FFXI Players views

I'd like to propose we take a page out of EVE onlines book to create a council of players that are voted for by the players of each server. This said council could then meet via forums or chat room to discuss player issues. Then voting on said issues they would then report them to SE at set time frames, monthly, quarterly, or whatever fits. I believe this would be a way to help pinpoint issues that are players concerns.

The representatives would be voted on by players of each server to nominate. The nominees would then need to accept the nomination(as some may not wan this job). Then a final vote to decide the final representative based on those that have accepted the nomination.

I know the websites meet every so often but this doesn't seem to be addressing concerns of players based on reading the posts on forums, so another way needs to be implemented.

It may be too late for this but I'm suggesting it anyway as a possible solution to helping SE address players concerns.

It's not that we need this, we need SE to actually take our concerns seriously instead of them going "This is what you want, you -think- you want these fixes, but this new content is what you -really- want"

no just no

I don't think this formal of an approach will work, but I agree with the goal. Why not offer more frequent Polls/surveys when considering which content to tweak, or which direction to move with new content? Could offer small rewards for participating as an incentive (like costumes, battlefield orbs, etc).

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Originally Posted by Vivivivi

I don't think this formal of an approach will work, but I agree with the goal. Why not offer more frequent Polls/surveys when considering which content to tweak, or which direction to move with new content? Could offer small rewards for participating as an incentive (like costumes, battlefield orbs, etc).

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Polls and surveys would be a good way to differentiate the vocal minority from the larger opinions of the playerbase. Most players don't even bother with the official forums.

You mean something like this?

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Originally Posted by Antanias

You mean something like this?

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That survey says that about half of the population only wants to do group activities on the weekends if at all (15% said "I'm a soloer).

About 80% said they don't want large group activities. Most said they wanted group activities like 6 man content or exp parties.

Meanwhile over on FFXI they just added all the best gear to an alliance only event that requires high end gear to excel at and can be spammed all day and day.

The problem is that there are polls, but they are in the Japanese section of the forums.

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Originally Posted by CrystalWeapon

Polls and surveys would be a good way to differentiate the vocal minority from the larger opinions of the playerbase. Most players don't even bother with the official forums.

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I gotta agree with CW here, very little of the playerbase is on these forums, especially the most numerous group, the casuals. And since the casuals are where most of the $ is derived from SE probably wouldn't be reaching them. And since their primary request is always going to be "ease up, seriously", I don't know what can actually be done. A few casuals-like myself-are active here and I have no illusions about speaking for the majority.

I've said it before, if you want to make the game workable for the casual player you need to get rid of dynamis currency, plasm, bayald, cruor, etc., make it all some kind of points and then make the quested/grind stuff purchaseable with those points from an NPC, as very few casual players have the time to be grinding dynamis, VW, reives, salvage and delve and still manage all the daily stuff you need to do to keep viable. Seriously, as long as they put in the grind time who cares where it is? And as they buy stuff that is sufficiently strong they can then access the more difficult content like delve where they have a chance to get items as a drop instead of having to use points to purchase it, saving those points for the augments-or a piece of gear that DIDN'T drop.

This is especially important for things that are gained through content that is largely abandonned now (empy harp, Aegis/Ochain, etc.), since-while the grind may be long-it would still be acheivable even low-man or solo.

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Originally Posted by Glamdring

I've said it before, if you want to make the game workable for the casual player you need to get rid of dynamis currency, plasm, bayald, cruor, etc., make it all some kind of points and then make the quested/grind stuff purchaseable with those points from an NPC, as very few casual players have the time to be grinding dynamis, VW, reives, salvage and delve and still manage all the daily stuff you need to do to keep viable. Seriously, as long as they put in the grind time who cares where it is? And as they buy stuff that is sufficiently strong they can then access the more difficult content like delve where they have a chance to get items as a drop instead of having to use points to purchase it, saving those points for the augments-or a piece of gear that DIDN'T drop.

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<--sneaks in mythic requirements into Glam's paragraph >_>

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Originally Posted by Antanias

<--sneaks in mythic requirements into Glam's paragraph >_>

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lol, yeah, I thought about that, then decided if I included all the grind I'd still be writing that paragraph next week ;)

and good to see you bud. hit me up sometime, we'll go slaughter something and laugh over its corpse

We already have the game being cattered to elitists already, no need to elect one of them to choose what they want to keep ruining the game.

I am all for anything that improves communication between SE and their players. Polls/surveys, community representatives, smoke signals... I dunno what would work best? XD

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Originally Posted by Antanias

You mean something like this?

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The problem with polls is that they put out statistics that can be misconstrued...

