The Devs Listen to Us

[Striker44]

The devs absolutely do listen. What throws people off, though, is that they listen to everyone and everything, not just the select few of us that post on the forums. They "listen" to commentary on a wide variety of social media, they "listen" to subscriptions, and perhaps most notably, they "listen" to engagement metrics they have on their end which shows what people are doing (or not doing) in the game.

For example, say I didn't like the Bicolor Gemstones grind associated with FATEs. So I come on this forum and make a post calling it trash. I get a couple dozen likes and a few other posters agreeing with me. The next expansion? Yep, another bicolor gemstone grind, so I go whining the devs "obviously" didn't listen to us and our little echo chamber here. Meanwhile, on their end, the dev team sees that a sizable portion of the playerbase actively completed the grind in both ShB and EW and actively uses the rewards from it. Perhaps that represents a few tens of thousand people. Put in that perspective, suddenly my whining that the twenty or so of us here on the forum didn't get our way looks like what it is - immature whining.

Now, if people didn't engage with the bicolor gemstone grind and it fell short of their goals on engagement, then it makes sense for them to do detailed follow-up and see what specific complaints people might have (is the grind too long, are the rewards not enticing enough, is the general idea itself just a non-starter, etc.) to see what changes might be in order.

But overall, it's just incredibly short-sighted to think the minuscule few of us on the forums here are representative of anything. Take for example the poster right above me with comments like:

"Healers are boring and they haven't changed for multiple expansions."

"2 minute meta is boring and they keep playing into it."

"Every relic step is tomestones."

And so on. Most of the comments are straight-up one person's opinions, nothing more, and others that are actually facts (e.g. tomestones) may be seen as a good thing by more people than not. Personally, I could turn most of those statements around and point out that I personally find healing enjoyable, I'm really liking the Variant Dungeons, I appreciate the relic this expansion just being tomestones, and I couldn't care less about housing or the 2-minute meta. That likewise wouldn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, because it's just one other person's opinion.

We need to step back and realize that we here on the forums are effectively a single grain of sand on an enormous beach. The dev team looks at the whole beach, not just the one grain of sand, when they make decisions.

[Velvet_Lunarfang]

The devs absolutely do listen. What throws people off, though, is that they listen to everyone and everything, not just the select few of us that post on the forums. They "listen" to commentary on a wide variety of social media, they "listen" to subscriptions, and perhaps most notably, they "listen" to engagement metrics they have on their end which shows what people are doing (or not doing) in the game.

For example, say I didn't like the Bicolor Gemstones grind associated with FATEs. So I come on this forum and make a post calling it trash. I get a couple dozen likes and a few other posters agreeing with me. The next expansion? Yep, another bicolor gemstone grind, so I go whining the devs "obviously" didn't listen to us and our little echo chamber here. Meanwhile, on their end, the dev team sees that a sizable portion of the playerbase actively completed the grind in both ShB and EW and actively uses the rewards from it. Perhaps that represents a few tens of thousand people. Put in that perspective, suddenly my whining that the twenty or so of us here on the forum didn't get our way looks like what it is - immature whining.

Now, if people didn't engage with the bicolor gemstone grind and it fell short of their goals on engagement, then it makes sense for them to do detailed follow-up and see what specific complaints people might have (is the grind too long, are the rewards not enticing enough, is the general idea itself just a non-starter, etc.) to see what changes might be in order.

But overall, it's just incredibly short-sighted to think the minuscule few of us on the forums here are representative of anything. Take for example the poster right above me with comments like:

"Healers are boring and they haven't changed for multiple expansions."

"2 minute meta is boring and they keep playing into it."

"Every relic step is tomestones."

And so on. Most of the comments are straight-up one person's opinions, nothing more, and others that are actually facts (e.g. tomestones) may be seen as a good thing by more people than not. Personally, I could turn most of those statements around and point out that I personally find healing enjoyable, I'm really liking the Variant Dungeons, I appreciate the relic this expansion just being tomestones, and I couldn't care less about housing or the 2-minute meta. That likewise wouldn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, because it's just one other person's opinion.

