Yoshi P in a nutshell

[Sotaris]

I mean someone can discontinue their subscription and continue to post until they finally do hit their time limit.

Yes, that’s correct.

[Denji]

Accurate. When was the last time they even recognized any suggestions made on the forums?

When we kept calling the nier hair on hroths "peanut head".

[LilimoLimomo]

But the question is why? There is 19 jobs already, wouldn't it be better to make jobs as distinct as possible, both in sense of job fantasy, gameplay and difficulty?

Personally I think both are good. Make things accessible, but also make a variety of jobs that are distinct. I do like the idea of having easier jobs and more difficult jobs; SMN for those who want something easier, BLM for those who want something more challenging, etc. But Yoshi-P might think differently. There's no one right way to do it, it really depends on what Yoshi-P's specific goals are and what resources he has access to in order to best approach those goals.

Low skill ceiling is objectively bad. Easy to learn, hard to master, that is pillar of skill expression. Plenty of gamers want that.

But plenty of gamers don't want that, which is why it's not actually objectively bad. Some people want their game time to be chill and easy; Yoshi-P recognizes that and is trying to make a game that all these different kinds of players can enjoy.

Why couldn't I? Existence is subjective, yes, but whether changes actually changed something, that is factual. Rotations are static...Then you have lower APM outside of your burst, but that's close to irrelevant...

I get the impression that you and I may be talking about different things when we talk about "action bloat", because actions-per-minute doesn't need to come into it. The controller and UI have a limited amount of space with which to contain all the actions a job has access to. The more actions there are, the less comfortably they fit in that limited space. It sounds like you play with keyboard and mouse, and if that's the case it makes sense that you wouldn't experience this problem in the same way as controller users. There are band-aids like macros and bar-swapping that can technically give players access to all of these actions, but these solutions are generally either clunky or less accessible. There's an argument to be made that the design of the game's interface would be improved with fewer action buttons so that they could more comfortably fit on the crosshotbar. And I say "arguably" because like most game design, this is subjective.

It's devs job to extrapolate data out of small subset of players. And what happens, if players start to feel like their feedback is being ignored?....0.4% expressing feedback doesn't mean only 0.4% disagree with it

I think you may be getting something confused, because when it comes to extrapolating data, that is exactly what it means. You get a large enough sample of users, get their data, and then provided that there aren't any confounding variables, you can safely assume that the data you found proportionately generalizes to the overall population. That's how researchers get statistical data for everything.

And in this case, we have a really great sample size of over 100,000 players. The call to action is put out, and of those players, less than 400 care enough to express negative feedback. If we generalize this data to the overall player population, those 400 players represent more than just 400 players. But the same is true for the 999,600+ players who weren't bothered enough to provide negative feedback; they too represent more players. Which is why the percentage of 0.4% generalizes to the rest of the player population.

Then you also want to account for the fact that SAM is just one job out of 19, only fraction of those 100 000 viewers play or care about SAM.

Oh of course. I had been hoping that the estimates would be enough to showcase that the amount of negative response was small, but if we want to we can try to get more accurate numbers. So let's dive in!

The 6.1 patch stream had 364k views on YouTube. The Twitch stream is too old so I can't see it anymore, but we can get an estimate of its views by looking at the 6.4 patch stream, which had 197k on YouTube and 34k on Twitch. 34/197= 0.173, so 364k x 1.173 = an estimated 426k total viewers for the stream.

Now there are 19 classes in the game, and while most people do use multiple classes, let's be overly generous and assume that the only people who care about Samurai are people who main them. So let's divide the total viewership of 426k by 19 to get the number of viewers who care about Samurai: 22,000.

So, of the people 22,000 Samurai watching that stream, let's again be generous and say that 400 took Yoshi-P up on his offer to write negative feedback. That's 1.8% of Samurai.

I imagine you could probably find some other reasons to adjust this number in some way. But I would be incredibly, incredibly surprised if there were any other meaningful operations that would transform a number as low as 1.8% of Samurai to a number high enough to be worth the developers rolling back. You would need to find some way to multiply that by around 30 to get a soft majority, or around 20 to get a minority that was still large enough to have weight. I don't think there are additional factors that will lead to multipliers of that magnitude.

The long and short of it is that not many people have cared enough to do so much as make a post or give a like. And while I'm sad that those people have lost something they care about, from a business perspective it makes sense for the devs to interpret their change as having very minimal opposition and move on.

Then also account for the fact that community is pretty split into people playing the game, and into people "playing" the game.

With respect, it seems dishonest to pretend that the players who RP and play dress-up aren't also doing content. MSQ gates everything and it contains mandatory combat. The fact that they have different preferences than you does not make them any less players who do combat in FF14.