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Originally Posted by Yoshi P

At first glance, Question 3's results look to be an overwhelming desire for party-based play, but looking closely at the regional breakdown, Japan in particular has a strong showing of players who prefer rolling solo.

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This is not necessarily true... I believe that people were smart enough to know what option they were voting for, but Yoshi P. used his crystal ball to scry a different answer. Even in Japan, 40% chose the option saying they would prefer to play with parties for 1-3 hours everyday... compared to 20% saying they prefer to play solo. (Also, these are disparate questions that should not have been glommed together... but the past is history.)

The challenge is that no two players want the same thing - we all have different goals when we sit down to play the game. That being said, SE could do a LOT more to make communications into a two-way street.

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Originally Posted by Spectreman

We already have the game being cattered to elitists already, no need to elect one of them to choose what they want to keep ruining the game.

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I know right? Personally I don't think we need to get a council going (Because that can just be ignored just as easily) if you want change -that- bad, organize a petition and put it in front of SE. They can't say no to a large majority of their player base wanting something to change.

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Originally Posted by CrystalWeapon

Polls and surveys would be a good way to differentiate the vocal minority from the larger opinions of the playerbase. Most players don't even bother with the official forums.

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you speak truth my friend

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Originally Posted by Anjou

They can't say no to a large majority of their player base wanting something to change.

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When did this happen? ok, maybe they don't say "no", but ignoring you amounts to the same thing

this would work, if you gave each representative a gun and a plane ticket to SE HQ .

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Originally Posted by pretre

this would work, if you gave each representative a gun and a plane ticket to SE HQ .

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dude that was...a little much don't you think?

I vote Draylo.

While its true that a lot of players never post to the forums in many MMOs, the case is made worse in FFXI because there is the overwhelming feeling that SE doesn't listen.

Go back to the early pages of this forum and there's a lot of hopeful posts and developer responses (usually saying "no", but at least there were reponses). More recently, we don't even get responses to a lot of fair questions.

Why weren't the RME updates in the version update forecast? Forget being priority, they're not even mentioned.

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Originally Posted by Anjou

dude that was...a little much don't you think?

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Obviously meant in jest.

But seriously though, they won't listen unless someone forces them to (Not implying that someone should literally force them to). They obviously don't care about complaints and or criticism. Forming a council or taking a poll would probably just lead to more anger when they ignore that too.

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Originally Posted by Anjou

They can't say no to a large majority of their player base wanting something to change.

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Of course they can and that's what they did since the release of this forum. They're not saying no to everything but unless you're JP they'll just ignore their player base.

There's a Babylon Translator I'm considering using to communicate with the JP players, maybe we could talk to them?

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Originally Posted by Anjou

There's a Babylon Translator I'm considering using to communicate with the JP players, maybe we could talk to them?

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Sadly, The JP forums echo mostly the same sentiments. The devs actually respond to them in a conversational manner, but they still don't heed their advice.

It's sort of like when you tell a car salesman that you need a 4 door family car and he just keeps pointing at 2 seat convertibles going "This one is Red. Red!"

I personally don't understand why people continue to act like ffxi is painful to play or overall terrible and the devs aren't doing anything. There is still plenty of stuff to do in the game for everyone right now and they are adding content in huge amounts EVERY MONTH. They did listen to the player base when they bitched about REM weapons, and they will likely have that fixed by September. All these individual job players bitching (like SMN and new avatars) consistently baffle me, because I don't know how you could possibly be playing this game with SMN as your priority job when it has been a weak and/or situational job for most of the history of the game until perfect defense. The moment the devs give people what they asked for, they just bitch more. It's unbelievable and I simply don't understand how people with this attitude can get along in the world outside of computer games.

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Originally Posted by Cowardlybabooon

Let them eat cake...

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So to be clear, you don't care about summoner therefor people who do are stupid.

How do you get along in life?

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

So to be clear, you don't care about summoner therefor people who do are stupid.

How do you get along in life?

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The original point of my post above was just that people bitch about everything no matter what the devs do. It got a little convoluted with the SMN example.

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Originally Posted by Cowardlybabooon

The original point of my post above was just that people bitch about everything no matter what the devs do. It got a little convoluted with the SMN example.

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Yeah, but you gotta realize why people bitch. If the devs ever fixed what they were bitching about and they continued to complain you might have a point. But, the devs just keep screwing up more instead of changing what people were already complaining about.

People like what they like. They aren't gonna change their minds and fall in love with something else just because the devs keep screwing it up. They either get what they want, or they bitch until the get tired and just quit.

Think of it like this: If they started showing nothing but home shopping on every channel and they kept saying they were gonna put more shows back on eventually, but they never did. They just kept adding more channels of HSN.

