Skill Branching: "Everyone Wins" Concept

[IDontPetLalas]

Fundamentally, what an a&& backwards approach - I don't think it's a good idea to limit what you would like to change by trying to estimate the impact on the development team.

Instead, customers should express what they don't like, including why they don't like it. If possible - they should express what they would rather have and why, with examples.

If I was on the development team , that would give me something to work with, I could possibly come up with a few workable solutions that fix the issues that customers identify , keep the customers happy, keep costs down, etc.

[AmiableApkallu]

I'd give the OP's proposal a try.

It's also the sort of post players should be making. Speaking as a software developer: It's my job to balance priorities. It's my job to fill in details to make a suggestion workable. It's my job to decide how much change is necessary. And these are all tasks that are made more difficult when you (users/customers) hold back and don't say what's really on your mind.

[Sebazy]

It'd be interesting to know from SE where this aversion to reworks mid expansion came from (Assuming it's not simply a case of the already small battle system design team being allocated onto other projects outside of Expansion crunch).

Absolutely agreed that the x.5 patch is the best time to go wild and start throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, best case it keeps players engaged at a point where pre expansion blues are at their worst, worst case it's a flop but it's not really going to cause any long term damage since fewer people will really care at that stage.

[Renathras]

I hate that a legitimate response to your suggestion is some variation of "this sounds great, but it would take work and thus the developers won't do it". How did we get here?

Not really. This has always been true of MMOs or any live service thing. If something requires major reworks of across the board systems, it's rarely done. It took WoW around a decade before they remade the Vanilla maps...and another before they made Classic (and, apparently, the rumormill saying they may get ready to do it again). It took FFXIV completely collapsing in 1.X for them to do it there.

While this is a SMALLER change, it's still a significant one. Not to mention they got flack every time they made big changes like this in the past, which may have led to them being gunshy. The answer to "How did we get here?" is "Because of the playerbase.", but also that "Here is where most companies and most MMOs are, so it's not unique; it's more unique it's taken FFXIV this long to reach the status quo."

It'd be interesting to know from SE where this aversion to reworks mid expansion came from

It seemed to be pretty clearly the SAM Kaiten thing. They were planning AST and DRG reworks for 6.1-3 ish timeframe. Between the SMN pushback from the total rework AND the SAM pushback on Kaiten, both were suspended. The only reason PLD got one (they were probably planning it as well) was because of how far it was falling behind the other Tanks by not fitting into the 2 min meta.

6.5 would be the best time to try an experimental 'different direction', because there's no stakes.

I disagree that "there's no stakes" - there are always stakes, and a bad rework's stakes are quite high, especially if it's a universal change which means this would affect all Jobs at once - but I also agree that 7.0 would be the best time to do it since the game is trying to have a reset and direction change and a bunch of other things. A rework of game systems OF THIS LEVEL - introducing effectively talent trees, even if super simplistic - is a major rework, so not something you'd do in a last patch of an expansion, especially since the Dev resources right now are probably already largely going to 7.0 at this point in the development cycle and that 6.5 is coming out in just a couple weeks.

But 7.0 has a narrative reset and so a more broad mechanics reset accompanying it (e.g. encounter design shakeup to require more healing...) would be the time to do it.

[Sebazy]

I'll be *wildly* surprised if 7.0 brings any serious kind of combat gameplay changes at this stage TBH. I'm fully expecting Dawntrail to effectively be patch 5.12 with AST being brought more in line with WHM rather than it being a proper rework into a truely new and unique job. I'm thinking GCD cards that are akin to Lilys with 2% buffs attached and neutral stance getting neutered.

Hopefully SE's team proves me wrong on this one, but until this game sees a substantial exodus and Yoshida moves on, I just can't see it happening. He has zero interest in healers, nor is he seemingly willing to invest enough into the battle system team to get people on board that do.

