Should SE implement a way to poll the playerbase?

[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