Communication around job design and changes

[Tunda]

it is as simple as this:

1 year before release:
"Hey WoL What changes do you want to see to DRK?"

6 months before release:
"after taking notes from the community here is the changes that we will be delivering:
1-
2-
3-

Thanks for your support"

6 months is enough to do changes.

it is as simple as that

[remiff]

Regarding job changes, I simply think that the developers' communication is far too vague.
They should provide reports with each major patch, clearly explaining the direction they are considering, how they envision it, and why, while asking for player feedback to see if the direction a job is taking will be well-received.

Especially since they supposedly have some really major changes planned for 8.0, and considering that most jobs saw almost no changes in 7.0,
it would be great if the developers could give us explanations on what they are considering as they evolve a job, to see if the community likes the ideas or not.

This would be better than making blind adjustments that often require a small rework or changes that demand a lot of work.

The devs are far too vague and unclear—even in the patch notes, the explanations are clearly not sufficient. Personally,
I can never be satisfied with a vague explanation like "we're removing the Summoner's resurrection because we think it's a wise choice."

They should provide guidelines and explain the reasoning behind their decisions.
For example, a statement that would satisfy me for any job, though this is just an example: "We are considering adjusting the Summoner's rotation because the current version of the job disrupts the balance between casters.
To address this, we will reduce the number of instant spells and provide new mobility tools to compensate.
We plan to make each demi-summon truly unique and are considering creating an entirely new resource management system," etc.

At least give us some guidelines without necessarily going into detail about how it will work.
This is not a spoiler of spells or anything like that, but guidelines to see if it appeals to players or not.

[Valence]

Well they may be too vague, but they do usually mention it in any case if any sort of significant rework is happening mid-expansion, or sometimes even showcase it like I remember them doing with the Ninja changes.

They can tell us all they want that they've primed a job for a rework, but what then? What feedback do we give without more info? "Please do not change anything I love my job the way it is please yoshi don't do it I beg of you"? Or "Please change that dumpster fire of a job right away"?

And even then some jobs get reworked out of the blue without a warning like AST/MNK (but I guess it's turning into a formulaic running gag at this point every expansion so perhaps they assume telling us about it is not necessary anymore... not that they have ever told us anyway to begin with except for EW MNK).

And now we even got the jobs actually primed for a rework that never happened: DRG.

So with all of this, what kind of feedback is actually expected of us there? Nothing makes any sense from an outside perspective. We're just here taking shots in the dark trying to see what's serious and what's not. Or just reacting to things that come as a complete surprised that won't get adjusted or changed after anyway, because it's too late. See you next expansion mon capitaine o7

I am serious. I'm not saying they always do it (like with ranged physical), but in these cases I think it is because they fundamentally disagree with the change. For example, they agreed to buff ranged physical damage once but didn't balance it with the other DPS roles and it seemed like that was because they fundamentally disagreed on that. I'm not sure why, but they really stick to their guns on it and there are going to be times when they don't do what invested players want such as making the game work for new and casual players.

You know why this actually happens? It's not because players beg them or ask them or anything, it's because something becomes obviously unsustainable most of the time. When they buffed in an emergency PLD and WAR that were both lagging behind other tanks by 400 DPS each in Abyssos, why did they only notice weeks after release? It's not like those jobs had huge changes for 6.2 to begin with. It was already a dumpster fire in 6.1 DSR (I should know, I've gone through phase 3 with a garbage comp with PLD inside... the DPS checks were funny, where other groups were actually holding their damage in P2 and we couldn't even do that). Why did they not noticed there? The only reason they noticed is because of their 1% overtuned doorboss HP shenanigans.

When they buff ranged jobs every expansion after release in x.1, it's because oh, well, damn, they're dealing 10% less damage than everybody, sometimes even more of a gap, and it's going overboard the 1% party bonus. Guess what's gonna get buffed once more for 7.1, and guess who never seems to learn the lesson? It's the third *** time an expansion is released with ranged jobs in that state. Why is this still happening? The only reason I see is that yes, they seem to stick to whatever guns they have in spite of the evidence of reality, and will once more be forced to rebuff the role again even though it's literally killing them to admit it needs buffing.

True, it wasn't really very specific and could have explained the planned changes in detail.
True, that has always been a problem and the most memorable to me is bowmage in Heavensward, where they added cast times to Bard and single-handedly wiped out all of the Bard players or made them quit, because being able to run about while attacking was its defining trait that made them like it. And then it took until Stormblood to suddenly fix it after they'd all quit.

