A (maybe) different outlook on the current DRK situation

[OdinelStarrei]

A response! I love this, let's continue this discussion.

(Also I'm a game designer by craft; writing a lot and trying to make it readable kinda becomes a constant habit)

And oh, don't worry, we're just two different kinds of DRK player...

I'm a bit of a software lad myself, nothing professional though, big respect for the stuff you put yourself through.
Yeah, we are two different types of player coming to a similar conclusion that our job is unsatisfactory. That's the exact opposite of what SE intends when they do reworks. Usually, your side of the fence gets what's needed to lower the skill floor to an acceptable point for entry, and my side gets to keep a diminished, but still observable skill ceiling, with mastery being a goal with equivalent results. DRK is unique in that it fails at both of these things. Compare this to WHM, where casually, it's A-OK, super solid. Under mastery, the entire MP economy of the job falls apart. Compare this to AST, as you've stated where casually, it's an actual nightmare, there are so many buttons and bloat over the job with a card system that changes all over the place per expansion, but under mastery, some of the highest skill expression any job can have in the entire game.

We have angry casual players, both the DRK and the pug group, and angry hardcore players, both the DRK and the static. Confused newcomers and unsatisfied veterans. People straight ask me if they're griefing if they are playing DRK. How is that even something that happens in this game? That's not good when ALL SIDES can universally come to a consensus that something is badly designed when our goals are so diametrically opposed most of the time.

Hmmmmm that depends, and I think we're seeing it from different angles...

And that's the gripe I have with this particular shield-to-healing ratio....

I certainly agree here. I am definitely seeing it as a healer-tank relationship, or more specifically rather how the base of the holy trinitiy in tanks/heals support the peak of the triangle, the DPS. If you are a tank, and your entire team is dead on a boss with 60% left, is it really suitable design for the one tank to solo the entire boss? Is there something wrong with an negative HP delta on tanks? I feel that tanks are that are not DRK are starting to seriously erode away healer agency both in casual and hardcore content(once it's on farm.) There is sub 1 month period of time every content release where healers can really flex their kits before gear creep and experience make the entire role trivial to it's own playerbase, but with how absolutely invincible tanks are with their sustains, and how non-punishing any damage intake is, I feel healers are being made increasingly irrelevant in their primary objective (healing). This is seriously evident on WHM, who doesn't have mechanics to distract from the nuke spam. Right now, it feels like tanks that are not DRK, especially WAR, are fulfilling all parts of the trinity at the same time, which doesn't feel right to me. I don't want to advocate for nerfs, those don't feel good at all, but something isn't right here. I could be wrong on this bit, and it might be too big of a issue for any single post to handle.

And I honestly think they aren't designing some things in a total vacuum. Things like Death's Toll were definitely designed in direct opposition to skills like Macrocosmos. Intemperances happen during 2 mins. Limit Cuts happen right before a pot window. Act 2 ends right on the two minutes as everyone comes in for raid buffs. DRK's damage is certainly scaled to utilize the team's damage increases, otherwise there would have been no reason to change the cooldown of things like Blood Weapon from 40s to 60s, Delirium from 80s to 90s, even if the design of those skills were different. Just, somethings don't seem to be thoroughly thought through before implementation, like Oblation. Or the quintuple-down that is Living Dead. It's feels like, the person who is designing DRK itself is given a note about what the team is trying to do overall this expansion with jobs, the damage dealt by players and mobs is, and then got shut in the Square Enix server basement where he can get consistent 5 hit Blood Weapons, and everything he did was implemented into live versions of the game with no oversight. That obviously isn't what happened, but that means that multiple people had to sign off on the Spell Speed thing, Living Dead, Blood Weapon, etc etc. Which is honestly worse.

But what I think they want for DRK, by comparing it from 3.0 to 6.0 DRK...

I just think they haven't hit the mark yet...

I think that's a significant part of why things are so tumultuous. I think a lot of us are tired of them trying to hit the mark while simultaneously wearing earplugs and a blindfold. As I said before, I firmly believe that we need a conversation. We're chalking in at almost six years of questionable design choices of varying severity and 3 vastly different versions of the same job. An open letter, a community representative, someone to say "Yeah, this is under review." We haven't had that for a really long time, so people are getting out of control, which just perpetuates this non-stop negative feedback loop, emboldened by soundbites and really awful play experiences. Players should not have the responsibility of designing jobs or fixing very obvious mistakes when you have the design documentation, the feedback, the data and a test environment right there as the staff. I know there are people who can do this job justice. And if you can't get to it right now, let us know. Just tell us, and we're going to understand, we dealt with delays/cancellations for ultimate, delays for Eureka, delays for Endwalker itself, I'm sure we can handle a "We're working on DRK, give us until 6.3." We need something from them soon. Otherwise, we're just going to continue this death spiral, until people leave the job/game, or just continue to make themselves very visibly miserable because they have stockholm syndrome for greatswords and dark magic. I don't think I can deal with another one of my strats getting ruined because Living Dead makes it significantly harder to execute or having xivanalysis yell at me for the billionth time about a missed BW hit because I had to unmend once with that stupid 2.5 GCD.

