Yay, i get to play my job with no changes for another 2+ years...

[Gemina]

It's also just really strange in general that they reveal job adjustments and new actions so late given that, had they revealed that information much earlier, they would have considerably more time to receive feedback about those changes and potentially adjust them based on the feedback if needed. Honestly, if we had some sort of test environment for new expansion job changes back in like, December, they could get hands-on feedback from players with half a year to act upon. But we'll just wait last minute I guess.

We can always consider the drop of an expansion a game wide beta test of what they've cooked up. The decisions surrounding this were likely green-lighted well before and hopefully based on feedback from the previous expansion. Obviously, they can't reveal any new abilities, or major job reworks prior to this, and not every design choice is going to be knocked out of the park. Some will foul right into the toilet like the decision to remove kenki management from SAM. But the job actions trailer is one of the most exciting and anticipated parts of a new expansion.

Prior to Endwalker's release, there was a statement that the healers outside of white mage would receive something similar to the stun on Holy--something that wasn't the same as just putting a stun on every healer AOE attack, but that each healer would have a similar answer like it, and that was never referenced again.

At this point, I'll believe it when I see it, pretty much.

Iirc, this was something they were thinking about but never actually confirmed they were going to do. It is still possible that they implement whatever this is. A bit of a stretch, but it is possible they've listened to feedback about WHM not really having anything that stands out from the other healers; something that gives them a definitive edge and simply chose to leave things as is. What was definitely confirmed was that they wanted to give each healer an additional skill to help them out. This ended up being Aquaveil, Protraction, Exaltation, and Krasis for WHM, SCH, AST, and SGE respectively.

[ty_taurus]

We can always consider the drop of an expansion a game wide beta test of what they've cooked up. The decisions surrounding this were likely green-lighted well before and hopefully based on feedback from the previous expansion. Obviously, they can't reveal any new abilities, or major job reworks prior to this, and not every design choice is going to be knocked out of the park. Some will foul right into the toilet like the decision to remove kenki management from SAM. But the job actions trailer is one of the most exciting and anticipated parts of a new expansion.

I guess it's just more bizarre to me because regardless of changes and decisions being green-lit ahead of time anyway, offering a public testing space for the next expansions changes can give you access to information that is literally worth tens of thousands of dollars for no additional cost, or very little cost to create the space in which those changes can be tested, comparatively speaking. Think about how many people you'd need to hire and pay for however much time to collect the same amount of data internally. And its not like having a public testing zone makes you obligated to adhere to any specific piece of feedback given. The beauty of information is the options that it gives you.

I'm also just astounded at how much time it takes for noteworthy changes to actually be made in response to feedback. White mage's Afflatus Misery being too weak was feedback being given since basically day 1 of Shadowbringers, yet we didn't see change until 6.1 nearly 3 years later--something that literally took someone several seconds to change. FFXIV moves at the speed of a beached whale. I would think every ounce of foreknowledge would be that much more valuable to the design team regardless of whether or not any particular bit of feedback is acted upon.