Perhaps if they had consulted on something like that first they would have anticipated the reaction.

Good suggestions.

That's all i'm asking with this thread really. I want the devs to not only gather feedback, but also tell us where the feedback they follow actually can be found because it's certainly not on those forums as evidenced by many changes recently. I also want the devs to expose to us in details what they intend to do so people can actually give feedback about it instead of being given done deals to be angry about.

[Wolf_Necros]

With the level of job complaints nothing they put out would satisfy people unless it was over powered and had no balance

[gllt]

With the level of job complaints nothing they put out would satisfy people unless it was over powered and had no balance

Yeah that's called dealing with gamers

The goal of adjusting the balance isn't to reach a game state where everyone would be satisfied because that's impossible, it's to reach a game state where the majority are satisfied and try to consolidate as many people as you can into the majority in the process

If your goal is to satisfy people and nothing else you're probably a hack with no vision and if you think you can make a game that doesn't agitate anyone you need to find a different career

Balance is a ghost in the average gamer's head, it's superstition most of the time, balance is partially made up of the reality of the game and the rest is made up by the feelings of the players, what you consider good balance will be dog water balance to someone else and both of you could be wrong, raw numbers only tell you so much at the end of the day even if you aggregate a butt load of them

[Valence]

You'd be surprised to see how smooth is player support when you're actually showing a bit of democracy and transparency in the process. The loyalty it generates for being genuine, especially in modern gaming, can be astounding, and in fact I'd argue that's why Yoshida and his team have always been avidly praised by everybody for their candor and honesty when talking about literally everything. There is a reason CBU 3 has a cult following within the playerbase.

I just feel this is slowly getting eroded when it comes to job design, because if you specifically mention it, then suddenly the view of the dev team has shifted there quite dramatically, and they're aware of it.

[Valence]

So in light of the newest announcement over the graphic update's unintended minor changes on some character faces, it seems that yes, the dev team does read the forums for feedback, because this has been specifically addressed again and again and once more today. The explanations even go into great detail about the whole process and the results of the investigation they have been running, even though they conveniently not mention any species/races.

One specific point also caught my eye:

Most of this feedback has come from our forums.

Meanwhile, job design feedback has been consistently ignored or scorned for years, and when something gets changed (like VPR, but that's just an example among many), we get told that they considered feedback that lead to such changes, while this feedback definitely does NOT come from those forums. So, I ask the dev team again, where does job feedback come from, so that I can give my feedback where it actually matters?

Secondly, why does feedback for the graphic update garner such detailed threads covering them while battle content feedback never gets anything addressed in such a manner?

[Supersnow845]

So in light of the newest announcement over the graphic update's unintended minor changes on some character faces, it seems that yes, the dev team does read the forums for feedback, because this has been specifically addressed again and again and once more today. The explanations even go into great detail about the whole process and the results of the investigation they have been running, even though they conveniently not mention any species/races.

One specific point also caught my eye:



Meanwhile, job design feedback has been consistently ignored or scorned for years, and when something gets changed (like VPR, but that's just an example among many), we get told that they considered feedback that lead to such changes, while this feedback definitely does NOT come from those forums. So, I ask the dev team again, where does job feedback come from, so that I can give my feedback where it actually matters?

Don’t you see this is where the feedback comes from

The devs decide on a direction then pawn over the forums till they find someone who said something vaguely related and use that as their justification

[Tunda]

So in light of the newest announcement over the graphic update's unintended minor changes on some character faces, it seems that yes, the dev team does read the forums for feedback, because this has been specifically addressed again and again and once more today. The explanations even go into great detail about the whole process and the results of the investigation they have been running, even though they conveniently not mention any species/races.

One specific point also caught my eye:



Meanwhile, job design feedback has been consistently ignored or scorned for years, and when something gets changed (like VPR, but that's just an example among many), we get told that they considered feedback that lead to such changes, while this feedback definitely does NOT come from those forums. So, I ask the dev team again, where does job feedback come from, so that I can give my feedback where it actually matters?

Secondly, why does feedback for the graphic update garner such detailed threads covering them while battle content feedback never gets anything addressed in such a manner?

I really want to know which type of feedback they ignored?

is it job busy or job do not need changes.

it is very vague

[Supersnow845]

I really want to know which type of feedback they ignored?

is it job busy or job do not need changes.

it is very vague

Because if you trawl back through the VPR posts literally nobody asked for job changes on VPR. They just announced them out of nowhere alluded to positionals then when people said “leave the job alone” they removed the debuff for……no reason