Should SE implement a way to poll the playerbase?

[cjbeagle]

In the aftermath of the 6.1 samurai changes, I got to thinking about their feedback paths and was wondering if simply polling might not be better than forums and month-later engagement metrics.

Not everyone bothers with the forums, and as much as I hate the 6.1 samurai changes, I have to admit that there's a participation bias when it comes to forum feedback.

It seems to me that simply polling the playerbase would give a better view of player sentiment compared to the forums in terms of participation bias, sample size, and easily-quantifiable results, and would likewise be incomparably faster than waiting for engagement metrics.

Any polling done could be filtered if they wanted, so it wouldn't be spamming everyone with polls - only hitting people actually affected by the topics in question - ie for the samurai changes, only players who have samurai unlocked, or perhaps only players who have samurai at 90, or maybe only players who have cleared the current raid content as samurai, etc.

What do you guys think? Good idea? Too intrusive? Other ideas?

[YukiB]

I don't trust the average FFXIV player to know what's a good or bad idea any more than I trust the current dev team, honestly.

[MicahZerrshia]

I think SE has made it pretty clear over the past 20 years of running mmos, they only really care what we say when they ignore everything we have already said and have to completely reboot their game. Many of the 1.x problems could have been fixed if they listened to those of us who tested it.

They go purely on numbers, like how they bragged about how many ppl were doing Eureka, even though the majority really seemed to hate it, but did it anyway since that was the only way to get a relic. To the point they doubled down on the system and made Bozja. And to boot both Eureka and Bozja were nothing but fate farms and the fate farm portions of the ARR and HW relics were the most hated part, still are in many cases. So, a poll in any form would be a pointless waste of time for us, and completely ignored by them unless they are losing enough money because of it.

TLDR: SE simply does not care unless it impacts them enough financially

edit: I want to point out that Yoshida acknowledged the hate toward the fate farming portion of the ARR and HW relics and promised to make adjustments accordingly and not to rely on fates so heavily going forward. So, you could imagine our shock when the next two relics were almost nothing but fate farms. It really makes you stop and wonder.

[cjbeagle]

I don't trust the average FFXIV player to know what's a good or bad idea any more than I trust the current dev team, honestly.

Touché - maybe the smaller sample size and participation bias that the forums feature is a good thing in this case.

[cjbeagle]

I think SE has made it pretty clear over the past 20 years of running mmos, they only really care what we say when they ignore everything we have already said and have to completely reboot their game. Many of the 1.x problems could have been fixed if they listened to those of us who tested it.

They go purely on numbers, like how they bragged about how many ppl were doing Eureka, even though the majority really seemed to hate it, but did it anyway since that was the only way to get a relic. To the point they doubled down on the system and made Bozja. And to boot both Eureka and Bozja were nothing but fate farms and the fate farm portions of the ARR and HW relics were the most hated part, still are in many cases. So, a poll in any form would be a pointless waste of time for us, and completely ignored by them unless they are losing enough money because of it.

TLDR: SE simply does not care unless it impacts them enough financially

That's really disheartening to hear - I'm relatively new to the game, so I'm not aware of the dev team's history with the playerbase - thank you for the insight. >_<

[HyoMinPark]

Generally, I think the idea of a playerbase poll with regards to job changes is a good idea. However, I wonder just what kind of results you’d actually get—and how would you filter out the more meaningful data from the data that isn’t as meaningful. I’m of the opinion that people discussing job changes need to have some level of “qualification” in order to discuss the changes and provide good constructive criticisms and feedback—and not everyone meets these kind of “qualifications”.

An example of someone “qualified” to speak on the SAM changes (to use the hot topic of 6.1 as an example), would be someone who mains the job and who plays it at (at least) an above average skill level. The latter qualification would imply that they have a deeper than surface-level knowledge of the job and understand it—someone like me, who plays SAM very infrequently and very casually, would not have the same kind of understanding needed to provide good feedback and criticisms. Another example would be someone who does not play healers cannot definitively give feedback on the state of the role, given that they do not play the role.


I’m putting a disclaimer in here that I don’t think one needs to be a 99th/100th percentile parse-level SAM in order to provide decent feedback. I just think that the person needs to actually play the job, play it regularly, and understand the way the kit functions and interacts. This goes for any job in any role. I don’t think that everyone is qualified to speak objectively and factually on every jobs’ changes. I know I’m not. I don’t play tanks or melee or casters, so I generally don’t join discussions for them, or try to provide feedback. My feedback would mean less than a tank main’s or a caster main’s or a melee main’s feedback.

That's really disheartening to hear - I'm relatively new to the game, so I'm not aware of the dev team's history with the playerbase - thank you for the insight. >_<

Sadly, Micah does have the right of it—especially when it comes to job changes.

