SAM players are quitting

[Foraet]

Gotta drop some abilities when you add some new ones in. I don't think dropping a potency modifier is a bad choice. I mean, it's kind of fun but certainly not very high on my list of interesting rotation mechanics. Not sure what they would have dropped instead. Maybe Ikishoten; never really found gauge shortcuts all that compelling. Or maybe Meikyo Shisui, it circumvents Sen Gauge building and I'm not a huge fan of anything that ignores the core of a job's identity. But they had to drop something, SAM is pushing three full bars.

But what do I know? I'm not a game designer.

[Ruminous]

But what do I know? I'm not a game designer.

Neither is the dev who thought of the samurai changes.

[Stasya]

Neither is the dev who thought of the samurai changes.

Obviously he is. It's just his level of competency should be managing ff14 web store and not touching ff14 ever again.

[Foraet]

Neither is the dev who thought of the samurai changes.

Do you mean a team of designers that probably discussed this ad nauseam before it was sent to multiple leads who inevitably rejected it a few times until it finally got approval only to be kicked back multiple times by QA until finally getting pushed to release? Only to be torn apart by thousands up thousands of hardcore users using the software in every way possible way? With complaints about ANY change or lack of change regardless of what you do.

I mean that's software development for you, but I'm always amused by this picture that there's one guy that's randomly coding stuff.

[Eorzean_username]

Do you mean a team of designers that probably discussed this ad nauseam before it was sent to multiple leads who inevitably rejected it a few times until it finally got approval only to be kicked back multiple times by QA until finally getting pushed to release? Only to be torn apart by thousands up thousands of hardcore users using the software in every way possible way? With complaints about ANY change or lack of change regardless of what you do.

I mean that's software development for you, but I'm always amused by this picture that there's one guy that's randomly coding stuff.

It depends on how you interpret some of Director Yoshida's statements.

For example, from the 6.10 Patch Notes Reading Livestream (unofficial translation, Iluna Minori, FFXIV Reddit Discord):

Naoki Yoshida:

担当者の説明を求めるというコメントも結構あるんですけど、担当者が出てきて言うったとしても僕と同じことを言うだけです。ちなみに、僕担当者と議論した上で、リスクも全部話して、それでもプレイヤー皆さんの将来のために変えたほうがいいよなというふうに僕自身が判断してサインが出していくんので、これは僕の責任なので…多分何を話しをしたとしても納得するかしないかという言論しかならないと思うんですよね…

I saw comments asking for the person responsible to come out and explain themselves, but even if they come out I doubt that they will say anything different than what I did. By the way, the adjustments you see here are the result of me debating with the person who worked on it, along with discussing the risks it come with, and in the end, decided and then signed on it after knowing and acknowledging that performing such changes are for the sake of the playerbase. So this is definitely my responsibility...so probably no matter how much I say here it will just be some speech where people either be convinced or not so...

You have to be very careful when translating from languages like JP that have very different grammars, structures, pronouns, etc. than English. Sometimes using singular pronouns is just a necessary approximation, guess, or interpretation for something that's left more contextual or ambiguous in the actual JP statement.

But at least on the surface, it sounds like there are cases where a Job's changes are handled by one individual at a time.

[cjbeagle]

Do you mean a team of designers that probably discussed this ad nauseam before it was sent to multiple leads who inevitably rejected it a few times until it finally got approval only to be kicked back multiple times by QA until finally getting pushed to release? Only to be torn apart by thousands up thousands of hardcore users using the software in every way possible way? With complaints about ANY change or lack of change regardless of what you do.

I mean that's software development for you, but I'm always amused by this picture that there's one guy that's randomly coding stuff.

It actually wouldn't surprise me at all if each of the job kits were owned by a single designer - it wouldn't even surprise me if that single designer owned more than 1 job's kit design.

It also wouldn't surprise me if it didn't get "kicked back multiple times by QA" - I've never heard of a QA team that had the power to veto design decisions they don't like.

It's completely conceivable that a single person thought this was a good idea and Yoshida, reluctantly or not, went along with it despite playtesting [hopefully] including negative feedback.

