DT Job Reworks - Unconfident Developers and Poor Communication

[W00by]

One thing i wanna say, the Samurai Change with Tsubame in 7.05 was great nearly everyone loves it i dont hear anything bad about it, sam makes finally again fun.

I don't think it's bad either, I think it's great. But the original 7.0 change to Samurai was really bad, and most people I've spoken to really disliked it. The good of the current change does not erase the bad of the change of the past. What I'm getting at in this post is: while 7.05 SAM is fun, why did they need to fix issues with 7.0 Samurai to begin with? How did a bad version of SAM that needed to be fixed make it to live? I know every expansion will have at least a few changes in the 7.05 patches, but three major job reworks on Savage launch day feels pretty crazy to me. Samurai didn't even have its BiS and optimal rotations worked out until, like, a week into the tier, which was a really negative impact for people who were week 1 progging as Samurai.

The Tsubame change is awesome, and that's fantastic. But if they're making these changes willy nilly and unconfidently with no idea what will work, it kind of doesn't matter if they made a good change, because it leaves us asking: was it on purpose? Did they actually know that this Tsubame change was gonna make the job way more free form, solve issues with filler GCDs, and help realign after Higanbana drift? Or was it an accident that happened to work out? We can't know, because their communication sucks, but the comments made about Viper and the simple fact that BLM and SAM needed to be reworked in 7.05 to begin with makes me really concerned for the future.

[Archeron]

Poor communication, ignoring feedback, and a lack of direction in content is the killer of MMORPG's. One only needs to look to WoW to see where that path leads.

Surveys would be massively beneficial on any and all changes they have planned but aren't confident would recieve a positive reception.

I imagine they're ignoring feedback because in their minds, its all negatively charged, or laden with personal insults. To that I say they need to grow a thick skin. People do not complain about a game they don't care about. Yoshi himself has said that in the past. He has thousands of devoted players to draw from. It doesn't hurt to put surveys out. His passive attitude and failure to take a stance on issues that are blaringly obvious with the MSQ and battle content is undermining the communities confidence in his ability to carry out a new story for the next 10 years. If he doesn't see that, he is truly lost.

I don't think the forums have even had ANY developer presence since at least 2021. And it really reflects on the content that came afterwards if you asked me.

[Aravell]

There's a lot of little things they've done over time that really makes it look like they have no idea on how to progress the jobs.

Remember how they redesigned every healer in Shadowbringers and, to this day, still dodge giving any concrete explanation on why they did such a thing or what the goal was.

MNK also has had a rework on every expansion launch, but I think this one has been the worst flip-flopping yet. They strip timer management off of MNK and change their rotation flow, then they reverted MNK's rotation flow and also deleted VPR's timer management which they took from MNK, so both MNK and VPR ended up with a net negative.

Another noteworthy thing is that they just completely dropped the proposed DRG rework and never mentioned it again. If they were confident in their direction, they wouldn't get scared by the Kaiten backlash.

All this certainly doesn't bode well for the rumoured 8.0 job identity rework.

[elioaiko]

The dev team needs a seperate combat design team period blank.

They're clearly out of creativity and it's been showing since ShB. The fact they had have a dedicated lead for each role is shocking.

They need fresh eyes on the jobs bc they clearly are throwing darts at a board atp.

[Tunda]

how Throne and liberty fixes their combat system in 9 months after release and we have to stick with this system since endwalker?

Is developer in this game this lazy? or Koreans are just better with combat system?

[Carighan]

how Throne and liberty fixes their combat system in 9 months after release and we have to stick with this system since endwalker?

You raise a good point, no matter how bad things are, we can take solace that few other MMORPGs are as botched as T&L. /toast

[jonimated]

I get this sinking feeling that Dawntrail has the potential to be FFXIV's "Shadowlands" if something drastic doesn't change. As in a not insignificant portion of the player base is going to come to the conclusion during the next 2 years that FFXIV is simply not for them anymore, and honestly that feels bad.