After 6.1, I started playing more PLD. Then 6.3 PLD rework happened, and I rather went back to maining SAM.

I'm surprised that even without Kaiten you still enjoy SAM. What is it that you enjoy about the class? I've got it leveled to 80 and while I enjoy some of what it has to offer, I think the 3 different combos to gain "stickers" just wasn't my style.

[Deo14]

But plenty of gamers don't want that, which is why it's not actually objectively bad. Some people want their game time to be chill and easy; Yoshi-P recognizes that and is trying to make a game that all these different kinds of players can enjoy.

Thing is that content lower than EX never forces you to be good. In fact, devs implied that it's fine that half a party sucks, if there are few people who can carry them. Skill ceiling is for these people effectively irrelevant, nothing changes if we lift the skill ceiling, at worst they'll deal less damage, but they should if they don't put in the effort. Misshapen Chair said this in one of his video:

Who are these changes indented for? Super casuals who don't want to play the game correctly anyways? It can't be, because they're going to mash whatever button their little heart desires. Is it for hardcore players who are going to maximize their job no matter how stupid it is? That doesn't seem right either because usually those are the players that are most in the love with the small amounts of complexity the game offers them.

People who want to chill can, nobody is forcing them to parse 99 in Sastasha. But if people want to get better, they should have a space to express themselves. Celesti gave good example how did circlifying of Tenka affected her regular dungeon experience. It was something along the lines that people were praising her when trash mobs were dying noticeably faster. But now? If you're SAM, you just stand in the middle of the trash pack, do all your circle AoEs, and you hit all mobs without any effort. You just spam Fuka-Oka-Fuka-Mangetsu-Gyoten-Tenka, rinse and repeat, while standing in the middle of the pack. People are not surprised if you do good job, because frankly, it would take more effort to do a bad job.

I get the impression that you and I may be talking about different things when we talk about "action bloat", because actions-per-minute doesn't need to come into it. The controller and UI have a limited amount of space with which to contain all the actions a job has access to. The more actions there are, the less comfortably they fit in that limited space. It sounds like you play with keyboard and mouse, and if that's the case it makes sense that you wouldn't experience this problem in the same way as controller users. There are band-aids like macros and bar-swapping that can technically give players access to all of these actions, but these solutions are generally either clunky or less accessible. There's an argument to be made that the design of the game's interface would be improved with fewer action buttons so that they could more comfortably fit on the crosshotbar. And I say "arguably" because like most game design, this is subjective.

Funily enough, in standard Midare opener, you not only do exact same numer of buttons, but exact same number of distinct buttons. You would end you burst with 10 Kenki, so you want to use gap closer to spend that last bit of Kenki.

Here's standard Midare-first opener, 6.08 vs 6.1.

What devs might see as problematic part are weave windows in GCDs 6 to 8. You do hardcasted Higanbana and then you should weave in another Kaiten, which I suppose can be problematic for some. But guess what, this opener was published and many people think this is only way to do it. You ideally want to do that so you maximaze chance that Ogi will be under buffs, but you can just swap Kasha with Ogi so you won't need to weave after hardcasting. But it seems like people would rather remove Kaiten as a whole instead of that.

Then in 2min burst phase, you should have pooled all med stacks and Kenki. You would do same with meditation stack in both 6.08 and 6.1+, and in 6.1+, you should theoretically do 1 or 2 less Shintens.

So yes, this is subjective, but you tell me if these minor changes were worth removing whole skill for, and creating another problem with a shinten spam.

I think you may be getting something confused, because when it comes to extrapolating data, that is exactly what it means. You get a large enough sample of users, get their data, and then provided that there aren't any confounding variables, you can safely assume that the data you found proportionately generalizes to the overall population. That's how researchers get statistical data for everything.

And in this case, we have a really great sample size of over 100,000 players. The call to action is put out, and of those players, less than 400 care enough to express negative feedback. If we generalize this data to the overall player population, those 400 players represent more than just 400 players. But the same is true for the 999,600+ players who weren't bothered enough to provide negative feedback; they too represent more players. Which is why the percentage of 0.4% generalizes to the rest of the player population.

So if you believe this is not enough, what job currently do you think is getting enough feedback to justify listening to it? I'm not going to disprove the math, both of us would work with just estimates, but compared to any other individual job, SAM just seems to get most feedback by far. Do you suggest none of the job feedback is worth listening to?

With respect, it seems dishonest to pretend that the players who RP and play dress-up aren't also doing content. MSQ gates everything and it contains mandatory combat. The fact that they have different preferences than you does not make them any less players who do combat in FF14.

