Can we expect even a SLIGHT rework for DRK in the upcoming live letter/patch?

[Danelo]

Remember the difference between criticism and insults too.
The devs deserve the criticism for the design of DRK (or tanking in general, or MCH) and being stern is perfectly reasonnable. Please be firm and straight to the point.
Just remember to not just be waxing insults with or without substance behind it. Calling them lazy or incompetent doesn't address any issue nor is actually constructive.
Anyway, mini-rant is over.

This is fair BUT criticism is for the design flaws, insults are self-inflicted for not responding to or addressing the full body of criticism for years. I’ll be honest, it has its place, as long as it’s not a pure personal attack, in hopes sqex never again abandons a job as it seems like they have done with DRK up to this point.

Surely they can understand the frustration manifest differently from customer to costumer and it won’t keep them from doing their jobs.

[Kalaam]

Insults are never warranted and just give an excuse to ignore the forums. There is other ways to voice frustration without creating conflict.

[Danelo]

Insults are never warranted and just give an excuse to ignore the forums. There is other ways to voice frustration without creating conflict.

In the day and age of anything being able to be taken as an insult I’d just rather the dev team polish the product they are paid to work on because it’s their job not because they feel like it or not based on player feedback good, bad or ugly. They have neglected the job and deserve all the feedback they are getting. The idea you will always receive glowing feedback or a critique that simultaneously pats your back and therefore when you receive a harsh criticism you shutdown is a slippery slope for the game.

[Kalaam]

Again, never said to send glowing feedback or not to criticize. Quite the contrary.
What I say is that insults are useless and just give an excuse to ignore the forums. If you care, don't give ammutions to justify ignoring you. Give feedback, explain the issues, suggest solutions, voice concern. All of that is useful. insulting isn't. That's all I'm saying.

[ForteNightshade]

Insults are never warranted and just give an excuse to ignore the forums. There is other ways to voice frustration without creating conflict.

Personal insults, no. Those aren't going to accomplish anything. With that said, calling them lazy based on say, their refusal to make Primal weapons for the new jobs or fix Viera hats after three years is entirely justifiable, in my opinion. There comes a point where people's frustration boils over because their criticism just isn't being acknowledged. Case in point, the healers. Look way back in Stormblood with the original Lily system. People said from the media tour those were terrible but were told "just try it out a see first!" Two years WHMs suffered with a system everyone knew was garbage from onset. DRKs, likewise, have brought up a bevvy of complaints only to be told "It cleared UCoB. It's fine!" Stuff like that inevitably grates on people. And while criticism should never be outright offensive, I'm not exactly going to fault anyone for pulling back on the polite veneer either.

[OdinelStarrei]

I have to agree. It's really disingenuous to go around proclaiming, " We play our own game! We listen to the community!" when the primary way DRK mains experience combat content in FFXIV has been tumultuous for years, and that's saying it lightly. Polite, well-structured, reasonable feedback has been given about this, and many other job issues for years. And if it were acknowledged, there wouldn't be a problem. It's the fact that it's total silence from a single talking head in Yoshi-P that only happens every few months in a LL or an untranslated interview we have to dig for that is starting to seriously grate on people. I understand TBN is becoming a very controversial and split topic, but is ANYONE asking for Living Dead and Blood Weapon to not be changed? These are easy wins for the development team to show "Yes, we are infact listening" but apparently they can't even be bothered to make even numeric adjustments, not even reworks. I find myself no longer caring about literally anything the developers say unless it pertains to healers or Dark Knights, because those are the two issues that have been frequently asked about, and then shoved aside with non-answers or silence. People have every reason to be upset.

For the developers to complain about harsh feedback from us, that's essentially their own fault, getting mad that the dog they keep kicking stops coming in for cuddles after a few beatings. I'm not advocating insulting them, because obviously, they do good work. But this uneven treatment is prime territory for building resentment.

[Lyth]

It's worth remembering that change is driven by profit. If you're unhappy with something in the game but it's not a deal breaker, then it's not really worth their while to do anything about it. Moreso if you just make a few posts in a community sub-forum to vent out your frustrations and keep playing anyways.

They've made a concerted effort to sell this image through influencer interviews that the dev team are a team of 'passionate players' just like you and are receptive to your feedback. And that is the message that gets broadcast in the end. Prospective consumers aren't actually going to see dissatisfied players on neglected jobs putting in years of feedback that gets deliberately ignored.

What worries me is that, much like in Stormblood when there was a player backlash over DRK issues, they'll promise to address the issue, offer up a token rework in the name of PR, and completely ignore Living Dead yet again. Even if they did nothing else, I'd feel like we were making progress if they just deleted the ability and made a new invuln from scratch. My expectations are below the floor.

[deadman1204]

I don't understand, drk functions super well. Guessing by its post count, its the single most played job in the game.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

I don't understand, drk functions super well. Guessing by its post count, its the single most played job in the game.

While I'm personally satisfied with DRK's incredibly bursty gameplay loop outside of Blood Weapon & Living Dead, most of the complaints people have against DRK isn't about its functionality, considering that it not only has the highest dps output, but also performs immensely well in raid scenarios mitigation wise due to the flexibility of its defensive kit, to the point DRK can solo double busters with relative ease and still have cooldowns to spare without needing to tap into its invuln ever.

Most of the complaints are more towards the feel of the job, something that is very subjective and not tied to how well it's performing on a functional level. Due to similarity in its gameplay systems to WAR, many people simply see it as a lesser copy-paste of WAR gameplay. Others find the 'Burst your entire kit in 10s then Soul Eater spam with occasional Edge/Bloodspiller until the next 60s window' gameplay loop to be bland. Others want more complexity in its kit through more in-detail resource management/buff management, closer to the HW/SB iterations of the job.

Others still are tired of the devs overlooking certain flaws in DRK's kit that have been prevelant for literal years (Blood Weapon) and some that have been an issue for literally half a decade now (Living Dead), which is made all the worse when the devs state they play their own game and read feedback, when somehow these extremely talked about points are somehow ignored again and again.

The feel of the job is the same idea behind why you had/have many people disliking jobs like old SMN, SCH, pre 5.4 / 6.0 MNK, etc. The jobs were fine functionally, and many were even meta - but they didn't feel good to play compared to other jobs in their role.

There's also plenty of people that are fine with DRK as it is, but voice their concerns over certain weaknesses in their toolkit, like it's inherent lack of self sustain contrasted to PLD / GNB (Discarding WAR since they're just OP compared to everyone on sustain front).

And on post count, people who are dissatisfied with something will be the most likely to voice their concerns, so it will naturally create a bias if you base a job's popularity purely off of how much its talked about.

[shao32]

In resume while DRK works and fullfill his duty in terms of numbers is the job most criticated mechanically/identity/gameplay wise and for a good reason, DRK is just a functional mess with despite of the feedback deliver from the past years to this day the Dev team refuse to put more than 5 min of development time on the job to fix or just apease the concerns above.