The Developers Need to Start Surveying Players After Every Patch

[Chessala]

A survey is useless if they ignore the feedback.

They have a track record of misinterpreting feedback or plain ignoring it, a survey would not change that. However, I guess it would be a start but it should not be just patch related, it should be general surveys. For example, the gaming company I work for makes a survey every 3 months. The survey is boosted on all channels where they can reach people: forum, facebook, twitter and email.

Also, they need to stop listening to whining and start looking at their game with open eyes. So many things they do now are things that could have done ages ago with little effort if they would just invest into a bigger and better team (dedicated programmers instead of "borrowing".

[Uriel_Kross]

This has been bothering me for awhile, Tanks did not get nerfed they returned to what their class was meant to do. Sure they took a hit to dps but now hold aggro better and get more HP with the new gear. And the devs have nothing to do with tanks being unpopular, tanking is a hard job with little room for mistakes because a mistake by a tank can wipe the group and not everyone is cut out for it. Lastly you don't play a tank to dps just as you would not play a dps to heal or a healer to tank

[Uriel_Kross]

Sorry about the double post hit back and it reposted

[Pomelo]

Although I really enjoyed this patch so far, I would still love surveys and more avenues for we the playerbase to communicate what we want to SE. Not everyone uses these forums.

[Abylim]

They do seemingly unpopular things for the good of the game. If they catered to our whims this game would be nothing. Its good to take on some feedback, but people are going to complain about pretty much everything.

[Ashkendor]

There's a point at which "what the (vocal) players want" and "what's good for the game" will be at odds though. Did we specifically want a nerf to tank DPS? No, but I see why they did it and as a result I don't really mind it. I welcome the change back to vitality. Gearing has actually been terribly unfair for us for a long time now. In order to be 'optimal' we were forced to 1) beg our static to let us greed on Slaying accessories with the melee (something which made them unhappy, I'm sure) 2) buy our accessories over the course of weeks with tokens, or 3) spend millions on expensive pentamelds. Meanwhile, the floor owns a full set of Fending drops. 3.2 hits and suddenly, Vitality accessories aren't completely useless. We can Need on the things we need. What a concept!

I welcome the step back to the heavier emphasis on mechanics over DPS checks as well. The way the encounters were structured in the Gordias cycle made them extremely unfriendly to all but a very small percentage of the population. I know my static suffered from constant roster changes because many people simply didn't enjoy the raids. There was no incentive for people to stay around. We'd go in, make a couple of weeks of progress, and then someone would suddenly leave. Our BLM let his sub expire because he just wasn't having fun with the game. Even those of us that stuck around weren't enjoying the time spent in those raids because it felt like we were just beating our heads against a brick wall. It was needlessly stressful to a lot of us.

SE has listened to a lot of feedback and that's why these changes have been made. A lot of tanks were tired of being crutched on to meet DPS checks. A lot of us were tired of having to put so much effort into gearing compared to other classes too. As fun and rewarding as the customization was, it was also unfair in a lot of ways because of the resources required to go about it. The 'holy trinity' concept has basically been broken around here for a while now and SE is simply trying to reinforce it. I don't mind at all. Now less-optimal DPS players can't just crutch on overpowered tanks to carry them.

As you said, not everyone posts on the game forums. Typically the people that want to complain about something that's been implemented make up the majority of threads about it, and that can create the perception that more people dislike it than like it whether or not that's actually the case. The thing is, if someone doesn't mind the change or actually likes the change, they're less likely to post. That's just human nature. We're simply conditioned to share and respond to what we feel is a negative experience.

[Dzian]

The issue with paladin was more that it didn't fit the games design. Everything in the game revolves around dps checks and thus a low dps class of any format doesn't really fit in the game.

Paladins are supposed to be high mitigation but mitigation isn't important it's the last thing considered in most cases

Most big hits that can screw you over tend to be managed by various mechanics more often than any form of mitigation. Which is another reason pld didn't fit.

The other issue is the preset party makeup of 2 tanks 2 healers and 4 dps. This requires every job to be almost equal.

So again a high mitigation low dps tank class instantly falls short. Because the mitigation isn't important.

If taking a pld meant you could take an extra dps then it "could" have worked out. (Assuming a war & drk or 2 wars would contribute as much dps as the pld+dps option) But neither the slight mitigation advantage a pld has nor the preset party compositions allow for such things.

[Defias]

Really? Everquest tanks did equal damage to DPS?
As a longtime player of EQ1, EQOA, & EQ2 I can say that's not true.

