job forum monitoring

[Glamdring]

Simply judging an idea's merits by replies to a post isn't a good way to judge things, especially if later replies just break down into petty bickering or people trying to prove they know more about the game than the next guy.

Oh, I never meant to exclude things from being read, I just meant that posts with alot of activity, be it response or just views is a decent jumpping off point. As an example, the "letter to the Devs from the Puppetmasters of Vanadiel" post sees alot of activity for a job post; as a Dev/Mod you might want to look there 1st in the pup forum. Each job forum has several posts like that, things that don't die because they've touched a nerve with the playerbase.

But you are right, many things don't see alot of activity, and I think you simply have to look at it in terms of the forum it sits in. The posts on Synergy/Crafting don't see nearly the traffic the job forums do, but those that do post in there feel as strongly about their topic as those in the job forums. Even the posts where people talk about the nice things they've seen in FFXI, if I'm a dev I'm looking at those to find what things players have found appealing.

[Glamdring]

*sigh* at all the off-topic responses based on examples given. Forget the examples, and the original post is a valid concern that the Job Forums do seem to be ignored, even if that is not the case.

SOME sort of feedback from the Devs would be extremely welcome, if for no other reason than to direct conversation in directions the Devs are interested in pursuing. This would also help to weed out requests for things the Devs have decided against or go in directions the Devs are not willing to pursue (goes against their vision/plans whatever) And when they do pop up, the Dev post can be referenced to stop the conversation before it goes too far.

Dev Team posts I'd like to see would come in these main forms:
1 ) (Response) We're looking into something similar to that! (we like it!)
2 ) (Response) We've decided against that concept. (we don't like it) (reasons please?)
And most importantly:
3 ) (Discussion) We want player input on <insert subject here>, with the Dev Team's concept under discussion and background reasoning along with the direction they want to take the subject at hand. (Similar to the post on 2hrs), the posts on Corsair's 11 roll and the post on Craft Skill Limitations. These discussion posts are different from your announcement posts, ideally allowing player input BEFORE too much time has been spent on programming the features and interface, allowing player input to potentially change what is decided upon.

Don't Forget: As you did with the Corsair topic, coming back to us with the Dev Team response to the discussion made that a very encouraging interchange with the Dev Team. (a little more would have been nice - they were still really vague on what was being implemented as a result.)

Exactly, this is just he kind of feedback I am asking for. As I stated in the OP, most of the threads in the job forums are just stupid and really deserve no response (with the possible exception of killing the thread... THAT'S a hint). The type of response you mention for the legitimate postings is excellent. The only additional request is when they say it is in the works a mention to any possible timetable, too... and periodically update it. i.e. pups were told the AI issues were being "looked at" over 4 years ago and as of this moment nothing has ever been done or heard from since. I would hardly call that an adequate response.