The Developers Need to Start Surveying Players After Every Patch

[Chessala]

A survey is useless if they ignore the feedback.

They have a track record of misinterpreting feedback or plain ignoring it, a survey would not change that. However, I guess it would be a start but it should not be just patch related, it should be general surveys. For example, the gaming company I work for makes a survey every 3 months. The survey is boosted on all channels where they can reach people: forum, facebook, twitter and email.

Also, they need to stop listening to whining and start looking at their game with open eyes. So many things they do now are things that could have done ages ago with little effort if they would just invest into a bigger and better team (dedicated programmers instead of "borrowing".

[Uriel_Kross]

This has been bothering me for awhile, Tanks did not get nerfed they returned to what their class was meant to do. Sure they took a hit to dps but now hold aggro better and get more HP with the new gear. And the devs have nothing to do with tanks being unpopular, tanking is a hard job with little room for mistakes because a mistake by a tank can wipe the group and not everyone is cut out for it. Lastly you don't play a tank to dps just as you would not play a dps to heal or a healer to tank

[Uriel_Kross]

Sorry about the double post hit back and it reposted

[therpgfanatic]

This has been bothering me for awhile, Tanks did not get nerfed they returned to what their class was meant to do. Sure they took a hit to dps but now hold aggro better and get more HP with the new gear. And the devs have nothing to do with tanks being unpopular, tanking is a hard job with little room for mistakes because a mistake by a tank can wipe the group and not everyone is cut out for it. Lastly you don't play a tank to dps just as you would not play a dps to tank or a healer to dps.

Only response I am going to make to the "tanking matter" people are focusing on, rather than the fact SE doesn't conduct player surveys before making substantial changes to game mechanics.

Tanks did not have trouble "tanking". So we didn't "return" to what we were meant to do.

PLD had issues because of lack of DPS, which is a problem that impacts gameplay outside of end-game raids (it impacts solo questing and DF runs, too, by creating frustrations WAR and DRK do not experience). But it impacted desirability for end-game raids because players in progression want to get every possible advantage they can to clearing content, so they always always always gravitate toward the tank which does the most DPS. This happens in every MMORPG, whether it is EQ, World of Warcraft or Ragnarok Online. Adding three tanks in Heavensward and making DRK the 2nd best DPS tank is the #1 reason why they are chosen as the 2nd best, while PLD and its DPS issues is the most undesirable. This remains to be the case due to lack of AoE and the need to do a three hit low enmity combo to apply our DoT -- doesn't matter how strong the DoT is if it is difficult to apply while maintaining hate. Flash might maintain hate on a group of mobs, but it contributes nothing to DPS like the AoE for WAR and DRK does. All these peculiar designs contribute to the PLD DPS issues and none of it was addressed by these changes. A PLD does the same amount of work tanking as a DRK and WAR player does, but receives a substantially lesser result. As the vast majority of MMO players view themselves as min-maxers, that PLD is not a min-maxed role leads to its undesirability.

Furthermore, when I resppecced my PLD from STR to VIT, I gained a couple hundred points of HP. The VIT change only has an impact on WARs due to Defiance boosting their HP pool based on its base. It makes absolutely no difference to PLD or DRK, and is actually a rather silly change in a game that allows players to choose where to put their bonus stat points (it's the illusion of customization). So while PLD may have had some abilities buffed, it lost its max DPS potential for no defensive benefit at all. That is what people are upset about.

Furthermore, people quoting "Holy Trinity" design for tanks as "high defense, low damage" have a poor understanding of game design theory. Holy trinity type of character mechanic design has appeared in nearly every FF game you have ever played, yet the melee characters still do tons of damage while also having abilities like Cover or taunts. There's nothing inherent about Holy trinity design that requires tanks to be the weakest DPS in the game in order to balance content. Furthermore Holy Trinity in MMOs first occured in World of Warcraft in response to the historical four roles (the fourth was controller) from DikuMud-like games such as Everquest. The controller role was erased and its utility divided between tanks, damage dealers and healers. That's what Holy trinity design actually means. One of the key issues in FFXIV design is outside of Sleep, there isn't much controlling happening which the tank isn't doing by positioning, and much of this has to do with the heavy emphasis on puzzle solving in boss encounter design in FFXIV. I could go on and on about this, but it's beside the point.

I should point out in Dikumud games like Everquest, tanks tended to have equal DPS output to damage dealer roles and this continued in WoW and other games of its ilk. FFXIV is the first game in a long time where I have seen tanks intentionally do low DPS and it accounts for why lack of tanks is such a critical issue in FFXIV. It's been a resolved issue in WoW every since they put tanking Paladin DPS on par with Warriors and Death Knights, which was like a decade ago. Warrior in WoW was always very close to damage dealer DPS.

As I said before, this thread is about the lack of surveys. I used the recent tanking nerf as an example of something that could have been avoided if SE conducted surveys.

