Do the dev's actually play this game?

[Hyrist]

This is also the same damage that a WAR dps could output, roughly 85% of what other dps classes were outputting (1k~1.1k). This was acknowledged by the drastic buff to Wanderer's Minuet

You're really not paying attention, you're just parroting what you've heard without investigating the full picture. Warriors were outputting those numbers in optimum conditions wearing full DPS gear with little to no heavy tanking obligations.

The damage numbers, globally in Alex Savage right now, are lower across the board - which puts greater emphasis on the fight utility each individual class brings to the table. Warriors will always spike high on damage (which is the parse you're referencing.) that's not at all different than what the top Warriors were doing before Heavensward.

Additionally "Massive Buff" is incredibly inaccurate. Bard and Machinist took significant hits on their spike points in trade for distributing their damage out more over all, because weaving turned out to be too clunky of a thing for most. (Even though it followed similar ideas of Tornado Kick, Chakra, and Blood of the Dragon.) It basically worked in the opposite manner to the Melee Classes, they prepared to launch their spike damage skills as the invulnerability phases ENDED (Preloading GB and WM before the enemy became targetable again.) But this method just turned out to be highly specific to endgame and neglected more casual play - THAT'S what netted the change. Not overall damage performance. The Devs confirmed that their own parses were showing Ranged DPS damage on par with where they wanted them to be before the changes. It's simply easier to reach those numbers now.

[Stupiduglytaru]

Well the person in charge of pvp certainly does, hes currently stuck in a 4month q frightened to load up the forum incase he misses the pop.

That's the real reason we haven't had a response.

[Duelle]

Yeah lost 5 Million users from autum to summer (expansion release 12 mio and may 7,1) is really something to look at ;D

Have you wondered and looked into why that happened? I'll clue you in: they promised a bunch of stuff and never delivered for Warlords of Draenor, reduced the game world just to Garrisons and removed game features (like flying) to try to hide the fact the expansion was small compared to others.

The same would have happened here if after promising Ishgard the devs decided to use it only for cut scenes and prohibiting you from entering the city. That's how the people who were promised Karabor and Bladespire Citadel and then got crappy little bases using garrison assets felt.

[Gunspec]

Have you wondered and looked into why that happened? I'll clue you in: they promised a bunch of stuff and never delivered for Warlords of Draenor, reduced the game world just to Garrisons and removed game features (like flying) to try to hide the fact the expansion was small compared to others.

The same would have happened here if after promising Ishgard the devs decided to use it only for cut scenes and prohibiting you from entering the city. That's how the people who were promised Karabor and Bladespire Citadel and then got crappy little bases using garrison assets felt.

I like to stay in my house and manage retainer ventures and airship voyages. It feels just like WoW!
... and then I leave the house and play in an actual mmo.

[Rumpelstiltzkin]

Except it hasn't. WoW's been getting a net loss on subscriptions more and more with each expansion, spiking lower each time, and then having a larger fallout than the expansion before them. The attrition is real. WoW is the Wowkiller.

This game has copied WoWs design in most of everything so that is not a good sign then. Then again the game still has by far more subs than any other game so. It is quite funny to see FFXIV do the exact same thing as WoW in terms of progression which is a large part of why WoW is losing subs (aside from the fact that it is just getting old); pure vertical progression to the point where many play for a couple of weeks each patch get bored and then unsub and come back several months later when the next patch/expansion comes around. Yoshi even said it himself he is fine with it, but to me it is just bad game design, both from a resource perspective as a developer since you just scrap your old content instead of expanding on the world continously, but also as a player it just leads to me feeling there is no point in doing much of anything aside from just following the storyline. I see so many say there is a lot to do, except grinding tomes every patch in the two new dungeons isn't a lot to do for me. Not to mention the backwards progression of 24-man after 8-man raid. I mean we just got a new expansion and what does it mean? We are back in 2.0 all over again which really isn't a good thing.

[Duelle]

It is quite funny to see FFXIV do the exact same thing as WoW in terms of progression which is a large part of why WoW is losing subs (aside from the fact that it is just getting old); pure vertical progression to the point where many play for a couple of weeks each patch get bored and then unsub and come back several months later when the next patch/expansion comes around.

Progression doesn't figure much into the equation, unless you're talking about content droughts like having 12 months of nothing but Siege of Orgrimmar.

People generally feel disenfranchised by some of the bullshit blizzard chose to pull with WoD, which is why subs have dropped so sharply. As I said, Blizzard promised a bunch of stuff and didn't deliver, did a bunch of stuff no one asked for (twitter and selfies integrated into the game), made professions worthless, centered the entire Draenor campaign in your garrison, made it a pain in the ass to move around the world, and cut out loads of content (including the zone that would become Netherstorm).

[Chiramu]

https://twitter.com/BuccoRoth
https://twitter.com/mattalos

Matt plays the game quite a bit it seems when he is off work. Of course the FFXIV team will not say their character names or servers, imagine all the spam and harassment they would get every time they log on >.>. They do play the game though.

Also, the dev team do a lot of work on fixing and balancing the game. I don't see where you get the idea of them not playing the game from, unless you think people can make hotfixes in a second and implement it without maintenance...

[Assirra]

I'm turned off of WoW. But if they do anything right, they balance out all their classes. Keep in mind this "under-performance"is usually a 5% difference in damage. That is a pretty tight margin. If you want to see imbalance on the extreme side, look at ffxi, aion, EQ, even newer games.

What in the world are you talking about?
Did you have a different version of WoW then the rest of the world or something?
Wow class balance is absolutely horrible, just look how many guilds stack x to be better. 8 balance druids in a group of 20 not enough to show something is horrible broken in a game that balances their classes?
Or what about the fact that Blizzard openly declared they will make demonology warlock useless next patch cause it was used so much in the expansion?


Very balanced...

And lets not even go into pvp balance, then its even more broken.

[Leshpar]

There is a reason we are here playing FF14 and not playing WoW. I played WoW for 7.5 years. It was great. I think this game does a lot of things better now though. WoW still has some good things, but overall I think FF14 does a much better job at just about everything.

[Rumpelstiltzkin]

Progression doesn't figure much into the equation, unless you're talking about content droughts like having 12 months of nothing but Siege of Orgrimmar. People generally feel disenfranchised by some of the bullshit blizzard chose to pull with WoD, which is why subs have dropped so sharply. As I said, Blizzard promised a bunch of stuff and didn't deliver, did a bunch of stuff no one asked for (twitter and selfies integrated into the game), made professions worthless, centered the entire Draenor campaign in your garrison, made it a pain in the ass to move around the world, and cut out loads of content (including the zone that would become Netherstorm).

Content droughts has a lot to do with it and that is what I meant. Pure vertical progression leads to content droughts to a much larger extent than horizontal progression does which is a problem. Devs can't keep up with the players and this becomes more and more apparent as the game gets older and less money sunk into it for content creation. I was not saying it was the only reason WoW is losing subs, but yes it plays a big part in it.