Communication around job design and changes

One of the biggest problems right now (and since... forever?) is that the dev team is never talking about the actual changes or job additions they plan to do. They only and barely talk about them when everything is already ready and done, and do everything not to have to deal with feedback prior to it when it actually matters. The most recent occurrence of this happened with the VPR changes, where the dev team literally presented the players with a done deal, then tell us to give feedback but only when it's already too late. This, even though by the words of Yoshida himself, they're torn about everything with their decisions. Is the dev team so afraid of its own playerbase?

Moreover, when something happens to be very poorly received, which we have many examples for, since it is already too late anyway and because of SE's incredibly rigid and formulaic production schedules, we're generally stuck until the next expansion to see it changed again completely, and repeating the exact same mistake by not asking feedback about the new model. Some jobs like AST, MNK, get literally reworked every expansion like a shot in the dark because the devs do not talk with their players, they only present them with done deals and ask for feedback only after. On top of it, whenever they finally talk about something that caused a lot of friction in actual interviews, they mention feedback that we don't even know where it comes from (certainly not from there, where we're told to give our feedback). It's truly mind-boggling.

This is frankly not healthy for the game and I do feel it continues to strain the relationship with the community at large. If we actually had even summary presentations of what the dev battle team plans ahead of time to gauge the reaction of players, and got explanations of the thought process behind, perhaps more people could actually get on board with the process instead of feeling angry at what we're presented with.

Forum user W00by has made a nice write up about the situation in the DPS forum. It's a good read that I will gladly link here.

Honestly, I feel incredibly defeated by it all. Whats even the point of making feedback when the devs just ignore even positive feedback and implement changes for the sake of... whatever? Really dampens any anticipatory excitement you may feel for new jobs or jobchanges, knowing SqEx can just decide that they don't want their customers having fun.

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Originally Posted by ovIm

Forum user W00by has made a nice write up about the situation in the DPS forum. It's a good read that I will gladly link here.

Honestly, I feel incredibly defeated by it all. Whats even the point of making feedback when the devs just ignore even positive feedback and implement changes for the sake of... whatever? Really dampens any anticipatory excitement you may feel for new jobs or jobchanges, knowing SqEx can just decide that they don't want their customers having fun.

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This post is it, chief. The best part, is that you don't need to be a DPS main in order to understand the confusing situation we're in right now.

I've thought about it a lot over the last six years. Is it arrogance? Is it ignorance? Is it laziness? No, this guy nails it. It's a complete lack of confidence. That's why, even though they said they wouldn't, they cannot help but knee-jerk their decisions. They cannot help but cite "community feedback" but not actually cite where/what/who the community feedback came from. They are running around like rats in a maze with no exit.

Something that only a few of us are beginning to understand is the pure terminality of it all. For every brick they remove from the foundation, that's another brick that needs to not just be placed, but materials allocated, effort spent constructing, labor spent placing, and oversight needed to make sure the entire house of cards doesn't fall apart instantly.

Every time they rip something out of the game, that decreases the chance of ANYTHING that we like coming back in the game just from pure logistics. Because for every one step forward we make in job design, we take 3 LEAPS backwards. So not only do they have to work on stuff in the future, they have to work harder and faster just to get us BACK to the spot where we were at in 2019.

Machinist has been reworked THREE times. And it's most recent rework has had nothing substantial added to it for four years. Dark Knight, same thing. SMN? Reworked into oblivion, and STILL can't get anything interesting added to it. AST? Oh my God, there are more factions of AST players now than sides in most major war conflicts. And they literally destroyed Black Mage for no reason. Because the PvE job design lacks vision, it lacks passion, and it lacks intent, unless it's a brand new shiny thing meant to sell you the expansion. And even then, that's not exactly a sure fire thing, looking at what happened to Viper.

Remember that. Lack of confidence, and from there, a lack of accountability or justification for the mistakes made and the people left disappointed. And from there, a lack of both the incentive, and the willingness to do better. And we slide further into the grey muck.

It is way more interesting and realistic guessing how they are going to screw up jobs, than how they are going to improve on them. People were BEGGING them not to change Viper, because they KNEW what was going to happen. That's the loathsome state they put us in.

