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

[Deceptus]

Id rather avoid more incidents where players get riled up for no reason without even having the patch thereby us experiencing a slew of forum posts freaking out over a job they havent played. (I.E. SB WHM Debacle). I mean theyll just tell you to play the job first and then give feed back. So better they do this instead.

I'd rather have the information than not to be able to constructively criticize it. Because SE has a track record of making some VERY poor decisions.

I honestly and truly wish that wasn't the case, but unfortunately it is. The Battle System team is simply too small for as many jobs as there are.

[gman1311]

It doesn’t matter too much, considering they don’t make changes when the patch notes comes out.

[HiroesX81]

I'd rather have the information than not to be able to constructively criticize it. Because SE has a track record of making some VERY poor decisions.

I honestly and truly wish that wasn't the case, but unfortunately it is. The Battle System team is simply too small for as many jobs as there are.

Why tho? Unless its for an expansion the response is gonna be the same. Theyll wait for people to try out the job and listen to the feed back after. They use Savage as the main feedback for job changes. Not really much point in getting the info before.

[Seraphor]

If only the lack of RNG was the problem. The current card system is just annoying from a mechanical perspective and requires an insane amount of busywork just to let AST be on par with a WHM that simply spams glare.

I agree that current cards need some QoL changes, it's a lot of busy work for an effect that feels piecemeal, but the old rng cards were an objective mess, and the countless "AST card suggestions" still filling the healer board are far worse.
Old Bole and Ewer were problematic, because you can't have healer utility on the rng, it makes it hard to balance the different healer kits. Does AST have a 10% damage reduction skill available... or not? Is it starved of MP, or does it have far too much?
Arrow was way too situational, only BLM and SAM really benefited from it, while some jobs like NIN were actually hindered by it, it was also far, far less effective than Balance, because although on paper a 10% speed boost should theoretically result in a 10% damage boost, in practice, you're not even getting a whole extra GCD in that 30s window, which means most jobs, that have a rotation on some multiple of 30s, feel absolutely no benefit.
Spear, oh boy. Crit is a pain to balance in this game due to it scaling logarithmically, meaning it gets better and better as the patch cycle progresses. This is why BRD lost it's crit mechanics.
We all know why Spire was useless.
That just leaves Balance... what a surprise.

What I would do to AST cards, is instead of using a card AND getting a seal, you either use a card OR get the seal, then increase the buffs of cards/divination accordingly, so that you're either pumping out Balances as strong as they used to be, or saving them up for an AoE Balance that is as strong as Trick Attack. This then gives you a valid choice to make with each card, do you use it single target, or save it for AoE? 8-man obviously makes this a no-brainer but for light parties either option can be effective.

[frostmagemari]

Why tho? Unless its for an expansion the response is gonna be the same. Theyll wait for people to try out the job and listen to the feed back after. They use Savage as the main feedback for job changes. Not really much point in getting the info before.

Gee.. it almost sounds like SQEX would benefit from a PTR. They would get the exact same kind of feedback from their players and could make changes before they flip the switch and potentially stop a large number of the angry threads from ever hitting the forums.

[Mahrze]

Gee.. it almost sounds like SQEX would benefit from a PTR. They would get the exact same kind of feedback from their players and could make changes before they flip the switch and potentially stop a large number of the angry threads from ever hitting the forums.

You have too much faith on them listening to PTR feedback.

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) / SCH (Abysmal) / MCH / DRK (and monk a bit).
5.0 SCH was a mess.

I know I'm missing some situations.

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.

Some of these are being put in a hyperbole to prove a point. I don't disagree that holding back information is not a good stance to take, but we as a community have proven to be hyper-reactive to more things than we want to accept.

Media tour for 4.0 showed SAM potencies were leading people to believe SAM would be a super OP machine of deeps and look were that went. Media tour for 5.0, People chanted GNB would be DOA and look where its at. SE misses the mark a lot more often than they want to accept, I won't disagree with that. But I am not going to simply say "crucify them" when even if the "vocal minority" or however you want to call it is the one who makes matters worse before they make it better.

SE listens, stubbornly and in a limited scope but they do listen. Sometimes too much (Second rework of WAR in 4.2? and current AST Card woes). And something like a PTR won't really change the issues nor make sure "stuff doesn't slip through the cracks" because it will.

What I would much rather ask for is for job roadmaps and venues for direct feedback and a bigger combat/battle team instead of the (rumored/assumed) 4 people for 18 jobs.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Gee.. it almost sounds like SQEX would benefit from a PTR. They would get the exact same kind of feedback from their players and could make changes before they flip the switch and potentially stop a large number of the angry threads from ever hitting the forums.

Pretty sure most ptrs don't actually work the way people think they do.

[Sated]

Honestly every time there's a patch I'm grateful that there isn't a PTR for this game. It's nice to see the hype for a patch last longer than an afternoon; new content gets to feel new. Definitely wouldn't trade that for some extremely early, niche feedback about which numbers some players thought weren't high enough.

[Theodric]

I'm not a fan of the idea of the game having a PTR. It doesn't really need one, since each patch is typically very polished by the time the content actually goes live. Plus if you look at WoW, content is spoiled months in advance due to the presence of a PTR. By not spoiling every last little detail about what is changing we also see everybody start on equal footing the moment a patch goes live, too.

I'd propose that instead of a PTR we push for more engagement here on the forum from community representatives.

[Nedkel]

Why would you even care when most of the english feedback is going into the trash bin anyway? Did they listened to gnb complains on sound? Nope
Did they listened on healers complains of oversimplifying dps? Nope
So why bother