[shao32]

While Odinel has respond to basically all the main points i want to add something more to the useless stuff.
DRK never had useless skill, in fact DRK never had anything useless until SHB and the actual EW version of the job and is Darkside, Darkside and his Darkside + Living shadow gauge is basically a useless mechanic on the job, they could secretly delete it tomorrow and nobody would tell the entire thing has gone, it's basically a huge waste of code and UI space right now.

[MagiusNecros]

Change something in the battle log. God this makes me so mad.

Check the PvP actions. They have no problem making Dark Missionary reduce all damage taken. Hilarious.

[The_User]

I made a suggestion for a rework to address the complain of Dark Knight community over the years here https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...on-Full-Detail. I have already tried calculated a potency and tested how the gauge build up. If you don't mind doing an analysis you can check it out. A solution might be in there.

[DoppelShifter]

A response! I love this, let's continue this discussion.

[Snip snip]

This time I won't do a point-by-point to your post (not out of disrespect, but for the sake of simplicity) because most of it boils down to some frequent points that sadly seem to be exceedingly common here in the forums.

Actually, coming here to the forums after all these years (last time I came here was during the 2nd month after Stormblood, when Square Enix hiked the sub prices in some countries, and I was among the affected, after they tripled my sub and I came to the forums to start a peaceful protest thread. I got a forum ban, and never came back) finally reminded me of some of the reasons why I don't really like to interact here very much.

But back to the subject in hand, I want to use a word you brought to the table: "communication".

Communication in the way you seem to want to happen is, frankly, impossible considering the scale of this game, this player base, and more importantly, its diversity.
Diversity of playstyles, diversity of platforms, diversity of focus content and even cultural and geographic differences; feedback from the Japanese community playing on PS5s on Toberry will often look different from what you see on the raid-heavy Excalibur, or the laid-back social-heavy Faerie, or the rather toxic raid-heavy and BR-influenced Behemoth, or people at the meme-heavy Twitter community, or the hardcore and often hyperfocused folks here on the Forums.

Also keep in mind that FFXIV is not a raid-focused game. It is, in no particular order (because said importance varies from person to person), a JRPG, an MMORPG, a virtual social community and a true-to-roots role-playing game.

So keeping all parts satisfied is almost a losing proposition, yet Division 3 nevertheless takes the ordeal.

[Sidenote: do note that I pick names deliberately: I call the *company*, the corporate entity dictating financial decisions, "Square Enix" or "SE", while I call the *developers*, the group led by Yoshi-P and responsible for the actual game we play, "Creative Business Unit III" or simply "CBU3" or "Division 3"]

I'm a bit of a software lad myself, nothing professional though, big respect for the stuff you put yourself through.

I will take this comment earnestly, but will say outright that this oversimplifies the issue.

Game development is not an individual, monolithic thing. Back when I was a producer and lead game designer, I led a team of 12, and it was hell. Tight deadlines, bosses that had no idea of what they were asking from us (and often contradicting the wishes of our own player base). It drained me to the point of mental breakdowns during online meetings. It's *not* easy, specially if you're like me and you like to micromanage the other teams while your bosses seemingly have no idea what a "videogame" is since back in the Atari era.

I don't have a (functional) crystal ball, but Yoshi-P might as well be on a similar ordeal, as he's also a producer who loves to micromanage his teams, and he loves his players far more than I did (and I really cared about mine). Except he leads *two* teams numbering on the hundreds, his player base numbers on the millions rather than tens-to-hundreds of thousands, and his direct bosses are one of the biggest gaming companies of the modern age, with executives so out of touch they might as well be taking satellite rides.

...And yet people seem to think everything wrong with the game is the result of "laziness", "blindness", "people sitting on their hands" or whatever. Believe me, as somebody who worked on game design and game production before multiple times, it's never that simple.

So what do they do? Well, they juggle priorities. They take feedback from all places, but they have to filter what's earnest and what's frankly just white noise, and then organize what to tackle first. What to prioritize.

