The Devs Listen to Us

[TheNight]

To be honest, I'm not even sure they have a way to look at/dump metrics programmed in...so I'm not even sure they do THAT. Looking back how spaghetti some of the programming is in general...a simple boolean check(true or false) in housing error. (That's only one line and they messed that up) [no testing]. It's hard to believe they do, and if they do, questions if their methodology of retaining said results is also spaghetti and what it actually factors in. (Bots, people just spamming actions for the heck of it, etc {would be some things need to consider})

I would certainly not trust them to gather the data and evaluate the statistics properly.

This is the same team that uses Microsoft Excel to write the story and build their systems on top of .csv instead of SQL.

[Jeeqbit]

To be honest, I'm not even sure they have a way to look at/dump metrics programmed in...so I'm not even sure they do THAT. Looking back how spaghetti some of the programming is in general...a simple boolean check(true or false) in housing error. (That's only one line and they messed that up) [no testing]. It's hard to believe they do, and if they do, questions if their methodology of retaining said results is also spaghetti and what it actually factors in. (Bots, people just spamming actions for the heck of it, etc {would be some things need to consider})

I remember they showed us a lot of random statistics one time, such as how many times someone had said Yoshi-P in the game and how many times the squadron NPCs had squat. They particularly record the battle log across all players so that they can gather mass statistics from it, such as the win and loss rate of each job in PvP.

They tend to have a good idea of how many people main each job even though this game involves switching jobs a lot and how popular content is. They also know how popular FATEs are, because they told us the one in Azim Steppe was popular around the world and they wanted to copy the concept for Shadowbringers.

All I can say about the housing is that they used an external server and I think I remember it being caused by a bottleneck. So the math did not function because it had no data with which to use the math on because the data had not reached the players at the expected time, or something like that.

[Sindele]

This is the same team that uses Microsoft Excel to write the story and build their systems on top of .csv instead of SQL.

If the use of Microsoft Excel for narrative construction (or basically anything else) is a disqualifier for you, I have some bad news for you about most of the video games you've enjoyed throughout your entire life!

(And trust me: when they homebrew tools, it is not any better. Nintendo's internal software solutions made me yearn for Excel.)

[Theodric]

They've never asked me to complete a feedback survey and I've had this character since 2012. I've heard they exist but only for people who quit the game for a long time. I think paying customers should have a voice too.

I've never received one either, though I did get one for the Nier series from Square Enix.

I think they should make an opt in survey on the official site or in-game asking people to leave feedback at least once per expansion. They can hire trusted third party sources to compile that feedback and identify common complaints, concerns and suggestions.

As it stands, they're only really getting feedback from people who are lucky enough to get an e-mail survey and from those who use social media. Yet a lot of players do not necessarily make use of Twitter or Reddit.

[Alleluia]

They do listen. However the feedback they listen to is the small amount that is actually constructive/helpful. Unfortunately the noisy obnoxious minority that think they're the center of the universe make it difficult to find a majority of the feedback that would actually be useful to them. That same minority also results in them not wanting to post responses.

The constant thread gridlock with some variation of "SE/the game sucks and is the worst its ever been", all posted within a day of each other, definitely make *me* not want to really visit General Discussion, a lot of the time.

I've never received one either, though I did get one for the Nier series from Square Enix.

I think they should make an opt in survey on the official site or in-game asking people to leave feedback at least once per expansion. They can hire trusted third party sources to compile that feedback and identify common complaints, concerns and suggestions.

As it stands, they're only really getting feedback from people who are lucky enough to get an e-mail survey and from those who use social media. Yet a lot of players do not necessarily make use of Twitter or Reddit.

This idea has potential. I mean, an opt-in survey will get spammed to high heaven, too, and skew feedback impressions. But I suppose you could limit people to being able to fill out one survey per account every x amount of weeks, or something. And exclude free trials.

Or allow free trials, but make sure its noted that that's what they are to possibly weight the feedback accordingly. My thinking is to avoid people bad faith spamming the surveys like some do these forums. Like someone creating several free trials to complain about endgame content an actual free trial player wouldn't have access to, for example.

Ideally, you'd want to maintain a "one player, one survey" situation to keep the feedback reflecting reality.

[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.

[Katish]

I remember they showed us a lot of random statistics one time, such as how many times someone had said Yoshi-P in the game and how many times the squadron NPCs had squat. They particularly record the battle log across all players so that they can gather mass statistics from it, such as the win and loss rate of each job in PvP.

They tend to have a good idea of how many people main each job even though this game involves switching jobs a lot and how popular content is. They also know how popular FATEs are, because they told us the one in Azim Steppe was popular around the world and they wanted to copy the concept for Shadowbringers.