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Originally Posted by Valence

the dev team is never talking about the actual changes or job additions they plan to do.

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If they are anything other than potency changes or anything major, they usually mention it in live letters or at fan fests and media tours.

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They only and barely talk about them when everything is already ready and done, and do everything not to have to deal with feedback prior to it when it actually matters.

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They actually clarified in one of the gamescom interviews that in the time between the lodestone post about the Viper changes, and the release of the Viper changes, they were prepared to make changes up until the last minute and were watching all the feedback to the post.

It was difficult to fully make it out since it was translated, but I think they intended to go further (such as to remove positionals and make it slower?) but they saw lot of players had already reached max level and were happy with it. I think even their own developers expressed concern about making it slower to play when the entire concept of it is about how fast it attacks.

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repeating the exact same mistake by not asking feedback about the new model

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While it's true they don't always ask for feedback, they don't necessarily need to... because people will definitely post it on the forums, where they ask it to be posted.

To give an example of where they listened to it, a lot of people said they wanted Astrologian's cards to have unique effects again. So now they do. They couldn't be the same as in Heavensward because a lot of the concepts we had then were removed (sharing MP, TP, etc).

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Some jobs like AST, MNK, get literally reworked every expansion

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MNK got reworked because tight "keep up" buffs and now permanent DoTs were removed from most jobs generally. With the job not having much sophistication to it at that point, I suppose they wanted to make all the different aspects work together like how SAM does.

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they mention feedback that we don't even know where it comes from (certainly not from there, where we're told to give our feedback). It's truly mind-boggling.

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It does seem strange. For example, they said they think more people wanted Kaiten removed than wanted it back, which seems astonishing. Maybe it is a vocal minority thing where it is somehow a minority that were in support of Kaiten, but I really didn't see anyone complain about Kaiten at all, ever.

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If we actually had even summary presentations of what the dev battle team plans ahead of time to gauge the reaction of players, and got explanations of the thought process behind, perhaps more people could actually get on board with the process

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I actually find most changes are in line with what raiders were predicting. For example, if they say "that job needs a buff", often that is what you see in an upcoming patch. When they said PLD was losing out due to having sustained damage instead of burst damage and losing its ranged advantage due to a larger hitbox, SE addressed that. It was just when they started throwing out "random" changes along with it like Kaiten that it started to cause friction.

If you ask me the problem lie into 3 thing really:
Homonization
Lack of vision/confidence
Sticking with old concept and refuse to improve them

If these has been addressed people will be happy

Didn’t they say the reason the don’t talk about job balancing changes/adjustments before they’re out anymore is because they kept getting criticised for them and were like ‘but you haven’t played it yet!!!’ (lol)

Ironically they’re causing major criticism of their job design, because of their complete fear of…criticism? lol. If they actually talked to players beforehand and tried to accomodate that feedback, they’d get a hell of a lot less complaints I’d say

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Originally Posted by Connor

If they actually talked to players beforehand and tried to accomodate that feedback, they’d get a hell of a lot less complaints I’d say

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So imagine they "talked" to us. How should they go about this?

1. Post regularly on the forums, and get inundated with polarized views and well-thought out replies being drowned out by ones that are not. Almost leaving them back at square one.
2. Do a conference system where only one person is allowed to speak at a time, like a TED talk or discord's stage calls. I suppose this could be like the Q&As they have done before, but allow them more time to put their point across.
3. Do a livestream and read the chat like they've done occasionally in live letters.
4. Ask people to post on the forums anyway but not reply because it'd get drowned out by all the polarized discussion, then aggregate the feedback.
5. Meet people in person instead which forces people to choose their words and thoughts more carefully, like they have been doing recently with fanfests, gamescom, pax, etc.

It's easy to just say "talk to us". But if you think about it they kinda have done many of the options. It's perhaps just doing it more ie. interacting with twitch/youtube chat more during liveletters to have thorough discussions/debates, aggregating feedback better from the forums, regular reddit AMAs.

But even if they did all of this more, would it change much? If all they get from that is polarized views, they will be in the same situation: unsure which direction to go because people are split and there are different parts of the community to cater to.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

So imagine they "talked" to us. How should they go about this?