[Sidenote number 2: When I posted my thread here, I took a quick glance at the Tank subforum and out of the first 10 threads, not counting mine, 4 were just elitist whining, 2 were from people with no idea what they were talking about, a megathread that's so huge and so full of salt that it would actually make MORE difficult for a developer to read useful feedback from, one was about Gunbreaker's sounds (?!?!) and one was the classic "will DRK be in the next live letter?".
Not exactly the reliable well of feedback a developer would wish for.]

And in prioritizing, they take into account not just what the players ask, but what the players *do*. They analyze the metrics, which tell them the most used classes, most used skills, most played content, what social hubs are the hottest at any point of the day, how many whacks people are giving on the machines at the Gold Saucer. Heck, they even analyze the memes we make. A lot.

Then they also see what content is being played (MSQ? Dungeons? Sidequests? Alliance Raids? Progression Raids? PvP?) and then prioritize them, but trying not to *starve* any of those (PvP is still using essentially using Shadowbringers skills and at least some of the balancing team is probably busy reworking that right now).

And then some of the team is working on future content. Female Hrothgar. New dungeons. The new Alliance Raids. *The next expansion*, which yes, is always already in the works. And much much more.

Players, specially the ones that complain the most, and even the ones who have very deep knowledge of their own class and gameplay style, very often lack the understanding of scale that comes with developing and balancing an MMORPG like FFXIV.

This is not to tell people "shut up and wait", but "rethink the way you express your feedback, you're not talking with a lazy bunch of dullards doing what they please, you're talking with a big development team doing their best with very chaotic feedback".

I am definitely seeing it as a healer-tank relationship, or more specifically rather how the base of the holy trinitiy in tanks/heals support the peak of the triangle, the DPS. [snip snip]

Ok, I'm gonna break my pattern and actually start to bring this to an end by pointing towards a very specific point of your argument.

You're right. Supertanks are breaking the balance of the "holy trinity of roles".

...But whether that's a bad thing or not, that's not set in stone. Because that "golden standard" is not really in the essence of FFXIV.

First of all, the scenario you described normally only tends to happen either when the supertank is at least a reasonably skilled player, or when the bored healer is at least a reasonably skilled healer. More likely when both are skilled.
...Plus, the DPSs won't really complain that they're getting a third or even a fourth buddy to push big numbers.

...In the real world, you'll see a lot of sprouts, or in-learning players, or people playing with a new class, or people who aren't really skilled but still like the game.

And when rest of the party wipes, and a talented tank, or a talented Red Mage, or a talented Sage stands their ground and solo's the boss, that's... awesome! That sparks an awesome social moment, they exchange a few compliments, somebody gets triple commendations, and they get a good story to tell.

This, to me, is far more important than balancing the trinity. I don't care about numbers if the alternative brings a more fun and relevant experience to more people.


And to wrap it up, you also kinda misjudged me when you put us in a binary of "you're hardcore, I'm pug-casual". This is never a binary, but a spectrum.

I'm an omniclass player (currently working on my last 2 classes to lvl90); I just happen to like tanking more, and DRK is my favorite (in gameplay and story). I'm also an omnicrafter and omnigatherer, who crafts her own gear. I play Savage raids when it fancies me, and I play Normal raids blind day one to figure out the mechanics. I play PvP. I decorate my house. I obsess for HOURS on what glams I'm gonna wear at any given day.

It would be unfair to call me a "casual" player. But I'm not your typical "parsing every fight, polishing every rotation, optimizing all damage, hardcore progression raider". And this kind of player is proportionally far less common than a lot of people seem to think.

And again. I'm not telling you, nor anyone, to stop voicing your wishes. Just do so with the knowledge that things aren't as simple, or as malicious, as some seem to think it is.

[OdinelStarrei]

Yay, another one. You know rare this is, that I get to engage with someone somewhat properly on the forums? Everyone at each other's throats all the time, I can't ever get a good conversation. I'm pressed for time, but you deserve good responses.


Some of the things I said were a bit off, so I apologize for those things.

This time I won't do a point-by-point to your post (not out of disrespect, but for the sake of simplicity) because most of it boils down to some frequent points that sadly seem to be exceedingly common here in the forums.

Actually, coming here to the forums after all these years (last time I came here was during the 2nd month after Stormblood, when Square Enix hiked the sub prices in some countries, and I was among the affected, after they tripled my sub and I came to the forums to start a peaceful protest thread. I got a forum ban, and never came back) finally reminded of some of the reasons why I don't really like to interact here very much.

But back to the subject in hand, I want to use a word you brought to the table: "communication".

