Yoshi-P Statement on Player Feedback

[Dyvid]

If the staff wants civil conversations they have to want to actually have a conversation first. Most cases you see a new staff member tell you how they look forward to working with the community before they ghost you forever and fade into the background.

This in a nutshell. People are fighting to be heard about issue that have stemmed back years and only meet with silence. Of course they are going to be angry and rude Yoshi-P. You need better communication between the development team and the player base.

[IdowhatIwant]

And this right here is what's being talked about. Not pointing out problems with the game itself, but insulting the devs behind it. And with such a ridiculous claim as 'lazy', completely discounting a variety of perfectly logical reasons why there is less content in your view.

-EW has waaay more cutscenes and story compared to previous expansion.
-they had to shift to a work from home situation. This has all sorts of time loss for a group environment like the devs are in, like in setup, coordinating how they're going to communicate, etc not counting the fact that living in a small space with other people will almost certainly lead to some lost manhours due to real life
-related to the above, work from home doesnt have the same high end pc's to do the work on, therefore taking more manhours to complete the same task

But no, it couldn't possibly be for any reason other than they're a bunch of super lazy slackers. Those same devs that spent how many hours of their own time adjusting some headwear for vierra because they didn't want to disappoint the players? Yup, clearly a case of just simple laziness, cold hard fact!

Here is the thing, and I am not sure if you understand how development teams work. The team is split into other teams. So the fact that Endwalker had more cutscenes and story has nothing to do with class design plummeting because the writers of the story aren't developing the classes in the game. The cut scene designers aren't developing the boss mechanics.

We have had less content in patches since Stormblood so your excuse about Endwalker, only applies to Endwalker. Covid also only applies to Endwalker and the later half of ShB. So I have no idea why you are even using this as an excuse for less content over almost a 5 year span. What's the excuse for dive bombs being an over used mechanic since ARR, yearly flu seasons?

So yes, I feel that if they decide to cut content and tell me they are going to replace that content with better class implementation, better casual content then that is what I expect, but I have not seen that so I am calling it lazy. Spending extra man hours for a race can wear a hat does not make up for that. Let the ears clip through the helmet.

Did you really just type that? Seriously? Which is not how I take your comment. Your comments are exactly the type Yoshi P was talking about.

How is this comment exactly the type of comment that Yoshi P was talking about. That is my feedback play and test the game, test all the classes, test them in the content specially if you are delaying the game for QA testing. The fact that GBR exist tells me they don't play the game or atleast test the classes. Why would you make a class that counter intuitive that spams OGCDs to do DPS on a role that needs to use OGCDs to survive taking hits, it doesn't make any sense. There is no reason why a dancer is not able to be on par with a bard with over all raid dps at launch unless it was not tested.

So you can say that I am an example because I called them lazy but that is what I have seen so far is laziness.

[Kaurhz]

Snip.

Interesting..

The thing about teams is that many of them will be given their own assigned budget or task assignment. Aside from this simple fact, teams are equally as interdependent on each other for resources and assets. Battle designers will still rely on environmental artist, similarly battle designers may also heavily rely on level designers or asset design. Equally scenario designers will also rely on a myriad of teams including battle designers and environmental artists. So yes it is still a perfectly logical thing to expect. Is it great? Nah. Is it ideal? Obviously not, but in the end it is still a valid point.

I only half and half agree with the point regarding content. We haven't really had less content. It has been more sparsely designed. But more importantly the issue is surrounding the level of replayability it has with the community. Deep dungeon wasn't exactly a monumental amount of content, versus the simple fact it was an extraordinarily designed piece of content for replayability. This is as much to do with incentivisation as to what it does with anything else. Placing the levelling and relics within the same set of content was a massive let-down in this regard. So yeah, I would argue we have as much if not more content but it hasn't necessarily translated into said content having the same replay value - Which the replayability is the bigger issue.

On the comment of testing. Having the time to test something, and then having the time to pass all those results through their pipeline to eventually feed back to the job and encounter designers, and then having them make the necessary adjustments are 2 entirely different things. Which given how much design actually goes into an expansion it isn't really the most feasible thing in the world to expect balanced jobs from the outlet. I suppose on this regard the only comment that can be made is to wait and see what changes are coming in 6.08.

