Communication around job design and changes

[Jeeqbit]

If they actually talked to players beforehand and tried to accomodate that feedback, they’d get a hell of a lot less complaints I’d say

So imagine they "talked" to us. How should they go about this?

1. Post regularly on the forums, and get inundated with polarized views and well-thought out replies being drowned out by ones that are not. Almost leaving them back at square one.
2. Do a conference system where only one person is allowed to speak at a time, like a TED talk or discord's stage calls. I suppose this could be like the Q&As they have done before, but allow them more time to put their point across.
3. Do a livestream and read the chat like they've done occasionally in live letters.
4. Ask people to post on the forums anyway but not reply because it'd get drowned out by all the polarized discussion, then aggregate the feedback.
5. Meet people in person instead which forces people to choose their words and thoughts more carefully, like they have been doing recently with fanfests, gamescom, pax, etc.

It's easy to just say "talk to us". But if you think about it they kinda have done many of the options. It's perhaps just doing it more ie. interacting with twitch/youtube chat more during liveletters to have thorough discussions/debates, aggregating feedback better from the forums, regular reddit AMAs.

But even if they did all of this more, would it change much? If all they get from that is polarized views, they will be in the same situation: unsure which direction to go because people are split and there are different parts of the community to cater to.

[ovIm]

So imagine they "talked" to us. How should they go about this?

I mean, this here was a good way to talk to us.

For the first time in FFXIV, upcoming job adjustments were talked about in a blog post. And players had a chance to give feedback to what was planned. This was a good thing, overall, and interestingly enough, most feedback I have read on the forum was more constructive.

The method is good - announce something like that, have the forums discuss it, and have community managers aggregate player feedback to forward to the dev team.

In terms of Viper, there was no criticism about the job design as it was, it was mostly praise that Square Enix build the job well, and to not change it. Yoshi-P even acknowledges this. Its frustrating when the devs open a dialogue like that, only to ignore our feedback.

Alternatively, SqEx could also just... make ingame polls, and ask for players opinions there.

[Supersnow845]

So imagine they "talked" to us. How should they go about this?

1. Post regularly on the forums, and get inundated with polarized views and well-thought out replies being drowned out by ones that are not. Almost leaving them back at square one.
2. Do a conference system where only one person is allowed to speak at a time, like a TED talk or discord's stage calls. I suppose this could be like the Q&As they have done before, but allow them more time to put their point across.
3. Do a livestream and read the chat like they've done occasionally in live letters.
4. Ask people to post on the forums anyway but not reply because it'd get drowned out by all the polarized discussion, then aggregate the feedback.
5. Meet people in person instead which forces people to choose their words and thoughts more carefully, like they have been doing recently with fanfests, gamescom, pax, etc.

It's easy to just say "talk to us". But if you think about it they kinda have done many of the options. It's perhaps just doing it more ie. interacting with twitch/youtube chat more during liveletters to have thorough discussions/debates, aggregating feedback better from the forums, regular reddit AMAs.

But even if they did all of this more, would it change much? If all they get from that is polarized views, they will be in the same situation: unsure which direction to go because people are split and there are different parts of the community to cater to.

Almost every other MMO has some kind of proper feedback loop that isn’t built on randomly flailing about in the dark on the forums and hoping that something comes out of it

For example a semi regular thing that gets used is community polls

Let’s take VPR changes

Option 1) remove noxious
Option 2) remove or reduce positionals
Option 3) slow the job down
Option 4) do nothing

People vote on that then that gives the devs a good lead into it, don’t let us pick what you are going to do, pick a narrow set of possible fixes to a problem you have identified and allow us to vote on our preferred action. You could even weight polls by a pre-selected “main” that each person picks

Direct communication on the current forum system won’t go very far but that’s specifically because they’ve allowed the forums to collapse into a cesspit where everyone is just screaming hoping to be the one random person they apparently pull the feedback from when they make a change

[Talamh]

I will forever miss Shadow Flare, Flash, and how Summoner used to be.
I mourn SMN every day, even though I have adapted.

It just isn't what it used to be, and I loved what it used to be...

It's frankly put insulting that your Squadron have access to Shadow Flare and Flash...


Oh yeah, let's not forget.
Why the HELL did they remove Plunge from Dark Knights?!

[ovIm]

Why the HELL did they remove Plunge from Dark Knights?!

To make burst phases less busy, really.

