Skill Branching: "Everyone Wins" Concept

[Renathras]

I hate that a legitimate response to your suggestion is some variation of "this sounds great, but it would take work and thus the developers won't do it". How did we get here?

Not really. This has always been true of MMOs or any live service thing. If something requires major reworks of across the board systems, it's rarely done. It took WoW around a decade before they remade the Vanilla maps...and another before they made Classic (and, apparently, the rumormill saying they may get ready to do it again). It took FFXIV completely collapsing in 1.X for them to do it there.

While this is a SMALLER change, it's still a significant one. Not to mention they got flack every time they made big changes like this in the past, which may have led to them being gunshy. The answer to "How did we get here?" is "Because of the playerbase.", but also that "Here is where most companies and most MMOs are, so it's not unique; it's more unique it's taken FFXIV this long to reach the status quo."

It'd be interesting to know from SE where this aversion to reworks mid expansion came from

It seemed to be pretty clearly the SAM Kaiten thing. They were planning AST and DRG reworks for 6.1-3 ish timeframe. Between the SMN pushback from the total rework AND the SAM pushback on Kaiten, both were suspended. The only reason PLD got one (they were probably planning it as well) was because of how far it was falling behind the other Tanks by not fitting into the 2 min meta.

6.5 would be the best time to try an experimental 'different direction', because there's no stakes.

I disagree that "there's no stakes" - there are always stakes, and a bad rework's stakes are quite high, especially if it's a universal change which means this would affect all Jobs at once - but I also agree that 7.0 would be the best time to do it since the game is trying to have a reset and direction change and a bunch of other things. A rework of game systems OF THIS LEVEL - introducing effectively talent trees, even if super simplistic - is a major rework, so not something you'd do in a last patch of an expansion, especially since the Dev resources right now are probably already largely going to 7.0 at this point in the development cycle and that 6.5 is coming out in just a couple weeks.

But 7.0 has a narrative reset and so a more broad mechanics reset accompanying it (e.g. encounter design shakeup to require more healing...) would be the time to do it.

[ty_taurus]

I disagree that "there's no stakes" - there are always stakes, and a bad rework's stakes are quite high, especially if it's a universal change which means this would affect all Jobs at once - but I also agree that 7.0 would be the best time to do it since the game is trying to have a reset and direction change and a bunch of other things. A rework of game systems OF THIS LEVEL - introducing effectively talent trees, even if super simplistic - is a major rework, so not something you'd do in a last patch of an expansion, especially since the Dev resources right now are probably already largely going to 7.0 at this point in the development cycle and that 6.5 is coming out in just a couple weeks.

But 7.0 has a narrative reset and so a more broad mechanics reset accompanying it (e.g. encounter design shakeup to require more healing...) would be the time to do it.

If they took the approach of making more experimental changes in the final major patch, there are stakes, but they're not massive stakes. This is assuming the team would actually be receptive to feedback, but if you launch some more risky decisions, you get to see what players think about those changes and use that to make any last minute adjustments to more significant changes in the expansion around the corner. The worst case scenario is that the job is in a bad state for a few months. Sure that may suck, but it sucks a lot less than it being in that state for 2.5 years for the entire expansion. But you would expect that they would receive that negative feedback and, in turn, offer greater security that the official direction taken come 7.0 would be a lot better.

However, the smarter decision is something Roe said a long time ago. Why isn't there a public test server? There's no reason why they couldn't have uploaded Dragoon and Astrologian to a public testing environment in 6.3, and even if we couldn't see those changes until 7.0, at least they would have a year's worth of feedback from public testers.

[Sebazy]

However, the smarter decision is something Roe said a long time ago. Why isn't there a public test server? There's no reason why they couldn't have uploaded Dragoon and Astrologian to a public testing environment in 6.3, and even if we couldn't see those changes until 7.0, at least they would have a year's worth of feedback from public testers.

That would require them to be receptive towards feedback even when it is sometimes justifiably negative.

The fact that they won't even post potencies etc in early previews and patch notes anymore is telling of how much faith they have in their own work. The backlash that caused this was entirely warranted and correct. My best guess at this point is that Yoshida is fed up of the the repeated egg on face look.

[Aravell]

That would require them to be receptive towards feedback even when it is sometimes justifiably negative.

The fact that they won't even post potencies etc in early previews and patch notes anymore is telling of how much faith they have in their own work. The backlash that caused this was entirely warranted and correct. My best guess at this point is that Yoshida is fed up of the the repeated egg on face look.

I'm pretty sure the huge pushback against SB lilies was the last straw for them. Now they take the "I know what's best for you" route. It's quite stupid to refuse to take feedback at all because you're scared of criticism, but that's where the dev team is currently.