Same applies like in first part of this essay. Nobody forces them to play perfectly. Higher skill ceiling will not hurt them, if they would care that they're underperforming, then they can start learning their job (even though they'll rather complain that jobs are too hard). If they don't want to improve, it will not affect their experience.

I'm surprised that even without Kaiten you still enjoy SAM. What is it that you enjoy about the class? I've got it leveled to 80 and while I enjoy some of what it has to offer, I think the 3 different combos to gain "stickers" just wasn't my style.

Well, I guess that I'm simply opposite of you - 3 different stickers is my style. After that, it's just elimination process. I always liked healers, but healers in this game are just bad, minus 4 jobs. I'm not a fan of casters except RDM, BRD feels like support that cannot support, don't like DNC and I hate job fantasy of MCH, that's minus another 5 jobs. MNK seems to have interesting gameplay loop, but martial arts are the just incredibly boring for me. RPR is smooth, but I feel like my brain is becoming smooth while playing it, same as WAR. DRG is kind of fun, but not fan of that many buffs and it feels like just throwing bunch of oGCDs, similar to DRK. So now I'm down to 5 jobs, and one of them is PLD, which I still like, it's just not that interesting anymore, after physical and magical phase are all in one. From the rest of the jobs, I just like SAM the most, even without Kaiten.

SAM is still most interesting for me compared to other jobs, it's simple as that. I haven't stopped playing it after EW, even though ShB SAM felt more engaging. But I'm realistic, which is why all I'm asking is to go back to atleast 6.08.

[Renalt]

Can I interest you in a nutshell in a Yoshi-P?

[TheNight]

I think you may be getting something confused, because when it comes to extrapolating data, that is exactly what it means. You get a large enough sample of users, get their data, and then provided that there aren't any confounding variables, you can safely assume that the data you found proportionately generalizes to the overall population. That's how researchers get statistical data for everything.

And in this case, we have a really great sample size of over 100,000 players. The call to action is put out, and of those players, less than 400 care enough to express negative feedback. If we generalize this data to the overall player population, those 400 players represent more than just 400 players. But the same is true for the 999,600+ players who weren't bothered enough to provide negative feedback; they too represent more players. Which is why the percentage of 0.4% generalizes to the rest of the player population.

This is completely wrong and I hope you never talk about statistics ever again.

By your insane logic, homelessness is not a problem that affects women because only a few homeless people spoke out about the problem on NPR. Opioid addiction clearly does not harm millions of Americans because only dozens are talking about it in the New York Times.

By your insane logic the COVID survey that the government sent out shows that only tens of thousands of Americans are negatively affected by COVID since they bothered to fill out the opt-in survey.

You don't even understand what confounding variables mean. Trying to establish causality is problematic if there are confounding variables that are unaddressed. Trying to find proportions is NOT affected by confounding variables. It is affected by sample bias or attrition which are NOT what any statistician calls confounding variables.

The forums are a biased representation of the entire playerbase since generally the more active and invested players will participate. That does NOT imply that the rest of the playerbase are completely neutral. The way to address sample bias is not to conclude that everyone out-of-sample behave the exact opposite of what people in-sample are like. That is ludicrously stupid.

I would hope you would take the L but you're likely not to so please realize you're talking to an actual statistician.

[LilimoLimomo]

The forums are a biased representation of the entire playerbase since generally the more active and invested players will participate. That does NOT imply that the rest of the playerbase are completely neutral. The way to address sample bias is not to conclude that everyone out-of-sample behave the exact opposite of what people in-sample are like.

I agree with everything you said here, and never said anything intended to suggest otherwise. If you genuinely interpreted my words such that it sounded like I was saying the opposite, it makes sense why you would think I was saying something that was in dire need of correction. I encourage you to give my conversation with De014 a good faith re-read.

And if there's a problem with my methodology that you notice after that, I'd genuinely love to hear about it. It would be helpful to have an actual statistician weigh in on the issue we're discussing and how best to interpret the numerical data!

[Koros]

I agree with everything you said here, and never said anything intended to suggest otherwise. If you genuinely interpreted my words such that it sounded like I was saying the opposite, it makes sense why you would think I was saying something that was in dire need of correction. I encourage you to give my conversation with De014 a good faith re-read.