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I mean, this here was a good way to talk to us.

For the first time in FFXIV, upcoming job adjustments were talked about in a blog post. And players had a chance to give feedback to what was planned. This was a good thing, overall, and interestingly enough, most feedback I have read on the forum was more constructive.

The method is good - announce something like that, have the forums discuss it, and have community managers aggregate player feedback to forward to the dev team.

In terms of Viper, there was no criticism about the job design as it was, it was mostly praise that Square Enix build the job well, and to not change it. Yoshi-P even acknowledges this. Its frustrating when the devs open a dialogue like that, only to ignore our feedback.

Alternatively, SqEx could also just... make ingame polls, and ask for players opinions there.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

So imagine they "talked" to us. How should they go about this?

1. Post regularly on the forums, and get inundated with polarized views and well-thought out replies being drowned out by ones that are not. Almost leaving them back at square one.
2. Do a conference system where only one person is allowed to speak at a time, like a TED talk or discord's stage calls. I suppose this could be like the Q&As they have done before, but allow them more time to put their point across.
3. Do a livestream and read the chat like they've done occasionally in live letters.
4. Ask people to post on the forums anyway but not reply because it'd get drowned out by all the polarized discussion, then aggregate the feedback.
5. Meet people in person instead which forces people to choose their words and thoughts more carefully, like they have been doing recently with fanfests, gamescom, pax, etc.

It's easy to just say "talk to us". But if you think about it they kinda have done many of the options. It's perhaps just doing it more ie. interacting with twitch/youtube chat more during liveletters to have thorough discussions/debates, aggregating feedback better from the forums, regular reddit AMAs.

But even if they did all of this more, would it change much? If all they get from that is polarized views, they will be in the same situation: unsure which direction to go because people are split and there are different parts of the community to cater to.

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Almost every other MMO has some kind of proper feedback loop that isn’t built on randomly flailing about in the dark on the forums and hoping that something comes out of it

For example a semi regular thing that gets used is community polls

Let’s take VPR changes

Option 1) remove noxious
Option 2) remove or reduce positionals
Option 3) slow the job down
Option 4) do nothing

People vote on that then that gives the devs a good lead into it, don’t let us pick what you are going to do, pick a narrow set of possible fixes to a problem you have identified and allow us to vote on our preferred action. You could even weight polls by a pre-selected “main” that each person picks

Direct communication on the current forum system won’t go very far but that’s specifically because they’ve allowed the forums to collapse into a cesspit where everyone is just screaming hoping to be the one random person they apparently pull the feedback from when they make a change

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If they are anything other than potency changes or anything major, they usually mention it in live letters or at fan fests and media tours.

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Not in live letters no. They generally mention they're working on a job rework in LLs, at most.

The only LLs that actually showcase reworks in details are media tour LLs just before the release of an expansion, for the 2 new jobs only.

The only reveal we get for other jobs happen a month after with the media tour itself and footage and screens coming out of it showing the actual grit and details of what we're getting. Changing anything at this point especially by their production process, is a fool's errand, it's already been too late for half a year at this point.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They actually clarified in one of the gamescom interviews that in the time between the lodestone post about the Viper changes, and the release of the Viper changes, they were prepared to make changes up until the last minute and were watching all the feedback to the post.

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This is what was announced specifically about VPR:

Planned Viper Adjustments
Newly released in Patch 7.0, we’ve received feedback pertaining to the busyness of their skill rotation. To that end, we’re planning several improvements, including the easing of directional requirements, and changes to the effects of several actions. We’re aiming to implement these changes in Patch 7.05, though we also intend to make some smaller adjustments to the range of certain abilities in Patch 7.01. It will take a while longer, but we hope to address player concerns as best we can.

What is there even to give feedback about this? It's vague as hell. Only the positional mention is somewhat telling, and people rioted about it, and they didn't proceed with it. But changing the effects of actions? How the heck are we even supposed to give feedback on something like this? It's like they stay so vague on purpose not to start a nuclear war.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It was difficult to fully make it out since it was translated, but I think they intended to go further (such as to remove positionals and make it slower?) but they saw lot of players had already reached max level and were happy with it. I think even their own developers expressed concern about making it slower to play when the entire concept of it is about how fast it attacks.