In my opinion, the issue stems from the developers having a specific “vision” for jobs in this game, but that “vision” directly clashes with the playerbase and how they actually play the job. You see this a lot with the healer role: the developers seem to design healers around the idea that most healers either wait for damage or they primarily GCD heal when healing in this game is actually very much on the offensive. We don’t wait for damage, GCD heals are a last resort, and we primarily heal with our off-globals versus saving them for emergencies. As a result, healer gameplay is incredibly stale and boring for people who have been playing them for any extended period of time. Take it from someone who has played them for over six years in all kinds of content: I am a gimped damage dealer more than I am a healer.

[Kolsykol]

I don't trust the average FFXIV player to know what's a good or bad idea any more than I trust the current dev team, honestly.

Not to mention that this stuff isn't even relevant to everyone.
If you just casually play the game you could already play without Kaiten, it matters more to someone who's doing harder content.
Dumbing down the game to suit casual players is kinda pointless because it doesn't even matter if they're playing correctly or not, why remove stuff just so that they can do closer numbers to better players but make the game less fun for the better players?

If you're not even doing content where numbers matter then I don't think it's a good idea to let you control how Jobs are balanced and how they play.
You could already just adapt how you play regardless because it doesn't matter, all it really does is enforce it on everyone else.

[cjbeagle]

Generally, I think the idea of a playerbase poll with regards to job changes is a good idea. However, I wonder just what kind of results you’d actually get—and how would you filter out the more meaningful data from the data that isn’t as meaningful. I’m of the opinion that people discussing job changes need to have some level of “qualification” in order to discuss the changes and provide good constructive criticisms and feedback—and not everyone meets these kind of “qualifications”.

An example of someone “qualified” to speak on the SAM changes (to use the hot topic of 6.1 as an example), would be someone who mains the job and who plays it at (at least) an above average skill level. The latter qualification would imply that they have a deeper than surface-level knowledge of the job and understand it—someone like me, who plays SAM very infrequently and very casually, would not have the same kind of understanding needed to provide good feedback and criticisms. Another example would be someone who does not play healers cannot definitively give feedback on the state of the role, given that they do not play the role.


I’m putting a disclaimer in here that I don’t think one needs to be a 99th/100th percentile parse-level SAM in order to provide decent feedback. I just think that the person needs to actually play the job, play it regularly, and understand the way the kit functions and interacts. This goes for any job in any role. I don’t think that everyone is qualified to speak objectively and factually on every jobs’ changes. I know I’m not. I don’t play tanks or melee or casters, so I generally don’t join discussions for them, or try to provide feedback. My feedback would mean less than a tank main’s or a caster main’s or a melee main’s feedback.

I absolutely agree that filtering would be necessary, but I don't think that's a problem - there are countless ways that you could filter - finding the right one might take some trial and error, but I imagine that a good start would be to only target players who appear to "main" the job in question, so level 90, cleared current content as that job more than any other job, perhaps only 50%+ parsers to ensure they at least know how the job is supposed to function at its core, etc.

Sadly, Micah does have the right of it—especially when it comes to job changes.

In my opinion, the issue stems from the developers having a specific “vision” for jobs in this game, but that “vision” directly clashes with the playerbase and how they actually play the job.

Again, that's very disheartening to hear. It appears that I made the grave mistake of assuming that the devs actually wanted feedback to improve the game. u_u

[HyoMinPark]

Again, that's very disheartening to hear. It appears that I made the grave mistake of assuming that the devs actually wanted feedback to improve the game. u_u

Despite being a very jaded healer and phys ranged player, I still want to believe that the developers genuinely want us to provide feedback. I think it just boils down to does this feedback clash directly with their vision or not. I think the delivery of some feedback could be better handled. Some posts here are very well thought-out and constructive. Others are just pure raging. And while I think everyone succumbs to forum rage at some point in their frustrations over their role being neglected (I’ve certainly had my share of snarky comments about the current state of the healers), I think that also turns off the developers to feedback to an extent. I also do not know the extent of NA/EU feedback that makes it to them compared to JP forum feedback. The general consensus is that they pay more attention to JP than NA/EU—and there is merit to that… For example, DRK’s Living Dead and Blood Weapon have been areas of contention and complaint on the NA forums for years. JP got up in arms about both recently, and now suddenly both are much better than they were with Patch 6.1.

I also think that there’s a significant lack of experience with some jobs/roles when it comes to the developers play testing. This is one of the main issues surrounding healer design: no one on their team really plays/mains a healer, so they likely won’t have a deep understanding of the role the way someone who plays it extensively does. The jobs that have decent representation on the dev team (e.g., BLM) tend to be in much better states than jobs the dev team don’t play. Yoshida is a really good BLM from everything I hear, so he has that “qualification” I’m speaking of, I would think. But he doesn’t have the qualification to speak on healers or tanks or phys ranged, for example, because he doesn’t seem to play them.

[MicahZerrshia]

I also think that there’s a significant lack of experience with some jobs/roles when it comes to the developers play testing. This is one of the main issues surrounding healer design: no one on their team really plays/mains a healer, so they likely won’t have a deep understanding of the role the way someone who plays it extensively does. .

Don't forget when they did have a good healer testing with them, they were replaced for being "too good", which is the testing equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and going la la la la la la la la la