TBN & WD probably wont be fundamentally changed (in 6.xx)

[Archwizard]

Being able to objectively evaluate feedback is just basic professionalism. Why would you ever want to spite the people whom you are designing a game for?

Exactly. But there's also a certain point I think a lot of people on these threads don't quite appreciate when giving feedback: that the devs will gauge feedback based on what is reasonable.

Some feedback would make a job overpowered or goes against its design philosophy; some would require far more work to accommodate than players understand due to system structures; some depreciates with time and changes in content; some is controversial, destructive or just plain bad faith. Now in my opinion as I'm sure with your own, there's plenty of honest and recent feedback about DRK's issues that evades those failings.
But when people spew insults, spread hyperbolic conspiracies ("dice theory"), or say "just delete the class already" (as I have seen dozens of times in these threads with regards to DRK since Endwalker dropped) in the official forums in the hopes the devs will read just what they think of them, they present their personal feedback as unreasonable and bad faith, focusing more on "giving a piece of my mind" than actually citing actionable criticism. (Especially once their demands are actually met and they don't bother to retract those conspiracies, either, just pocketing them for the next time.)
And when people start doing so in droves inside feedback threads, it makes large parts of the community seem unreasonable, and just as importantly buries the honest feedback.

There's a line between "They're ignoring our feedback and in fact actively making the job worse to spite us" and "They're sifting through a mountain of bile to find the gems, and working with what they can until they have enough." And there's already enough delay on that with the language gaps between the playerbase and dev team.

Even in the case of Ghostcrawler, what people didn't quite appreciate was that he was actively making himself the face of the dev teams because players would bash the devs until they got their way, and he often drew that attention to himself instead of the devs working on those jobs so they wouldn't crumble under the stress.

[Imoye]

We pay for this game out of our own pocket. There's no way I will accept a hackjob with shitty visuals compared to the treatment many of the other jobs received. If you're gonna give splendid visuals to certain jobs then others deserve the same treatment. If you're gonna spend tons of resources on making certain jobs feel satisfying to play then others deserve the same treatment. That, or we get a timeline for when they're going to give the jobs the attention they deserve.

The devs can only do so much with the resources they get of course - the blame lies primarily with the company as a whole. But the devs can choose how they communicate with the community. So far I haven't seen anything worthwhile on that front.

[Faafetai]

Fundamentally, I do agree with part of your post. Far too many people think that its even in the realm of possibility the devs will do radical changes to DRK's job kit and how it operates before 7.0 and not just simple tweaks.
But at the same time, for an ability like Walking Dead that is so fundamentally broken and negative, it's very easy to radically change how the ability works and make it far more usable and player friendly without even adding or re-writing the tooltip:



Unless the backspace key is broken on every computer at Square Enix HQ, they can radically change WD into a usable ability by wiping out a single IF statement and nothing else. No thought or game design doctorate needed.

Otherwise, FortenightShade has pretty much all of my opinions summarized. Flavor is always welcome in a job's kit, but not at the detriment of its usability. They tried to be unique with Walking Dead in a simpler time of the game's lifespan, but content design and job balance has rendered Walking Dead an active hindrance rather than a benefit, and it has no place in today's FF14 design.

I know many would not like this, but this is coming from someone who plays with a healer or I am the healer. Walking dead is fine when it is in that combination, yes it sucks it kills you but pulling it off in a pull is so satisfying and would be sad to see it go. Though this is not the optimal scenario for many players and I understand that is why it is disliked so much. If I were to fix it I would give that small boost for the drk to be able to heal out of it right now if you use it on a trash pull and use abyssal drain you are part of the way there. I am unsure what you could do but I think that would be kind of fun to figure out rather than taking those moments away from people who are synergizing well with their team mates. It is similar to holmgang and superbolide but with more of risk where they have options to heal themselves after their invulns giving healers time to react maybe give life steal on something other than your 1 2 3 rotation.

[Archwizard]

I know many would not like this, but this is coming from someone who plays with a healer or I am the healer. Walking dead is fine when it is in that combination, yes it sucks it kills you but pulling it off in a pull is so satisfying and would be sad to see it go.

Aaaand also speaking as someone who regularly heals, I fully disagree. Given that even in the best case scenario it does nothing better than Holmgang, the satisfaction of pulling it off isn't worth the sheer amount of terror and anxiety sparked when I see Walking Dead activate while I'm not prepared for it, when I don't have that same anxiety with WAR.

If it had some benefit to successfully healing it off -- like, "the target becomes invulnerable for the remaining duration and gains an additional bonus for X sec" if healed early -- then I could see the argument for rewarding team synergy. In such case we would still need a UI element and argue to reduce the healing requirement as not to leave healers who have actually been using their CDs until that point in the dust, but it would actually be a boon to seek out and coordinate with rather than just a penalty for failing to. Ample reward to justify taking a risk.

Because as now, it's a huge risk for equal or lesser value as other tanks get.

[Lyth]

...

The main value in player feedback is in defining the design problem, not its solution.

