SE: Holding back information won't stop criticism, it will only delay it and is bad.

[Deceptus]

TL : DR We as players need MORE information from a company that supposedly already learned this lesson, not LESS.

In the recent Live Letter, Yoshi stated:

Special Note

Regarding Job Balances and Adjustments

YoshiP, in his previous Patch 5.1 Note Reading segment has confirmed that he will no longer detail the job balances and its adjustments in preliminary notes and maybe/likely during PLL as well because he does not want players to be overly concerned about how their job will end up getting nerfed or buffed just by looking at the paper, or the numbers itself. As pre-announcing it will just make people work up on details that shouldn't worry them until they play the actual job on release, they've decided to omit all job balance details until they patch day itself.

Therefore, while the translation staff, will put in as many details as we can from the PLL, don't be surprised if you see no job balance details (like what skill or ability will receive adjustments) more than maybe "this job and that job will be buffed", et cetera. If there is information to be had, the translation team will be sure to relay it to you. Otherwise, don't be surprised because YoshiP decided to keep things a little bit private for the sake of the playerbase.

This is an extremely bad decision for the SE development team to make. There have been multiple instances where they released pre-patch notes and the player base largely said they don't like what they see.

"But wait until it's live!" The white knights always claim.

And then it becomes live and the player base who was concerned is largely proven right.

Remember when SE thought it was a great idea to implement a GREED ONLY rule in all of the 24 mans? Yeah that was announced pre-patch and it was thoroughly lambasted and SE rightly had to reverse course shortly after implementation.

2.0 Warriors we were "playing wrong"
3.0 Bard Bow-Mage / AST were a mess along with Ninja. Remember when we were "doing it wrong then" as well?
4.0 WHM (useless Lilies) / MCH / DRK (and monk a bit).
5.0 SCH was a complete mess. Healers in general were extremely disappointed, RDM's had extreme mana issues.

I know I'm missing some situations.

What was the overwhelming majority of the problems in almost EVERY case of the above? Numbers. Tuning. There were some overall job gameplay issues at hand but it was largely numbers.

For example, this happened in 6.1:


Pay 200 extra MP for diff VFX :3c

Credit: Rein_eon_Osborne

Which is exactly what SE wants us to have less information regarding.

So much of this can be attributed to SE's absolute defiance for a public test realm. They can't possibly predict how millions of people will react to their product but only having less than 25 people (being extremely generous) play test it, and only four job designers for 18 battle jobs, something is bound to fall through the cracks.

[Skivvy]

Honestly, the playerbase as a whole is annoyingly uppity. I can't blame them for deciding to hold back information.

[Deceptus]

Honestly, the playerbase as a whole is annoyingly uppity. I can't blame them for deciding to hold back information.

Possible, the most uninformed often shout the loudest but mixed in with those shouts are other people who are legitimately informed and want the best for the game.

[Razard]

Possible, the most uninformed often shout the loudest but mixed in with those shouts are other people who are legitimately informed and want the best for the game.

So who is going to determine what is legitamate criticism, and what is the insufferable shrieking of the banshee squad?

It's unfortunate, but sometimes this forum is like diving for pearls in a sea of Urine. Sure, you might find something valuable. But you are more likely to come out of the experience empty handed and smelling like pee.

[Gojin]

Honestly, the playerbase as a whole is annoyingly uppity. I can't blame them for deciding to hold back information.

uppity? my bad for wanting to get what a pay monthly for, guess I should just pay my monthly fee and not know what Im getting sorry!

[Deceptus]

uppity? my bad for wanting to get what a pay monthly for, guess I should just pay my monthly fee and not know what Im getting sorry!

You like that poop sandwich they give you dang it! You don't get to complain about the taste. Just say "thank you" senpai and shove it in! (heavy /s)

Well, I'll have to disagree with you on that point.

There's a 24-page topic dedicated to people complaining that their favorite choice didn't win in the vote for a seasonal event.

The in-game FFXIV community is definitely one of the better MMO communities out there, but the forum/reddit crowd seems to be prone to the same overblown reactions and backseat driving that most of the internet is known for.