Every one of their excuses for why they removed Kaiten falls apart under the slightest scrutiny - my bet is that it was done specifically to dumb-down the job, and if so, mission accomplished, working as intended.

[Foraet]

It actually wouldn't surprise me at all if each of the job kits were owned by a single designer - it wouldn't even surprise me if that single designer owned more than 1 job's kit design.

It also wouldn't surprise me if it didn't get "kicked back multiple times by QA" - I've never heard of a QA team that had the power to veto design decisions they don't like.

It's completely conceivable that a single person thought this was a good idea and Yoshida, reluctantly or not, went along with it despite playtesting [hopefully] including negative feedback.

I work in software development and I've had QA kick back plenty of issues that had to go all the way back to design. A good QA team is not afraid to push back on user experience issues. I've also worked in very small to very huge development teams. Huge development shops are loaded with bureaucracy. I have spent so many hours in meetings with designers and project managers and department leads discussing every little detail for every little thing. To think job design decisions by a company as large as SE with a game as popular as FF14 is done by one person and never challenged by anyone else is mind-boggling.

[cjbeagle]

I work in software development and I've had QA kick back plenty of issues that had to go all the way back to design. A good QA team is not afraid to push back on user experience issues. I've also worked in very small to very huge development teams. Huge development shops are loaded with bureaucracy. I have spent so many hours in meetings with designers and project managers and department leads discussing every little detail for every little thing. To think job design decisions by a company as large as SE with a game as popular as FF14 is done by one person and never challenged by anyone else is mind-boggling.

Same, except I've had the exact opposite experience.

From what I've seen, QA is primarily if not exclusively tasked with finding bugs, finding repros for bugs, and verifying fixes for bugs. They also participate in playtests, but to that extent their feedback carries the same weight as any artist, animator, engineer, producer, etc. that gives playtest feedback.

The idea of QA kicking back an issue to design is standard because design fixes a lot of the bugs that QA finds, but if they kick back something because they disagree with the design, that gets closed out as NAB.

Design is the designers' job - a "good QA team" shouldn't be expected to influence design any more than anyone else who provides playtest feedback.

As for design ownership and decision-making, from what I've seen there's usually only 1-3 people involved in any given decision - the owner and/or the owner's lead and/or (the design director or someone from prod) - I've never seen the type of groupthink micromanaging you're describing (thankfully - it sounds horrible).

So again, yes, it's completely plausible that a single person thought this was a good idea and got it through. Nobody said it was never challenged - Yoshida even explicitly mentioned dissent - but that doesn't mean it was passed by committee - could have just been that the challenges were ignored by the content owner.

[Quor]

Do you mean a team of designers that probably discussed this ad nauseam before it was sent to multiple leads who inevitably rejected it a few times until it finally got approval only to be kicked back multiple times by QA until finally getting pushed to release? Only to be torn apart by thousands up thousands of hardcore users using the software in every way possible way? With complaints about ANY change or lack of change regardless of what you do.

I mean that's software development for you, but I'm always amused by this picture that there's one guy that's randomly coding stuff.

If you look at the credits of Endwalker, there are four people (iirc) that are credited with "job design," which is a team unto itself. That means 4-5 jobs per person. Supposedly they would work in collaboration on at least some things but it wouldn't be unusual at all for one person to be completely responsible for one or more entire jobs. We know for sure that the initial creation of DRG in 1.0 was as a result of the efforts of a single programmer so there's precedent for this kind of thing.

[Martynek]

Not sure what they would have dropped instead.

Shoha II (Upgrade Shoha to Shoha II at the relevant level, make it a single target ability with aoe falloff like Paladin's Expiacion)
Hissatsu: Guren (Give Senei aoe falloff, same concept)
Tsubame-gaeshi's keybind (Iaijutsu automatically changes to Tsubame-Gaeshi when it would be possible to cast a Kaeshi Iaijutsu)
Ogi Namikiri's keybind (Ikishoten changes to Ogi Namikiri/Kaeshi: Namikiri after use, as appropriate)

And that's just stuff that could be harmlessly and effortlessly cut.