Why no official dares answering us?

One thing people have not mentioned,

there is a reasons very few developers ever say "hey cool! We like your idea" or some variation of like. I believe it was on the WoW forums where I read it, but basically, it gets them into some thorny legal positions with regard to copyright. A player told by a mod that "hey I like your idea" and then a variation of that idea is later added can be seen as an actionable case of needing to pay the player for it. Where as if they just take our feedback wether commenting on it or not, and implement it due to "popular demand" it becomes more muddy and an indavidual player's claim far less easy to establish.


And then of course there is that many players suggestion are blindingly dumb, contradictory, or would require coding so advanced it doesn't exist yet to actually implement, or only sound good on paper, in practice would be a mess, that probably also stays their hand in responding

This is a Japanese game. There is no English DEVELOPMENT team. All development happens in JAPANESE, so honestly if you want real answers from the real team, you need to go to the Japanese forum. The English community reps have to take the posts and send the questions to the Japanese staff most of the time - they even say this a lot in their posts. So it's going to take longer to get answers here than it would if SE were an English company.
However, there are community rep posts nearly every single weekday with responses to players questions and suggestions. But what really gets me is that in almost every single Letter From the Producer, Yoshida will explain why they do some of the things they do. So I'm not sure what more you are expecting...

There you go my friend:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

In my opinion mods are obligated to take our feedback and report it to the devs, not respond to childish threads like this. All you're doing in this thread is trying to make them look bad.

---

Ah some speculation about my intents :)
I actually intend to make some SE representative react a bit more to what we say. But I know you'll call me stupid because I do it, because of the way I do it and because I'm not happy and you don't care :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

There have been a number of changes that have occurred after threads in general discussion got a lot of traction/support from the community.

---

I have to agree with that. Not going to insult you because I can control my testosterone.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

On the flip side, they don't make every change we want because of opposing views both in their vision and in the community.

---

No kidding?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

They don't post about every single change on the forum and I don't think they should have to.

The head developer in this game releases letters, live streams, goes to a ton of events and shares as much information as possible without completely pissing off SE's public relations team. In addition to that mods here respond fairly often in a serious manner that has clearly been analyzed prior to posting. They are trying to avoid putting their foot in their mouth or causing unrest on the forums.

---

I do think SE has a communication strategy and actually devote a lot of energy to it.
My point is that we lack interaction. A solution to this would be that Devs answer a recurring issue with some sort of communication: producer letter, interview, Dev representative on the forums etc. They pick the media they want.
When they say "we balanced this because our community was widely complaining about it", how do they know? Are forums not made for that?
So far, as I said before I only see them answering commercial/bug fix answers/typos types of posts.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

All in all you're entitled to your opinion but in my opinion they are doing a great job communicating with us. Comparing them to league of legends is just laughable.

---

This is your opinion and we could discuss about it more.
I love FF14 and many FF games. I love many games Squaresoft created, Enix and Square Enix created. But I don't see what's so laughable to compare FF14 Dev team to the most played online game in video games (League of Legends). It's not the same game I agree with what MageBlack said, but there are lessons to learn from what Riot Games did.

Hey, OP. Get in line. I asked for dual wielding SCH books and 1sec Flare cast times first. Don't make me report you for cutting in line at the mall santa.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GalkaBikini

This is a Japanese game. There is no English DEVELOPMENT team. All development happens in JAPANESE, so honestly if you want real answers from the real team, you need to go to the Japanese forum. The English community reps have to take the posts and send the questions to the Japanese staff most of the time - they even say this a lot in their posts. So it's going to take longer to get answers here than it would if SE were an English company.
However, there are community rep posts nearly every single weekday with responses to players questions and suggestions. But what really gets me is that in almost every single Letter From the Producer, Yoshida will explain why they do some of the things they do. So I'm not sure what more you are expecting...

---

For the most part they dont really respond directly to anything in the english forums. Its the english dev team translating something posted in the Japanese forums, then they find a thread that closely resembles the question they are answering, then slap the post in there with a little personalization. Camate, Grekuman, and Bayhone are great for that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MageBlack

For the most part they dont really respond directly to anything in the english forums. Its the english dev team translating something posted in the Japanese forums, then they find a thread that closely resembles the question they are answering, then slap the post in there with a little personalization. Camate, Grekuman, and Bayhone are great for that.

---

And I think it's usually when they actually have a thread that is similar to what the Japanese thread was discussing otherwise I don't think they get posted. I don't think they generally post new threads for translated posts from the Role forums. Usually I think only Yoshi-P's posts are directly translated?

Guys, thank you for this page, the most interesting one I read in this thread (apart from my post lol) since I created it.
Terrini, Pandastirfry, GalkaBikini & MageBlack <3

I will have to go to the JP forums then hahaha.
itteki masu !

The devs are always leaving replies and there are a ton of QoL features that we have gotten put into the game that started as topics here. Just because one thing that you want to happen hasn't happened, doesn't mean that they are not listening, it means that they thought something else was more important and they decided to put effort into that instead.

To say that they don't give us any official answers is ugly and insulting IMO, as they do take the time to give lots of answers, whether it be on things I deem silly or otherwise. I see a lot of work put into this forum and our game!

