So, they fix 2B's tights due to community feedback...

[Vahlnir]

Excuse me, but which majority? Was there an official poll in the game with later announced results of this poll? I suppose I somehow managed to miss it then, because I don't remember any pop-up announcements with request to write an opinion about sounds for the job in these 6 months since ShB release. A lot of players don't even use forums, twitter, reddit and any other medias (and there isn't even any guarantee that those users from other medias aren't the same people from forum), they just play silently, using in-game chat at max.
I love these forums. People here at first tell "forum isn't a majority" and "don't speak for everyone" but later suddenly "majority wants" when it applies to their personal opinion. Amazing.

No one knows the numbers for anything but SE. Up until they changed the sounds, however, I don't recall seeing anyone complaining about them on the forums or in game, and I'm logged into both a lot. So while the forums are not the majority, they can give a bit of a clue as to what a portion of the player base is feeling. The GNB sound change was implemented out of nowhere, plain and simple. And while I don't mind the changes, mainly because I have my dream job, even I can see how pointless it was to change the sounds. It was kind of like when they decided the main menu screen had to be louder. Just...what?

[TheMightyMollusk]

Well overhauling stuff is part of their job isnt it? You want money you earn it by doing something.

Sorry, the higher-ups at SE can't hear you over the funneling of our subscription fees into the FF7 remake and other projects.

[Halivel]

No one knows the numbers for anything but SE. Up until they changed the sounds, however, I don't recall seeing anyone complaining about them on the forums or in game, and I'm logged into both a lot. So while the forums are not the majority, they can give a bit of a clue as to what a portion of the player base is feeling. The GNB sound change was implemented out of nowhere, plain and simple. And while I don't mind the changes, mainly because I have my dream job, even I can see how pointless it was to change the sounds.

The only thing it does say that some layer of playerbase is pissed by the change itself tbh, not that recent sounds are bad. How many of us would even notice it if not for specific line in patch note that stated the change? There were players in other threads (or even this one) who was like "er, what's wrong with them? Sound ok for me" because that's how they always heard them (because either didn't witness 1st version or just didn't pay attention to how it sounded before). And then there also players that are always "previous version was better return it" about everything - you can witness it with every new FF game release and with almost every new expansions in various MMO games actually. What says that it's not the case with GNB?

[Banriikku]

Funny...

The Comm complains about a Soundbug and SE ignors that for months - after Yoshida experiened it at a Livestream and the Livestreamchat yells at him the bug vanishes and is solved.

The Comm praises the 2b outfit and SE simple reverts that change. Only after every Forum yells at SE and a ruckus in the Livestreams - SE changes it back.

The Forum brings up usefull Stuff and SE ignors it as a whole.
In the Forums otter pictures are posted getting deleted and ppl banned for it.

SE changes AST from "fishing for Balance" to "Fishing for Seals" and says: "Look, how different it is now". Many ppl comlain and say that this is close to no change at all and AST lost a lot of identy.

The Comm ask what about Viery and Hrothgar related Stuff (different haistyles, headgear)?
What about GNB and DNC weapon/armor glamour (old primalweapons and such)?
What is with the old primal weapons?

COMPLETE IGNORANCE FROM SE.

The absolut best part is BLM does so much dmg, dnc plays so easy and whm does both dmg and easy-fluid gameplay but all other classes getting nerfs and their identy butchered.

PPl ask for what is the future of FF14. What are the plans.
No clear answer. I do not expect them to explain their work or every detail but atleast a direction would be nice.
And then they announce less Dungeons but they want to make things and stuff better.

PPl ask: What exactly ?
SE: Stuff and things, stop asking. Its done when its done. Remember Yoshida-San is in charge so we do it all right and you have to love it because of Yshida-San.

As a example for the absolut weird stance of SE: the last QA was very weird because all questions related to classes were ignored or just with "we look in to it" parried. Also the questions raised by crafters related to Ishgard and the exploit of it and the questions about the trivialization of Content/Jobs as whole were not adressed at all.

Oh and the high praised Crafter/Gatherer changes are UI changes (really good in my opinion) and a ridiculous amounts of exp boost for those jobs so i am in less then a week from zero to hero.

So now we are getting more Crafter and Gatherer Stuff ... i am not sure if i am really happy about this because the last changes for those jobs and Ishgard were not that great (i am very polite at this point because after the announcement i thought some serious changes would come to the crafters but the actual changes were just making the crafting a short-lived joke and the UI changes are the only really good ones in my opinion.)

SE will ignor the Forums and such until something really big comes up or someone posts a otter.

Thats my salt on this matter. Sorry for my bad english.

[Maeka]

2B's tights are not a gameplay balance issue.

