Just a letter from the producer like in ff14
SirLeeMinion wrote: »TBH, I think they have communicated their vision pretty well, or at least better than in the past. They want classes that play the same except for cosmetic differences, skills that feel the same and damage the same with different animations, nothing that will absolutely murder new players in under 50 BGs (well... they haven't said that last bit). Where they are lacking imho is in actually caring about what players want. They are looking at metrics of who plays what & how often, how often do groups fail at which content and where, what sells crown items, etc... In the end, they will follow those metrics until it visibly hurts the bottom line, and my, or any player's, opinion on it as an individual matters not at all. It's only in the aggregate and only as expressed by in-game choices of classes and skills and content that our opinion matters. Not saying I like it, just saying what I've observed.
Look at the writing on the wall. Quarterly combat updates fail, class rep program fail, combat QAs fail, new combat team that was going to breath new life into the game fail. Either the devs are some of the most dysfunctional of any game that I’ve ever played or there’s something else going on that’s out of their control. But that doesn’t really matter because the out come is the same for us.
On the contrary, I think they're doing a decent job at communication in itself (much better , they're just being as vague as possible about everything. We keep hearing about some balancing standard that governs all the changes we're seeing, but we don't know what that standard is, and so how it impacts the current state of balance. It's a similar story regarding performance, group PvE content, PvP content, and so much more. They are talking about it, but they're being as vague as possible about it all.
I decided to create this thread in irder to convey an idea that not a great lot of people seem to share - at this point, I feel like we really lack more developer communication. I personally feel like after Wrobel's departure the new team became a bit more closed up and secretive, perhaps shy, unwilling to publicly speak to the community. The last QnA that was posted felt like I was trying to speak to an anonymous poster on the wall. General anonimity of the text and it's tone created a slight feeling of threat, as if whoever wrote it felt threatened himself, so he couldn't possibly allow himself to speak openly to the public, from his own name etc.
I feel like it's in part a result of generally increased toxicity in the community (as if it became a trend of some sort). I know for a fact this kind of a trend can be brought down a notch by the developer team being more public about the thought process in regards to the combat balance etc. Like, I personally just want to speak to someone, have that personal connection to the developer team that we used to have with Wrobel - we loved to hate some balancing decisions, but it was still friendly and heartfelt.
I believe that the class rep program is simply outdated at this point, especially since there's so few pvp players in it right now.
What we do actually need is a developer representative program.
Share your thoughts about the general tone the new developer team had created, and how we can make our relationship better, and whether we do actually need it or not in your opinion.
SirLeeMinion wrote: »TBH, I think they have communicated their vision pretty well, or at least better than in the past. They want classes that play the same except for cosmetic differences, skills that feel the same and damage the same with different animations, nothing that will absolutely murder new players in under 50 BGs (well... they haven't said that last bit). Where they are lacking imho is in actually caring about what players want. They are looking at metrics of who plays what & how often, how often do groups fail at which content and where, what sells crown items, etc... In the end, they will follow those metrics until it visibly hurts the bottom line, and my, or any player's, opinion on it as an individual matters not at all. It's only in the aggregate and only as expressed by in-game choices of classes and skills and content that our opinion matters. Not saying I like it, just saying what I've observed.
Which is funny because the two problem skills this patch - Entropy and soul trap - are now purchasable in the crown store and can be used in under 50BGs from the start. Subsequently I think what sells crowns is the only metric they’re really looking at. It’s the only excuse for these bone headed changes and terrible performance in PvP. They cannot possibly be that stupid.