[Petition] Have Naoki Yoshida Play Healer and take off the DPS Gloves for a year.

[Dyvid]

The exact reasoning behind FFXIV's team size has been touched a few times in interviews. Yoshida's stance is generally that he prefers to keep a compact team for the sake of efficiency (And likely costs are also a significant factor, SE have historically always been big on this as was seen throughout FFXI). It's also well documented that hiring experienced MMO designers in Japan is highly challenging, likely because the majority of them end up in far more lucrative and easier mobile development divisions.

More designers resulting in more opinions is absolutely not a bad thing though, especially in how long term game development projects are handled. Remember that a large amount of time is often spent literally doing nothing more than filling up whiteboards with ideas to evaluate. Having more ideas is always good and given how bland a lot of FFXIV's design decisions have been of late, this is pretty clearly a weak spot which is reflected in how little the Battle System design team has changed since 2.0.

Arguing over things whilst implementing and creating features isn't a designer issue, that's a direction and production problem, an area where Yoshida's team is actually very strong so that honestly isn't a concern IMO. If you look at historic games where this has been an issue, it's always been where the project management has either outright lost control or has been contributing to the problem themselves (Sorry Molyneux! ).

Given the roadblock SE appear to be facing with recruiting proven designers, my favourite solution is for SE to approach someone with a proven track record like Mythic to act in a consultancy role, quite literally paying them to fill up a 'whiteboards' with entire new job concepts as well as refinements and improvements for existing classes for Yoshida's own internal team to then pull ideas from.

As far as improving QA goes, this isn't quite as easy as it seems and I'm pretty confident in my opinion that Yoshida doesn't have access to a dedicated testing team but rather simply has access to a large pool of testers that is shared across the company. As such they will often be playing the game at a much more basic level than a lot of the player base and as such, fundamental flaws can easily slip through (SCH's lack of AoE with Stormblood is a great example). Naturally the solution here is for SE to have their own specific testing division for FFXIV alone to allow them to control the variety and skill level of the team to spot more issues, but that's an expense that I genuinely can't see them allowing.

I think maybe they should move Akihiko Matsui from FFXI back to FFXIV considering he was the Lead Combat System Designer and maybe shuffle the team around with FFXI's team for nothing more then getting new eyes on the problems and fresh takes on how to fix them.

[game_enjoyer]

Except... he doesn't. He is in charge of the game's high-end direction - things like 'what are we prioritizing engine work on?' or 'how many gameplay hours are we expecting x content to have?' or 'what order are we prioritizing these specific features in?'

He's not directly in charge of the day to day running. He's not as influential to the balance as you think, and the fact that you think he's heavily involved in the day to day balance decisions - beyond possibly a sign off on how many hours devs can spend on balance and maybe a part of in-house committee/focus group discussions on direction.... shows you know nothing about large-scale game design.

I don't believe I ever said I think he's heavily involved in day-to-day balance decisions. You said that I said that, though. What I said was, and I'm paraphrasing here because I guess you didn't understand, "Someone as important to the direction of the game as Yoshida is should be aware of what he is green-lighting, and it appears he doesn't play healers, so he should play healers." And I don't even know to respond to the notion that the head producer, does not, in fact, have much influence on the direction of the game. And hey, the entire ethos of the design team, as stated by Yoshida on multiple occasions, is to ensure casual players can clear all content, which to me sounds like it extends into balancing issues, so yeah, he actually does have a bunch of influence on the balancing because he is the one who is pushing the design philosophy in one direction.

[Martynek]

Another thing I don't think people really understand is that we don't necessarily mean Yoshida himself here. Just that someone on the job design team (or ideally, everyone) needs to play healers, and not just a quick on-and-off for bugtesting purposes.

To use the restaurant analogy from earlier, it's one thing if the owner of a restaurant that has salmon dishes on its menu doesn't like salmon. But if none of the chefs taste test their salmon because "they don't like it", then anyone would be absolutely in the right to complain (or worse) when the salmon dishes are near inedible.

[MintnHoney]

Another thing I don't think people really understand is that we don't necessarily mean Yoshida himself here.

No, we really do want YoshiP to play as a healer, exclusively, for a year. It's kinda in the title of the thread. Per your restaurant analogy, we accept no additions or substitutions.

Bonus points if he does it all as a Hrothgar.

[Martynek]

No, we really do want YoshiP to play as a healer, exclusively, for a year. It's kinda in the title of the thread. Per your restaurant analogy, we accept no additions or substitutions.

While that would do a better job of putting the issue directly on blast for everyone to see, just making them playtest their own game... like they are supposed to do, like they are meant to be fucking getting paid to do - would solve the problem. Naturally it would be far more entertaining to watch Yoshida stream Hrothgar WHM gameplay once a week for a year, but at the end of the day, the problems will be fixed in either case.

