Where does the mentioned feedback actually come from?

[Valence]

I am actually curious to know since it was specifically mentioned in the PLL that your changes are made after considering player feedback, yet I felt completely disconnected from the actual changes. I have never seen anybody asking for most of those except perhaps for AST rng, which as they say, is actually divisive (are they only going for the hotly debated feedbacks just to drive us nuts?).

I have been going through everything that's been brought up by the PLL and I am actually a little annoyed that it's so empty of anything truly daring or impactful, much like the same PLL before Endwalker was all about how Addle was getting 5% physical mitigation like it was the greatest thing ever.

Worse, all of the actual big issues of contention that have been brought up for years and years have been purposely ignored. I'd actually have liked to have you talk about the things that actually matter, even if to just be said "no" with some explanations about the direction they have in mind and your justifications for it.

Why were so many hours of live letter spent actually talking how mitigation was going to be increased by 5% of 5s? Or how Second Wind is going to be more powerful? Or swiftcast getting a lowered recast?

Meanwhile, the list of dire issues and feedback complaints that have been going on for years, with hundreds of pages on those forums alone among other platforms, have not had a single word about them:

• The infamous 2 min meta has been number 1 contention for most players for years and even if I do think it's only the tip of the iceberg, not a word on it. I do understand that you did nothing about it, but perhaps it could have been nice to tell us why?
• Healer gameplay: some jobs got some more actions added, but let's face it, nothing is truly changing on that front either. Can you tell us what we can expect to actually do as healers in Dawntrail besides spamming 1-1-1?
• Tank gameplay: tanks are infamously unkillable, and do not require active healing from healers anymore, especially in casual content, yet they get even more mitigation and improved defensives. I do not know what kind of changes you have done to the actual defensives like bloodwhetting and whatnot for Dawntrail and I do hope something will be done about them, but why the silence about it?
• On support gameplay and roles: utter silence on why it is suddenly okay that even if the healer dies in dungeons, it's not a problem. In fact, if the 3 players die but the tank, the tank can continue hitting and killing the boss forever while everybody waits on the floor. Is that the kind of gameplay you want for Dawntrail?
• Support jobs all seem to follow a system of mirrors, where GNB is just a more involved version of PLD with the same basic structure (even the change on the dot has been mirrored for Dawntrail between both to keep them identical). DRK is the same compared to WAR. AST has the same basic structure than WHM. Why is every change made to specifically keep them identical?
• Braindead and butchered jobs: SMN is the big culprit and has been under the spotlight since its inception in Endwalker, yet you double down on it without talking about it. What's the big idea? What about MCH that got a similar treatment?
• Veteran players: many veteran players feel that you have been dropping the ball and leave them out of the equation. We feel unwanted, not listened to, and alienated by unilateral arbitrary changes on core designs like the battle system or jobs?
• The game paradigm shifting completely out of the RPG systems to focus entirely on its encounters and their body checks. Is this what XIV is intended to become now? Us playing through scripted encounters with basic scripted rotations without much flavor?

I am utterly sorry if this sounded mean, but I was expecting an actual job PLL to talk about the deeper things and roadmaps and intentions for the game instead of focusing on useless minutiae and trivial balance changes? Why is SE so afraid to talk about the feedback you've been asking for and keep asking for?

And more importantly, where is the so called feedback you say you base everything you do around from? Most of what we have been presented here yet again seemed to go into the completely opposite direction of the actual feedback I can read on those very forums.

Please help me understanding. Talk to us. (and don't tell me to wait for 8.0, big changes incoming, please look forward to it)

[Valence]

Another thing of importance here, and again please forgive me if this is going to sound rude, but what have your battle and job designers actually been doing for 3 years? 5-6 years if we count all the way up to Shadowbringers? Is this the only changes we can hope to see after 3 years of development? It wasn't possible to do more, even though you seem to acknowledge that job identity should be worked upon, but we'll have to wait for 8.0 to see anything about it? Those issues have been there for ages.

Meanwhile you redid pvp entirely within less than half an expansion, and I actually want to congratulate you about the result, because it's actually awesome.

What's your angle here?

[Sjol]

It sounds like the job designers have been busy designing new systems that don't have the tech yet. There have been a couple of interviews where Yoshi-P has made offhand comments that makes me think they're rethinking some core systems (maybe level sync, e.g.). His disgust at the idea of doing exactly what we're doing for another 10 levels makes me wonder if they're going to completely change systems like they ditched jobs or even the 1.0 to 2.0 overhaul. We don't know. I hope it's not just another set of minor changes for 10 levels.