Communication in the way you seem to want to happen is, frankly, impossible considering the scale of this game, this player base, and more importantly, its diversity.
Diversity of playstyles, diversity of platforms, diversity of focus content and even cultural and geographic differences; feedback from the Japanese community playing on PS5s on Toberry will often look different from what you see on the raid-heavy Excalibur, or the laid-back social-heavy Faerie, or the rather toxic raid-heavy and BR-influenced Behemoth, or people at the meme-heavy Twitter community, or the hardcore and often hyperfocused folks here on the Forums.

Also keep in mind that FFXIV is not a raid-focused game. It is, in no particular order (because said importance varies from person to person), a JRPG, an MMORPG, a virtual social community and a true-to-roots role-playing game.

So keeping all parts satisfied is almost a losing proposition, yet Division 3 nevertheless takes the ordeal.

[Sidenote: do note that I pick names deliberately: I call the *company*, the corporate entity dictating financial decisions, "Square Enix" or "SE", while I call the *developers*, the group led by Yoshi-P and responsible for the actual game we play, "Creative Business Unit III" or simply "CBU3" or "Division 3"]

I want to talk about the forum (or even the community at large, I have some takes on that, but I'll save that for later in this post.
As far as I know, Yoshida is now on the board of directors on top of being producer for the next mainline, and essentially has a blank check for FFXIV (within reason) now. I think he has more financial sway than you think, considering how well the construction of Oceania and the plans for data center expansion are proceeding in the middle of this dreadful tech product drought. And even when I say that, I still think the amount of pressure in that environment is unimaginable to your average person, even more so to ones who don't work in the field. I'm not privy to their internal machinations, even if I would like know some aspects of their development pipeline beyond what we see on the surface with consistent patch releases. This is why the development insights we get during fanfests, particularly with the encounter designers, were always my favorite part of the events, because it gave me a glimpse into the minds of obviously talented people. It's inspiring! And what they've managed to accomplish regarding the wide-reach of FFXIV is frankly, a total masterstroke, especially considering the codebase AND reputation they started with.

For the most part, I think they have by and large succeeded in their endeavors since late Heavensward, and a vast majority of people are really satisfied. I certainly have grievances, but I'd still put this game up there as one of my favorites, the only live service game to keep me around for this amount of time, and a very skilled, but sometimes misguided, development team. I know that I sound like a jaded, unappreciative player who will never be satisfied, but that really couldn't be further from the truth. I really think Dark Knight just brings out the worst in me.

I understand that my post-MSQ priorities (satisfying raid content, and Dark Knight being fun to play) are minuscule compared to the overarching design priority of the team, and it's really selfish of me to think otherwise. I know that, but I can't help but feel the way I do, and I really wish that wasn't the case.

I will take this comment earnestly, but will say outright that this oversimplifies the issue.

Game development is not an individual, monolithic thing. Back when I was a producer and lead game designer, I led a team of 12, and it was hell. Tight deadlines, bosses that had no idea of what they were asking from us (and often contradicting the wishes of our own player base). It drained me to the point of mental breakdowns during online meetings. It's *not* easy, specially if you're like me and you like to micromanage the other teams while your bosses seemingly have no idea what a "videogame" is since back in the Atari era.

I don't have a (functional) crystal ball, but Yoshi-P might as well be on a similar ordeal, as he's also a producer who loves to micromanage his teams, and he loves his players far more than I did (and I really cared about mine). Except he leads *two* teams numbering on the hundreds, his player base numbers on the millions rather than tens-to-hundreds of thousands, and his direct bosses are one of the biggest gaming companies of the modern age, with executives so out of touch they might as well be taking satellite rides.

...And yet people seem to think everything wrong with the game is the result of "laziness", "blindness", "people sitting on their hands" or whatever. Believe me, as somebody who worked on game design and game production before multiple times, it's never that simple.

[Sidenote number 2: When I posted my thread here, I took a quick glance at the Tank subforum and out of the first 10 threads, not counting mine, 4 were just elitist whining, 2 were from people with no idea what they were talking about, a megathread that's so huge and so full of salt that it would actually make MORE difficult for a developer to read useful feedback from, one was about Gunbreaker's sounds (?!?!) and one was the classic "will DRK be in the next live letter?".
Not exactly the reliable well of feedback a developer would wish for.]

...This is not to tell people "shut up and wait", but "rethink the way you express your feedback, you're not talking with a lazy bunch of dullards doing what they please, you're talking with a big development team doing their best with very chaotic feedback".

