback do you think makes it to the official channels

This either means “the marketing department wants me to PR talk because people are meh about job changes but I don’t really care. Plus everyone’s gonna forget I said this by 7.2” or “oh fuck nobody’s excited about jobs in DT, we cannot wait for 8.0 we need to fast track that”. Or it’s a mistranslation. Either way, I’ll believe it when I see it.

He's been saying this stuff in a lot of interviews, but the one with Famitsu was especially detailed at the extent to which he's aware and addressing everything people have been bringing up here. Almost everything I've seen on the forums for the last several years got brought up suddenly across these interviews.

He seems to want to create room for skill expression, but doesn't want to make the jobs different at the same time as going back to their ARR/Heavensward content design philosophy of unique mechanics that might hit or miss or be controversial, because he thinks people need to get used to the content differences first. He also said that's why Viper and Pictomancer are designed on the same level as the other jobs are now rather than being some sort of example of what they would do in 8.0.

Obviously they aren't going to massively overhaul all the jobs outside of an expansion because that never happens, so if they make changes in a patch we are probably looking at minor adjustments to how skills function or extra role actions.

With job homogenization, he said it's difficult for the same reasons I've been saying, that if one person has a gap closer and another doesn't, then people complain, but once they give it it's homogenization. I think there was only one interview where I saw the 2 minute meta even mentioned, but it seems that is included in what he wants to fix because of how it's all constraining jobs to feel more similar, but we'll have to see whenever that happens.

weird thing to say when they took away one of dragoons JUMPS and replaced it with generic gap closer dash.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

With job homogenization, he said it's difficult for the same reasons I've been saying, that if one person has a gap closer and another doesn't, then people complain, but once they give it it's homogenization.

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Devil’s in the details. You can give each tank a gap closer and it’s not homogenous as long as they work differently. If, for example, drk had a no damage gap closer, PLD had a damaging gap closer, Warrior had a shukuchi-like ability that dealt a little bit of damage, and gunbreaker had an accelerated GCD (like mudra/RDM melee) that lets them dash in any direction then the goal of “give all tanks gap closers” has been achieved but without them feeling homogenous.

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Originally Posted by seolhyun

weird thing to say when they took away one of dragoons JUMPS and replaced it with generic gap closer dash.

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I do believe Spineshatter shouldn't have had damage on it ever so that it could be used strategically instead of for damage, but having a dash instead of a jump on dragoon is odd.

it's copium to think we'd even get those supposed changes in 8.0. don't ever take corpos at their word.

Just hoping they pick a job in 7.2 to take a risk on and try something completely new and outside the FF14 box and see what happens with player feedback

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

On the other hand you can’t just assume that because someone didn’t leave feedback they are happy

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My point was more one of proportion.


If 5% of happy customers send feedback and 70% of upset customers send feedback, this creates a disparate sample size that heavily overemphasizes the negative.
I pulled those numbers out of my rear, but it should still be illustrative of my overarching point.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

For example NN on jenova for like 5 years has been basically nothing but “does healing ever get more fun” and “why is healing so boring”

How much of that feedback do you think makes it to the official channels

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I've seen similar sentiments in Tonberry's NN, and contributed to much of it myself.


I would wager that feedback from there (if frequent enough) does make it back to Square in some form.
There are GMs that monitor public chats to measure public sentiment, and aggregate players' thoughts.
NN is but one place they would monitor.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

Devil’s in the details. You can give each tank a gap closer and it’s not homogenous as long as they work differently. If, for example, drk had a no damage gap closer, PLD had a damaging gap closer, Warrior had a shukuchi-like ability that dealt a little bit of damage, and gunbreaker had an accelerated GCD (like mudra/RDM melee) that lets them dash in any direction then the goal of “give all tanks gap closers” has been achieved but without them feeling homogenous.

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That would be nice, but I've seen plenty of people take the level of differences you're talking about and reduce them to the same thing. AST is getting new cards and immediately it went to, "it's just Aetherflow". Well, they're similar, but still different in the details. SCH and SGE are often said to be the exact same thing on these forums.

I think the amount of distinction it takes for a person to consider two things different varies by person and is part of the pain for the developers.

To me it's a question of game feel; the kind of moment to moment decisions I make to deal with situations as they arise and influence the state of battle.

Doesn't matter which healer I pick, it's 30s DoT and a single target nuke at the same pace.
If I know some big party wide is coming in, it's Asylum; Sacred Soil; Collective Unconscious; Kerachole.
If I know there's a tank buster coming, it's Divine Benison; Excogitation; Celestial Intersection; Haima.
If I want to slowly heal up the team, it's Afflatus Rapture; Whispering Dawn; Celestial Opposition; Physis.
and so on.

The skills themselves are all different, and we can get stuck in the weeds nitpicking the minutiae.
But these differences don't really culminate in them actually feeling different to play moment to moment (outside of AST's cards).

So I'm actually not being the least bit hyperbolic when I state that "All the healers play like WHM!"
Rather, I'm simply being reductive.

Heard it all before OP, Yoshi is full of it. The Drk's were told that they were gutting out class to give it strong foundations to build on, 3 expacs and all they've done is take away more than they add.

The statements in recent interviews are just PR damage control, cause they've now realised that they screwed up focusing an expac on a graphic update when their gameplays has some major issues. Fans aint happy and this expac is heading to a flop. Factor in Wow releasing their expac a month after, so basically just as FF14 gets a content draught. The devs are scrambling to save themselves SE took a big financial hit this year and DT is going to preform poorly.

Eh i'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt since we have a hard patch date rather than 'eventually lol"
we'll see with .2 if things will actually improve i guess. I'm still gonna play cause i like the story but if we don't get good job changes... i dunno if i'll do more than play on expansion launches in the future

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Originally Posted by HighlanderClone

cease your signature at once

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

I refuse, brother. Welcome back. This forum needs you.

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Lol, citizens. The FFXIV Official Forums has returned to its former glory.




Go forth to victory.