And if there's a problem with my methodology that you notice after that, I'd genuinely love to hear about it. It would be helpful to have an actual statistician weigh in on the issue we're discussing and how best to interpret the numerical data!

there's no bulletproof way to interpret these data, every interpretation is subject to attack. the only way to even approach a good guess of how representative the forums are is to somehow randomly sample the entire playerbase - not possible.

no one should be even attempting to do serious statistics on these questions without some miraculous way of collecting data that no one else can. anecdotes and traditional rhetorical arguments are fine, and actually important.

but your 0.4% ceiling is just awfully flawed beyond the issue of sample bias and yes i realize you are saying that their opposition is above some threshold, such that they feel compelled to go on the forums to complain.

however what the data shows is that 0.4% of people are mad enough that their disutility from Kaiten's removal times the perceived probability that their marginal complaint will effect a change is greater than the disutility of posting on the forums, it does not show that 0.4% of people have a high disutility from Kaiten's removal.

if the perceived probability that their marginal complaint will effect a change is low, then they won't post or even like. this happens either due to (1) they don't think complaints matter or more often (2) others already complained, so any additional complaint does not have significant value.

if the disutility of posting on the forums is high, they won't post either. OF has a bad reputation, and people probably wouldn't post much.

furthermore, there's the problem of compliance, 100,000 viewers =/= 100,000 players receiving the "treatment" - in this case, Yoshi P's message. I don't know a single person who pays close attention to live letters, a lot of people just have it as background noise.

finally, while not an issue of statistics, people have different personalities, and significantly more people silently quit than make complaints - even yoshi p has said this himself. i doubt anyone would quit over kaiten, but cumulative effects matter. developers should absolutely not extrapolate dissatisfaction of decisions made based on people who are of the personality and/or are mad enough to complain. the silent majority often, but not always, side with these complainers.

there is no reliable way of actually knowing who the silent majority is siding with based on data, and trying to figure out whether a change is good or bad based on data is short-sighted. this is a video game at the end of the day, and developers need to actually play the game and read the subjective experience of people who played the game to make decisions. sadly a lot of game companies are filled with """"data experts"""" whose instructors seemed to have failed to instruct them on the limitations of statistics and their math wizardry serves as a good way to shut up dissent in meeting rooms by making the other side look stupid when they can't argue back with math, and now too many of them are making decisions based on interpreting data as if everything is observed while the unobservables screw the game over.

[LilimoLimomo]

Thing is that content lower than EX never forces you to be good. In fact, devs implied that it's fine that half a party sucks, if there are few people who can carry them. Skill ceiling is for these people effectively irrelevant, nothing changes if we lift the skill ceiling, at worst they'll deal less damage, but they should if they don't put in the effort. People who want to chill can, nobody is forcing them to parse 99 in Sastasha. But if people want to get better, they should have a space to express themselves.

I agree with a lot of the philosophy here, but unfortunately the fact is that even in non-EX content, less skilled players are criticized frequently enough that for some of them it creates an unwelcoming environment. I'm guessing it's because not all high-end players are as understanding as you; many see someone doing only half the damage they could be doing and they feel like that player should be doing better, without thinking about the needs and wants of that player. That issue got big enough that the devs made their controversial post a few years back about how it's basically against the ToS to tell players how to play. There are a lot of different angles from which to tackle a problem like this, but one of them is to try to reduce the gap between the skill floor and ceiling. To be clear, I think there's both good and bad to this approach.

I'll also add that in terms of accessibility, more buttons can translate to more overwhelming, which can be discouraging for players, even the ones who are trying to get better. So there's that angle, too.

And I guess I should also just sort of restate my intent! My goal isn't to say that Yoshi-P is finding the ideal solutions; I myself disagree with that! I'm just saying that the solutions he is finding have a reasonable basis relative to the often conflicting goals he's trying to meet as best he can, so even when I disagree with his solutions, I trust that he's genuinely trying.

So if you believe this is not enough, what job currently do you think is getting enough feedback to justify listening to it? I'm not going to disprove the math, both of us would work with just estimates, but compared to any other individual job, SAM just seems to get most feedback by far. Do you suggest none of the job feedback is worth listening to?

I mean I think it's all worth listening to. Even if your feedback on Kaiten doesn't achieve the specific goal of bringing Kaiten back, it will undoubtedly play a part in shaping how the devs develop content in the future. The devs are trying to make a game that a dozen different types of players will all enjoy, and you're definitely one of the types of players they want to please. It's just that they're trying to please all those other kinds, too, and that requires that they compromise on what every kind of player wants. But your feedback helps them get closer to what you want in the future.

So I wouldn't look at the devs not doing a rollback as them not listening, as rollbacks just one of many ways that devs act on feedback. And rollbacks are perhaps that most extreme kind of dev response, and thus one that requires a very extreme backlash to elicit. Your feedback will shape the game in other ways, though!