This is a great section here, and adequately defends your points with a real-world anecdote that I can relate to, working in the government dealing with computer systems and policies designed by people with little oversight or long-term sustainability plans. This leads to my biggest concern with the feedback now, is that we're inundated with white noise and a complete fracturing of the what the DRK playerbase as a whole wants. The only thing people seem to agree on is that Blood Weapon is bad, Living Dead is bad, and SOMETHING with the mitigation kit is wrong with Dark Knightm, ranges from Oblation, to sustain, to TBN, etc etc. This is probably why like 40% of the topics regarding DRK also feature in-depth, complex reworks of the entire job kit, rather than fixing what we currently have, which I have pushed back on as "white noise". Which again, is not something that I'm disparaging on your end, I agree that this version should be tweaked versus reworked. Please understand that the forums didn't always used to be like this, I don't think we weren't nearly as angry or as divided as before, and I really hate how a lot of the discourse has broken down into rage or outright trolling. We're a ship with no captain, I don't even think we have anything to steer the boat right now.

A bit of history for us specifically, something critical broke when we got the Media Tour for this expansion. It feels like the floodgates were removed and a lot of grievances people had just exploded all at once, and we've been dealing with the aftermath ever since October. There is an ever growing, loud, but still tiny contingent of the playerbase that I don't think trusts the developers very much, mainly because of things like the odd interview answers, the ungarmax incident, the baldesion arsenal incident etc etc.

We were explicitly told to use Megathreads for DRK feedback to "get it seen more by the developers" just like how JP does it, even though our previous version of the megathread was deleted. Checking my post history, I was particularly mad after Yoshida said "We don't see any feedback regarding your Blood Weapon, please make topics on the official forums" when the issue was something I and others went to extreme lengths to conclusively prove in multiple threads on the official forums and off of them, it's not an unpopular take. That being said, I would totally understand if you don't want to surround yourself in this environment, it's not very good mentally, it must be worse for the devs, considering the common consensus internet-wide is that feedback from English Forums are never even acknowledged (ie: healers) Like, I've made what I think are in-depth, reasonable feedback posts that aren't just total whining or swipes at the dev(or at least I used to), and still nothing has changed. We don't really have anything to be happy about on the support role forums, because they keep removing things people like and replacing them with things people don't like on top of just constant arguing with each other or a general attitude of malaise.

I know there is no grand DRK conspiracy, I know the developers are not being actively malicious. But that's not my point. My point is that we've essentially lost the plot, we're in a really unfavorable situation, and I don't know exactly who is at fault, maybe it's no one and it's just the circumstances of the situation. I don't know why they reworked DRK so many times. I don't know why they do the things they do. Did somethings just fall through the cracks in the heat of development? Are there any plans to get us out of this miserable state? I don't know, and it drives me up the wall.

...But whether that's a bad thing or not, that's not set in stone. Because that "golden standard" is not really in the essence of FFXIV.

First of all, the scenario you described normally only tends to happen either when the supertank is at least a reasonably skilled player, or when the bored healer is at least a reasonably skilled healer. More likely when both are skilled.
...Plus, the DPSs won't really complain that they're getting a third or even a fourth buddy to push big numbers.

...In the real world, you'll see a lot of sprouts, or in-learning players, or people playing with a new class, or people who aren't really skilled but still like the game.

And when rest of the party wipes, and a talented tank, or a talented Red Mage, or a talented Sage stands their ground and solo's the boss, that's... awesome! That sparks an awesome social moment, they exchange a few compliments, somebody gets triple commendations, and they get a good story to tell.

This, to me, is far more important than balancing the trinity. I don't care about numbers if the alternative brings a more fun and relevant experience to more people.

And to wrap it up, you also kinda misjudged me when you put us in a binary of "you're hardcore, I'm pug-casual". This is never a binary, but a spectrum.

I'm an omniclass player (currently working on my last 2 classes to lvl90); I just happen to like tanking more, and DRK is my favorite (in gameplay and story). I'm also an omnicrafter and omnigatherer, who crafts her own gear. I play Savage raids when it fancies me, and I play Normal raids blind day one to figure out the mechanics. I play PvP. I decorate my house. I obsess for HOURS on what glams I'm gonna wear at any given day.

It would be unfair to call me a "casual" player. But I'm not your typical "parsing every fight, polishing every rotation, optimizing all damage, hardcore progression raider". And this kind of player is proportionally far less common than a lot of people seem to think.

And again. I'm not telling you, nor anyone, to stop voicing your wishes. Just do so with the knowledge that things aren't as simple, or as malicious, as some seem to think it is.

I have to split this up in two parts.