All I can say about the housing is that they used an external server and I think I remember it being caused by a bottleneck. So the math did not function because it had no data with which to use the math on because the data had not reached the players at the expected time, or something like that.

There should be no math done on a boolean check if there is math, they are doing it wrong lel. They should be checking yes or no, that's it. Assuming houses are objects and players are objects, which they should be...
this will be somewhat pseudo, as this is pseudo will not follow an actual language but should be understandable...:"
bidUI(); <---opens UI..handles which buttons are shown on UI generation...hides bid button if not isBiddableHouse...

void houseConfirm(object house, object player){
//fetch dynamic assigned housing dates and confirm it is a biddable house...would need to declare function that does that
bool houseBool = isBiddableHouse(house);
if(houseBool && buttonPress(specificBidButton)){
onBid(player);
} else {
//fetch arraydata as you should implement a function to manipulate and get the player winner
object winner = houseWinner();
---> Assign houseWinner to a newArray that will check if the player already owns a house...
}

}

object houseWinner(){
//this is where we would fetch our array data so let's assume we made that function...fetch data handles manipulation to read back into a new array;
array myFetchData = manipulateData("...locationOfData");
int rand = newrand(myFetchData.GetSize()-1); <--- this would get an int at random by our array size (i.e the maximum number), as arrays start at zero we would need to -1
object playerWinner = myFetchData[rand];
return playerWinner;
}

void onBid(object player, int date){
//closeDate will need to be the date at which you can bid until, after bidding allow the houses to do nothing
int closeDate;
if(date < closeDate) {array bidArr = arrBid(player);} else {player.ShowMsg("The bidding for this house has passed");}
}

array arrBid(object player) {
array myArray;
//add player object to array if you cannot do that find player name and instead hold strings in an array then find player by that string...
myArray.Add(player);
return myArray;
//convert array to string if you plan to save it to file, you will need to make a separate fetch function
}

this outlines the general idea...the logic might not be 100% sound as I have no way of testing unless I made a program and followed the instructions but again this was done out quickly.
I don't trust the numbers they show if they can't do this much...

[Koros]

There should be no math done on a boolean check if there is math, they are doing it wrong lel. They should be checking yes or no, that's it. Assuming houses are objects and players are objects, which they should be...
this will be somewhat pseudo, as this is pseudo will not follow an actual language but should be understandable...:"
bidUI(); <---opens UI

void houseConfirm(object house, object player){
//fetch dynamic assigned housing dates and confirm it is a biddable house...would need to declare function that does that
bool houseBool = isBiddableHouse(house);
if(houseBool && buttonPress(specificBidButton)){
onBid(player);
} else {
//fetch arraydata as you should implement a function to manipulate and get the player winner
object winner = houseWinner();
---> Assign houseWinner to a newArray that will check if the player already owns a house...
}

}

object houseWinner(){
//this is where we would fetch our array data so let's assume we made that function...fetch data handles manipulation to read back into a new array;
array myFetchData = manipulateData("...locationOfData");
int rand = newrand(myFetchData.GetSize()-1); <--- this would get an int at random by our array size (i.e the maximum number), as arrays start at zero we would need to -1
object playerWinner = myFetchData[rand];
return playerWinner;
}

void onBid(object player, int date){
//closeDate will need to be the date at which you can bid until, after bidding allow the houses to do nothing
int closeDate;
if(date < closeDate) {array bidArr = arrBid(player);} else {player.ShowMsg("The bidding for this house has passed");}
}

array arrBid(object player) {
array myArray;
//We assume server has a method to return to player name as this is quite a staple.
myArray.Add(player.GetName());
return myArray;
//convert array to string if you plan to save it to file, you will need to make a separate fetch function
}

this outlines the general idea...the logic might not be 100% sound as I have no way of testing unless I made a program and followed the instructions but again this was done out quickly.
I don't trust the numbers they show if they can't do this much...

honestly people don't realize that outside of silicon valley and a select few top companies (of which game companies are not) most programmers are really bad.

se can't hope to beat L5 salaries at Meta or Google.

the median coder at a video game company never took algorithms and thought intro to python was a hard class, like no offense, the disparity is huge.

of course, they have other comparative advantages like passion or having a good intuition for what makes good game design, but if management keeps overriding their ideas and if they get no funding, they can't do much

[Katish]

honestly people don't realize that outside of silicon valley and a select few top companies (of which game companies are not) most programmers are really bad.

se can't hope to beat L5 salaries at Meta or Google.

the median coder at a video game company never took algorithms and thought intro to python was a hard class

Unfortunately that is the case.

[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.