Please stop alienating the playerbase with job total reworks

[Aravell]

To answer your post in general, and not just this tiny bit I just quoted : I'm a little disturbed by the "old fanbase has to be satisfied first" mentality. That's why I don't agree with your choice to ignore success metrics - they matters, even if we don't always like it. Experienced players don't have the priority, and shouldn't have it.

And you're suggesting that the older players should be completely stomped on and cast to the side just to attract new players to the job? I can't agree with that at all, that kind of mentality of "metrics above all" disturbs me in turn. Agree to disagree.

Also, you are heavily misrepresenting my point. I never said the old players should be more important than the new players, I said they should be considered when a job is to be changed. Also, your mentality of metrics above everything puts new players above the older players, which goes against your very principles, unless you're fine with older players being placed last in priority, just not new players.

[Merrigan]

And you're suggesting that the older players should be completely stomped on and cast to the side just to attract new players to the job? I can't agree with that at all, that kind of mentality of "metrics above all" disturbs me in turn. Agree to disagree.

Also, you are heavily misrepresenting my point. I never said the old players should be more important than the new players, I said they should be considered when a job is to be changed. Also, your mentality of metrics above everything puts new players above the older players, which goes against your very principles, unless you're fine with older players being placed last in priority, just not new players.

We're going to go round in circles here, so I won't answer everything (everyone is entitled to their own opinion here, after all, and even if I don't agree with you I can see where you're coming from) but just to finish on one point: on certain aspects, I do feel that "old" players should not be listened to. There are plenty of examples in the history of MMORPGs where listening to players has been a bloody disaster.

[TheDustyOne]

We're going to go round in circles here, so I won't answer everything (everyone is entitled to their own opinion here, after all, and even if I don't agree with you I can see where you're coming from) but just to finish on one point: on certain aspects, I do feel that "old" players should not be listened to. There are plenty of examples in the history of MMORPGs where listening to players has been a bloody disaster.

I highly disagree, it was listening to players that brought this game back from the disaster that was 1.0. It's the older players that gave the game its community to begin with, and understand it better than most players. Alienating old players for the potential (not guarantee) of appeasing new players ends up leaving people bitter.

It ultimately is up to the devs to try and make good decisions around player feedback; typically when it comes to game testing, players are very good at highlighting what is wrong with a game, but not necessarily in offering solutions (not always, it depends on the solution and feasibility of implementing that solution). If we just decide that older players should not be listened to, you lose most of that informed feedback.

That doesn't mean new players don't have important feedback either, they offer a fresher perspective that many vets lost long ago, and as such can point out different problems that are just as valid. But they also lack the experience for why something is implemented the way it is. Either way you can't throw out one side of feedback, both new and old need listening to.

[ty_taurus]

We're going to go round in circles here, so I won't answer everything (everyone is entitled to their own opinion here, after all, and even if I don't agree with you I can see where you're coming from) but just to finish on one point: on certain aspects, I do feel that "old" players should not be listened to. There are plenty of examples in the history of MMORPGs where listening to players has been a bloody disaster.

I want evidence that the over simplification of job design has had any positive impact at all on the game's popularity and population. Because the game's growth is far more attributed to its marketing budget and MSQ. I have never seen a single person talking about FFXIV and go, "You should play it! It's such a good game because it's so incredibly simple and far less dynamic than in the past, which was what kept me away from it in the first place."

All I ever see is people talking about when praising the game is its story and nothing else. Is there any decisive evidence that the game would be less popular if everything about Shadowbringers and Endwalker was the same except that the game had maintain the same general level of job complexity from Stormblood or even Heavensward? Prove to me that keeping the job design depth that "old" players miss would be detrimental to the game's ongoing success. Because unless you can show me decisive evidence that the over simplification is what generated more new players for each expansion, then I cannot be convinced that Endwalker wouldn't have been more at least a tiny bit more successful retaining more "old" players who have gradually abandoned the game because of its simplification by maintaining the general levels of complexity from before while still pulling in every single person who has joined since then with its praise-worthy story and increased marketing budget.

[Merrigan]

I want evidence that the over simplification of job design has had any positive impact at all on the game's popularity and population. Because the game's growth is far more attributed to its marketing budget and MSQ. I have never seen a single person talking about FFXIV and go, "You should play it! It's such a good game because it's so incredibly simple and far less dynamic than in the past, which was what kept me away from it in the first place."

All I ever see is people talking about when praising the game is its story and nothing else. Is there any decisive evidence that the game would be less popular if everything about Shadowbringers and Endwalker was the same except that the game had maintain the same general level of job complexity from Stormblood or even Heavensward? Prove to me that keeping the job design depth that "old" players miss would be detrimental to the game's ongoing success. Because unless you can show me decisive evidence that the over simplification is what generated more new players for each expansion, then I cannot be convinced that Endwalker wouldn't have been more at least a tiny bit more successful retaining more "old" players who have gradually abandoned the game because of its simplification by maintaining the general levels of complexity from before while still pulling in every single person who has joined since then with its praise-worthy story and increased marketing budget.

