A Message to Our English-speaking Community

[OmnysValefor]

all of those things YOU wish to see. SE never intended everyone to be a one man army.

Tell me what's bad about a storage slip for non-augmented relic+2, please.

Or anything else I listed that could be done for inventory?

The only possible issue is something someone expressed about them needing to change the results of the recipes, and that's a fair argument, but there are possible ways around that. One possibility is making no change at all and just having the alchemists build stacks of 99 at a time. As long as you make all 99, it's the same gil, and more AH-space available to you.

Instead of making 20 stacks of 12 echos, you could make 2 stacks of 99 (formerly 17 of 12), and 2 stacks of 12 remedies, and 2 stacks of holy water.

Yes, *I* wish to see them, along with many other players, because *I* am aware of the issues in the game.

You see you use the term good as in literally good (the positive iterance of the word) work. I used the term good work as in their work is good keep it up. there is a difference.

I'm not seeing a difference. You're saying the work they're doing is good, and I disagree. I like a few things, and have pointed them out (Monstrosity, New Skirmish, though both have issues) but the overall direction the game is going is bad. You don't go tip a waiter who provided bad service just because the drinks were cold.

You don't have to be a jerk about everything especially when you are speaking to another person from another culture especially ones like japan where courtesy and respect get you farther than being rude and obnoxious.

I'll need you to point out for me where I was being a jerk. I've tried to be courteous and honest. I avoid sugar-coating my words simply because I understand that it will be translated and pleasantries and colloquialisms may not translate well.

However I'm not going to continue defiling a thread which was aimed at good intentions. I've said my part HF sitting on the black sludge of a floor you call negativity.

Ideally, I wouldn't have wanted to taint a thread created as a sign of good will but we have pages and pages of threads that aren't being seen by the right eyes. It is my genuine hope, a faint one, that Matsui would come back to this thread, see all the replies and find someone to translate for him.

It was my intent, and I think I achieved it, that my first reply was as nice and respectful as could be, as I want to be a positive member of the community. I'm sorry though, I'm not going to say to him what I believe are lies.

Perhaps he just isn't hearing us. Maybe, not likely, that's been the problem all along.

[Karbuncle]

I can safely say If i made a thank you thread and came back to nothing but more complaints about people whining the game sucks because their favorite jobs aren't updated or their favorite event isn't designed how they wanted, I'd probably just ignore it.

There's a time and a place for bringing up issues, Its littered all over this once decent forum... Can go to "New Posts" and almost every threads going to be another inconsequential complaint. i've contributed a few myself and stand by a few, but the point remains, If anyone wanted to be Courteous or polite they'd of kept their squabbles, qualms and bickering in any of the 1,000 already existing threads for such a thing.

I'll acknowledge my argument is kinda pointless cause its attempting to reach people who feel fully justified hating this man and will continue to find reason to do so despite how much the games improved since he's joined. Maybe not all of us agree on this point, and maybe the success isn't in Subs, but I'll maintain this is because FFXI players are among the worst in the MMO community for accepting new things (sorry!), but the game is a lot more accessible to everyone, with the only real hindrance being the communities ability to welcome less than perfection. Which is our fault not so much as its theirs, cause I can tell you with fact you can beat Tojil and etc without Perfect weapons... the LS I was in did it before they added I.lv stats like Skill+ and not a single one had Oatix... And I've seen it 8-manned.

I can speak with 100% certainty half the stuff suggested here, even stuff I've backed like SMN/THF/RDM updates or Campaign updates, Is in majority either looked down upon or laughed at as pointless by other forum communities, and people I play with online. There are some who wouldn't mind it, but very few who say they'd support putting man hours too it as a priority.

Point being, they listen to our suggestions, they just mostly suck or not everyone wants them and they're going in order of priority, and while they may seem "urgent" to you or me, they aren't, which is the bottom line.

They're doing a fine job and while a lot of us can disagree with the design direction, when it comes to minor things we have to understand we're not the center of the universe, and despite having this Official forum hub, not all suggestions here are equal in the eyes of the FFXI community and this is not the single source of their information, by their own admission they do read other forums to get a rough idea of peoples reactions and such or for leisure heck if i know, this is just their hub where they can respond.

(PS Dude above me, Like 99% of this is not directed to you or anyone specific in this thread)

[detlef]

Well I don't think it helped that that particular post was started by one of the more sycophantic posters on this forum. I'm sure everybody knew it wasn't going to go well the moment the post was made. It didn't help that he said "gratifying" instead of "gratitude."

Aside from that, once you make a post (especially one like that), you have no control over the responses. It's not like you can police or bully people into only responding positively. While we'd all love sensible, well-reasoned posts, I think that rants are also helpful because they convey much more emotion. I'm sure that we wouldn't have gotten as quick or as definitive a response to the RME issue if people hadn't flooded that thread with negative responses of all kinds.

