What exactly was the purpose of these forums?

[Runespider]

Apart from giving yet another forum for players to vent, the level of actual staff interaction is minimal and the only stuff staff post about is stuff that the devs are working on OR stuff that's posted anyway on the playonline website/twitter. Nothing against the staff of this website I know they are limited by SE but this could be so much more than it is, I know a lot of garbage gets posted here but there are some well thought out genuine posts too.

Any other questions are ignored, even if mass numbers of players all would like the same things answered. Would it kill Square devs to communicate with us and tell us important things like what they have planned for the future of FFXI (like if we will EVER get any more full expansions or what mini exps are planned, answers on important game questions etc) Is this top secret stuff, i don't get it. There are things people would like to have some communication about aside from what they are currently working on, these posts on the forum are nothing better than what we used to get with update teasers on playonline >_>

The really sad thing is, we got more genuine questions answered from Square in their "ignore the playerbase, we know best" years from fansite/vanafest Q&A's than right now when they launch all these new things.

Spending money on forums and twitters and extra staff for no measurable difference seems utterly pointless >_> Check out other game forums and see the level of interaction they get, bioware and blizzard etc

[Alhanelem]

What exactly was the purpose of these forums?

To give people an "official" place to talk about the game?

[Seha]

I see them interacting with many threads actually. Not all of them, but you can't expect to see posts in every silly thread people make. And there are many silly threads.

[Kagato]

Considering how dead other FFXI forums are (KillingIfrit gets maybe 5 new posts a day and half of them are by trolls like Banter), this new forum is great. It's more advertised and has actual professional mods who actually give a damn about when people are causing trouble or not.

Not to mention our ideas can actually viewed and considered by the dev team. No longer is a forum going to have topics of "Things we wished the devs could see."

[Seha]

Considering how dead other FFXI forums areFFXIah, Alla and BG don't look so dead to me. At least last time I checked.

[Kagato]

I said other. Not all.

[Flunklesnarkin]

OP has a point..

I mean why isn't there an army of developers all over the bacon mage idea D:

[Rambus]

Considering how dead other FFXI forums are (KillingIfrit gets maybe 5 new posts a day and half of them are by trolls like Banter), this new forum is great. It's more advertised and has actual professional mods who actually give a damn about when people are causing trouble or not.

Not to mention our ideas can actually viewed and considered by the dev team. No longer is a forum going to have topics of "Things we wished the devs could see."

lol him and path is most of KI

have you post there? have we met? <3

[Harpalina]

OP has a point..

I mean why isn't there an army of developers all over the bacon mage idea D:

Oh my goodness with the Bacon Mage...lmao.

[Alhanelem]

We want our bacon mage!

[Kagato]

lol him and path is most of KI

have you post there? have we met? <3

I'm Logan Draconia over there.

[Chiren]

Apart from giving yet another forum for players to vent, the level of actual staff interaction is minimal and the only stuff staff post about is stuff that the devs are working on OR stuff that's posted anyway on the playonline website/twitter. Nothing against the staff of this website I know they are limited by SE but this could be so much more than it is, I know a lot of garbage gets posted here but there are some well thought out genuine posts too.

Any other questions are ignored, even if mass numbers of players all would like the same things answered. Would it kill Square devs to communicate with us and tell us important things like what they have planned for the future of FFXI (like if we will EVER get any more full expansions or what mini exps are planned, answers on important game questions etc) Is this top secret stuff, i don't get it. There are things people would like to have some communication about aside from what they are currently working on, these posts on the forum are nothing better than what we used to get with update teasers on playonline >_>

I disagree. Take a look at: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/751-NPC-Fellow-Please-Raise-Level-Cap-And-Expand-Areas-Of-Use

That seems like a very good start to me. They even have dev-tag system in place to help keep track of what comments are about what announcements they've made.

They're trying, and it shows. You need to give them more credit.

[Runespider]

They're trying, and it shows. You need to give them more credit.

Well to be fair, this game has been out for 8-9 years now and things are barely better than they used to be. By the time they perfect things this game probably won't exist anymore.

I find it really sad that we can't get answers to stuff like if there will ever be any future full expansions or other serious questions people may have about content being worked on, there is very little conversation about stuff. We just get told what they are adding and thats it..more or less.

I really hope some form of Q&A thing is spawned from this forum. They posted about for instance "new HNM" but they didn't really tell us anything..at all, even though they saw that people were really worried about if they would add a fail pop system to them. I can understand they want to keep some of it a suprise but some level of further information would be nice, what I read about HNM was akin to what I would read on playonline teasers in the past..and they said nothing new about them since or even posted to say they noticed the worry of players at this and it to be passed on.

[Malamasala]

I was hoping for more bug report interaction, but sadly it is not that much. Before it was automated thank you mails, now it is a person replying with "Thank you". It is a step up, but I'd really want to hear more like "We discussed this at the meeting today and we consider it a serious bug but do not have time to work on this until later so it is scheduled for July review".

