Square obviously not listening to feedback

[Equitable_Remedy]

To go with this example, time played, by itself, is meaningless.

I'm not sure what "by itself," means here, but I disagree. Roughly, if the number of hours on SMN per player hour increased sharply after and since the rework, that's decent evidence that players generally like new SMN more than old SMN. It's not conclusive, but it is definitely evidence.

When it's FC raid night, and someone asks, "Can someone please play a caster?", I go, "Yeah, I'll switch to SMN." I don't have fun with the job; I think the job is lacking in many ways. But when I'm in voice chat with some friendly folk, I'm willing to suffer that. I don't normally play a caster, but SMN is a freebie, so in the spur of the moment, whatever.

Where as before Endwalker SMN, maybe I would have put the effort into learning RDM or BLM, both jobs that I actually have fun with, but haven't felt like taking the time to learn to play competently.

Do you think that the average hour played on SMN is under duress, or that this is an edge case? I think that we can agree that this anecdote is probably not representative of the average hour played on SMN.

You say that, of the three available caster options, you choose reworked SMN in preference to BLM or RDM but that you might not have chosen pre-reworked SMN - that is exactly evidence that the rework worked for you! It's actually an example of reworked SMN satisfying your needs (a caster that you can pick up easily) when old SMN wouldn't have.

Put another way, you're looking at the wrong thing: you say that reworked SMN isn't fun for you, but it in fact best satisfies your needs to have fun with your FC, which is why you picked it over the other two casters. The fun is "filling the caster role to raid with your FC," and reworked SMN is the best way for you to do that.

[Equitable_Remedy]

It was a genuine question, like who's feedback are they listening to, to come to these conclusions. One would assume that these are the official forums, so they would hold weight.

Fair question! I would suggest that one shouldn't make that assumption. Social media, including this forum, is a source of feedback, but not the only source nor always a good source.

[Supersnow845]

It does often seem like people complain about SE not listening to feedback when specifically their request are not acted upon. It is also worth thinking about how much of the player base people complaining in these forums and on other platforms make up. If it's only a few hundred, or even thousand then is it worth acting on their advice to please them at the risk of alienating tens of thousands that are already happily playing without complaint. There is no guarantee that the changes suggested here or other places would enhance the experience for everyone playing, or even the majority of players. It's also worth remembering this is an international game, and I feel it's primary audience is the Japanese base and their feedback is what the team listens to the most which may or may not align with what we see in the NA boards. All that to say that small groups of friends and people on message boards that you interact with because you share similar opinions about the game do not translate into a majority of players.

If the feedback here is so unpopular with the wider playerbase then the damn community managers need to start coming out onto these forums and telling us that

Right now we are constantly told this is where to leave feedback, we just sit here screaming into a void while nothing appears to get acted on, if square wants to maintain our trust they can at least pretend to tell us where specific feedback is coming from

[AmiableApkallu]

Put another way, you're looking at the wrong thing: you say that reworked SMN isn't fun for you, but it in fact best satisfies your needs to have fun with your FC, which is why you picked it over the other two casters. The fun is "filling the caster role to raid with your FC," and reworked SMN is the best way for you to do that.

This is like saying, "The fun is, 'not getting shot by an execution squad while standing in the yard of a maximum security prison.'".

I looked at my options, and chose the best one available. The fact that the best one available to me is 100% lackluster and lacking is still something that ought to be fixed.

[CelestiCer]

It does often seem like people complain about SE not listening to feedback when specifically their request are not acted upon. It is also worth thinking about how much of the player base people complaining in these forums and on other platforms make up. ( snip )

The point of Yoshi P telling everyone to go to the Forums for Feedback is to give... well Feedback. Square is clearly stonewalling or being very selective with their Feedback for to long...

*snip* Obviously, this isn't an argument, but an opinion stated as fact. It also begs the question - has the game really removed "every optional depth or skill ceiling?" That seems, charitably, a bit hyperbolic. You know that it was done for no reason, or do you mean that you don't know the reason? Of course, I'm not suggesting that the devs don't make mistakes - people make mistakes all the time. Maybe this was a mistake, but that brings us back to the point: is the same relatively small group of people repeating it to themselves good evidence of that?