What one person can construe as being lazy, another can reasonably construe as just having tight deadlines and not having the ability to meet every nuance of them on the expansion launch. Hence the reason for minor patches like 4.06 or 6.08.

[IdowhatIwant]

Interesting..

The thing about teams is that many of them will be given their own assigned budget or task assignment. Aside from this simple fact, teams are equally as interdependent on each other for resources and assets. Battle designers will still rely on environmental artist, similarly battle designers may also heavily rely on level designers or asset design. Equally scenario designers will also rely on a myriad of teams including battle designers and environmental artists. So yes it is still a perfectly logical thing to expect. Is it great? Nah. Is it ideal? Obviously not, but in the end it is still a valid point.

I only half and half agree with the point regarding content. We haven't really had less content. It has been more sparsely designed. But more importantly the issue is surrounding the level of replayability it has with the community. Deep dungeon wasn't exactly a monumental amount of content, versus the simple fact it was an extraordinarily designed piece of content for replayability. This is as much to do with incentivisation as to what it does with anything else. Placing the levelling and relics within the same set of content was a massive let-down in this regard. So yeah, I would argue we have as much if not more content but it hasn't necessarily translated into said content having the same replay value - Which the replayability is the bigger issue.

On the comment of testing. Having the time to test something, and then having the time to pass all those results through their pipeline to eventually feed back to the job and encounter designers, and then having them make the necessary adjustments are 2 entirely different things. Which given how much design actually goes into an expansion it isn't really the most feasible thing in the world to expect balanced jobs from the outlet. I suppose on this regard the only comment that can be made is to wait and see what changes are coming in 6.08.

What one person can construe as being lazy, another can reasonably construe as just having tight deadlines and not having the ability to meet every nuance of them on the expansion launch. Hence the reason for minor patches like 4.06 or 6.08.

When I mention less content, I believe it was Stormblood they first stopped doing hardmode dungeons (or maybe they still called them hardmode) and bringing the amount of dungeons to 1 every 4.x0 and one every 4.x5 patch. Then shadowbringers brought that down further to one every 5.x0 patch IRRC. So Stormblood halved the number of dungeons we got, and Shadowbringers halved the half. So we now get a quarter of the dungeons we used to get back in ARR and HW. Which cuts down on some of the replayability you mentioned and can really make it tough to get those weekly tomestones.

BTW, Thank you for the well thought out response.

[Kaurhz]

When I mention less content, I believe it was Stormblood they first stopped doing hardmode dungeons (or maybe they still called them hardmode) and bringing the amount of dungeons to 1 every 4.x0 and one every 4.x5 patch. Then shadowbringers brought that down further to one every 5.x0 patch IRRC. So Stormblood halved the number of dungeons we got, and Shadowbringers halved the half. So we now get a quarter of the dungeons we used to get back in ARR and HW. Which cuts down on some of the replayability you mentioned and can really make it tough to get those weekly tomestones.

BTW, Thank you for the well thought out response.

It's a philosophy thing for them, really. Does the number of dungeons necessarily translate into a substantial amount of content? I mean they've been long reduced to corridor simulators long before Stormblood, and any dungeon that wasn't (in ARR), quite arguably just remained unexplored. Personally I can't really call or consider the hardmode tag to be anything now given the point of corridor simulators. To my understanding the dungeons have been as followed:

- 18 in HW
- 15 in SB
- 13 in ShB

I don't think the factor of replayability can come down to a dungeon level, nor do I think it makes it any more difficult to get tomes (unless you count bonus too), arguably all it has accomplished is giving people a greater sense of stale-ness from the scope of their roulette. In this regard I think it would be a nice idea in merging 50/60/70/80 with the expert roulette, so that it draws from a wider array of dungeons. But not many people would feel mutual on this regard.

[Tibowmew]

When I mention less content, I believe it was Stormblood they first stopped doing hardmode dungeons (or maybe they still called them hardmode) and bringing the amount of dungeons to 1 every 4.x0 and one every 4.x5 patch. Then shadowbringers brought that down further to one every 5.x0 patch IRRC. So Stormblood halved the number of dungeons we got, and Shadowbringers halved the half. So we now get a quarter of the dungeons we used to get back in ARR and HW. Which cuts down on some of the replayability you mentioned and can really make it tough to get those weekly tomestones.