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It's completely schizophrenic. They're not sure about changing something drastically, but they finally decide to go with it even though they know it's gonna cause an uproar and a total loss of trust in the player's side.

They pulled the exact same crap with AST, if you remember, when in the pre release LL they presented AST quickly and clearly spelled out "we know it's a very divisive topic in the community but we have decided to remove all rng from the card system". If it is so divisive, why are you arbitrarily changing it? Why are you giving the middle finger of all the players that have been enjoying it since the beginning? Why are you removing the single thing left from AST's original concept? If something is gonna be split either way, deciding to change it for the opposite of what it is to please the other side is absolutely wild.

Still no explanation for it.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

To give an example of where they listened to it, a lot of people said they wanted Astrologian's cards to have unique effects again. So now they do. They couldn't be the same as in Heavensward because a lot of the concepts we had then were removed (sharing MP, TP, etc).

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This is exactly what I've been aiming at in the OP: they do listen to some feedback AFTER the fact. Especially when a job design eventually shows that it's pretty mid and is going literally nowhere remotely flavorful or interesting (aka ShB/EW card system). So you complain about it at expansion release, and then during 2-3 whole years, until they change it next expansion because they do not change jobs within an expansion unless to prep for a later rework like MNK in ShB (which felt like a first for them anyway, and made the job so awful and boring for half of ShB that it was probably not the way to do it either).

So in the case of AST, yes, it's the whole point: you get a change trying to account for SOME feedback in the next expansion... if you're lucky and if the job is not successful, and/or if the devs realize they've reached a dead end on the design. But as for giving actual feedback WHILE the job is being reworked during the expansion? You can't. They will only showcase it once the rework is mostly done before release during media tours, running the risk of repeating the exact same mistake, because if things suck with it, we're all stuck until the expansion after anyway, and we will only be able to give feedback on the current sucky version of the job and not what they're actually cooking. It's a crazy cycle when you think about it.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I actually find most changes are in line with what raiders were predicting. For example, if they say "that job needs a buff", often that is what you see in an upcoming patch.

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Are you serious? You've seen the state of range physical since 2019?

I will forever miss Shadow Flare, Flash, and how Summoner used to be.
I mourn SMN every day, even though I have adapted.

It just isn't what it used to be, and I loved what it used to be...

It's frankly put insulting that your Squadron have access to Shadow Flare and Flash...


Oh yeah, let's not forget.
Why the HELL did they remove Plunge from Dark Knights?!

Mao still trying figure out why Devs took EW BLMs whats almost perfects and wrecks it in DT. The ONLY thing Mao can think of as reason, assuming Devs knew what thems doing, is to deliberatesly push BLMs down in order to give leg up to PCTs (job whats most similar to BLMs) so that PCTs gets chosen more for high end contents. Thems wanted precious new job that thems worked so hard to create to be played lots in high end contents. EW BLMs were not some kind of god-state. Difference between Standard vs Non-Standard play was maybe 2%. What EW BLMs playstyle offered was flexibility to react more smoothly to fight mechanics. Devs apparentsly not likings that though.

Now IF is true that Devs NOT knowings what thems doings, then all bets off table. Changes to BLMs, unwanteds by most BLMs players, could be due to just abouts ANYTHING. Is possible that this might be case. After all, Devs restored Ice Paradox and bumped Umbral Soul down to Level 35. Mao has hard time believing that Devs knowings where thems goings with BLMs if thems already revertings some changes. Maybe Devs really is just throwings spaghettis against wall and seeings what sticks.

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Originally Posted by Eraden

Mao still trying figure out why Devs took EW BLMs whats almost perfects and wrecks it in DT. The ONLY thing Mao can think of as reason, assuming Devs knew what thems doing, is to deliberatesly push BLMs down in order to give leg up to PCTs (job whats most similar to BLMs) so that PCTs gets chosen more for high end contents. Thems wanted precious new job that thems worked so hard to create to be played lots in high end contents. EW BLMs were not some kind of god-state. Difference between Standard vs Non-Standard play was maybe 2%. What EW BLMs playstyle offered was flexibility to react more smoothly to fight mechanics. Devs apparentsly not likings that though.