I wasn't talking about simplification. The discussion was more about the positive aspect of asking old player about the new design a job should get.

[ty_taurus]

I wasn't talking about simplification. The discussion was more about the positive aspect of asking old player about the new design a job should get.

But that's my point. You're saying that listening to old players is a bad thing. The main point of contention is job design, and I'm saying if job design hadn't been simplified, the game would be at worst, just as popular as it already it, and at best, a little better thanks to less players having jumped ship because of the simplificaiton.

[Merrigan]

But that's my point. You're saying that listening to old players is a bad thing. The main point of contention is job design, and I'm saying if job design hadn't been simplified, the game would be at worst, just as popular as it already it, and at best, a little better thanks to less players having jumped ship because of the simplificaiton.

I really don't want to be unpleasant and generally argue unnecessarily. But there's a lot of bad faith in one area: claiming that all the old players are asking for something complicated, which implies at the same time that all the new players are brainwashed... And pretending that many requests don't confuse "interesting" with "unnecessarily complicated".

[ty_taurus]

I really don't want to be unpleasant and generally argue unnecessarily. But there's a lot of bad faith in one area: claiming that all the old players are asking for something complicated, which implies at the same time that all the new players are brainwashed... And pretending that many requests don't confuse "interesting" with "unnecessarily complicated".

If you want to discuss bad faith, the only person who used the word "complicated" is you. You are the one who has decided to write off requests and suggestions as "unnecessarily complicated." So if you want to avoid bad faith, consider meeting people where they are and understanding their perspective perhaps. They are the group that feels they have lost something. You have not, and are in no danger of losing anything nor is the group you oppose advocating for you to be incapable of completing the content you are already actively participating in.

I also was not suggesting that literally every old player is asking for the same thing. I would like to believe that we can make casual statements and collectively understand what one another is talking about, or if there is confusion, simply asking for elaboration. "When you say 'old players,' do you mean everyone from before Shadowbringers?'" Yet I constantly am reminded that every statement needs its own footnotes paragraph to help explain nuance and colloquial discussion as to make sure nothing is misunderstood. Regardless... in order for players to feel upset about the loss of something, such as job elements, they have to have experienced those elements first. Meaning those players have to have been playing since at least Stormblood in order to have experienced those elements, which seems to be what the conversation is referencing when discussing "old players." That is why I used the term as such. Make no mistake though, that doesn't mean there aren't new players who feel the job design area is lacking. There have been players who have dropped by and stated as such before, that the further they got into FFXIV, the more they have recognized the flaws in its job design.

[Valence]

I really don't want to be unpleasant and generally argue unnecessarily. But there's a lot of bad faith in one area: claiming that all the old players are asking for something complicated, which implies at the same time that all the new players are brainwashed... And pretending that many requests don't confuse "interesting" with "unnecessarily complicated".

I don't think new players are brainwashed. I struggle a lot more in current endgame raids than I did in older ones, because they're not designed exactly around the same requirements.

Reworks are necessary, else it's just adding ever more and more buttons. Eventually you just can't add any more buttons, some jobs are already at the reasonable limit. Ast comes to mind as a job that really just has too many buttons. Ninja too - I don't know how anyone can play some of these jobs on controller. I have an mmo mouse and still fill up at least three full bars with ctrl\alt\shift modifiers because there are just too many skills with so many being situational.

So, they have to. And sometimes that does mean that there are going to be some big changes to how jobs play sometimes.

It probably doesn't help that many of the jobs are amalgamations of jobs from earlier games - like AST for example having FFXI Corsair abilities, but it's a healer, and a DPS. Would be nice if SE would just get a clear vision for what they want some of these jobs to be.

It saddens me that you obviously didn't really read the OP... Or maybe I'm very bad at conveying the message I had in mind.

[strawberrycake]

We're going to go round in circles here, so I won't answer everything (everyone is entitled to their own opinion here, after all, and even if I don't agree with you I can see where you're coming from) but just to finish on one point: on certain aspects, I do feel that "old" players should not be listened to. There are plenty of examples in the history of MMORPGs where listening to players has been a bloody disaster.

I disagree wholely based on the fact of how bias works in the case of newer players. My s/o started playing at the end of Stormblood, they had no real time with that expansion or HW in it's prime and only really had the newer experiences of the game to gauge their interest, they then went and did the research to see what was differnt on their own, and came to a lot of conclusions that are on par with how a lot of the player base feels with the over simplification. Many of the voices that say the oversimplification is fine have not done that research as they don't care to and do not understand why we as vet players take issue with it, as they only know ShB and EW and they only know this way of approaching the game.

Many of us have been here when the system required more investment to get anything out of it and aren't calling for it to go back to that time, but if a vet player is trying to explain and show the issues f the current system and how it's becoming a massive joke to even play high end content, then we need to not exclude them. While some may be bias'd to better times, it's not all of us and in most case that bias is based within proof that things worked and were changed fo the worse.