A few weeks ago, my and random PLD duo'd P2N, no one's first time or anything. The entire team died at 50%, after several previous wipes, me and PLD pretty much just looked at each other and silently agreed "Yeah we're doing this on our own.". While some parts of the team were cheering us own, there were two people who said we were "interrupting their play experience" by not wiping and allowing them to try for the 5th? time. Part of me said," Ha! Shouldn't have died to mechanics then!" but thinking about it, "Yeah, we kinda did just rip the agency away from them and killed it on our own." I certainly enjoyed my time killing the boss, but does my play experience override another person's who doesn't want to be dead for twenty minutes because I had the fortune of tank privilege on that raidwide that killed everyone else? It certainly wasn't awesome for those people, they were really angry about it. And I don't know how I feel about it in general, this is certainly something that I need to develop my feelings on, it's a constantly evolving issue that I don't think I'm going to get true handle on until I see if I can solo P1N on DRK and stew on it for awhile.

Next, this one is going to be a bit personal. I have to seriously apologize, I certainly did misjudge you and put you in a camp that is trivializing and honestly, marginalizing how important what the normal player does. After such much playtime, significantly over a year of actual time, at least 3/5ths of that being on DRK specifically, I have straight up forgotten what's like a have a normal relationship with DRK or FFXIV at large. There are so many players online, both in-game, forums, discord communities, that have been polarized pretty heavily. I got sick of dealing with a lot of certain things in the game, so people said," Stop talking in game, go make your own group, go play amongst your own kind, and stay away from us." So I did, and have been in this odd bubble of semi-closed communities for a long time that as someone has said to me on this forum previously "means you have no idea what it's like to be an ordinary player, nevermind a DRK player anymore."

I am mistaken. I've overestimated my own capabilities and diminished others, when I really need to practice more humility and objectivity in my discussions. In a past post, I said "No matter what someone's experience in FFXIV is, as long as their statements are backed up by verified facts or at least, solid logic, it shouldn't matter what that person says, it has just as much merit as mine." In this light, it makes my previous post quite hypocritical in retrospect, and I really apologize for that, even if I didn't mean any offense by it for the sake of proving an example. Seriously, this is a huge misstep of wording on my part, it's never been binary, and I should know better. You were accurate in saying it was unfair.

I know that when I peel away the layers of the graphs and the spreadsheets, I'm really just a player who wants to enjoy the gameplay of my job, not be a burden to my team, and experience the ride of learning in progression environments. I love the lore of DRK, I love the aesthetic, I love the feel of the job when things actually work properly, and my history and experiences I've had with the job I could write a book in, both in raid and more casual content. If I cared about damage so much, why didn't I switch to WAR in SB, or GNB in ShB? Could I have played Endwalker on any job but the one I've spent years being very intimate with? It's that burning passion for DRK, and to be totally transparent with you, "Odinel the hardcore raider" and Odinel the FFXIV enjoyer" have been at complete odds for almost the entire Endwalker release so far. I've literally asked myself, " How can you be enjoying Endwalker when your main job is in this state? Why are you leveling alts and doing random stuff when the DRK playerbase is in open revolt? Join them, traitor!" The thing that I appreciate the most about your posts is that you have a straightforward through-line with everything you've been saying, but meanwhile, I'm horrifically conflicted in more than one way with FFXIV.

In a way, I'm wondering if you have the right idea with leaving the forums. I don't dislike the game, or the developers, but there's a part of me that is harboring significant irrational, emotional resentment. Not anger, really, not complete dissatisfaction, but a deep resentment for the current situation, and how it's been handled. It's not reasonable, but it's what I'm feeling. Looking back on my post history, it's distressing to see how unhappy I sound in my own posts, and for that unhappiness to be reflected or amplified by my peers. So, I once again grapple with uncomfortable questions. Is this valid? Is what I'm thinking justified? Am I being too stubborn or unfair? Do I need to just touch grass? Are I and the community at large seriously off-base? Are the developers off-base and out of touch? Am I allowed to feel the way I do? Is that even appropriate when it's not something I had a hand in personally developing, even more so for something as minor as a job in an MMO? Is there even a point to what I'm writing?

I've spent a long time reading and digesting over your post, and trying to come up with answers for myself, and I'm not getting a whole lot of them. So I think you've actually given me a ton of things to think about, a lot more than I really gave to your topic, and I have to thank you for that, at a minimum.

Gah, I just want my job worked on. I know it probably is. I'm so tired, man. I know this is rambly, I'm in a rush right now, sorry!

PS: If you don't mind doxing yourself, what game did you develop? Now that the tier is finished, I've been going through my backlog, and I'd probably buy your game, my tastes are pretty varied, and it's so rare that I get to talk to an actual developer of anything 1:1 versus me and a sea of others in an official space.