When people say "I WANT AST CARDS CHANGED!!!!!!!"

The team has to get together and go "So, how can we change AST cards but yet NOT upset game balance?"

With 2B's tights, it's an aesthetic change and will not impact gameplay balance, other than making more people want to go out and get them.

But with a whole card rework, that's... a bit trickier to do. It takes more math, calculations, playtesting. What can they do that doesn't make AST too OP or UP? That takes time to do.

That, and coming from years of experience of WoW and also FFXIV, it seems like major reworks to adventuring classes are not done in mid-expansion unless it is absolutely necessary. They would rather make small tweaks to keep classes playable/fun, and save reworks for major expansions.

They likely will re-do AST cards.. in the next expansion.

Doing a whole re-work in the middle of an expansion is a disaster waiting to happen. You'd have AST progression raiders upset that they have to re-learn their class in the middle of an expansion while SCHs and WHMs can just keep trucking along. It would put them at a very unfair advantage for a bit of time, especially if this coincided with a new raid tier.

It's just not good form, and not something we really want them to do.

EDIT: In response to the poster above me: Yoshi-P himself does not read the forums. He has a team of people to skim through the stuff and relay stuff to him. Things can get lost in translation, things can be glossed over, etc. But when something is dropped right in front of the Boss himself at a Fan Festival, Livestream, Dev Letter, what-not, then the Boss Himself takes notice of it and goes "hmm, yeah, okay. Do this." and they snap to, because the boss himself said to. So yeah, obviously something that is presented straight to Yoshi-P is going to get the fastest response. Obviously.

The man doesn't have time to sit here and converse with each of the thousands of people who have issues with various things in the game, and he might not even agree with the issues you raise anyways. Maybe he thinks AST cards are fine. *shrug* Personally, I don't mind AST cards myself. I'm fine with the mechanic. In fact, I like them more than I did the Stormblood iteration.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

SE stopped giving detailed plans cuz if anything changed, the community would go "no, you said THIS! How dare you change plans!"

We used to see a lot more of dev ideas for things, they'd show off what was in testing and give ideas on how future content would function.

[Maeka]

SE stopped giving detailed plans cuz if anything changed, the community would go "no, you said THIS! How dare you change plans!"

^^^^
Another very valid point.

I've seen this over at Blizzard too, back when I used to play WoW.

You simply cannot give detailed plans, especially NOT release dates unless you were 200% sure that you would meet each and every thing you said would happen.

You just don't do it. You don't tell the public any more than you absolutely must for exactly this reason. And you know what? The playerbase only has themselves as a whole to blame for being toxic and causing developers to not give more detailed info as to what they are planning.

It is why I have always been outspoken against such toxic behavior in the past, but people just wanna rant and rage all over the place, despite any voices of reason asking them to calm down.

[Theodric]

SE stopped giving detailed plans cuz if anything changed, the community would go "no, you said THIS! How dare you change plans!"

Eh, I don't think that's the case. I think they stopped giving detail because they're increasingly disconnected from the community due to the game getting much bigger over time. This place is practically ignored these days in favour of Twitter/Facebook by the community representatives. Who, I note, don't even weigh in on legitimate issues that are in need of clarification such as the lack of a promotion for the Black Fat Chocobo in the EU region.

We see them show up to introduce themselves and then...never post here again.

[Lambdafish]

Sorry, the higher-ups at SE can't hear you over the funneling of our subscription fees into the FF7 remake and other projects.

You have no idea how businesses work. Of course XIV funds FF7 remake, in the same way that FF7 remake funds XIV. SE has a central pool of funds that is made up of many different projects and that is distributed between divisions. Just because XIV requires a large amount of overhead that it maybe isn't getting, that doesn't mean that FF7 remake (a far more mass-market game I should mention) is stealing from it.

[Maeka]

You have no idea how businesses work. Of course XIV funds FF7 remake, in the same way that FF7 remake funds XIV. SE has a central pool of funds that is made up of many different projects and that is distributed between divisions. Just because XIV requires a large amount of overhead that it maybe isn't getting, that doesn't mean that FF7 remake (a far more mass-market game I should mention) is stealing from it.

I would imagine that different projects are worked on by different teams and each project is allotted an X amount of funds and time to complete the project. FFXIV has its own budget, and FF7 remake has its own, and the plethora of other things that SE might have going on at any given time.

Whenever you start a project, you go "OK, I'm going to assign them, them, and those people over there to it, and you get (insert money here) budget for it. Go." and that's it. Sometimes things go over budget, but eh. I would imagine the company has funds for general purpose for that reason along with other things like supplies, equipment, taxes, and other expenses.