Now IF is true that Devs NOT knowings what thems doings, then all bets off table. Changes to BLMs, unwanteds by most BLMs players, could be due to just abouts ANYTHING. Is possible that this might be case. After all, Devs restored Ice Paradox and bumped Umbral Soul down to Level 35. Mao has hard time believing that Devs knowings where thems goings with BLMs if thems already revertings some changes. Maybe Devs really is just throwings spaghettis against wall and seeings what sticks.

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It’s not PCT, it’s the devs hate when players find ways to get more damage out of a job they didn’t explicitly design around

Non standard BLM is an example, WAR smuggling is another, PCT skip magenta is a third

There was also a rather large subset of the BLM playerbase when it was announced what flare star does that were happy with the change because they believe that “playing the job as intended should award maximum damage”

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Originally Posted by Talamh

Why the HELL did they remove Plunge from Dark Knights?!

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To make burst phases less busy, really.

You know, they could have just put those gapclosers on the GCD, as an alternative to the ranged attacks, and keep the animation. That way, we would not use gapclosers during burst either since GCD's are super valuable. But honestly, at this point, I don't expect SqEx to come up with actual solutions to issues like that, only bandaid fixes and promises for the next expansion.

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Originally Posted by ovIm

To make burst phases less busy, really.

You know, they could have just put those gapclosers on the GCD, as an alternative to the ranged attacks, and keep the animation. That way, we would not use gapclosers during burst either since GCD's are super valuable. But honestly, at this point, I don't expect SqEx to come up with actual solutions to issues like that, only bandaid fixes and promises for the next expansion.

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That's.. such an assenine way of doing it, but now I know why it is so thank you x_x but yeah... REALLY BAD.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

It’s not PCT, it’s the devs hate when players find ways to get more damage out of a job they didn’t explicitly design around

Non standard BLM is an example, WAR smuggling is another, PCT skip magenta is a third

There was also a rather large subset of the BLM playerbase when it was announced what flare star does that were happy with the change because the believes that “playing the job as intended should award maximum damage”

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Devs should tread carefully if that the case. Cookie-cutter gameplay can quickly gets stale and borings. This something that experienced dungeon masters learn when runnings D&D campaigns. If force players to has go to places X, Y, and Z in that order and do things usings exactly skills A, B, and C, then players get boreds and claustrophobics very quickly. Is why when Mao ran D&D campaign many years ago, Mao ran things open ended. Players gots to choose where thems go and whats them do. Was much works for Mao buts players really happys.

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Originally Posted by Valence

They generally mention they're working on a job rework in LLs, at most.

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Well they may be too vague, but they do usually mention it in any case if any sort of significant rework is happening mid-expansion, or sometimes even showcase it like I remember them doing with the Ninja changes.

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Are you serious? You've seen the state of range physical since 2019?

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I am serious. I'm not saying they always do it (like with ranged physical), but in these cases I think it is because they fundamentally disagree with the change. For example, they agreed to buff ranged physical damage once but didn't balance it with the other DPS roles and it seemed like that was because they fundamentally disagreed on that. I'm not sure why, but they really stick to their guns on it and there are going to be times when they don't do what invested players want such as making the game work for new and casual players.

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They're not sure about changing something drastically, but they finally decide to go with it even though they know it's gonna cause an uproar and a total loss of trust in the player's side.

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That reminds me of something Yoshi-P has said. He has said that if he doesn't fix a problem immediately, then people become used to it and then complain when it gets fixed. He said he learned this when making MP matter in 1.0, I think? There were people upset because they were used to it not mattering.

So what that suggests to me is he knows that changing something people have become used to causes an uproar and that he has to feel it's necessary enough to do it for some reason.

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changing the effects of actions? How the heck are we even supposed to give feedback on something like this? It's like they stay so vague on purpose not to start a nuclear war.

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True, it wasn't really very specific and could have explained the planned changes in detail.