Anyway, I have no doubt that Matsui is doing the best job he can for us. I have no doubt that he has the game's best interest in mind whenever he makes a big decision for the game's future. We'll see how well he does. As players, if we are given a forum to voice opinions and concerns, it should be used to provide critical feedback on anything and everything. As long as you don't make it personal, he and his staff should be able to handle any and every bit of feedback we give without shedding a tear.

[Demon6324236]

And you people wonder why they don't bother posting more material in threads? most of you are either ungrateful, or selfish... And the only thing your worried about seeing is responses to game content, or the mechanics behind game content... they don't want to talk mechanics as every time somethings not broken what do most reps tell you to do? go to your community based sites for info. They don't want to talk to you about how YOU think the game should be run. What they do want is feedback for the job your play, and questions about their game that doesn't force them to pull the "I can't really talk about that because it's a nono topic for us to even discuss" card.

What's wrong with wanting to know about mechanics behind an event? How can you justify GMs not being allowed to explain to me what I have to do to qualify for drops in a WK Reive, and them having to tell me to go to a community site? How is it wrong for us to want to see responses on content rather than only lore, or silly comments and the like rather than real meaningful and informative responses to a post? Its funny how they say something isn't broken, go look at community sites for problems which are multiple years old, and yet, the players on any English site have no info on it. Were not perfect, community sites are not perfect, to always point us to only other players means many things can go completely unknown forever such as ToAU kings because we have no idea exactly how they work which is why sometimes they go a very long time without people getting them to pop.

No one was patting them on the back.. If I wasn't clear enough I stated in my initial post on that thread that I appreciate the work he's doing and I know how much pressure he and his team are under and to keep up the good work.

If someone tells me to keep up the good work, I think I'm doing well, doing the right thing, how is making me think that not the exact same thing that patting someone on the back is meant to do?

then you get your emo responses like "Yeah he does an ok job, but he still sucks at this" or "Wheres mai cait sith" or "Haste II?" or "I disagree he sucks he needs to do a better job"

We point our how he does a bad job as well? Why he should not keep up 'the good work'? I fail to understand how that's ungrateful or selfish of us.

then he comes onto the site and posts something for english speakers thanking us for our patience and tells us that they do look through our forums and hopes he can do a better job and everyone goes apeshit on him... no wonder why he stays to posting in threads that are about gaming lore of future updates.

The reason we get on him about things is because that's all he posts in, if that's why he posts only in them then congratulations, you have found the loop. He does not answer many of our questions, we complain, he hates us, he does not answer many questions, repeat.

Maybe, just maybe, we are complaining in this thread because he said we are all happy about the new content, which the only content I think got universally good feedback on was Monstrosity. It would be like if at a concert the crowd was booing and there were 3 people out of a thousand which were cheering & shouting for an encore. It doesn't mean they all love you, it means if you want to do a good job, you need to make the other 997 people like it by changing some stuff up. He came in saying he's happy to see we all like the new content, and he reads our posts, these two things contradict one another and if you think about it, make his post meaningless in a way.

[OmnysValefor]

The concert is a fantastic example.

When a concert sucks, most people leave. What's left are a few people who want to stay, stay merely because friends are staying (sound familiar?), or because they paid to go.

How does that relate to XI? A lot of people have given up on XI. They left. They may have stayed for some time, because friends did, as many in my clique did, but ALL of those friends left for XIV? Why am I still here? I enjoy the total result of my effort. I enjoy the journey as much of my friends, but I'm not keen on starting a new journey because it appears, I'd rather continue on the one I'm on.

To put it better, when a concert sucks, you have three types of customers. Those that left, those that want to stay, and those that stay because of friends or some loyalty to the band. FFXI has three types of customers, aside from those who quit because it was time to move on: Those disappointed, who quit, those who want to stay, and those who stay for friends/attachment to accomplishment/faith in the brand.

FFXIV is just the better concert next door.

[Umichi]

Sycophantic.

I don't like being called names, especially ones that are false..

[Demon6324236]

I can safely say If i made a thank you thread and came back to nothing but more complaints about people whining the game sucks because their favorite jobs aren't updated or their favorite event isn't designed how they wanted, I'd probably just ignore it.

So you would do the stupid thing? If everyone is yelling at you that they are angry and do not like the game for blah reason and you do nothing but ignore it you will only serve to alienate those players, and prove you did not truly listen to them in the first place has he has just claimed. Also, unless the majority of people are doing this, it would be no issue anyways, so its not as though he would be alienating some small part of the players, but rather, it seems the majority of players would be ignored, again, meaning he is doing just the opposite of what he said he is doing.

I'll acknowledge my argument is kinda pointless cause its attempting to reach people who feel fully justified hating this man and will continue to find reason to do so despite how much the games improved since he's joined. Maybe not all of us agree on this point, and maybe the success isn't in Subs, but I'll maintain this is because FFXI players are among the worst in the MMO community for accepting new things (sorry!), but the game is a lot more accessible to everyone, with the only real hindrance being the communities ability to welcome less than perfection. Which is our fault not so much as its theirs, cause I can tell you with fact you can beat Tojil and etc without Perfect weapons... the LS I was in did it before they added I.lv stats like Skill+ and not a single one had Oatix... And I've seen it 8-manned.