Would you just watch forever in hopes that some day your mind would change and you would think that staring at infomercials for crappy blenders and cubic zirconium was the most awesome thing ever? I mean do you really think you would start to like it just because it was the only thing on TV?

I think you would complain about it to anyone that would listen and then cancel your account. Which is what's happening here.

Player Power lol. The only example I saw of that, was one guy from my LS who ragequit and deleted his account. Was he mourned by his ls mates? Sure, for a while. He came back a few weeks ago, started from fresh, the poor sod has to do it all over again. Meanwhile the difference to SE net is : 1 account lost, 1 account won.

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Originally Posted by Cowardlybabooon

The original point of my post above was just that people bitch about everything no matter what the devs do.

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you speak the truth. what's the old saying, you can't please everyone? story of the forums. I honestly think SE made a mistake making these forums. The idea of a medium for players and SE to converse was certainly a good one but for the most part these have just devolved into a whining trollfest. Even when there is a legitimate gripe it gets put into 100+ threads because noone knows how to use a search feature. Honestly, I hope SE is paying Camate and the gang's psychotherapy bills. Because if their job requires them to read all the duplicative threads then I would say their sanity is in danger of going the way of the Great Auk. As much as I think people can constructively build off eachother's ideas if they have a way to "converse", it looks like the time has come to make a different method where none of us can see the others' posts. Then the devs can put the ideas out there that they want commentary/feedback on and we don't even see the ultimately irrelevant posts on stuff they have no intention of ever addressing.

so, if that seems to draconian a measure then how about a submit feature for new threads that goes to Cam and the moderators but only they can actually start the threads?

Censorship. {no thanks}

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Originally Posted by Glamdring

you speak the truth. what's the old saying, you can't please everyone? story of the forums. I honestly think SE made a mistake making these forums. The idea of a medium for players and SE to converse was certainly a good one but for the most part these have just devolved into a whining trollfest. Even when there is a legitimate gripe it gets put into 100+ threads because noone knows how to use a search feature. Honestly, I hope SE is paying Camate and the gang's psychotherapy bills. Because if their job requires them to read all the duplicative threads then I would say their sanity is in danger of going the way of the Great Auk. As much as I think people can constructively build off eachother's ideas if they have a way to "converse", it looks like the time has come to make a different method where none of us can see the others' posts. Then the devs can put the ideas out there that they want commentary/feedback on and we don't even see the ultimately irrelevant posts on stuff they have no intention of ever addressing.

so, if that seems to draconian a measure then how about a submit feature for new threads that goes to Cam and the moderators but only they can actually start the threads?

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I have an easier solution for you.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/27350...ur-hosts-file/


Those are instructions on how to add http://forum.square-enix.com/ to your host file. Follow them and you will never see anyone bitching on this forum again. You can thank me in gil.

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Originally Posted by Antanias

You mean something like this?

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That kind of customer service will never exist in FFXI until the game is in serious danger of being shutdown due to everyone leaving (which isn't happening anytime soon.) The only reason FFXIV switched over to "kiss customer ass" mode was because most bailed on it, it didn't maintain the amount of people that FFXI is able to and was failing harder than their worse nightmares. They had no choice but to start caring about what the players wanted or have a numbered FF game flop. FFXI isn't that desperate yet (kinda makes me wish they would get a little desperate so they can start listening to our feedback at some point.)

I mean come on Square, tons of people are taking the time to tell you what you can do to keep customers happy and make the game better, yet you continue to force feed us new content with tons of broken content ignored. I could not care less about the newest expansion, what I do care about playing campaign in the Throne Room again, getting some use out of my countless beastmen seals (make BCNM capless & soloable already, we worked hard for our levels, stop capping them in special battles) and tons of other complaints (like promised summons, making garrisons soloable plus capless, and etc...)

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Originally Posted by VoiceMemo

I'd like to propose we take a page out of EVE onlines book to create a council of players that are voted for by the players of each server. This said council could then meet via forums or chat room to discuss player issues. Then voting on said issues they would then report them to SE at set time frames, monthly, quarterly, or whatever fits. I believe this would be a way to help pinpoint issues that are players concerns.

The representatives would be voted on by players of each server to nominate. The nominees would then need to accept the nomination(as some may not wan this job). Then a final vote to decide the final representative based on those that have accepted the nomination.

I know the websites meet every so often but this doesn't seem to be addressing concerns of players based on reading the posts on forums, so another way needs to be implemented.

It may be too late for this but I'm suggesting it anyway as a possible solution to helping SE address players concerns.

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Good idea but the idea of playbase voting for someone wouldn't work since most likely the wrong people would get voted (Large elitist group LS's) leading to a very biased view and demands for the game.