The Developers Need to Start Surveying Players After Every Patch

[Aomine1992]

I like tanking and all but for the sake of balance something had to be done about WAR I'm sorry I have to be that guy but even playing optimal on my DRG I was doing less dmg then most mediocre WARs with their 10k crit fell cleave and pvp was disgusting, holmgang and fell cleave your healers face in....so in my opinion tank dmg is fine now especially since I haven't really seen to many tough dps checks here in 3.2

And 3.2 in my opinion has proved that they listen Alexander Midas is really fun and a little challenging, sephirot is really fun...not as hard as thordan but to me much more enjoyable.

[Leigaon]

Each company has their own way of surveying customers and their responses. What someone said is very true, social media is the biggest one. Along with feedback forums, this is where the Lodestone comes in. People come here to express their concerns, whether it is good or bad.

You are right, in the thousands of posts every hour, having to manually go in and find things you will miss some golden nuggets. Some brilliant suggestions that could very well make the game better but are lost in the sea of pages.

Each system though has their own pro's and con's. It is up to the management team to determine what is best results for them. For example, for us, when we resolve an issue it sends the resolution to the user and a link to give a survey. Most don't do it because the server just went down, we brought it back up and you got documents to digitally sign and send out somehow to a very important person. At that point, an important suggestion is lost due to work load.

Also, the ones who read these surveys really skim through. Again you have the % of a good idea to pass through. Say 1,200 surveys come in that week and out of the 40% relate to the same thing. If two people have astounding suggestions, it is the workers fault for not doing this but..it will most likely get missed as they've put those two surveys in with the rest of the people who complain about the same problem. Human Error, the unmanageable bottleneck..always has to be taken into account. Someone can read "You broke my job!" suggestions only so many times before they're thinking "Screw it.."

I'm not saying that the surveying option is bad. I am saying it has its cons also, and with each system they need to be weighed out. Then there is the restructure of it all. Yes, on the face of it..it is a simple fix. As you go through the back end, it gets much more complicated. You involve HR, Managers, CIO's..everything.

Somewhere down the line it's not going to be an issue to someone and that holds things up. Next thing you know it's been 3 years and the one guy no one wants to upset hasn't said nothing.

These people do try, they do care. As you go up the chain though more things come into play other than "This will make these 50 people very happy." I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying it is wrong. I am saying that it happens. I'm not saying that a survey such as you suggested will or will not improve the game.

I am saying they have a system, approved by the powers that be and they are doing their best to work on it. This system could change, but right now it is what they have. Even then, the suggestions have a long way to go before they get put through.

[Iskander]

Maybe a system like what they have in Blade and Soul could work. At certain levels, a survey becomes available in game for each player to take. Give your opinions on the content you've been experiencing. That would give them feedback on the game as a whole by the players in game instead of just forum goers. When a new patch is released, there would be a couple surveys that would pop up after you do certain things.

i.e. New pvp stuff this patch. Once you do the pvp stuff, survey pops up.

Once you go into SephEx and come back out, survey pops up for your thoughts on if it's tuned right.

Things like that.

[Deceptus]

I like tanking and all but for the sake of balance something had to be done about WAR I'm sorry I have to be that guy but even playing optimal on my DRG I was doing less dmg then most mediocre WARs with their 10k crit fell cleave and pvp was disgusting, holmgang and fell cleave your healers face in....so in my opinion tank dmg is fine now especially since I haven't really seen to many tough dps checks here in 3.2

And 3.2 in my opinion has proved that they listen Alexander Midas is really fun and a little challenging, sephirot is really fun...not as hard as thordan but to me much more enjoyable.

So making penta melded 150 better than 220 was a good idea?

[Kaurie]

I'd like surveys to be added.

Some people agree.

Some people disagree.

Square isn't going to add them.

This was discussed at length like 2 weeks ago. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-content-patch (posted February 8th)

[Zumi]

The tank change is good, I play a tank and it feels much better having a lot of hp.

[AdamuKun322]

I enjoy tanking. My love is slowly being restored to my PLD. It actually feels like we're getting hit hard and sounds like we actually block something with our shield with that "tinge" sound that I just began to hear. Also, my Royal Authority still crits at times for 2200.

[Kosmos992k]

Kosmos is just trolling.

No. I wasn't. Thanks so much for the unfounded accusation of misconduct. I'm not sure what your axe is, but grind it elsewhere thank you very much.

Is it any wonder that a business consultant for entertainment companies would want such regular surveys of the customers of an entertainment company? After all, who conducts such research?

As for the meat of the point. If you have ever worked on large scale computing projects whether corporate IT, infrastructure, or games, the one thing you do not want is shifting goalposts. Surveying a fickle group of consumers on a monthly basis results in contradictory responses, and altering priorities with each survey. If management start acting on the results of such surveys, they have to spend time reacting to the survey and re-planning the project, developers have to rework things, or change direction entirely. It doesn't take much of that to delay or even derail a large project.

[Alberel]

I think at most a survey with every expansion would be ok. Something that would allow them to correct course for the next expansion if need be. The patch schedule is extremely tight though; they simply won't have time to factor in any major changes as a result of surveys between patches so it would be pointless.

[Mindylou]

The Developers Need to Start Surveying Players After Every Patch

/agree