In an ideal world, the feedback should be well articulated and accompanied by a please with sugar and a cherry on top. In practice, that's usually not the case because players are often tired, frustrated, and angry by the time they finally choose to vocalize their complaints. But the goal of the game designer is to identify what the underlying problem is. The emotional content is water off a duck's tail.

If there's a design philosophy, you have to get the players on board with it. MMOs are still viewed as a fairly significant time investment. The business plan that Yoshi-p put out during the last Live Letter was well done. It shows you a big picture view of why it's worthwhile for you to invest your time into this game over the next few years. They've always been good at that. But the devil's in the details. People want to be able to be able to focus in on the specific gameplay aspects that they individually care about, be it housing and glamour, job balance, solo content or whatever. Players want to know if its worthwhile to invest their time into those specific gameplay elements, or find other things to do in game that are more satisfying.

How much do we explicitly know about their tank role or job design philosophy? During Stormblood, there was a fairly major disconnect between the players and the dev team. Tanks were (presumably - although this was never explicitly explained) doing too much damage during Heavensward, so that was stealth nerfed through role locking accessories and removing tank STR scaling from them during the expansion transition. Tanks complained about the lack of STR scaling. The dev team buffed enmity in response to player feedback. Tanks laughed and equipped i280 STR accessories from Heavensward. The dev team made accessories scale STR.

We were very lucky that they messed up here, but it also highlights some interesting points. First, it's better to be upfront about unpopular decisions like nerfs so that you can get players on board with the reasoning behind your decision. Players still always notice what you're doing (and are smart enough to find out loopholes around it), even when the changes happen on the sly between expansions. We might not see eye to eye, but it gives us a reference frame to talk about it in an open and honest way. Second, even if you've made a design decision that you're moving towards and you're sticking to it, you won't always get the player experience right the first time in its implementation, which is why two-way communication is essential. Players want to get stronger with more powerful gear so that their upgrades feel meaningful. That's a pretty basic concept in MMO design. Imagine if we were still stuck on VIT only accessories with no damage scaling today.

Living Dead has had an endless stream of complaints about it since 2015. It gets highlighted as a problem every expansion. The bottom line is that players don't enjoy being instant killed by their own abilities. That's a design constraint right there. That thing? Don't do it. Most players aren't going to distill it down for you that much, though. The game designer has to read through the negative experiences objectively to identify that. And when you let it fester for long enough and then buff two other invulns at the start of the present expansion, you shouldn't really be surprised at the backlash. Living Dead may have accounted for 1% of the 4000 or so English questions asked this time around, but this isn't the first Q+A where it was a high demand question. It's just got to the point where players were fed up with the silence on the subject.

People are looking for the design direction. There are a lot of smaller, up and coming dev teams that seem to recognize this. Here's a ten minute VOD on our plans for gameplay feature X from the section lead, let us know what you think in the comments below. Players reinforce those ideas in the community by quoting the dev perspective. They want to be given something to believe in. Otherwise you just have a bunch of people guessing at the design direction and getting progressively more angry that nothing is being done.

[Deceptus]

The main value in player feedback is in defining the design problem, not its solution.

QFT.

The whole strawman of "Well, what would YOU do to fix it" falls flat on it's face for a basic reason:

We don't get paid to design the game. It's not on US to fix it. As stated above, we can assist by pointing out the flaws but it's not on us to fix them.

[Archwizard]

The main value in player feedback is in defining the design problem, not its solution.

And I agree. Especially since player-defined "solutions" are usually armchair dev-ing that gets peoples' hopes up for specific changes they have no power to create.

The whole strawman of "Well, what would YOU do to fix it" falls flat on it's face for a basic reason:

We don't get paid to design the game. It's not on US to fix it. As stated above, we can assist by pointing out the flaws but it's not on us to fix them.

I'm not sure at what point in this discussion it was suggested that it was our job.

Perhaps Lyth's commentary is not directed specifically at me and is meant to add onto my statements, but my point was that dev-bashing is never helpful, regardless of whatever they did to slight us, or even however long we've waited for X change.
Being upset is understandable and valid, and even emotionally charged feedback has a place when a change or lack therein FeelsBadMan, but the feedback still has to be about something they can change.
Lack of communication? They can and should change that.

But as I said before, "I think they just rolled dice and patted themselves on the back" is not actionable in the context of DRK because they cannot change your mind. It helps no one and suggests nothing to change.
It's just whining.

[Faafetai]

If it had some benefit to successfully healing it off -- like, "the target becomes invulnerable for the remaining duration and gains an additional bonus for X sec" if healed early -- then I could see the argument for rewarding team synergy. In such case we would still need a UI element and argue to reduce the healing requirement as not to leave healers who have actually been using their CDs until that point in the dust, but it would actually be a boon to seek out and coordinate with rather than just a penalty for failing to. Ample reward to justify taking a risk.
Because as now, it's a huge risk for equal or lesser value as other tanks get.

This is fair And depending on level and healer your playing it can be horrible. I was fumbling around in ala mihgo on scholar even with a heads up, I think a emergency tactics adloh and one lustrate cleared it off, but it was an already rough pull my first time healing that. I do enjoy level 50 dungeons talking it out with the tank and them giving me a heads up on white mage. "I am going to living dead" "Okay I have bene". I know though this is not the normal case scenario. Even been in the bad situations where I feel like all six of my lustrates at 50 were not enough I still have to do the math and see with server ticks because it can get freaking rough.