I actually work with this kind of thing daily, and I know how many bug reports just end up in limbo because they are not important enough at the moment or that the people choosing bugs to fix don't know how important it is to fix the bugs. At least at my workplace the users can go into the system and raise the priority of the issues and leave a comment. We are stuck here waiting a few months and then re-submitting the same bug reports again and see if it works better next time.

If only the moderators and developers talked a bit more so that more feedback returned.

[Rambus]

Well to be fair, this game has been out for 8-9 years now and things are barely better than they used to be. By the time they perfect things this game probably won't exist anymore.


I have to agree with this and malamasla reflecting on the same point.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/4614-My-concerns-about-the-censoring-on-this-site.

That is the second time the deleated my issue with that without notice, so why the censor? GM don't want SE to find out they do not give service?

[Karbuncle]

I pretty much assume if a Thread we think is interesting but doesn't get DEV Attention, we can just pretty much assume our Idea is bad and we should feel bad about it.

I know i do. on a Daily basis.

[rog]

There is no purpose.

[Rezeak]

Spending money on forums and twitters and extra staff for no measurable difference seems utterly pointless >_> Check out other game forums and see the level of interaction they get, bioware and blizzard etc

Considering SE has it's own servers anyway running a forum is near nothing to maintain. and some guy spending 10 mins to post on twitter is probably not gonna bankrupt SE either.

The point....
So that we can talk about FFXI in one place
So SE can easily see how we feel about the additions they make
So SE can easily communicate to us.
So some pple can pointlessly vent about pointless stuff.

[Rambus]

I have to agree with this and malamasla reflecting on the same point.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/4614-My-concerns-about-the-censoring-on-this-site.

That is the second time the deleated my issue with that without notice, so why the censor? GM don't want SE to find out they do not give service?

you know I am sorry for this I have to correct my self, and this is why.

I had an old link before that said broken so i thought the thread is deleated.
then I click on my self to find post history and I did not find it there.

I do not know if it is my meds or blind or what but i talked to SGM today and i found all my stupid threads -.-
when I can I am going to try to see if there is some cap or something to post history and figure out why i did not see them

[Gennadi]

Ive read every post on these forums twice and my brain is gone i mean totally gone i cant even remember where i put my computer. I think my keyboard is missing and my desk is misplaced. I did see my monitor once but cant remember where.

Oh well back to reading posts

[Rambus]

Ok this is where i missed up, there is actally a different section now for posts you did and threads you started ( this divion was an update i think and why i claimed the threads vanished)

[Krystal]

Considering how dead other FFXI forums are (KillingIfrit gets maybe 5 new posts a day and half of them are by trolls like Banter), this new forum is great. It's more advertised and has actual professional mods who actually give a damn about when people are causing trouble or not.

Not to mention our ideas can actually viewed and considered by the dev team. No longer is a forum going to have topics of "Things we wished the devs could see."

ummm.......you must have this forum confused with another one with devs that ACTUALLY give a darn about our ideas,concerns, and questions.

[Greatguardian]

I highly doubt the actual Development Team spends most of their time in a Foreign Language Forum. The Community Team has also already addressed their presence here in other threads. They read the forums a lot, they just don't comment very often. I appreciate this approach, personally. It allows them to properly bring attention to things whenever they do post.

[Kingofgeeks]

although its annoying to hear people constantly complain about the most absurd things, there has been some times when someone will complain about something on the forum and then hey! ffxi announces it will be in the next update (unlimiting FoV and NPC fellow limit cap come to mind). So its already starting to become a good idea... even if we're annoyed at times

[Miiyo]

The ratio for good questions to irrelevant messages in the forums is 1:10,000. Most of these "good questions" are from one sided views about something they don't like or want to see change that wouldn't really benefit the community as a whole. Having someone sit in the forum and answer questions all day is really a way to get you in trouble. Firstly, it'd have to be someone really high up who has knowledge about all the changes and plans. Instead of them actually working, you want them here to lay out a map of the game's future. Again, they would be here wasting time because 90% of the posts here say something sucks. Doesn't suggest what would make it better, but just outright says, I pay you and continue to play, but I'm sure I can do a much better job. Waste of time. Lastly, this game was meant to be an adventure. If you are given every bit of info on what's going to happen, where is the element of surpise? What do you have to look forward to when you know most of what's going to happen.

[Malamasala]

1 to 10 000 sounds about correct. As in real life, majority of people are insane, and just the small minority has good ideas. Sadly to get popularity as a developer, you can't work on these small minority good ideas, because it won't make enough happy. Instead you have to waste time on flavor of the month jobs to make them keep or re-earn their overpowered status again.

I just wish there was some place in this world where we could work on good things instead of popular bad things.

[Fiarlia]

That's pretty much why I post here and would likely be viewed as an ass to many of those insane people you talk about.

I certainly do not want to think about what would happen if all the idiots posted their ideas/rants/suggestions/complaints and there was nobody from the community itself to shoot them down and explain logically with either (correct) math and/or facts to show the dev team that not everyone thinks <insert stupid idea> is awesome or that <insert something that is actually good> is horrible. I'd be worried that if nobody came out and pointed out that shit is shit that it might be taken into serious consideration.