That said, if it's not a major overhaul I don't know that the game is going to have enough draw in 3 years to keep going.

[Oizen]

Big Streamers and Japan.
They do not read the Official Forums.

[GoatOfWar]

Streamers who don't use hair products have exactly been asking for a lot of these things.
Combo's on 1 button, gap closer potency removed, more homogenisation, consolidation of abilities..
Etc etc.

[TheOperator3712]

I'm reminded of this review of Destiny 2's expansion from 6 years ago from SkillUp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyeGmkDp7g In it he made a comparison to the world's largest ship and how long it took it to change course. I've been noticing that the XIV team seems to be multiple years ahead on content. Ion Hazzikostas of the WoW development team has mentioned in the past that the WoW team did or does work similarly and that it was lead to the absolute disasters of the Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands expansion. By the time they were able to get feed back from the end of the Legion feedback about artifact weapons, it was too late to implement that feedback into BFA, by the time they were able to get feedback about BFA, it was too late to implement it into SL. Assuming the same is true about XIV, I would expect the game to continue to go downhill for some time.

[Post]

It's just tough to believe these are the problems when this is the same man in charge that steered that ship from 1.0 to 2.0 in three years.

Maybe the ship is just one of them Argonaut dealies, or maybe they didn't really understand the finer points of a game they largely copied from WoW (not that WoW understood them either).

[Turtledeluxe]

I
[*]The game paradigm shifting completely out of the RPG systems to focus entirely on its encounters and their body checks. Is this what XIV is intended to become now? Us playing through scripted encounters with basic scripted rotations without much flavor?
[
8.0, big changes incoming, please look forward to it)

This particular point is very interesting to me because I also feel like XIV is trending in the same direction as this team's other work, FFXVI. A big issue with XVI is that it also focuses more on a straightforward gameplay loop vs RPG systems. It would seem Yoshi P, or someone on the team, is either misinterpreting some kind of data or comparing XIV to other games (particularly those popular with younger audiences), or both. It's interesting to me that they're looking at middling reviews and sales of XVI, and still think gamers can't handle deep systems or reasonable difficulty.

I guess we are just going to be stuck with braindead jobs and combat, unless you want to be "engaged" by Ultimates i.e spend your life on this game.

[posona]

I know the 2 min meta has been addressed, I can’t remember if it was a previous live letter or somewhere else, but he said it came about due to player feedback, and now all the player feedback they hear is AGAINST it, so they’re confused about what people want.

[LilimoLimomo]

If CBU3 actually intends to get feedback that represents the overall player base, then it is unsurprising that the collected feedback would differ from what we commonly see on the forums. This is for a few reasons:

1. Most of the game's players don't use the English forums. Part of this is because English is only one of many languages, and part of it is because most players are casual to the point where they wouldn't spend much if any time here. To get the voices of all players, feedback must be sought from other sources as well.
   
   
2. Generally speaking, the forums create a skewed view of player opinions because it's a bit of a bubble. There are some topics where folks have constructive and respectful debates about their differing opinions, but it's far more common to see mud-slinging and bad faith arguments. (And to be clear, I don't blame the players for this: I blame CBU3 for not doing a better job funding and organizing their moderation team.) And in that sort of environment, there's a feedback loop where people who are getting yelled at less are more likely to stay, and people who are getting yelled at more are more likely to leave the forums behind...so over time the louder opinions will tend to get even louder and more monolithic, regardless of whether that opinion is or isn't representative of a majority of the player base's views.
   
   To illustrate one aspect of this phenomena, imagine that there are 100 Users who posts variations of their pro-Buttstomp opinion 365 times each over the course of an expansion. Also imagine that there are 100 users who post their anti-Buttstomp opinion only a single time throughout the expansion. In this scenario, to your average user it's going to look like there's a lot more pro-Buttstomp sentiment because that's what they're regularly being exposed to...even though in actuality, there's a 50/50 split of users who posted pro-Buttstomp versus anti-Buttstomp. To be clear, I'm not saying the forums are actually 50/50 on any given matter, but rather that a person's experience of the forums is an inaccurate tool to use in an attempt to understand the spread of player opinions.

All of that said, I would also be curious to hear what sources were used for this feedback! Not only would it be nice to see that manner of transparency, but it would give players a better understanding of what to do to get their voices heard. I'm guessing that the FanFest survey was at least one source of this feedback, but I would hope there are others as well.