[Aryalandi]

The vast majority of players do not post in game forums; only specific types of personalities use internet forums, and many people avoid forums because of the toxic environment player communities have become (See the example of the first post response to this thread is someone trolling)

The person trolled you because this topic came across as one that has been posted about 10 times by 5 different people since the patch. You say only specific types of people post here but.. you are posting here so what kind of person does that make you? If you want to see what a real toxic community looks like you should go see the blade and soul community. That place is 24/7 rage with the same topic stacked 12 times in a row.

Tanks were /always/ supposed to be using vit gear to do their job, all SE has done with the change has been to make it so that people are using the intended gear for the intended effect. We are simply not supposed to be putting out huge numbers on top of out living everyone else, the classes were broken.

And SE does in fact pay attention to the player base, in fact they altered cnj/whm in response to the amazing thought process that led to stance dancing to encourage it when it was originally made for solo play.

There is a difference between wanting something your way even when (or because) its broken and wanting SE to listen to your logical ideas about how something should be because it will make whatever it is better.

Yes, SE could survey people and that would be a nice addition. But that may not actually improve things as much as you may believe, especially if everyone wants something different. They do what they believe that people will enjoy and eventually alter what needs altering to an extent. I doubt we will ever get player surveys.

[Pomelo]

Although I really enjoyed this patch so far, I would still love surveys and more avenues for we the playerbase to communicate what we want to SE. Not everyone uses these forums.

[Abylim]

They do seemingly unpopular things for the good of the game. If they catered to our whims this game would be nothing. Its good to take on some feedback, but people are going to complain about pretty much everything.

[Ashkendor]

There's a point at which "what the (vocal) players want" and "what's good for the game" will be at odds though. Did we specifically want a nerf to tank DPS? No, but I see why they did it and as a result I don't really mind it. I welcome the change back to vitality. Gearing has actually been terribly unfair for us for a long time now. In order to be 'optimal' we were forced to 1) beg our static to let us greed on Slaying accessories with the melee (something which made them unhappy, I'm sure) 2) buy our accessories over the course of weeks with tokens, or 3) spend millions on expensive pentamelds. Meanwhile, the floor owns a full set of Fending drops. 3.2 hits and suddenly, Vitality accessories aren't completely useless. We can Need on the things we need. What a concept!

I welcome the step back to the heavier emphasis on mechanics over DPS checks as well. The way the encounters were structured in the Gordias cycle made them extremely unfriendly to all but a very small percentage of the population. I know my static suffered from constant roster changes because many people simply didn't enjoy the raids. There was no incentive for people to stay around. We'd go in, make a couple of weeks of progress, and then someone would suddenly leave. Our BLM let his sub expire because he just wasn't having fun with the game. Even those of us that stuck around weren't enjoying the time spent in those raids because it felt like we were just beating our heads against a brick wall. It was needlessly stressful to a lot of us.

SE has listened to a lot of feedback and that's why these changes have been made. A lot of tanks were tired of being crutched on to meet DPS checks. A lot of us were tired of having to put so much effort into gearing compared to other classes too. As fun and rewarding as the customization was, it was also unfair in a lot of ways because of the resources required to go about it. The 'holy trinity' concept has basically been broken around here for a while now and SE is simply trying to reinforce it. I don't mind at all. Now less-optimal DPS players can't just crutch on overpowered tanks to carry them.

As you said, not everyone posts on the game forums. Typically the people that want to complain about something that's been implemented make up the majority of threads about it, and that can create the perception that more people dislike it than like it whether or not that's actually the case. The thing is, if someone doesn't mind the change or actually likes the change, they're less likely to post. That's just human nature. We're simply conditioned to share and respond to what we feel is a negative experience.

[CyrilLucifer]

Every current player gets surveyed once a month...when they pull that money from your account.

Unsubbing alone tells SE nothing. If anything, it might be misleading. Someone might unsub because their friends all quit, another person might unsub because they have real life issues that prevent them from playing (ie, a new job), then a third person might unsub because they're simply not having fun anymore. SE cannot tell the difference.

I agree that a survey would be nice so that SE can know what had made players dissatisfied when they do unsub. I'm pretty sure most companies do this when it comes to non-game subscriptions, at least those that I have worked with do.

[therpgfanatic]

Unsubbing alone tells SE nothing. If anything, it might be misleading. Someone might unsub because their friends all quit, another person might unsub because they have real life issues that prevent them from playing (ie, a new job), then a third person might unsub because they're simply not having fun anymore. SE cannot tell the difference.

I agree that a survey would be nice so that SE can know what had made players dissatisfied when they do unsub. I'm pretty sure most companies do this when it comes to non-game subscriptions, at least those that I have worked with do.

Yes, most companies send a survey when a customer leaves their service to determine why the customer left. SE should do this, too.