You know, they could have just put those gapclosers on the GCD, as an alternative to the ranged attacks, and keep the animation. That way, we would not use gapclosers during burst either since GCD's are super valuable. But honestly, at this point, I don't expect SqEx to come up with actual solutions to issues like that, only bandaid fixes and promises for the next expansion.

[Talamh]

To make burst phases less busy, really.

You know, they could have just put those gapclosers on the GCD, as an alternative to the ranged attacks, and keep the animation. That way, we would not use gapclosers during burst either since GCD's are super valuable. But honestly, at this point, I don't expect SqEx to come up with actual solutions to issues like that, only bandaid fixes and promises for the next expansion.

That's.. such an assenine way of doing it, but now I know why it is so thank you x_x but yeah... REALLY BAD.

[Daralii]

To make burst phases less busy, really.

You know, they could have just put those gapclosers on the GCD, as an alternative to the ranged attacks, and keep the animation. That way, we would not use gapclosers during burst either since GCD's are super valuable. But honestly, at this point, I don't expect SqEx to come up with actual solutions to issues like that, only bandaid fixes and promises for the next expansion.

The funny thing is that they made additional changes to make DRK's burst phase less busy, which combined with the removal of Plunge resulted in the job losing 8 actions per Delirium. They shouldn't have pulled the trigger until they had a new oGCD ready and/or added at least one extra charge to Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain.

[Eraden]

Mao still trying figure out why Devs took EW BLMs whats almost perfects and wrecks it in DT. The ONLY thing Mao can think of as reason, assuming Devs knew what thems doing, is to deliberatesly push BLMs down in order to give leg up to PCTs (job whats most similar to BLMs) so that PCTs gets chosen more for high end contents. Thems wanted precious new job that thems worked so hard to create to be played lots in high end contents. EW BLMs were not some kind of god-state. Difference between Standard vs Non-Standard play was maybe 2%. What EW BLMs playstyle offered was flexibility to react more smoothly to fight mechanics. Devs apparentsly not likings that though.

Now IF is true that Devs NOT knowings what thems doings, then all bets off table. Changes to BLMs, unwanteds by most BLMs players, could be due to just abouts ANYTHING. Is possible that this might be case. After all, Devs restored Ice Paradox and bumped Umbral Soul down to Level 35. Mao has hard time believing that Devs knowings where thems goings with BLMs if thems already revertings some changes. Maybe Devs really is just throwings spaghettis against wall and seeings what sticks.

[Supersnow845]

Mao still trying figure out why Devs took EW BLMs whats almost perfects and wrecks it in DT. The ONLY thing Mao can think of as reason, assuming Devs knew what thems doing, is to deliberatesly push BLMs down in order to give leg up to PCTs (job whats most similar to BLMs) so that PCTs gets chosen more for high end contents. Thems wanted precious new job that thems worked so hard to create to be played lots in high end contents. EW BLMs were not some kind of god-state. Difference between Standard vs Non-Standard play was maybe 2%. What EW BLMs playstyle offered was flexibility to react more smoothly to fight mechanics. Devs apparentsly not likings that though.

Now IF is true that Devs NOT knowings what thems doings, then all bets off table. Changes to BLMs, unwanteds by most BLMs players, could be due to just abouts ANYTHING. Is possible that this might be case. After all, Devs restored Ice Paradox and bumped Umbral Soul down to Level 35. Mao has hard time believing that Devs knowings where thems goings with BLMs if thems already revertings some changes. Maybe Devs really is just throwings spaghettis against wall and seeings what sticks.

It’s not PCT, it’s the devs hate when players find ways to get more damage out of a job they didn’t explicitly design around

Non standard BLM is an example, WAR smuggling is another, PCT skip magenta is a third

There was also a rather large subset of the BLM playerbase when it was announced what flare star does that were happy with the change because they believe that “playing the job as intended should award maximum damage”

[Eraden]

It’s not PCT, it’s the devs hate when players find ways to get more damage out of a job they didn’t explicitly design around

Non standard BLM is an example, WAR smuggling is another, PCT skip magenta is a third

There was also a rather large subset of the BLM playerbase when it was announced what flare star does that were happy with the change because the believes that “playing the job as intended should award maximum damage”

Devs should tread carefully if that the case. Cookie-cutter gameplay can quickly gets stale and borings. This something that experienced dungeon masters learn when runnings D&D campaigns. If force players to has go to places X, Y, and Z in that order and do things usings exactly skills A, B, and C, then players get boreds and claustrophobics very quickly. Is why when Mao ran D&D campaign many years ago, Mao ran things open ended. Players gots to choose where thems go and whats them do. Was much works for Mao buts players really happys.