Quote Originally Posted by Aravell View Post
Where did I say they're vending machines? Where did I disrespect the developers directly?

I'm saying that the excuse is unacceptable. So COVID took 2 years, what about the other 3? The whole pandemic thing has settled down throughout Endwalker, so why weren't they thinking about the future of the jobs during the time they thought about the future of the game? 3 years is still a very long time and I don't think they were so busy that they couldn't spare a single thought for job evolution.

I don't think they should be given free credit for only potentially resolving an issue 7 years after it was raised, other companies being more deaf to feedback doesn't make that any better.
3 years to build and sustain an expansion of comparable size to actual RPGs which have had over double that development time. All the while, bug testing, new raids, new dungeons, new cutscenes, on a clockwork schedule that they can't afford to miss. They have to pick and choose what they resolve because they can never stop building the game. If they have any major revisions or critical problems halfway into development that completely derails their schedule. Either they have huge delays which leads to content drought or half-baked gameplay, both of which will cost them players. They probably don't commit to a change until they know they are fully ready to go through with it, and class balance can get broken extremely easily. We are lucky they play mostly the same and don't have a situation like WoW has had in the past where some builds were so overpowered they'd break the game outright because nobody had checked it before launch. Besides which, coding is a monster, and on a strict deadline with spaghetti code it's even worse.

My point being, I believe they have legitimate reasons for putting off healer changes as long as they have. Games are already hard to make successful without the demands of the industry, and putting an active, non-negotiable timeline on that means nothing short of excellent planning, judgement, and determination will get it to the 10-year mark. They have a plethora of other issues to deal with besides healer balance, they've at least made an effort to keep everything playable. Have some faith and some patience, they'll deliver what we're asking for. They said they wouldn't give us male Viera or female Hrothgar, and here we are with both and a graphical overhaul on top of it. They just needed time to do it right, like they probably do now. But a strike would just create chaos and in the end there'd probably be more issues than got solved. We may pay for the game but we can't control the development process, we have to trust they know what they're doing and that they haven't forgotten us.