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So you complain about it at expansion release, and then during 2-3 whole years, until they change it next expansion because they do not change jobs within an expansion

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True, that has always been a problem and the most memorable to me is bowmage in Heavensward, where they added cast times to Bard and single-handedly wiped out all of the Bard players or made them quit, because being able to run about while attacking was its defining trait that made them like it. And then it took until Stormblood to suddenly fix it after they'd all quit.

Perhaps if they had consulted on something like that first they would have anticipated the reaction.

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Originally Posted by ovIm

upcoming job adjustments were talked about in a blog post. And players had a chance to give feedback to what was planned. This was a good thing, overall

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

community polls

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Good suggestions.

it is as simple as this:

1 year before release:
"Hey WoL What changes do you want to see to DRK?"

6 months before release:
"after taking notes from the community here is the changes that we will be delivering:
1-
2-
3-

Thanks for your support"

6 months is enough to do changes.

it is as simple as that

Regarding job changes, I simply think that the developers' communication is far too vague.
They should provide reports with each major patch, clearly explaining the direction they are considering, how they envision it, and why, while asking for player feedback to see if the direction a job is taking will be well-received.

Especially since they supposedly have some really major changes planned for 8.0, and considering that most jobs saw almost no changes in 7.0,
it would be great if the developers could give us explanations on what they are considering as they evolve a job, to see if the community likes the ideas or not.

This would be better than making blind adjustments that often require a small rework or changes that demand a lot of work.

The devs are far too vague and unclear—even in the patch notes, the explanations are clearly not sufficient. Personally,
I can never be satisfied with a vague explanation like "we're removing the Summoner's resurrection because we think it's a wise choice."

They should provide guidelines and explain the reasoning behind their decisions.
For example, a statement that would satisfy me for any job, though this is just an example: "We are considering adjusting the Summoner's rotation because the current version of the job disrupts the balance between casters.
To address this, we will reduce the number of instant spells and provide new mobility tools to compensate.
We plan to make each demi-summon truly unique and are considering creating an entirely new resource management system," etc.

At least give us some guidelines without necessarily going into detail about how it will work.
This is not a spoiler of spells or anything like that, but guidelines to see if it appeals to players or not.

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Originally Posted by ovIm

To make burst phases less busy, really.

You know, they could have just put those gapclosers on the GCD, as an alternative to the ranged attacks, and keep the animation. That way, we would not use gapclosers during burst either since GCD's are super valuable. But honestly, at this point, I don't expect SqEx to come up with actual solutions to issues like that, only bandaid fixes and promises for the next expansion.

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The funny thing is that they made additional changes to make DRK's burst phase less busy, which combined with the removal of Plunge resulted in the job losing 8 actions per Delirium. They shouldn't have pulled the trigger until they had a new oGCD ready and/or added at least one extra charge to Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

That reminds me of something Yoshi-P has said. He has said that if he doesn't fix a problem immediately, then people become used to it and then complain when it gets fixed. He said he learned this when making MP matter in 1.0, I think? There were people upset because they were used to it not mattering.

So what that suggests to me is he knows that changing something people have become used to causes an uproar and that he has to feel it's necessary enough to do it for some reason.
True, it wasn't really very specific and could have explained the planned changes in detail.

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The thing with this is to either make incremental changes most people barely notice until the intended state is realised (the boiling frog method) or to properly test a state that can exist for multiple expansions to come and consider making minor adjustments here and there.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Well they may be too vague, but they do usually mention it in any case if any sort of significant rework is happening mid-expansion, or sometimes even showcase it like I remember them doing with the Ninja changes.

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They can tell us all they want that they've primed a job for a rework, but what then? What feedback do we give without more info? "Please do not change anything I love my job the way it is please yoshi don't do it I beg of you"? Or "Please change that dumpster fire of a job right away"?

And even then some jobs get reworked out of the blue without a warning like AST/MNK (but I guess it's turning into a formulaic running gag at this point every expansion so perhaps they assume telling us about it is not necessary anymore... not that they have ever told us anyway to begin with except for EW MNK).

And now we even got the jobs actually primed for a rework that never happened: DRG.