While all of this is true, there are some things they do very poorly. The game is more accessible in one respect, while they are still as vague and unhelpful with things as ever before, leading only to community sites for information, expecting us to have nothing more than other players to get our info from. I accept some new things, I hate many others, part of why new is bad for this specific game is that those who like old, not people who are ignorant and hate it for being new, but they just flat out do not like new, could come here for old. Now, this is becoming new, so where does one go for old? The game had a unique aspect to it of being different, many people didn't like how, but it was different, so it worked for it, if you make an old game like every new game there will never be much reason to play it, if you make an old game stay old, it might continue to live on as an old game, for those who like them.

I can speak with 100% certainty half the stuff suggested here, even stuff I've backed like SMN/THF/RDM updates or Campaign updates, Is in majority either looked down upon or laughed at as pointless by other forum communities, and people I play with online. There are some who wouldn't mind it, but very few who say they'd support putting man hours too it as a priority.

I'm sure, this is a close minded player base after all. I basically had to argue with a leader 2 nights ago to let me go RDM/SCH as a DD to Yorcia Skirmish, because he claimed my RDM would never out DD his DRK or MNK. After finally getting him to accept me I ended up out DDing every person in the Skirmish easily because I was 1~2 shooting nearly everything. Because of his close minded approach to my RDM, thinking as most do, RDM is worthless, magic damage sucks, WAR DRK SAM MNK are the only real DDs, blah blah blah, he almost made his run fail, because without me, they were not killing mobs as fast as they popped up. The problem is that they hardly do any of these updates anyways. If they fixed RDM's flaws, maybe people would bring one more often, maybe it would not be getting replaced by SCH once again, right now, in all content RDM has been good for in SoA, mind you that's limited to Skirmish and Delve Boss runs. But rather than do that kind of update, they make new events which only make their old events not worth doing, which is creating a cycle of wasted time.

Point being, they listen to our suggestions, they just mostly suck or not everyone wants them and they're going in order of priority, and while they may seem "urgent" to you or me, they aren't, which is the bottom line.

How many people asked for Skirmish gear to smash Delve rather than be on par? How many asked for more completely random augments for an event? How many asked for hour long battles that take more than 50 people to take down? They listen to some suggestions, yes, but it seems to have almost no priority factor. How many THFs will really use marksmanship weapons? How many RDMs will really even be allowed to use daggers in parties without RDM melee being upgraded at some point? How hot were these topics even in their own forums? Yet, here they come, we will be getting them in the fall update. What about redoing merits? Making TH mean something in more events? Making THF have more of a use than simply TH? Fixing RDM melee by adding more decent gear? RDM unique spells or Haste II? These are things which were much more popular and requested many more times by the players, but they never happen, yet, Marksmanship & Daggers are on the way. How is that priority?

They're doing a fine job and while a lot of us can disagree with the design direction, when it comes to minor things we have to understand we're not the center of the universe, and despite having this Official forum hub, not all suggestions here are equal in the eyes of the FFXI community and this is not the single source of their information, by their own admission they do read other forums to get a rough idea of peoples reactions and such or for leisure heck if i know, this is just their hub where they can respond.

I agree they do a good job in some things, but I think they do horrible in others. I just wish they seemed to listen to us a bit more on where we want them to take this game rather than only going where they want with most things. We are in a car and they are the driver, if they do not end up going somewhere we want though, we are going to jump out of the car and find someone else going the direction we want if at all possible.

[Mnejing]

I don't like being called names, especially ones that are false..

He's not referring to you, he's referring to someone else.

[OmnysValefor]

Daemon authored the thread he's talking about and it was his second (or first, but he made two) attempt at a thread merely meant to praise Matsui. It got exactly what I'm sure he wanted: direct attention from Matsui.

[Nebo]

And you people wonder why they don't bother posting more material in threads? most of you are either ungrateful...

I'm going to stop you right there.

The dev team doesn't post on the forums as a favour to us. They do it as a function of their greater marketing strategy - customer relationship management. And they don't do it for free. They do it because we pay them every month for their services. They also want us to keep paying them every month for their services.

Mr. Matsui doesn't do this out of "love" for the player base. This is his job. There are a lot of people doing him the favour of continuing to pay for the privilege of posting on these forums to express their dissatisfaction with his product, rather than just cancelling their subscription and moving on.

For any community management team, it's a challenge to sift through the tone and find the common denominator that creates dissatisfaction. But if any of them, including Mr. Matsui takes it personally and focuses on the tone, not the message and become offended...they aren't professionals.

And realistically, they have no right to be. It is very much a reality that we have been paying full price subscription fees for less and less resources/service every year.