The community managers read and comment, but mostly they read.

You cannot realistically expect them to address every nagging issue raised on the forums. If we were conditioned to receive feedback on every piece of trivial chocoboshit that makes its way here, then you would see childish threads like "Billy's post about X got an answer, why didn't mine? Devs don't care about Y!"

If it's not addressed in a reasonable period of time, consider it a) working as intended or b) too stupid to warrant a reply. The staff is good about necroposting threads if their position changes. Not that this will change your mind on the matter--but take heart: there will be plenty of people like myself to quote your posts out of context and reply with sarcastic one-liners for thumb-ups.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kraktur

so i'll just "shut up".

---

You are light years ahead of me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pandastirfry

there is a reasons very few developers ever say "hey cool! We like your idea" or some variation of like. I believe it was on the WoW forums where I read it, but basically, it gets them into some thorny legal positions with regard to copyright.

---

This is spot on and a major reason that most detailed suggestions don't get a direct response. General suggestions and questions are easier to answer without promising too much or seeming like they're cherry-picking specific ideas from fans. It also helps avoid disappointment and divisiveness in the community due to one person's idea being implemented over others.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kraktur

Please check league of legends forums before making such statements.

---

Ew, gross. No.

you must be new here... let me show you the only MMO i have ever played that has listen to the player like this one does.

Something that might be a nice QoL change for the Forums:

Have a little icon (like the crown for dev responses) where it will indicate "This thread was opened by a dev"

You know, kinda like how when we click on a link the words go from bold to normal?

Am I making any sense?

SE is a company. A large company.
See, there's a thing called "PR" or "Public Relations" They have to be VERY careful what they can say. Ever worked on a group project? It's kind of like that. For EVERYTHING.
Hell the legal department at a given company will STRONGLY advise and sometimes even force employees to not say anything.
For example, Yoshida once made comments on how he wanted or how they were working on housing way way back when 2.0 was a new thing.
Since it didn't end up working out that way, players have been royally miffed.
Every post from development and the community managers has to be "official," otherwise you get a repeat of that incident. They seriously cannot comment on anything that isn't either happening right now (a known bug or exploit, or online store problems) or will be happening within the next week with no possibility of changes happening(panels, big patch releases within the next week, etc.)
For example, they CANNOT directly comment on certain ideas, nor can they even say they're "taking them into consideration" unless they get approval from like 5 different departments first (community, development, corporate, legal, marketing, and yoshi himself)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MageBlack

Something that might be a nice QoL change for the Forums:

Have a little icon (like the crown for dev responses) where it will indicate "This thread was opened by a dev"

You know, kinda like how when we click on a link the words go from bold to normal?

Am I making any sense?

---

Actually I wish we just had the option to click that crown and be taken directly to the dev post rather than having to slog through 8 pages of people complaining.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GalkaBikini

This is a Japanese game. There is no English DEVELOPMENT team. All development happens in JAPANESE

---

This actually Indy entirely true. A lot of the lore and scripts are done in English first, then localized into the other three supporters languages after. If you check out the Lioe forums, Fernehalwes has made a number of posts explaining the processes they go through.

While most of the mechanical and technical aspects of the game are Japanese developed, the game has a touch of flavour from across the seas!

Please don't feed the trolls, guyz.

I read the first page of this thread. It seems to go like this:

OP: SE reps never respond! SE reps never listen to players! SE doesn't care about playerbase!

Someone disagrees with OP.

OP: IMMA TELL SE ON YOU!

/logic.

1st post edited, thanks everyone for sharing your opinion with me, this was enlightening.
I appreciated all the love I got too :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MageBlack

Something that might be a nice QoL change for the Forums:

Have a little icon (like the crown for dev responses) where it will indicate "This thread was opened by a dev"

You know, kinda like how when we click on a link the words go from bold to normal?

Am I making any sense?

---

Talk about a nightmare, incoming threads about how a dev "read my suggestion but completely ignored it, guess they don't care about us" These reps can't read all suggestions and formulate a reply that match what the Japansee developers are thinking to the countless issues here, most of which are rediculous complaints that would just waste their time. I feel they respond to the important stuff pretty adequately. Need to have realistic expectations for them since everything they say will be scrutinized heavily.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilaAquillina

Please don't feed the trolls, guyz.

I read the first page of this thread. It seems to go like this:

OP: SE reps never respond! SE reps never listen to players! SE doesn't care about playerbase!

Someone disagrees with OP.

OP: IMMA TELL SE ON YOU!

/logic.

---

lol thnks for the laugh :P

What I find funny is that this exact complaint can be found on every gaming forum for every game I've ever played.

The two games that I've played where the devs sat on the forums listening to the vocal minority were trashed in no time. They both went away fast. This is because the minority who are complaining are never the ones who know what's actually best. The game designers who got us all hooked are the ones who know what's best.

i just want to know in what other industry is this an expectation? Do you do this when you go to stores or out to eat? Do you do it after watching a movie? Why do people in gaming demand that a developer talk to them and make changes to their product based on what you say?