So with all of this, what kind of feedback is actually expected of us there? Nothing makes any sense from an outside perspective. We're just here taking shots in the dark trying to see what's serious and what's not. Or just reacting to things that come as a complete surprised that won't get adjusted or changed after anyway, because it's too late. See you next expansion mon capitaine o7

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I am serious. I'm not saying they always do it (like with ranged physical), but in these cases I think it is because they fundamentally disagree with the change. For example, they agreed to buff ranged physical damage once but didn't balance it with the other DPS roles and it seemed like that was because they fundamentally disagreed on that. I'm not sure why, but they really stick to their guns on it and there are going to be times when they don't do what invested players want such as making the game work for new and casual players.

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You know why this actually happens? It's not because players beg them or ask them or anything, it's because something becomes obviously unsustainable most of the time. When they buffed in an emergency PLD and WAR that were both lagging behind other tanks by 400 DPS each in Abyssos, why did they only notice weeks after release? It's not like those jobs had huge changes for 6.2 to begin with. It was already a dumpster fire in 6.1 DSR (I should know, I've gone through phase 3 with a garbage comp with PLD inside... the DPS checks were funny, where other groups were actually holding their damage in P2 and we couldn't even do that). Why did they not noticed there? The only reason they noticed is because of their 1% overtuned doorboss HP shenanigans.

When they buff ranged jobs every expansion after release in x.1, it's because oh, well, damn, they're dealing 10% less damage than everybody, sometimes even more of a gap, and it's going overboard the 1% party bonus. Guess what's gonna get buffed once more for 7.1, and guess who never seems to learn the lesson? It's the third *** time an expansion is released with ranged jobs in that state. Why is this still happening? The only reason I see is that yes, they seem to stick to whatever guns they have in spite of the evidence of reality, and will once more be forced to rebuff the role again even though it's literally killing them to admit it needs buffing.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

True, it wasn't really very specific and could have explained the planned changes in detail.
True, that has always been a problem and the most memorable to me is bowmage in Heavensward, where they added cast times to Bard and single-handedly wiped out all of the Bard players or made them quit, because being able to run about while attacking was its defining trait that made them like it. And then it took until Stormblood to suddenly fix it after they'd all quit.

Perhaps if they had consulted on something like that first they would have anticipated the reaction.

Good suggestions.

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That's all i'm asking with this thread really. I want the devs to not only gather feedback, but also tell us where the feedback they follow actually can be found because it's certainly not on those forums as evidenced by many changes recently. I also want the devs to expose to us in details what they intend to do so people can actually give feedback about it instead of being given done deals to be angry about.

With the level of job complaints nothing they put out would satisfy people unless it was over powered and had no balance

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Originally Posted by Wolf_Necros

With the level of job complaints nothing they put out would satisfy people unless it was over powered and had no balance

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Yeah that's called dealing with gamers

The goal of adjusting the balance isn't to reach a game state where everyone would be satisfied because that's impossible, it's to reach a game state where the majority are satisfied and try to consolidate as many people as you can into the majority in the process

If your goal is to satisfy people and nothing else you're probably a hack with no vision and if you think you can make a game that doesn't agitate anyone you need to find a different career

Balance is a ghost in the average gamer's head, it's superstition most of the time, balance is partially made up of the reality of the game and the rest is made up by the feelings of the players, what you consider good balance will be dog water balance to someone else and both of you could be wrong, raw numbers only tell you so much at the end of the day even if you aggregate a butt load of them

You'd be surprised to see how smooth is player support when you're actually showing a bit of democracy and transparency in the process. The loyalty it generates for being genuine, especially in modern gaming, can be astounding, and in fact I'd argue that's why Yoshida and his team have always been avidly praised by everybody for their candor and honesty when talking about literally everything. There is a reason CBU 3 has a cult following within the playerbase.

I just feel this is slowly getting eroded when it comes to job design, because if you specifically mention it, then suddenly the view of the dev team has shifted there quite dramatically, and they're aware of it.

So in light of the newest announcement over the graphic update's unintended minor changes on some character faces, it seems that yes, the dev team does read the forums for feedback, because this has been specifically addressed again and again and once more today. The explanations even go into great detail about the whole process and the results of the investigation they have been running, even though they conveniently not mention any species/races.

