Public Discussion: Community Feedback - Is it being heard?

[Shougun]

I somehow viciously doubt you predicted the removal of Kaiten or the fact that the devs would be so careless as to make a massive change to any job in the middle of the patch cycle, but maybe that's just me. First thing to come to mind. And even if you could predict it: Okay? Good for you? I'm sure this proves much.



HisShadow, is that you again? How's this alt treating you?

I didn't lol, but I'm not sure what kind of point you're making to me specifically.

I said I feel they've listened to me, specifically, and other feedback from others I've seen, that or I have made a lot of specific guesses that came about later. Some I can easily imagine are coincidence, but I feel too many to all be as such.

I've never made any feedback for Kaiten.... Is your point they don't listen to feedback because of those things you listed?

[Dyvid]

snip

While I do know they have listened but also implemented players suggestion in the past, I also feel success can lead to arrogance. Perhaps it's not arrogance but ignorance though. When healers say they want to DPS, it's more along the lines they are bored and want to do something else than cast Heal 1 and Heal 2.

If they would just communicate with the players either with direct contact or through survey, it would mean they could get the heart of many issues. Instead we get half arse attempts at trying to make players happy and ends up making matters worse.

[Avenger]

While I do know they have listened but also implemented players suggestion in the past, I also feel success can lead to arrogance. Perhaps it's not arrogance but ignorance though. When healers say they want to DPS, it's more along the lines they are bored and want to do something else than cast Heal 1 and Heal 2.

If they would just communicate with the players either with direct contact or through survey, it would mean they could get the heart of many issues. Instead we get half arse attempts at trying to make players happy and ends up making matters worse.

Off the top of my head I can think of many interactions where players requested things and SE responded in some way. This may not be 100% correct but I think it captures the flavor of what I am trying to say:

Players asked for DPS meter. Yoshi-p initially said it would be doable via an eventual client-side add-on mechanism, but ultimately decided in favor of no DPS meters ever, citing bullying concerns.
Players asked for BLU. SE delivered limited job (showing their vision for BLU is very different from FFXI's.)
Players asked for full BLU job like FFXI. SE said nope, limited job. (They liked a BLU that could learn tons of skills and become unbalanced vs. standard jobs.)
Players asked for viera. SE delivered limited races of f viera and m hrothgar and said "no more races" citing ongoing/multiplicative resource development cost/effort.
Players asked for viera and hrothgar headgear. SE said no but then delivered some headgear, apparently via an internal skunkworks project.
[... many additional examples deleted for brevity]

The examples indicate (to me at least) that SE often seems to hear player requests, but doesn't necessarily respond with the exact action that players are requesting (or demanding), and they usually have some rationale for doing so. That doesn't seem unreasonable. It also doesn't seem unreasonable for some players to comment if the response isn't what they wanted (even if it is what they are getting for now) or if they do not find the rationale compelling. However, I think they could perhaps publish a FAQ on some of these issues explaining the rationale for each decision. And as I mentioned I like the idea of periodic/monthly Q&A managed by the regional community teams to augment the limited number of questions which can fit into a producer live letter.

[Dyvid]

Off the top of my head I can think of many interactions where players requested things and SE responded in some way. This may not be 100% correct but I think it captures the flavor of what I am trying to say:

Players asked for DPS meter. Yoshi-p initially said it would be doable via an eventual client-side add-on mechanism, but ultimately decided in favor of no DPS meters ever, citing bullying concerns.
Players asked for BLU. SE delivered limited job (showing their vision for BLU is very different from FFXI's.)
Players asked for full BLU job like FFXI. SE said nope, limited job. (They liked a BLU that could learn tons of skills and become unbalanced vs. standard jobs.)
Players asked for viera. SE delivered limited races of f viera and m hrothgar and said "no more races" citing ongoing/multiplicative resource development cost/effort.
Players asked for viera and hrothgar headgear. SE said no but then delivered some headgear, apparently via an internal skunkworks project.
[... many additional examples deleted for brevity]

The examples indicate (to me at least) that SE often seems to hear player requests, but doesn't necessarily respond with the exact action that players are requesting (or demanding), and they usually have some rationale for doing so. That doesn't seem unreasonable. It also doesn't seem unreasonable for some players to comment if the response isn't what they wanted (even if it is what they are getting for now) or if they do not find the rationale compelling. However, I think they could perhaps publish a FAQ on some of these issues explaining the rationale for each decision. And as I mentioned I like the idea of periodic/monthly Q&A managed by the regional community teams to augment the limited number of questions which can fit into a producer live letter.

Well as an example to what I'm talk about let take the Viera Hrothgar headgear issue. If SE came and talk to us we could discuss our issues and maybe come to a compromise like job gear and raid headwear. But were aren't even close because as you said; SE is no and we are yes.

Like you, I feel we need some quarterly feedback and maybe end of patch survey to the Devs can gauge what their player base is feeling in terms of current issues. That's not a lot to ask considering we (The FFXIV Customers) are the ones keeping Square Enix profit margins up.

[Rolder50]

Well as an example to what I'm talk about let take the Viera Hrothgar headgear issue. If SE came and talk to us we could discuss our issues and maybe come to a compromise like job gear and raid headwear. But were aren't even close because as you said; SE is no and we are yes.

