Player and developer communication

[Haventale]

I gotta wonder if they have anyone on the "Healer" development side of the team lol.

From what I’ve heard, they don’t. Their job design team is supposedly 4 people, which consists of 3 dps mains and a PLD main. They literally don’t have a person on their team who enjoys healing in mmos, and my god it shows.

[AnotherPerson]

If the devs are listening to player feedback so intently what exactly happened to healers? I don’t remember people asking for their entire playstyle to be reduced to literally a single button and they’ve never given any kind of explanation as to why we have insane amounts of healing output when every single piece of content outputs tiny damage amounts.

Yes, they have listened to feedback from the players. They heard SCH's clunky because of fairy delays. They fixed that in Endwalker by making the fairy more reactive to commands. They heard how Deployment tactics take over a GCD after using Adlo, so they made Adlo's shield go off before the cast finishes, allowing you to immediately deploy it without waiting. They heard WHM and SCH doesn't have good weave slots compared to AST, so they made all jobs 1.5 seconds on their nuke. They heard AST's card system sucked while others preferred the current version, so they tried to add something new to the AST system. They heard people saying they don't like healers with one button rotation, so they tried making SGE and to tell plays to give that job a shot. For Ninjas, they heard Raiju sucked because they cannot hold it and were forced to use the forced gap closer, so they created an extended duration and stacking buff, then later changed the skill to be 2 separate weaponskills - depending on whether you needed to gap close or if it was bad to gap close.

It's not that they haven't listened to ANY feedback at all, as changes still take time to implement while making changes to other jobs and new content. Whether the changes to the feedback worked as intended is a different story, but the devs are quite transparent in that regard.

From what I've seen in the forums and in other conversations, people disliked Bard for not being able to compete with DNC at the time during ShB, so they made Bard a bit more similar to DNC in raid buffing. That's not very surprising. The same thing happened to DRK. People complained about DRK being too similar to WAR... but in actuality, the reason why that happened is because originally, DRK players complained about how WAR was fun and DRK wasn't ... so the devs tried to make DRK similar to WAR in that regard. As you can see, that backfired, so DRK is becoming more mitigative in gameplay compared to WAR's self healing. You can't shove the problem all onto the devs as it's partly the fault of player feedback as well. Player feedback doesn't always communicate well either (memes can sometimes be part of the issue in that regard), nor does it always coincide with what the devs have in their vision. MNK suffered from player feedback from Heavensward to Shadowbringers - reverting changes left and right until they realize they need to scrap the concept since there's no vision or direction for that job to improve outside of more niche abilities.

[Nizzi]

Yes, they have listened to feedback from the players. They heard SCH's clunky because of fairy delays. They fixed that in Endwalker by making the fairy more reactive to commands. They heard how Deployment tactics take over a GCD after using Adlo, so they made Adlo's shield go off before the cast finishes, allowing you to immediately deploy it without waiting. They heard WHM and SCH doesn't have good weave slots compared to AST, so they made all jobs 1.5 seconds on their nuke. They heard AST's card system sucked while others preferred the current version, so they tried to add something new to the AST system. They heard people saying they don't like healers with one button rotation, so they tried making SGE and to tell plays to give that job a shot.

No disrespect meant to you, but most of these things are things they should've been aware of to begin with. This is where a lot of frustrations come from, these glaringly obvious issues that should be fixed or tweaked throughout the course of an expansion, and not touted as big expansion changes. Don't get me wrong, Scholar's fairy is better, Deployment Tactics feels better to use, and 1.5s cast times are nice to have, but none of these are "big expansion shakeups" and these are all issues that should've been addressed back in Shadowbringers. Sage also has no more DPS options than any other healer, and while Kardia is nice, it doesn't change the issue of spamming 1-1-1-1 over and over - Sage is not different from any of the other healers at all in terms of what it's doing for it's "DPS rotation" over a fight, so they've failed to address any of the issues facing the monotony of healer downtime.