[DoppelShifter]

Yay, another one. You know rare this is, that I get to engage with someone somewhat properly on the forums? Everyone at each other's throats all the time, I can't ever get a good conversation.

Indeed, which is why I tend to avoid official forums in general. I learned my lesson with the Elite Dangerous forums years ago.

As far as I know, Yoshida is now on the board of directors on top of being producer for the next mainline, and essentially has a blank check for FFXIV (within reason) now. [Snip snip]

Oh, I know about Yoshi-P being in the board has been a while, which is what I believe is still keeping FFXIV mostly protected from the kind of predatory monetization Square Enix slaps everywhere else (now including NFTs apparently).

I mean, why do you think most of FFXIV's extra recurring revenue, aside from subs, comes from in-game cosmetics and lifestyle items that vary from plushies to luxury watches to electric guitars, and all of them sell like water in the Sahara? Heck, we even got the second edition of an Eorzean cooking book! (and I really want the whole collection) All of that without having to resort to lootboxes, battle passes, NFTs or other more scummy monetization methods.

Yoshida not only has an incredible talent as a producer, but he assembled a team of amazing specialists, and even a business management team that knows what they're doing. This is almost unprecedented in modern games industry. And they're doing this while understaffed, with lots of people working remotely, and without enough server equipment to deal with basic necessities; not to mention the database structure from 1.0 that still plagues the game's back-end to this day.

Yoshida is one of the few game producers in large scale games (potentially alongside folks like Yoko Taro, Hidetaka Miyazaki and Vince Zampella) that realize that a game has to be an entertainment-drive, cohesive experience for its audience, first and foremost. Otherwise you risk becoming the new Blizzard or BioWare.

This leads to my biggest concern with the feedback now, is that we're inundated with white noise and a complete fracturing of the what the DRK playerbase as a whole wants. [Snip snip]

Yeah, it's like what I said before, we have a vastly diverse player base that wants things that, when put together, often point in opposite directions. And somehow the development team has to not only figure out the right choice, but also prioritize what to figure out first.

...Which brings me to a personal theory of mine. You certainly realized how most classes (except AST) have been vastly streamlined, with many rotations flowing out of each other, things like DoT management being replaced by side-rotations or oGCDs, and most of the "new stuff" from Endwalker being in-place upgrades to things we already have -- I think most classes only got 1 or 2 new buttons at their bars at most, and some even kept the exact same amount.

...This, I believe, is groundwork so they can more easily tweak things together in the future. Remember: when they rebalance a class, they have to cross-check with every other class matchup in the game, and that's an exponentially growing work as more classes get added. So I believe this initial streamlining with 6.0 will be groundwork for easier, more punctual, smaller fixes (like, for example, "Give Blood Weapon stacks and lifesteal"), since the changes are part of a systemic issue, and that needs to be kept to a manageable size. But only time will tell.

As for the confusion and miscommunication you mention, it's like I said, I think a lot of it boils down to having to listen to vastly different "community cores" that communicate and behave in vastly different ways. Japanese megathreads are probably far different from the endless truckloads of salt that we have in the English-speaking ones, for example.

But again, only time will tell.

A few weeks ago, my and random PLD duo'd P2N, no one's first time or anything. [Snip snip]

Oh, believe me, I know there are bad experiences that also come from that same imbalance I mentioned. Though, speaking from my own experiences since A Realm Reborn, I've seen far more positive ones that negatives, and the negatives by their own nature tend to be quickly left behind and forgotten.

What stays in your memory the longest? A heroic last stand celebrated by the entire party, or just one more run where people were salty, ungrateful and annoying?

...Also, I do think this varies vastly between data centers. You're in Primal - Exodus (my very first World, coincidently), and its community is indeed usually more toxic, specially because of the strong focus on raiding and their seething rivalry with Excalibur and the even more toxic Behemoth.

...I, on the other hand, now play on Aether - Faerie, the unofficial LGBTQ+ World. We do have an active raid community (my FC has an active static), we have a SUPER active economy (them gays love decorating their homes and working on their glams, and I will admit I'm very guilty of both). But above all, the Aether data center seems to be more wholesome overall. We have far more duty runs where the players chat while mowing through dungeons. We joke and meme so much during Praetorium. We give stuff for free for Sprouts in Limsa's main plaza. Paladins and Red Mages help newbie Healers by using Clemency/Vercure to give some assistance. And overall... it feels like a lot of Aether players have "fun for everyone" as one of their core values; something I definitely didn't experience that often back when I was on Primal.