Like you, I feel we need some quarterly feedback and maybe end of patch survey to the Devs can gauge what their player base is feeling in terms of current issues. That's not a lot to ask considering we (The FFXIV Customers) are the ones keeping Square Enix profit margins up.

For viera/hroth headgear, the truly astonishing thing is that they release brand new head pieces that STILL don't work on them. I can understand, begrudgingly, the issue fixing old gear, but brand new stuff made after viera were put in? Come on now.

[KizuyaKatogami]

With Sage being added that has a bit more combat focus

I’m not sure where people get this from. Sage has quite literally the same amount of dps abilities as ast. Just because they can heal at the same time they dps doesn’t mean they’re more combat focused. Otherwise i guess sch is more combat focused because of eos. They tell us every expansion healers will heal more and it’s never true. They said it in ShB, it wasn’t true. They said it in this expansion. and it wasn’t true in fact it was actually far worse because tanks now have way more mitigation, self healing, and almost every dps job now has either multiple mitigation tools and heals. Let me put it this way. How would all you dps and tank players feel if for 90% of a fight all you could do is press 1. Rdm you spam jolt. Blm you spam nothing but fire. Y’all would be in shambles. People are already shitting on the devs just for the removal of Kaiten. Meanwhile healers only have 1 button to press for 90% of a fight. And it’s been this way for 4+ years now.

[Shougun]

I’m not sure where people get this from. Sage has quite literally the same amount of dps abilities as ast. Just because they can heal at the same time they dps doesn’t mean they’re more combat focused. Otherwise i guess sch is more combat focused because of eos. They tell us every expansion healers will heal more and it’s never true. They said it in ShB, it wasn’t true. They said it in this expansion. and it wasn’t true in fact it was actually far worse because tanks now have way more mitigation, self healing, and almost every dps job now has either multiple mitigation tools and heals. Let me put it this way. How would all you dps and tank players feel if for 90% of a fight all you could do is press 1. Rdm you spam jolt. Blm you spam nothing but fire. Y’all would be in shambles. People are already shitting on the devs just for the removal of Kaiten. Meanwhile healers only have 1 button to press for 90% of a fight. And it’s been this way for 4+ years now.

My impression of playing it at least. Also I do agree there is a weird problem with healers, that wasn't really fixed in EW. As I said in my post my thoughts were the first few weeks when everyone is under synced it's mostly fine but as everyone makes healer's role less relevant it's not a good situation. Especially since like if people get more damage or tank better they do their role better but all that directly impacts healer being less important. My suggestions ranged from new gearing systems (changing defense growth / etc), more support skills, making one of the healers more aggressive, etc.

For me, as someone who doesn't really live to play a healer role, I like being crazy simple white mage cause I feel it's easy to be good lol (no one dies, you deal damage easily).. but for those who live for the role and are also fairly skilled (bad healers in your group can still cause trouble in the game, they're not entirely pointless- just easily made pointless by someone who is half decent at being a healer), I /can/ see how they might not be feeling like they're not living in paradise.

Noted the sentiment enough I made a sort of eldritch blood mage healer that would ideally have mostly offensive moves (one of which was attacking the enemy to heal your ally.... so again another moment where they might have taken feedback). Of course in my mind most of the kit would have been offensive. I didn't count the sage skills so I apologize if it's technically not the case, but given the build of the job I did feel it was more offensive / interactive (only playing it slightly), than say WHM which is my go to "I can do that, whatever that was I can do that" (and low stress, because it feels really straight forward and lax).

[Ralphe2449]

Raiders and high end players ALWAYS whine that their feedback isnt heard, even in WoW where the game literally caters to them and treats casuals as 4th class citizens they still whine.

That often happens because due to clearing high end content they feel their opinion has more value and get mad when the devs ignore them to focus on casual and solo content aka the people who are paying the bills.

WoW didnt fail because it didnt listen to its high end raiders, it failed cause it kept treating its casual player base worse and worse with Shadowlands being the epitome of treating casuals like 4th class citizens and giving them trash gear for reward and barely any casual and solo content, FF14 is thankfully not doing the same mistake and Yoshi P. even said he ll try focus more on solo casual players thankfully.

If you want a hardcore high end raiding game go play wow, dont try to ruin this game for casuals

[Hysorn]

Sometimes, I mean, the Living Dead changes basically included every single point people wanted out of it even if it took a long time. Other times however, it feels like they just get a bit tone deaf and go the WoW dev team route of "We understand the concern but we think our way works better" which is a 50/50 on whether it is actually better.

[Skiros]

Raiders and high end players ALWAYS whine that their feedback isnt heard, even in WoW where the game literally caters to them and treats casuals as 4th class citizens they still whine.

That often happens because due to clearing high end content they feel their opinion has more value and get mad when the devs ignore them to focus on casual and solo content aka the people who are paying the bills.

WoW didnt fail because it didnt listen to its high end raiders, it failed cause it kept treating its casual player base worse and worse with Shadowlands being the epitome of treating casuals like 4th class citizens and giving them trash gear for reward and barely any casual and solo content, FF14 is thankfully not doing the same mistake and Yoshi P. even said he ll try focus more on solo casual players thankfully.

If you want a hardcore high end raiding game go play wow, dont try to ruin this game for casuals

Sorry didn't realize Hrothgar hairstyles, personal housing, fleshed out Island Sanctuary, better anti-cheat measures are all hardcore feedback.