It's things like this that would make some form of communication better, because we could at least understand what they're thinking. Was there a legitimate design reason back in Shadowbringers for why WHM and SCH had 2.5s cast times that made them have to sacrifice DPS to heal outside of their DoT refresh when AST didn't? Is there a legitimate design reason that WHM and SCH still lose DPS to heal with parts of their kit when AST and SGE don't, even with 1.5s cast times? Is there a legitimate design reason for why AST's GCD heals are less expensive MP wise than WHM's despite having the same potency and AST having way more oGCD heals than WHM? What is their view on WHM's place within the four healers, given that there are now TWO "selfish DPS" healers, with Sage able to do more damage than WHM, and of the two "pure/regen healers", Astrologian is able to heal more effectively without sacrificing personal DPS due to it's wide number of oGCD heals while providing raid buffs?

These aren't issues that they should be hearing about from players, these are issues that they should be seeing themselves as the ones who should be playing these jobs extensively to test and see how they feel. But it feels like they aren't and like they have nobody playing them to the point where they can recognize the problems they face. But if we had communication with say, a healer developer, maybe we could get some insight on why they think these design choices are good, vital, essential, etc to the jobs that they're developing, rather than having it feel like they just hastily look over some jobs so they can get back to designing cool stuff for the jobs they actually play.

[Jeeqbit]

If the devs are listening to player feedback so intently what exactly happened to healers? I don’t remember people asking for their entire playstyle to be reduced to literally a single button

The explanation we were given was there are a lot of healers that only want to heal. They also do not want to pressure healers to attack by giving them a combo and then have to choose between interrupting it or not healing, because they may choose not to heal. They don't want a rotation to distract them too much from healing.

and they’ve never given any kind of explanation as to why we have insane amounts of healing output when every single piece of content outputs tiny damage amounts.

This is true except for big pulls in leveling dungeons, which in shadowbringers forced me to burn through my entire healing kit on scholar. It was only in certain big pulls that I began to see that there actually is a healing rotation you can burn through but it is very rare to need it.

[Maxilor]

From what I’ve heard, they don’t. Their job design team is supposedly 4 people, which consists of 3 dps mains and a PLD main. They literally don’t have a person on their team who enjoys healing in mmos, and my god it shows.

Citation needed.

[Tyjacon]

Saying the devs don't listen to the players while meaning they don't specifically listen to you.

If you ask 10 players what they want to have changed on a particular job, you'll get 6 different answers.
Some want it harder, some easier, some more utility, some more mobility while using skills, etc.
So, how are they supposed to make everyone happy?

The devs do communicate, they just say something you might not like.

[Maxilor]

Saying the devs don't listen to the players while meaning they don't specifically listen to you.

If you ask 10 players what they want to have changed on a particular job, you'll get 6 different answers.
Some want it harder, some easier, some more utility, some more mobility while using skills, etc.
So, how are they supposed to make everyone happy?

The devs do communicate, they just say something you might not like.

They can't make everyone happy and they never will, which is why for the most part player's opinions on job changes are filed directly into the trash can.

Like the example you gave, ask 100 Players what to change about a certain job and you'll get 100 different answers.

But when something is so awful, so broken that those same 100 players all agree on it... That's when the devs should begin to listen.

[Kes13a]

But when something is so awful, so broken that those same 100 players all agree on it... That's when the devs should begin to listen.

not really.

you have 100 raiders from that other game that want things like they were in the other game. or 100 pvpers wanting open world pvp.

in your theory, they are more important than the vast number of people against that?

unfortunately, or fortunately, game companies are not democracies, its their vision. could there be a bit more communication? sure, why not. ever play Wildstar? they started listening to their players... hmmm.. where is that game today? Or that other game, they listened to high end raiders, and where is it today?

the player is not always worth being listened to. plain and simple.

[Maxilor]

not really.

you have 100 raiders from that other game that want things like they were in the other game. or 100 pvpers wanting open world pvp.

in your theory, they are more important than the vast number of people against that?

unfortunately, or fortunately, game companies are not democracies, its their vision. could there be a bit more communication? sure, why not. ever play Wildstar? they started listening to their players... hmmm.. where is that game today? Or that other game, they listened to high end raiders, and where is it today?

the player is not always worth being listened to. plain and simple.

That was just an example I made, but in real life we would be considering the entire player base and each individuals opinions.

If the great majority of a player base all agrees that a certain job is unfun, or is broken in some way should their feedback not be taken into consideration?

BTW i'm not talking about the loud minority on the forums.

[Caurcas]

I doubt the devs actually take any community feed back. Even JP feedback. Just look at the state of MCH, or WHM. The state of tanking and healing as a whole. The list goes on and on.