A (maybe) different outlook on the current DRK situation

[DoppelShifter]

A response! I love this, let's continue this discussion.

[Snip snip]

This time I won't do a point-by-point to your post (not out of disrespect, but for the sake of simplicity) because most of it boils down to some frequent points that sadly seem to be exceedingly common here in the forums.

Actually, coming here to the forums after all these years (last time I came here was during the 2nd month after Stormblood, when Square Enix hiked the sub prices in some countries, and I was among the affected, after they tripled my sub and I came to the forums to start a peaceful protest thread. I got a forum ban, and never came back) finally reminded me of some of the reasons why I don't really like to interact here very much.

But back to the subject in hand, I want to use a word you brought to the table: "communication".

Communication in the way you seem to want to happen is, frankly, impossible considering the scale of this game, this player base, and more importantly, its diversity.
Diversity of playstyles, diversity of platforms, diversity of focus content and even cultural and geographic differences; feedback from the Japanese community playing on PS5s on Toberry will often look different from what you see on the raid-heavy Excalibur, or the laid-back social-heavy Faerie, or the rather toxic raid-heavy and BR-influenced Behemoth, or people at the meme-heavy Twitter community, or the hardcore and often hyperfocused folks here on the Forums.

Also keep in mind that FFXIV is not a raid-focused game. It is, in no particular order (because said importance varies from person to person), a JRPG, an MMORPG, a virtual social community and a true-to-roots role-playing game.

So keeping all parts satisfied is almost a losing proposition, yet Division 3 nevertheless takes the ordeal.

[Sidenote: do note that I pick names deliberately: I call the *company*, the corporate entity dictating financial decisions, "Square Enix" or "SE", while I call the *developers*, the group led by Yoshi-P and responsible for the actual game we play, "Creative Business Unit III" or simply "CBU3" or "Division 3"]

I'm a bit of a software lad myself, nothing professional though, big respect for the stuff you put yourself through.

I will take this comment earnestly, but will say outright that this oversimplifies the issue.

Game development is not an individual, monolithic thing. Back when I was a producer and lead game designer, I led a team of 12, and it was hell. Tight deadlines, bosses that had no idea of what they were asking from us (and often contradicting the wishes of our own player base). It drained me to the point of mental breakdowns during online meetings. It's *not* easy, specially if you're like me and you like to micromanage the other teams while your bosses seemingly have no idea what a "videogame" is since back in the Atari era.

I don't have a (functional) crystal ball, but Yoshi-P might as well be on a similar ordeal, as he's also a producer who loves to micromanage his teams, and he loves his players far more than I did (and I really cared about mine). Except he leads *two* teams numbering on the hundreds, his player base numbers on the millions rather than tens-to-hundreds of thousands, and his direct bosses are one of the biggest gaming companies of the modern age, with executives so out of touch they might as well be taking satellite rides.

...And yet people seem to think everything wrong with the game is the result of "laziness", "blindness", "people sitting on their hands" or whatever. Believe me, as somebody who worked on game design and game production before multiple times, it's never that simple.

So what do they do? Well, they juggle priorities. They take feedback from all places, but they have to filter what's earnest and what's frankly just white noise, and then organize what to tackle first. What to prioritize.

[Sidenote number 2: When I posted my thread here, I took a quick glance at the Tank subforum and out of the first 10 threads, not counting mine, 4 were just elitist whining, 2 were from people with no idea what they were talking about, a megathread that's so huge and so full of salt that it would actually make MORE difficult for a developer to read useful feedback from, one was about Gunbreaker's sounds (?!?!) and one was the classic "will DRK be in the next live letter?".
Not exactly the reliable well of feedback a developer would wish for.]

And in prioritizing, they take into account not just what the players ask, but what the players *do*. They analyze the metrics, which tell them the most used classes, most used skills, most played content, what social hubs are the hottest at any point of the day, how many whacks people are giving on the machines at the Gold Saucer. Heck, they even analyze the memes we make. A lot.

Then they also see what content is being played (MSQ? Dungeons? Sidequests? Alliance Raids? Progression Raids? PvP?) and then prioritize them, but trying not to *starve* any of those (PvP is still using essentially using Shadowbringers skills and at least some of the balancing team is probably busy reworking that right now).

And then some of the team is working on future content. Female Hrothgar. New dungeons. The new Alliance Raids. *The next expansion*, which yes, is always already in the works. And much much more.

Players, specially the ones that complain the most, and even the ones who have very deep knowledge of their own class and gameplay style, very often lack the understanding of scale that comes with developing and balancing an MMORPG like FFXIV.

This is not to tell people "shut up and wait", but "rethink the way you express your feedback, you're not talking with a lazy bunch of dullards doing what they please, you're talking with a big development team doing their best with very chaotic feedback".

I am definitely seeing it as a healer-tank relationship, or more specifically rather how the base of the holy trinitiy in tanks/heals support the peak of the triangle, the DPS. [snip snip]

Ok, I'm gonna break my pattern and actually start to bring this to an end by pointing towards a very specific point of your argument.

You're right. Supertanks are breaking the balance of the "holy trinity of roles".

...But whether that's a bad thing or not, that's not set in stone. Because that "golden standard" is not really in the essence of FFXIV.

First of all, the scenario you described normally only tends to happen either when the supertank is at least a reasonably skilled player, or when the bored healer is at least a reasonably skilled healer. More likely when both are skilled.
...Plus, the DPSs won't really complain that they're getting a third or even a fourth buddy to push big numbers.

...In the real world, you'll see a lot of sprouts, or in-learning players, or people playing with a new class, or people who aren't really skilled but still like the game.

And when rest of the party wipes, and a talented tank, or a talented Red Mage, or a talented Sage stands their ground and solo's the boss, that's... awesome! That sparks an awesome social moment, they exchange a few compliments, somebody gets triple commendations, and they get a good story to tell.

This, to me, is far more important than balancing the trinity. I don't care about numbers if the alternative brings a more fun and relevant experience to more people.


And to wrap it up, you also kinda misjudged me when you put us in a binary of "you're hardcore, I'm pug-casual". This is never a binary, but a spectrum.

I'm an omniclass player (currently working on my last 2 classes to lvl90); I just happen to like tanking more, and DRK is my favorite (in gameplay and story). I'm also an omnicrafter and omnigatherer, who crafts her own gear. I play Savage raids when it fancies me, and I play Normal raids blind day one to figure out the mechanics. I play PvP. I decorate my house. I obsess for HOURS on what glams I'm gonna wear at any given day.

It would be unfair to call me a "casual" player. But I'm not your typical "parsing every fight, polishing every rotation, optimizing all damage, hardcore progression raider". And this kind of player is proportionally far less common than a lot of people seem to think.

And again. I'm not telling you, nor anyone, to stop voicing your wishes. Just do so with the knowledge that things aren't as simple, or as malicious, as some seem to think it is.