We need to step back and realize that we here on the forums are effectively a single grain of sand on an enormous beach. The dev team looks at the whole beach, not just the one grain of sand, when they make decisions.

I hate the variant dungeons because there isn't any good rewards for it afterwards. The devs don't listen because people complained about it and rightly so.

[vetch]

stuff

Basing decisions off of KPIs isn't a good thing, it's why nostalgic jobs like ever-popular white mage receive less dev attention compared to other jobs with less cachet unless some big streamer makes them a pet project.

It's not a coincidence that the jobs actually mained by people inside the dev team at a high level are better designed. It's not because KPIs have indicated that those jobs just need to be designed better, coincidentally; it's because considering feedback from job veterans is actually really important.

[AwesomeJr44]

The devs absolutely do listen.

"Healers are boring and they haven't changed for multiple expansions."

"2 minute meta is boring and they keep playing into it."

"Every relic step is tomestones."

All of these complaints are very common and hardly a 'single grain of sand', and yet Yoshi P seems surprised whenever one is finally brought up at a live event, despite those complaints existing for years by then. What that tells me is that they are not listening.

[Striker44]

All of these complaints are very common and hardly a 'single grain of sand', and yet Yoshi P seems surprised whenever one is finally brought up at a live event, despite those complaints existing for years by then. What that tells me is that they are not listening.

It might hurt some of our fragile egos, but yes, they really are just grains of sand. This game's playerbase varies between several hundreds of thousands of players up to near 2 million as patch cycles go, and continues growing with each successive expansion (with EW having the highest population to date). Simple reality - you can take any position on any point, and you will find people somewhere that adhere to it. That doesn't make them a significant portion of the population to warrant anything.

Case in point with healers - I readily find I have instant queues with tanks, but ~1 minute queues w/ healers. What does this tell us? More people are queuing as healers than as tanks. So, more than enough people are either straight-up enjoying healing, or at least find it sufficiently good enough that they're actively choosing to play it. If anything, it suggests tanks might warrant some kind of tweaks to make them as appealing as healers are now. Again, however we much we might desperately want the world to agree with us, the reality is that compared to the size of the playerbase, you need a truly enormous number of people to actually represent anything significant. The devs listen - and see that healers are okay right now.

[AwesomeJr44]

It might hurt some of our fragile egos, but yes, they really are just grains of sand.

You're lying to yourself if you think that's even remotely true for some of the examples of complaints you brought up.

[Koros]

It might hurt some of our fragile egos

Yes we're all aware of your ego and your minority opinions

[Kes13a]

Yes we're all aware of your ego and your minority opinions

as we all are of yours ^^

personally, if I was a Dev, why would I, as a japanese speaker come to the English forums? I wouldnt.

thats why if we are going to place blame anywhere, we should blame the community reps, because THATS THEIR ACTUAL JOB!

if the english forums have no community reps, thats on SE to fix. its not, and should never be on the developers themselves to visit the forums. I doubt they have the bandwidth...

[Supersnow845]

It might hurt some of our fragile egos, but yes, they really are just grains of sand. This game's playerbase varies between several hundreds of thousands of players up to near 2 million as patch cycles go, and continues growing with each successive expansion (with EW having the highest population to date). Simple reality - you can take any position on any point, and you will find people somewhere that adhere to it. That doesn't make them a significant portion of the population to warrant anything.

Case in point with healers - I readily find I have instant queues with tanks, but ~1 minute queues w/ healers. What does this tell us? More people are queuing as healers than as tanks. So, more than enough people are either straight-up enjoying healing, or at least find it sufficiently good enough that they're actively choosing to play it. If anything, it suggests tanks might warrant some kind of tweaks to make them as appealing as healers are now. Again, however we much we might desperately want the world to agree with us, the reality is that compared to the size of the playerbase, you need a truly enormous number of people to actually represent anything significant. The devs listen - and see that healers are okay right now.

Let’s ignore that every metric of job satisfaction and level of play relative to the other jobs crashed when they changed healers in ShB and even with a new job this expansion that was billed as being build for modern healing rather than lobotomising an old job healers still are overall the least played job and most often the ones with the shortest queues