One specific point also caught my eye:

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Most of this feedback has come from our forums.

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Meanwhile, job design feedback has been consistently ignored or scorned for years, and when something gets changed (like VPR, but that's just an example among many), we get told that they considered feedback that lead to such changes, while this feedback definitely does NOT come from those forums. So, I ask the dev team again, where does job feedback come from, so that I can give my feedback where it actually matters?

Secondly, why does feedback for the graphic update garner such detailed threads covering them while battle content feedback never gets anything addressed in such a manner?

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Originally Posted by Valence

So in light of the newest announcement over the graphic update's unintended minor changes on some character faces, it seems that yes, the dev team does read the forums for feedback, because this has been specifically addressed again and again and once more today. The explanations even go into great detail about the whole process and the results of the investigation they have been running, even though they conveniently not mention any species/races.

One specific point also caught my eye:



Meanwhile, job design feedback has been consistently ignored or scorned for years, and when something gets changed (like VPR, but that's just an example among many), we get told that they considered feedback that lead to such changes, while this feedback definitely does NOT come from those forums. So, I ask the dev team again, where does job feedback come from, so that I can give my feedback where it actually matters?

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Don’t you see this is where the feedback comes from

The devs decide on a direction then pawn over the forums till they find someone who said something vaguely related and use that as their justification

They poked the actual hornets nest with this graphics update seeing as how much vitriol its caused by people obsessed with their characters. But job feedback is the no no here.

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Originally Posted by Valence

So in light of the newest announcement over the graphic update's unintended minor changes on some character faces, it seems that yes, the dev team does read the forums for feedback, because this has been specifically addressed again and again and once more today. The explanations even go into great detail about the whole process and the results of the investigation they have been running, even though they conveniently not mention any species/races.

One specific point also caught my eye:



Meanwhile, job design feedback has been consistently ignored or scorned for years, and when something gets changed (like VPR, but that's just an example among many), we get told that they considered feedback that lead to such changes, while this feedback definitely does NOT come from those forums. So, I ask the dev team again, where does job feedback come from, so that I can give my feedback where it actually matters?

Secondly, why does feedback for the graphic update garner such detailed threads covering them while battle content feedback never gets anything addressed in such a manner?

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I really want to know which type of feedback they ignored?

is it job busy or job do not need changes.

it is very vague

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Originally Posted by Tunda

I really want to know which type of feedback they ignored?

is it job busy or job do not need changes.

it is very vague

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Because if you trawl back through the VPR posts literally nobody asked for job changes on VPR. They just announced them out of nowhere alluded to positionals then when people said “leave the job alone” they removed the debuff for……no reason

Agree!

I didn't use to be a fan of WoW's Beta/PTR because of how spoilery it was, but I still engaged with it solely to test out class changes, and despite feedback being ignored or not (I heard that nowadays they listen more to players, though), it felt a bit more interesting than how it's handled here in XIV.

I don't really expect them to create some sort of "job changes testing environment" like that, but I'd absolutely love if they shared more of what are their ideas beforehand, especially when 8.0 is supposed to bring changes/improvements with more substance.

Based on what we've seen so far for the "Encounter Design Expansion", I'm not especially thrilled for the future of the next one being the "Job Design Expansion". The High End fights in DT are excellent, don't get me wrong, but there's almost no novelty or interesting out-of-the-box elements - it's just their safe formula being executed really well. People are coping with the idea that this is supposed to be reflected only for Dawntrail's patch cycle, but I personally only believe when I see it.

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Originally Posted by Tunda

I really want to know which type of feedback they ignored?

is it job busy or job do not need changes.

it is very vague

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See this article here

Money quote being:

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We announced that we were considering making adjustments to the job, but the response to that was a lot of feedback from players who had already reached the level cap and were already used to playing with the job, and they were happy with the way it played. However, we had already identified some actions which would inevitably be a cause of stress for players. Eventually, we just went through with adjusting what we had initially planned, and that was unrelated to the community feedback. However, I believe probably there was some misunderstanding on the community's part."

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