[MintnHoney]

While that would do a better job of putting the issue directly on blast for everyone to see, just making them playtest their own game... like they are supposed to do, like they are meant to be fucking getting paid to do - would solve the problem. Naturally it would be far more entertaining to watch Yoshida stream Hrothgar WHM gameplay once a week for a year, but at the end of the day, the problems will be fixed in either case.

I don't know if it's specifically about entertainment, but I believe the logic, at least initially, was that whatever YoshiP seems to be playing is what consistently sees improvement and stability. Therefore, if he is forced to play something for a prolonged period of time, he might be forced to administer beneficial changes to whatever he's playing, even if only because he's now faced with playing the job and would likely want to try to enjoy it.

As for playtesting, we know that they're playtesting their game. We also know that they playtest the game strictly to make sure that it works and falls within specific parameters for the benefit of their work. For that purpose, of ensuring that the game works, and not necessarily that gameplay is fun, they have actively worked to ensure that they utilize lower-skilled healers (to which, they admitted replacing their healer for being too good). So I don't believe they would utilize playtesting in a way that provides what we're looking for.

[Martynek]

I don't know if it's specifically about entertainment, but I believe the logic, at least initially, was that whatever YoshiP seems to be playing is what consistently sees improvement and stability. Therefore, if he is forced to play something for a prolonged period of time, he might be forced to administer beneficial changes to whatever he's playing, even if only because he's now faced with playing the job and would likely want to try to enjoy it.

As for playtesting, we know that they're playtesting their game. We also know that they playtest the game strictly to make sure that it works and falls within specific parameters for the benefit of their work. For that purpose, of ensuring that the game works, and not necessarily that gameplay is fun, they have actively worked to ensure that they utilize lower-skilled healers (to which, they admitted replacing their healer for being too good). So I don't believe they would utilize playtesting in a way that provides what we're looking for.

While BLM is the most egregious example, there are at least two other jobs that seem to see favoritism - PLD and DRG. It's too early to say whether this is true of RPR, but considering they seem to have a lot of the things other jobs have lost (such as weaving differently-shaped aoes), I think that's worth keeping an eye on. Either way, these jobs all seem to remain consistent in their identity with significant (and mostly contented) playerbases. So it's not just that BLM is the golden child, rather that jobs played by the job design team get all the fun toys.
I think I said earlier in the thread that they are definitely doing at least the bare minimum amount of bugtesting for all jobs just to ensure things aren't broken, but it's highly unlikely most of them undergo extensive gameplay testing to ensure they're fun to play - SAM being the very recent example, and healers being the constant pain point since Shadowbringers.

[Elesh]

I don't believe I ever said I think he's heavily involved in day-to-day balance decisions. You said that I said that, though. What I said was, and I'm paraphrasing here because I guess you didn't understand, "Someone as important to the direction of the game as Yoshida is should be aware of what he is green-lighting, and it appears he doesn't play healers, so he should play healers." And I don't even know to respond to the notion that the head producer, does not, in fact, have much influence on the direction of the game. And hey, the entire ethos of the design team, as stated by Yoshida on multiple occasions, is to ensure casual players can clear all content, which to me sounds like it extends into balancing issues, so yeah, he actually does have a bunch of influence on the balancing because he is the one who is pushing the design philosophy in one direction.

There's no legitimate reason for the game's producer to play every role. None. Zero. That's why teams exist. No one person can be everything, and no one person should be expected to be everything. Even the producer. Even the lead designer. No one. Again: that's why teams exist.

If someone wishes to create a new feedback thread along the lines of 'The development team needs more high-end healer representation'. Different point altogether and one that is probably viable. But that's not the premise of this thread. The premise of this thread is specifically wanting ONE SPECIFIC PERSON to play healers and it's nonsense. Utter nonsense.

[Deceptus]

There's no legitimate reason for the game's producer to play every role. None. Zero. That's why teams exist. No one person can be everything, and no one person should be expected to be everything. Even the producer. Even the lead designer. No one. Again: that's why teams exist.

We don't even have a dedicated battle designer for every role (Tank / Healer / DPS - Melee, ranged, ranged physical) and you're mentioning "teams"? We have a single, understaffed job design team.

[technole]

The exact reasoning behind FFXIV's team size has been touched a few times in interviews. Yoshida's stance is generally that he prefers to keep a compact team for the sake of efficiency (And likely costs are also a significant factor, SE have historically always been big on this as was seen throughout FFXI). It's also well documented that hiring experienced MMO designers in Japan is highly challenging, likely because the majority of them end up in far more lucrative and easier mobile development divisions.

..

Yep. When Sudo left the battle design team (Mr. Titan/UCoB) they certainly had to backfill the ranks and it kind of showed in the last Eden savage tiers. Sometimes they end up with a standout like Yoshihashi whom went from an underwhelming E7S to an excellent E12S. Or Mr. Ozma gets to finally do his own ultimate in DSR, and probably the best one. Fresh blood can certainly help, sometimes just takes time to develop.