BTW, Thank you for the well thought out response.

My perspective may be different as a newer player, but it seems that there's still quite a lot of content in the game. I suppose if you plan on only doing dungeons, then there are less per expansion. But having other consistent things like alliance raids and areas like Eureka and Bozja are nice because they're not the same type of activities. I don't know what their budgets look like, but I also imagine there's some weighing the costs on adding new content in. Like the new PvP setup. Those resources had to come from somewhere. I can't really comment on replayability though, outside of incentives, since that would just depend on the kind of content each player likes to do.

I'm glad to see people having respectful conversations here, despite everyone's different perspectives.

[SigilBaram]

When I mention less content, I believe it was Stormblood they first stopped doing hardmode dungeons (or maybe they still called them hardmode) and bringing the amount of dungeons to 1 every 4.x0 and one every 4.x5 patch. Then shadowbringers brought that down further to one every 5.x0 patch IRRC. So Stormblood halved the number of dungeons we got, and Shadowbringers halved the half. So we now get a quarter of the dungeons we used to get back in ARR and HW. Which cuts down on some of the replayability you mentioned and can really make it tough to get those weekly tomestones.

BTW, Thank you for the well thought out response.

TBH I felt this way at first but over time I realized I actually kind of prefer this change. Dungeons are neat and all but we get other kinds of content now, like the multiple tiers of map portals and things like Eureka/Bozja. Those kinds of things are more interesting than running yet another dungeon for a couple more tomestones. Also, all those lvl 50 ARR dungeons might have some fond memories, but they are also a very mixed bag when you get them in 50/60/70/80 roulette. So many not-relevant mechanics that no one knows how to deal with. Snowcloack is a story dungeon and even there no one does the yeti boss right anymore. I love spending 5+min just burning a boss that you're supposed to kill with mechanics, because people won't leave the sprites alone... Then you get something like Stone Vigil (Hard)? It's not even relevant content, but it will be left in roulettes for years to come and that roulette needs to not balloon out of control with yet more obscure boss mechanics. It's bad enough already. I started during 2.4 and I have trouble remember all those optional boss fights, let alone new players. We really don't need 25+ dungeons every expac...

[Avatre]

And besides a majority of feedback they listen to is either JP playerbase or raid data.

Quite likely, and I haven't visited the JP side of the forums because I literally cannot read Japanese, it's due to how things are discussed. Rather than 500 threads about the exact thing putting it into 1 mega thread, that way they aren't having to try and find all 500 threads to see what the issues are(which, lets be honest here, are usually just vaguely veiled insults at the devs for the way things are without providing actual suggestions to improve, or reasons as to why something isn't liked).

Consolidated threads have been proven to get notice more often than not.

The thread about allowing opposite genders to wear certain gear? Yup, that ended up happening.

The Hempen Camise model being available for all races? Yup, that was at least responded to with a "we will look into it" type of response.

Other than being large threads in themselves, what do they have in common? Civil requests. Very few, if any, responses in those threads were overtly hostile like half the "feedback" threads.

Keep things civil, without any name calling(notice I snipped your comment to below a certain point?), and you get more attention from those able to make the changes/pass along the requests or feedback than when you thinly veil an insult at the people who initially made the stuff, based entirely on decisions by people much, much, higher up in the company than they are.

[Melorie]

While I sympathize with Yoshi concerns and believe that people should not be insulting, I also see this too being taken out of context by a loud part of the community that can't handle a criticism unless you bring a paper convincing THEM that your concern and feedback is "valid". If anything though, I'm curious to see what the hell is happening on the JP side to see this type of commentary.

[Kaurhz]

While I sympathize with Yoshi concerns and believe that people should not be insulting, I also see this too being taken out of context by a loud part of the community that can't handle a criticism unless you bring a paper convincing THEM that your concern and feedback is "valid". If anything though, I'm curious to see what the hell is happening on the JP side to see this type of commentary.

This thread already highlights a glaring issue that people are negligent enough of their own behaviour and actions that they cannot make the distinction between them presenting their criticism as just that - A criticism, and something reasonably inferred as thinly veiled insults which serve no purpose.

I suppose in this regard people reap what they sow.