The tonedeaf Live Letter LXXXVI 86

[Hallarem]

In the end it is kind of hilarious that they ended up making jobs more unique in pvp while constantly trying to stick all the jobs in pve into a blender.

[User202503201232]

In the end it is kind of hilarious that they ended up making jobs more unique in pvp while constantly trying to stick all the jobs in pve into a blender.

It's honestly bizarre how the PvP team seems to have nailed good gameplay, even if I personally thought Feast was better (but it had an unreasonably high skill floor for most).

I wonder why. I wonder if management just does not have a directive for the PvP team, there's no concern about making things too deep or challenging, there's no concern about innovation causing imbalance... I wonder if they're given free rein to do what they wanted and unleash their creativity, while the entire game's PvE is completely locked down, designed with rows of spreadsheets instead of human creativity.

[Azurarok]

It's honestly bizarre how the PvP team seems to have nailed good gameplay

I dunno, I feel like they've already started to take a wrong turn with some jobs in the 7.1 update. I'm definitely not into pvp enough to know if it's better competitively, but I wasn't happy to see RDM's black/white stances and GNB's junctions gone.

[Arzalis]

Constructive criticism is how you get things done. Being nonconstructive and hostile about things is how you get your opinion ignored. There is a wide berth between "This is bad, this is why this is bad (with data), and here's what could be done to fix it." and "SE sucks and thinks they're all braindead morons and suckers."

I think the overly negative feedback from the community is a result of people giving largely constructive criticism for half a decade at this point and being either ignored or told they're wrong. Yoshida has gotten to the point he even pokes fun at people who give criticism when he's speaking during Live Letters, which is extremely tonedeaf. For a long time the consensus was "Yeah, the game has problems, but at least the story is good." It was inevitable this couldn't be swept under the rug anymore the moment they released a middling-to-bad story.

Basically, people are fed up with CBU3's inability to listen or self-reflect and it's come to a bit of a peak because Dawntrail has been so bad. They seriously need to work on the foundations of the game, but seem content to keep coasting and blaming the playerbase for being "wrong" in their eyes.

[Rithy255]

I do wonder: does management just hate being stuck with ff14? Do they want to tank it so they get fired with nice corpo parachutes?

I'm starting to believe that, because they keep making the same mistakes again and again.

[ForsakenRoe]

Constructive criticism is how you get things done. Being nonconstructive and hostile about things is how you get your opinion ignored. There is a wide berth between "This is bad, this is why this is bad (with data), and here's what could be done to fix it." and "SE sucks and thinks they're all braindead morons and suckers."

I wonder, does this thread count as constructive criticism? If SE asked me for my feedback on Healers, I'd give them that thread. In it, not only do I identify what I perceive to be 'what is wrong with the role', I've already got the groundwork laid out to start to address most of those identified issues. Updating the Job kits and gameplay loops to better fit the state of the game as it currently is (instead of what appears to be 'Healers designed for Cataclysm WOW healing, but without the encounter difficulty of Cataclysm'), adding new systems that directly incentivize using Healing actions as a Healer, and even making each of the Healers feel like they have a unique gameplay loop from the other three, both in Damage profile, and in Healing profile. I could give all of this to SE, literally for free, if they asked for it. Would it 100% fix every single issue about the Role? Probably not. But 'Perfect is the enemy of Good', and just throwing hands up and saying 'it doesn't solve everything, so let's not solve anything' is how we've ended up in this situation in the first place.

The real issue is, someone like me can put in the hours, and suggest all these ideas, give all this feedback, but at the end of the day, they don't want this feedback from someone like me. They can say 'oh send us your feedback' as much as they want, but it's clear that some feedback is more noticed by them than other feedback, and it seems entirely based on which of the nationalities of the Forums you use. Living Dead was an issue talked about on the EN forums since it came out in HW, and only with EW did it get addressed. MCH's WildFire and Hypercharge were both mentioned many times on the EN forums as being 'very ping sensitive, please can we have them adjusted' and nothing happened for years. There was even a time when YP thought that RMT bots were not an issue, until he did a 'Walk With YP' event on NA and got bombarded by the spam. Seems like, it's only once YP himself experiences the issue, that they realize that 'oh actually this is a problem for people outside of JP'.

Healer issues addressed with 'Go play Ultimate', as if some of us don't already (and still feel the effect of the issues), Kaiten removed and never mentioned again (despite 'asking for feedback' about it specifically), now BLM is getting completely flipped on its head identity/gameplay-wise in response to god-knows-what feedback, and no doubt that all of our 'feedback' is going to have zero effect, no matter how much any of us mention how bad a design idea it might be.

Suggestions on how to improve Healers in particular have floated around since SHB mangled them, and yet we're still in this situation we're in, 5 years later.

Clearly, 'constructive criticism' is thrown in the same place that 'nonconstructive namecalling' is. They might say 'send your feedback', but it's painfully obvious that they don't want our feedback. They have a plan, they're going to execute it, and 'it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission' is alive and well

Edit: Is the issue that, for the problem I have with the game that I'm giving feedback about (Healer Role), they didn't request any feedback on? Literally 'Don't care, didn't ask'?

[Red-thunder]

I dunno, I feel like they've already started to take a wrong turn with some jobs in the 7.1 update. I'm definitely not into pvp enough to know if it's better competitively, but I wasn't happy to see RDM's black/white stances and GNB's junctions gone.

I haven't played it since 7.0 so I wasn't even aware. Damn. GNB's junctions were really cool.

[Arzalis]

MCH's WildFire and Hypercharge were both mentioned many times on the EN forums as being 'very ping sensitive, please can we have them adjusted' and nothing happened for years. There was even a time when YP thought that RMT bots were not an issue, until he did a 'Walk With YP' event on NA and got bombarded by the spam. Seems like, it's only once YP himself experiences the issue, that they realize that 'oh actually this is a problem for people outside of JP'.

This is such a good example of what I'm talking about. People complain about the relationship to ping and some skills and how that can be an issue sometimes. Literally anyone outside of Japan who plays the game can tell you there is some weirdness with this, even if you have a pretty good connection. YoshiP just keeps insisting everyone is wrong anytime it comes up. This is hardly the only issue like this, too. It's just such a basic fundamental issue they double-down on for some bizarre reason.

If they can't acknowledge and fix that, then what hope do lesser issues or QOL type stuff really have to be heard from the devs?

[Greyhawk]

I do wonder: does management just hate being stuck with ff14? Do they want to tank it so they get fired with nice corpo parachutes?

It's funny you mention this, as I was just thinking to myself: "Are they just trying to torpedo their own game at this point to put it out of its misery to make it easier on everyone to shut down?"

[Hallarem]

It's funny you mention this, as I was just thinking to myself: "Are they just trying to torpedo their own game at this point to put it out of its misery to make it easier on everyone to shut down?"

Funnily enough, one of the unhinged tinfoil conspiracy theories I have is that they are doing this on purpose. To either tank it, or get it into maintenance mode so they can move on to the next game.