Well, I guess that I'm simply opposite of you - 3 different stickers is my style. After that, it's just elimination process. I always liked healers, but healers in this game are just bad, minus 4 jobs. I'm not a fan of casters except RDM, BRD feels like support that cannot support, don't like DNC and I hate job fantasy of MCH, that's minus another 5 jobs. MNK seems to have interesting gameplay loop, but martial arts are the just incredibly boring for me. RPR is smooth, but I feel like my brain is becoming smooth while playing it, same as WAR. DRG is kind of fun, but not fan of that many buffs and it feels like just throwing bunch of oGCDs, similar to DRK. So now I'm down to 5 jobs, and one of them is PLD, which I still like, it's just not that interesting anymore, after physical and magical phase are all in one. From the rest of the jobs, I just like SAM the most, even without Kaiten.

SAM is still most interesting for me compared to other jobs, it's simple as that. I haven't stopped playing it after EW, even though ShB SAM felt more engaging.

Thanks for telling me so much about the jobs you like and dislike; it makes sense, you're someone who really likes trying to achieve a meaningful skill ceiling, while also caring about the aesthetic vibe of the class you're playing. PLD is may main tank and I do feel ambivalent about the consolidation of the physical and magical phases. On one hand, it was neat to go between those phases. On the other, there's something about having magic spells basically be the 4th step of the 1-2-3 combo that I enjoy, and the overall rotation does feel a bit more relaxed now that there's just that single primary burst window. As for DRG, I feel similarly, so I'm really looking forward to seeing the DRG rework that will be released with 7.0; I'm hoping it will feel a bit more distinct, a bit more focused towards regularly jumping in ways that feel meaningful. And with luck, the job updates in 7.0 will be something that gives all players something they find even more enjoyable than what's already out there.

[Deo14]

I agree with a lot of the philosophy here, but unfortunately the fact is that even in non-EX content, less skilled players are criticized frequently enough that for some of them it creates an unwelcoming environment. I'm guessing it's because not all high-end players are as understanding as you; many see someone doing only half the damage they could be doing and they feel like that player should be doing better, without thinking about the needs and wants of that player. That issue got big enough that the devs made their controversial post a few years back about how it's basically against the ToS to tell players how to play. There are a lot of different angles from which to tackle a problem like this, but one of them is to try to reduce the gap between the skill floor and ceiling. To be clear, I think there's both good and bad to this approach.

That must be some DC dependant behaviour, I have not seen any considerable amount of whatever you're talking about. Both before or after policy changes.

I'll also add that in terms of accessibility, more buttons can translate to more overwhelming, which can be discouraging for players, even the ones who are trying to get better. So there's that angle, too.

You get skills at very, very gradual rate while leveling. There should be minimal barrier of entry, I'm talking about tiny halfstep. If you can't even get over this tiny barrier, which is getting somewhat familiar with 1 new skill every 4-5 levels, then you should get filtered. People who would get filtered by this are not some legitimate bad players, they're bottom of the barrel, people who will not put any effort in. Which might be fine in single player, but this is online game, your lack of care does affect others. At that point, you're just selfish, if you don't care that you let your party down so hard, then you should get out. You had plenty of time to learn some very basics of the game, beating MSQ takes like 300 hours, there are no excuses.

I mean I think it's all worth listening to. Even if your feedback on Kaiten doesn't achieve the specific goal of bringing Kaiten back, it will undoubtedly play a part in shaping how the devs develop content in the future. The devs are trying to make a game that a dozen different types of players will all enjoy, and you're definitely one of the types of players they want to please. It's just that they're trying to please all those other kinds, too, and that requires that they compromise on what every kind of player wants. But your feedback helps them get closer to what you want in the future.

They're making game for 2 kinds of people - hyper casuals, and raiders. There is barely anything in between. Only midcore content in EW are EX. At least in the past normal content was fun, because jobs felt fun and engaging, now you just do brain dead rotations while hitting a glorified striking dummy.

So I wouldn't look at the devs not doing a rollback as them not listening, as rollbacks just one of many ways that devs act on feedback. And rollbacks are perhaps that most extreme kind of dev response, and thus one that requires a very extreme backlash to elicit. Your feedback will shape the game in other ways, though!

Job design is always going in one direction, and it's always down. It will shape the SAM in such a way that they'll bring back Kaiten, just to disconnect it from Kenki, reduce the effect so it's easier for balancing, and then do bunch of terrible changes which will make whole experience somehow even worse.

I'm sorry for sounding so pessimistic, but if you look at history, job design was only making things dumber, more casual, more boring and more homogenous. They got their benefit of doubt, but it's clear that devs don't want to make jobs fun to play and would rather prioritize perfect balance (or at least attempt to, 6.2 was a trainwreck) and accessibility.