The times it is pulled off are great but the times it is not are not very fun. I do like those times, but if it means less times in full on panic I would be fine with it either being changed or give drk a way to sustain or heal out of it on their own. Holmgang you can heal yourself back up no problem most of the time especially after raw int you don't even need to worry about stressing the healer. I am torn on this because it is really fun, but the stress it does cause people is not fun.

The worst thing to come out of living dead would have to be the time snarky tank decided to tell the healers as if they were infants that they need to heal them out of walking dead when they were being sliced to bits in Niddhogg extreme. They had I think 5 stacks possibly 7 of the magic down vuln debuff thingy and were bene'd by both healers and still died because they yeeted their voke and shirk off their hotbars. You need to swap for that similar to many of the alex fights. I was the co-tank paladin just watching with disbelief while covering for their inability to voke or shirk by stealthily voking when I seen they had 4 stacks after my ad was killed sometime 3 I think it might have been. It was just a bad situation all together. Asked by a friend to run niddhogg extreme for the first to prog it with the drk throwing the entire wikipedia into chat at the start to begin with >.<

I think all together though it is fun to pull off when it happens, but it is unfair that drk is literally the only tank with this disadvantage, unsure if I mentioned that. There is a point where 'stream lining' is a good thing like say giving everyone a moment ability at the same time and the warrior change where your movement now no longer wastes beast gauge. It is similar to how I feel whm and astro's potencies and mana costs should be fixed to be more fair. It is like playing favorites randomly.

I like your idea and wish they would implement more synergies. I would like for it to be less punishing unsure if I mentioned this before sometimes I have more thoughts in my head than I can put into words and lose track. When I heal it usually 'shield healer' and healing living dead though at many levels it is trivial with a communicating tank via voice chat or hyper awareness sometimes that surprises me sometimes(though this is equaled out with many moments of derp on my part). It kind of just stinks more times than it is fun. Early levels whm and astro I feel have a better chance than sch or sage and I am talking 50 or prior. One button or two to solve over multiple buttons with precious time to spare as you see living dead is at 3 seconds now and you cast time will not save them.

It all reminds me of people being sad positionals are gone that made certain classes more 'skill based' but you have literally every boss spinning on a five second timer and there are not enough true norths in the world to rid anyone of the pain. I think the 'fun' is not worth the unfairness and bleh I feel sometimes know drk is done for and I wasted swift on something else. Usually adloh for the emergency adloh and it was not enough time! Server ticks also make me a bit salty about this and at first I was thinking maybe make the walking dead portion longer same with other cooldowns because you lose at least 3 seconds of most if not all cooldowns including invulns to server ticks.

[BlackLion3173]

snip

You've already seen what it's like to try to heal a Drk that has Living Dead go off. Let me also give you a little perspective from the other end.
Every time I activate Living Dead, I have to hope that my healer is able to get me to 100% of my hp before I die to my own ability. The worst part? I have NO way to contribute to my healing besides Soul Eater and maybe Abyssal Drain if I have it off CD. I feel like a damn burden on my healer(s) instead of being an asset.
After leveling up GNB and PLD with WAR close to being maxxed out, the difference between those tanks and DRK are like night and day. Those classes don't have to worry about their own invulns killing them at the end, and even if they did, their kits allow them to contribute to their own healing. This is a huge oversight on the dev's part, and the backlash exhibited could have been seen a mile away. Blood Weapon needs an adjustment, Living Dead needs a FULL REWORK/OVERHAUL, and no less. The rational part of me wants to believe that the devs will do right by us in Patch 6.1, but there's another part of me that thinks otherwise. If they are too resource strained(likely scenario) or too lazy(worst case), the bare minimum, like others have stated is to delete the damn healing requirement altogether. Let it go the way of the Kingdom of Voerburt: buried and forgotten. My expectations are below the ground right now. If the changes to LD are inadequate, being "descended upon in cloud of black smoke" will be the least of their worries.

[Deceptus]

I'm not sure at what point in this discussion it was suggested that it was our job.

Anytime someone trots out the tired "What would you do to fix it" rebuttal is simply attempting to shift the responsibility from the Devs to the Players.

Perhaps Lyth's commentary is not directed specifically at me and is meant to add onto my statements, but my point was that dev-bashing is never helpful, regardless of whatever they did to slight us, or even however long we've waited for X change.

It's not bashing the devs to point out it's their responsibility to design their game well and fix any overly burdensome flaws. To suggest otherwise is simply White Knighting.

Being upset is understandable and valid, and even emotionally charged feedback has a place when a change or lack therein FeelsBadMan, but the feedback still has to be about something they can change.

Like others have said, Living Dead has been cumbersome since it's implementation and the solution is simply hitting the delete key on an IF statement in the code. That's about as simple as it gets. They can either do that or completely redesign the skill.

Holmgang got changed so it didn't lock you in place. There's zero logical reason for Living Dead to have been as clunky as it has for as long as it has.