A large portion of that thread isn't complaining that "their favorite" didn't win, most people are criticizing (with good cause) the terrible writing that was displayed and how SE had essentially rigged the outcome from the beginning. Thinking that the female, previously known NPC, sporting red on Valentines wasn't going to win is a pretty far fetch. Versus two new characters in not red coloring.

[Valorak]

I'll definitely agree to disagree. Personally, a 24-page reaction to an event is more reaction than any event has gotten in a while, and it shows that the players were able to invest themselves in these characters we only got snippets of. At the end of the day, I think even pure hatred is better than apathy; the day that the community is completely apathetic towards the game is the day Yoshi P has lost.

I hear what you're saying, and while I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment that passion/anger > apathy, I hesitate to use that in this situation. People disproportionately weigh in on things when they're angry so it doesn't necessarily indicate that people weren't enjoying events before. There wasn't much useful information to be found in that topic, imo.

I'm really glad that people are passionate about the game, but that doesn't mean that any and all complaints are immediately vindicated just because people are loud and passionate about it, nor does it make them qualified to accurately predict how class changes are going to affect balance. The community has been wrong about the effect of incoming changes just as many times as it has been right about them.

Maybe if I couldn't switch between classes then I would care more about quick turn-around on class balance and open dialogue about it, but between having all classes on one character and the fact that they've stated that they ultimately don't care if one class is 1% dps over the other one, I don't view it as a big deal. People who live for the meta like that are gonna be loud regardless of what they do (exhibit a: World of Warcraft), so I suppose it makes sense for them to limit the amount of noise that they have to hear until after the changes have actually hit.

A large portion of that thread isn't complaining that "their favorite" didn't win, most people are criticizing (with good cause) the terrible writing that was displayed and how SE had essentially rigged the outcome from the beginning. Thinking that the female, previously known NPC, sporting red on Valentines wasn't going to win is a pretty far fetch. Versus two new characters in not red coloring.

Hmmm... I saw a decent amount of people complaining about the writing (although there was also voter bias in some of those posts too); But I also read enough of that topic to know that the majority of posters were there to complain about people being too lazy to read text, or claiming that people had just picked Astrid because she was a girl, or that she was familiar etc. There was also a fair number of people proclaiming their hatred for office/work romances, and a smattering of people admitting that they just picked her because they knew her/wanted the red clothes. Personally, I didn't find much criticism in that topic that I would consider to be constructive. Definitely not enough for 24 pages and one or two spin-off topics.

[MomomiMomi]

Hmmm... I saw a decent amount of people complaining about the writing (although there was also voter bias in some of those posts too); But I also read enough of that topic to know that the majority of posters were there to complain about people being too lazy to read text, or claiming that people had just picked Astrid because she was a girl, or that she was familiar etc. There was also a fair number of people proclaiming their hatred for office/work romances, and a smattering of people admitting that they just picked her because they knew her/wanted the red clothes. Personally, I didn't find much criticism in that topic that I would consider to be constructive.

Most of that is useful feedback that could be used to learn how to better make future events, though I doubt that they'll even listen to it.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

Hmmm... I saw a decent amount of people complaining about the writing (although there was also voter bias in some of those posts too); But I also read enough of that topic to know that the majority of posters were there to complain about people being too lazy to read text, or claiming that people had just picked Astrid because she was a girl, or that she was familiar etc. There was also a fair number of people proclaiming their hatred for office/work romances, and a smattering of people admitting that they just picked her because they knew her/wanted the red clothes. Personally, I didn't find much criticism in that topic that I would consider to be constructive. Definitely not enough for 24 pages and one or two spin-off topics.

You conveniently forget to mention that, because of what happened with Astrid's landslide victory, no one can experience Bert or Rodrigault's storylines in the game ever.

[Gula]

uppity? my bad for wanting to get what a pay monthly for, guess I should just pay my monthly fee and not know what Im getting sorry!

You will know though. On patch day. Or would you like to hover over everyone's shoulder as they work? Then you can see everything. Including story spoilers, gameplay mechanic spoilers and every single thing you want.