I mean what is an RPG that has uninteresting combat and a mid story? Ask WoW players circa 2020 - 2022.

[Carighan]

I get this sinking feeling that Dawntrail has the potential to be FFXIV's "Shadowlands" if something drastic doesn't change. As in a not insignificant portion of the player base is going to come to the conclusion during the next 2 years that FFXIV is simply not for them anymore, and honestly that feels bad.

I mean what is an RPG that has uninteresting combat and a mid story? Ask WoW players circa 2020 - 2022.

Really? Because in WoW that was more an issue of it capping off a steady decline in production quality and a steadily more idiotic story, and then this weird slingshotting on class design. That came to a head in Shadowlands, but the individual problems were all not only around before, but partially actually worse before.

With Shadowlands, it was the thing tha the players as a joke predicted the story beats, meant to be "Hey at least the story isn't this stupid!" and then they go and do exactly that. But gameplay wise, WoW had been at far worse points. And better points. And everything in between. Keep in mind the age of WoW ~2020 already. And just how many iterations everything had gone through.

That's maybe actually the problem here, in FFXIV: We haven't had that yet. Even their "reworks" were mostly rather benign. The only total rework so far was really Summoner. Everything else kept many of the overall elements, it just shuffled things around, merged, split and restructured. Maybe what FFXIV in fact needs is more willingness to actually go and break stuff. WoW had by the time of Shadowlands gone through... five talent systems? FFXIV never even had one!

[jonimated]

Really? Because in WoW that was more an issue of it capping off a steady decline in production quality and a steadily more idiotic story, and then this weird slingshotting on class design. That came to a head in Shadowlands, but the individual problems were all not only around before, but partially actually worse before.

With Shadowlands, it was the thing tha the players as a joke predicted the story beats, meant to be "Hey at least the story isn't this stupid!" and then they go and do exactly that. But gameplay wise, WoW had been at far worse points. And better points. And everything in between. Keep in mind the age of WoW ~2020 already. And just how many iterations everything had gone through.

That's maybe actually the problem here, in FFXIV: We haven't had that yet. Even their "reworks" were mostly rather benign. The only total rework so far was really Summoner. Everything else kept many of the overall elements, it just shuffled things around, merged, split and restructured. Maybe what FFXIV in fact needs is more willingness to actually go and break stuff. WoW had by the time of Shadowlands gone through... five talent systems? FFXIV never even had one!

This is all true. I meant more the game becoming something the players no longer want to play, as opposed to the literal problems which plagued Shadowlands. Could have worded it better.

Job design in current Dawntrail is arguably the most boring simplistic it's every been. 90% of jobs have completely become "follow the flashing lights". Which is a strange inconsistency when you consider the DT encounter design is some of the best it's ever been. It feels like the job design and combat design folks are not only working in separate rooms, but are in completely separate building with no communication at all.

Endwalker had a similar issue with it's job design, and inarguably significantly worse encounter design, but the Shadowbringers/Endwalker story was so good I think players were able to look past it. Now with the story being as divisive as it is, if the game also isn't fun to play what does it have left? I just think there is a real potential for a lot of players to look at Dawntrail and consider that FFXIV just isn't a game for them anymore, since it doesn't have any of the strong pillars which held up previous expansions. There's nothing to fall back on.

[ovIm]

how Throne and liberty fixes their combat system in 9 months after release and we have to stick with this system since endwalker?

Is developer in this game this lazy? or Koreans are just better with combat system?

FFXIV adheres to a very rigid development cycle, and the Devs really don't want to step out of it.
Additionally, the current plan is to adjust content first (which we are supposed to see starting in 7.2), and then pull the classes up later on.
So, our first "fix" is scheduled to come on roughly 6 months, give or take (considering 4 months per major patch). Now, if they are successful with this endeavor or not, that remains to be seen, and personally, I am going to remain skeptical until I see the results.

As for the main topic - i do agree with W00by here, its a point I have made in the past as well. It really feels like Square Enix is definitely not confident in their product, nor their playerbase.