...It's not always paradise, of course. Trolls and asshats exist everywhere. But the positive experiences are far more common (and memorable) than the bad ones. And the community fosters that.

Next, this one is going to be a bit personal. I have to seriously apologize, I certainly did misjudge you and put you in a camp that is trivializing and honestly, marginalizing how important what the normal player does.

Oh, I'm far from being a "normal" player XD
I'm quite an odd gal when compared to the typical Eorzean dweller.

I'm an academic who uses FFXIV both for fun and as a tool of academic study, I occasionally give classes in Game Design (and used FFXIV's development cycle as theme and example in quite a few occasions) and I love to fiddle with every system in the game; sometimes I will obsess over something, sometimes I'll take it in a very casual manner, but my main takeaway in how I see FFXIV is "understand that this is a diverse game, with diverse players, and it's important to have enough empathy to realize that different people play differently".

...I guess that comes more easily to a professor and game designer than to the usual gamer, but it is a skill that I do believe absolutely every MMO player should develop at least just a little.

And by what you said, you do seem to be on the right track. I hold no grudge, I see no malice, all's forgiven.

I am mistaken. I've overestimated my own capabilities and diminished others, when I really need to practice more humility and objectivity in my discussions. [Snip snip]

An enormous slice of the hardcore raiding community is guilty of this and much more, to be honest. A lot of them seem to think FFXIV is as raid-focused as some other MMOs (like WoW, that basically funnels people into raiding as the true endgame), when in fact the "FFXIV endgame" doesn't have a single answer, and that's by design. You wanna be a fashion designer, a home decorator, an omnicrafter, wanna collect all mounts, get every single fish in the game, or... well, get World First in a raid? The choice is yours. But the important thing is that the devs need to maintain the existence of that choice. And that comes with some sacrifices and prioritizing that often frustrate the hardcore raiders.

Essentially the hardcore raiders pigeonhole themselves into insular communities that only care about their extremely limited slice of the game, to the detriment of all others. And guess what's the kind of player that will come to the forums to complain the most? XD

As for your own questions about how you see the forums and your place in the community, well... that's your own journey to trail. But keep an open mind, cultivate empathy, and you'll probably see far more than you used to. And then you'll find a path that makes you happier in this game.

PS: If you don't mind doxing yourself, what game did you develop? Now that the tier is finished, I've been going through my backlog, and I'd probably buy your game, my tastes are pretty varied, and it's so rare that I get to talk to an actual developer of anything 1:1 versus me and a sea of others in an official space.

Well, the answer is kinda disappointing: ...you can't buy the games XD

My only games that were published in actual digital storefronts were educational games made for a national project to enrich student learning (thus the "tens-to-hundreds of thousands of players" I mentioned, since the games were intended to be used in public schools nation-wide), and my team was assembled with the specific goal of "making actual games, not bullshit edugames that look like shit from the 90's". I was dead-serious in following that goal, but sadly my bosses had no idea what a proper game is (I think of games as an "experience" rather than "ooo, buttons you can play for a score"), so you can imagine my frustration during that contract (though I did accomplish my goal, at least).

...And also, while the games are available for free (it was a contract to supply games accessible to high-school students in public schools, after all), they're not available in English and potentially region-locked in the stores, so I'm not sure you'd be able to access them. I'm not even sure I'm properly credited as producer for the ones that got published after I was fired (for "the sake of my own mental health", they said with a straight face).

My other games are experimental, short games made during Game Jams (being producer and main game designer in a team of 20 making a 3D split-screen game in just 48 hours was probably the second hardest challenge I had in all my gamedev carreer), and also for fun on my own during some moments of my life. I'm still (eternally) working on hosting them somewhere, but that's sadly still far from ready XD

...All other games I worked one were inside academic projects, and thus not available to the public (something-something Sharlayan bureaucracy). Sorry XD

Anywho, I hope this answers your questions XD

[DoppelShifter]

For anyone who skipped the latest live letter, yes, they are going to rework Living Dead and Blood Weapon <3

We just don't know when specifically, but there will be further info in future patch-specific live letters.

[Veranolth]

For anyone who skipped the latest live letter, yes, they are going to rework Living Dead and Blood Weapon <3

We just don't know when specifically, but there will be further info in future patch-specific live letters.

Honestly really nice that they'll rework those 2 skills.

[Adriclyon]

I know the job has plenty of other problems, but these are literally the only two I even remotely care about. Especially Blood Weapon; I play on the east coast on console and it is actually impossible for me to consistently hit 5 GCDs into that cursed skill.