I life and breath Samurai. I give a annalistic feedback on my favorite Job based on what I am seeing from the DT footage. In agreement with the OP, it looks clunky and we base that also off of the description they gave. As for evidence on rather or not we have lost depth or skill ceiling... have you been under a rock? do we play the same game called FFXIV? Samurai has been simplified so much up to 7 times now... shaving away at its ceiling yes... and that's just Samurai btw...

Repeatedly telling a group they are a minority for giving critique or feedback? does not erase Square's mistakes, flaws and broken-promises... if you're done with the semantics, at the very least show me " Job-Wise " what you disagree with or any take analytically. Break down the Job-trailer, rather then telling someone they are wrong for not equally sucking up the devs asses, mhm.

[vetch]

If the feedback here is so unpopular with the wider playerbase then the damn community managers need to start coming out onto these forums and telling us that

Right now we are constantly told this is where to leave feedback, we just sit here screaming into a void while nothing appears to get acted on, if square wants to maintain our trust they can at least pretend to tell us where specific feedback is coming from

Note also the unsubstantiated assumption that the people playing without posting are happy, rather than perhaps being bored with the game but not caring enough or cognizant enough of the reasons to speak up about it.

Most unhappy people just put up with it until they can't anymore and then take off. Any company as big as Square should know this, because if 'I'm quitting FF14' ever picks up momentum then the network effects will kill the game.

[Taranok]

As a thought experiment, consider the following: the same 25 people keep posting on the forum that reworked SMN is terrible, but SQEnix can see that way more players are spending way more hours playing SMN as compared to before the rework. You might think that the forum is "the feedback," but I would suggest that the time played is much more indicative of the revealed preference of the player base and is the better feedback.

I have thoughts on this.

The biggest being that Summoner is the only caster DPS designed to do the content the devs were making. RDM had no damage and just was suffering on certain bosses. BLM also had no damage for most of the expansion and was extreme suffering, also depending on certain bosses (E.G. BLM did better in P4S while RDM did better in DSR.)

I like the SMN rework. It fits within endwalker's 'Screw casters in particular,' encounter design. But I want summoner to be a caster again. It doesn't need BLM's complexity or RDM's randomness. It just needs cast bars. The encounter designers also need to remember that, for casters, sitting still and casting is more fun than constantly jogging around, regardless of ability to actually move around as a caster. A lot of people are drawn to casters to enjoy the concept of learning boss mechanics and prepositioning in advance of them. It's why I still maintain TEA is the best-designed fight in the game. It challenges all 5 roles uniquely and in fun ways. Sure it can get boring at some points, but those points allow jobs to shine differently while others are working hard. This is fine.

My point is, you're correct. SMN is the literal most popular job in the game for EW. And it makes sense given how bad EW has been mechanics-wise. I just hope the devs learn that part of the problem is mechanics design, which has directly and indirectly been a major point of controversy the entire expansion.

But, I digress. This is a very sideways way of saying: SMN shows that RDM and BLM were broken all expansion long. As for why it was broken, that's a matter of opinion. I say it's encounter design combined with SMN not having cast bars. Fix that and the problem just goes away.

[xbahax92]

The reality is that CBU3 does what is convenient for them, which usually involves pruning game features to reduce their QA costs and development overhead.

This is what I've been feeling since a while now. Battle mechanics are such a joke, it seems like they do it on purpose to reduce production cost/time resources. It's really unsettling, that the most important part of the game (battle system) is being cut heavily.

[kuroashi_sanji]

I may be wrong, but I remember Yoshida saying something like this in the EW media tour: "Many people are asking for HW job design, but let's continue with ShB design", not with those exact words, but yeah, they heard our feedback but chose to ignore it for the sake of new players I guess. So what's the point of giving feedback if they're going to completely ignore it?

[Katish]

snip.

In the current live letter, they literally said if we had feedback place it on the forums; so the question still stands, if they aren't listening to forum suggestions, where do we send feedback?

The answer to the question is they probably aren't listening to feedback. Or if they are, it's in house and for the benefit of the company when it comes to major suggestion changes.
If I am wrong, I would be happy if they could be a little more transparent. If there are any devs reading the comments, transparency would solve a lot of the issues I have with the current direction of things or at least appease some fears I have with the direction its headed in; at the moment, it feels like voices are just screaming into a void.