[ty_taurus]

I disagree that "there's no stakes" - there are always stakes, and a bad rework's stakes are quite high, especially if it's a universal change which means this would affect all Jobs at once - but I also agree that 7.0 would be the best time to do it since the game is trying to have a reset and direction change and a bunch of other things. A rework of game systems OF THIS LEVEL - introducing effectively talent trees, even if super simplistic - is a major rework, so not something you'd do in a last patch of an expansion, especially since the Dev resources right now are probably already largely going to 7.0 at this point in the development cycle and that 6.5 is coming out in just a couple weeks.

But 7.0 has a narrative reset and so a more broad mechanics reset accompanying it (e.g. encounter design shakeup to require more healing...) would be the time to do it.

If they took the approach of making more experimental changes in the final major patch, there are stakes, but they're not massive stakes. This is assuming the team would actually be receptive to feedback, but if you launch some more risky decisions, you get to see what players think about those changes and use that to make any last minute adjustments to more significant changes in the expansion around the corner. The worst case scenario is that the job is in a bad state for a few months. Sure that may suck, but it sucks a lot less than it being in that state for 2.5 years for the entire expansion. But you would expect that they would receive that negative feedback and, in turn, offer greater security that the official direction taken come 7.0 would be a lot better.

However, the smarter decision is something Roe said a long time ago. Why isn't there a public test server? There's no reason why they couldn't have uploaded Dragoon and Astrologian to a public testing environment in 6.3, and even if we couldn't see those changes until 7.0, at least they would have a year's worth of feedback from public testers.

[Sebazy]

However, the smarter decision is something Roe said a long time ago. Why isn't there a public test server? There's no reason why they couldn't have uploaded Dragoon and Astrologian to a public testing environment in 6.3, and even if we couldn't see those changes until 7.0, at least they would have a year's worth of feedback from public testers.

That would require them to be receptive towards feedback even when it is sometimes justifiably negative.

The fact that they won't even post potencies etc in early previews and patch notes anymore is telling of how much faith they have in their own work. The backlash that caused this was entirely warranted and correct. My best guess at this point is that Yoshida is fed up of the the repeated egg on face look.

[Aravell]

That would require them to be receptive towards feedback even when it is sometimes justifiably negative.

The fact that they won't even post potencies etc in early previews and patch notes anymore is telling of how much faith they have in their own work. The backlash that caused this was entirely warranted and correct. My best guess at this point is that Yoshida is fed up of the the repeated egg on face look.

I'm pretty sure the huge pushback against SB lilies was the last straw for them. Now they take the "I know what's best for you" route. It's quite stupid to refuse to take feedback at all because you're scared of criticism, but that's where the dev team is currently.

[Renathras]

Ty: Thing is, we don't know they're not listening to feedback. Apparently, the JP folks tell them they want more healing, not more damage buttons, so we got P5-8S, which drove people away from raiding because of it. Further, you don't make changes like this in a content patch. There's more or less zero chance of a final expansion patch - when they're shipping it then basically go into a semi-maintenance mode for the next 6-8 months while they finish working on the Expansion - being when they completely upend the battle system. I do remember WoW released new expansion changes a week or two before the expansion, but that was part of the pre-expansion patch and events, not the content patch 6-8 months earlier.

As for no PTR: They don't want data mining. Straight up. We've seen WoW release new raid tiers where people went into the PTR and basically worked out all the strats, which completely changes both the world first race and the expectation for how much all players know when tier/expansion hits. PARTICULARLY in regards to expansions, they play those very very close to the chest. They don't even release ability potency changes anymore because the playerbase gave them so much flak over that.

When I say we're where we are due to the playerbase, I'm serious.

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Sebazy: That's unfair. They don't post them because people tend to go ballistic on them for it, even when it's totally uncalled for. When people get their hands on things, they tend to see that most things work better than their initial numbers assessments. And again, if the backlash - "warranted" or not - was not so vicious, they wouldn't do it. It's a case of "this is why we can't have nice things".

[AmiableApkallu]

Re public test servers: If we restrict this to job design, all SE needs is a toggle somewhere on/in the character select screen: "Try Bizarro Job Design for your next login? [y/n]" Let players try the new job design in existing content. There's no need to include new MSQ, new dungeons, new raids, etc. anywhere in the client -- only the job, and only up through the current level cap, is required.