As WOW opened up Pandora's box on Tank dps. The very reason dual-spec came out was to try and fix the issue as Tanks became pure DPS & could no longer Tank effectively, Tanks became nigh non-existent.
Every Warrior, Paladin, & Deathknight were dps specced.
Eventually Tanks complained they needed to have 2 gearsets, 1 for dps, and 1 for Tanking while other players only needed 1 set.
(Now WOW has made significant changes so this isn't nearly as big an issue. But the fact remains.)

Also I'be seen many Tanks come and go because on top of the stress of Tanking, learning Strength Tanking was extremely rough on new tanks.
SE just made sure gear is assigned appropriately.

Maybe they should look at ESO and adapt this game to those classes. Where every class can wear and use all weapons, armor, and fill every role.
Maybe then folks will be happy?

[therpgfanatic]

Really? Everquest tanks did equal damage to DPS?
As a longtime player of EQ1, EQOA, & EQ2 I can say that's not true.

It totally is true.

Realize that I am not referring to the DPS specs for Warrior, Paladin and Dark Knight and comparing those specs to EQ tank output, but fact remains EQ tanks were quite strong. I doubt the forum posts still exist at Allakazam from way back then, but I recall Jeff Kaplan and Rob Pardo being well known for their rants about tanking, and these opinions led to some early issues in tank design in WoW (namely the disparity between Paladins as tanks, and Warriors as tanks -- in EQ Paladin, as a hybrid was viewed as a better tank whereas Kaplan and Pardo were of the view if you are a hybrid you should be weaker than a pure class, and this design mindset created issues in WoW which seemingly are being repeated in FFXIV with Paladin design -- if I had to guess, PLD are being punished with lower DPS simply because the class has access to WHM spells, and now Clemency) which were not adequately addressed until WoTLK where they finally realized any disparity between tank DPS and mitigation would create frustrations in players who selected the less ideal tank class, leading to a tank shortage problem.

FFXIV has a tank shortage problem because they have intentionally made WAR the best, DRK 2nd best and PLD the worst. A lot of people choose PLD and don't realize the tanking disparity until they have already heavily invested into leveling the character. This causes frustration in players of the least desirable tanks, which leads to the shortage issue when they either stop playing a tank or leave the game altogether for somewhere else that doesn't have this problem. And the tank shortage problem will continue until the tanks are made equal.

Boredom sitting at work, as someone who is going to continue to play the game until it shuts down and as a paladin on several characters i take a vested interest in my job not being broken.

PLD having equal DPS output as WARs would not result in them being "broken", and that you feign interest for this reason only serves to reveal you are trolling.

[Lambdafish]

FFXIV has a tank shortage problem because they have intentionally made WAR the best, DRK 2nd best and PLD the worst. A lot of people choose PLD and don't realize the tanking disparity until they have already heavily invested into leveling the character. This causes frustration in players of the least desirable tanks, which leads to the shortage issue when they either stop playing a tank or leave the game altogether for somewhere else that doesn't have this problem. And the tank shortage problem will continue until the tanks are made equal.

The fact that you say this and still complain about tank changes shows how much of a misunderstanding of the reason that the nerf happened you have. The nerd happened for 2 reasons:

1) PLD was buffed at the same time that all tanks were nerfed, meaning that I do the same damage that I did before the patch (give or take) while the gap was closed, as the other tanks were brought closer together. What this does is give all the tanks their strengths and weaknesses, War is still OT heavy, and PLD and DRK are good for MT, but all classes are at least competitive. Remember how PLD was at the beginning of 3.0 and you can clearly see that the gap needed to be closed.

2) DPS balance. This reason is similar to why they added the limit break changes. It helps the developers massively when designing DPS checks if they can design them without having to take into account players choice to take a War and DRK or DRK and PLD, either way this excludes PLD because WAR is like a 5th DPS at that point (going against the point of the DPS check)

Like you said WAR is still the best, but it's no longer the only viable choice.

- From an early 3.0 PLD who could never find a group because the damage gap was too large

Edit: on a side note, you know a tanks damage needs to be nerfed when you can clear Thordan with 7 WAR, 1 healer

Edit 2: I do support the survey idea btw, it would help a lot, and I feel like the dev team would use the information, as they do seem to be trying to listen right now. The one problem I see though is that they try to please everyone and tend to make disjointed content trying to please both hardcore and casual, surveys might help, they might hinder