Developer lack of communication

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Originally Posted by Brundlefly

I think the biggest mistake SE has made so far with this expansion was the way the media tour was handled. They really should not have allowed video or pictures to be taken. (At least not in the way that it did.) I can say that the only video I've seen from the Media Tour was Mr Happys general video about his visit. And I seem to be hearing more and more rumors from people who watched all the other vids complaining about stuff. I don't go out of my way to look for that info, but you end up hearing it everywhere (i.e. Twitch, in game, forums). I've never seen such craziness where SMNs go from hype of Bahamut in the Live Letter to wanting to change classes the next week.

What I'd love to see happen is that everything that was seen from the media tour be just complete bogus data and people be pleasantly surprised when the game actually comes out.

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The media was probably told the same as we were during the live letter (assuming any media missed it), but they needs their clicks and views...

Every video I've seen said the same thing. This is under development and subject to change. It is watermarked on every video.

I don't understand the logic of some people PANICKING over a game that is not even out yet.

Yes there is some "sort" information out but you have to wait until you have tested it yourself rather than ranting.

This forum sometimes feels like a class room full of kids not wanting to do their assignments cause they are too difficult but once they get on with it was never hard in the first place....

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Originally Posted by Riardon

Everything is subject to change as they said many times. It's not dev's fault when people are so eager to spam threads about the death of WHM and other nonsense before the expansion even gets released. What has to stop is all those premature theory crafts and death talks. Let the thing gets released first then try it out in the new context and then give serious feedback in the official forums. Threads like "Thx SE my WHM is now deder than ded" is not constructive feedback. Also you have to keep in mind that translators do many mistakes even when they are professionals.

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"Our players are dumb and hysterical, let's completely ignore their concerns and just let them all be mad." is a very bad PR philosophy.

"This is an old build and the WHM design has been improved since then." takes about five seconds for a rep to type and calms a lot of people down.

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Originally Posted by MisterLucie

"Our players are dumb and hysterical, let's completely ignore their concerns and just let them all be mad." is a very bad PR philosophy.

"This is an old build and the WHM design has been improved since then." takes about five seconds for a rep to type and calms a lot of people down.

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Seems to work for WoW and really it flat out does say things are subject to change but I can understand if you want the watermark all these videos have to be directly posted into the forums. No one is saying they can't give feedback though

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Originally Posted by MisterLucie

"This is an old build and the WHM design has been improved since then." takes about five seconds for a rep to type and calms a lot of people down.

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But they said it

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Originally Posted by RukiaFae

Every video I've seen said the same thing. This is under development and subject to change. It is watermarked on every video.

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Do they really have to say how old it is instead of just that it is old?

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Originally Posted by MisterLucie

There's literally a giant post right on the front page of MMO-champ with a blizzard dev having a conversation with the elemental shaman community about what they feel is wrong with the spec and what Blizz is doing to tweak it. There's a large amount of notes not far under it regarding upcoming raid design and changes being made to it.

I wonder if there's a class community in 14 that could really benefit from a dev speaking to them about their distressing changes right now? Hmm.

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They have those conversations after completely ignoring player feedback for months and months and then finally addressing the classes over halfway through the expansion, despite having the feedback and resources to make class adjustments to avoid launching a expansion with broken classes and extremely bad class balance.

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Originally Posted by Felis

But they said it

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No, they didn't. "This could potentially maybe perhaps change" doesn't mean anything. "This is old and it has changed" means something.

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Originally Posted by MisterLucie

No, they didn't. "This could potentially maybe perhaps change" doesn't mean anything. "This is old and it has changed" means something.

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What interest us is the live version. So yes, the presentation version is old since the presentation started and Yoshida said that it is still the development version.

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Originally Posted by Pluvia

You say that but I took part in the alpha and beta of legion and they flat out ignored issues we brought up 6 months before the expansion released and took weeks or months to actually do anything about it let alone admit there was a problem. All of us testing DH telling SE hey we have too much AoE damage you may want to look into it Ignored until a good month after release when they have to finally nerf it because all they were taking for mythic + runs were DH.

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I am saying that they responded to some feedback. There were blue posts which basically said, we've heard what you are saying and here is our response. It wasn't for every single piece of feedback, but it was there and widespread. Again, Blizz ain't perfect, but they give infinitely more communication than we get from Square.

Note that actually making changes is not the same thing as communication.. Here is an example..

Player A: Class X's ability is too weak and needs adjusting to remain balanced.

Company A: Thank you for the feedback, we actually are finding on internal sims that Class X is perfectly balanced.
Company B: .... Patch Notes later: Class X's aoe has been buffed by 10%.

Both listened, but A actually communicated, even though B made the change and A did not. B still didn't communicate anything.

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Originally Posted by Felis

What interest us is the live version. So yes, the presentation version is old since the presentation started and Yoshida said that it is still the development version.

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So, in your mind, when bad information is given about a bad design right before the final product is released to the public and it's the only thing a consumer has to go off of other than a vague "it might change, somehow, maybe." it's the consumer's fault that they have a negative impression of it? And then, when the consumer expresses that negative impression they're blatantly ignored and given no further clarification?

It's just extremely bad customer relations. There's no debating that. SE is a massively successful company, I'm sure they can afford to hire a CM or two that can actually relay info from a dev to their customers in between the several month gap of information that routinely happens.

You want them come here and tell you what you already know. Ok you here go. "Things are subjected to change and please look forward to it." lol

But seriously they can't tell us everything because they are still working on it and it may change again. Then people would be crying about the new changes and saying "SE you don't constantly tell us everything you're doing and every change you make".

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Originally Posted by RukiaFae

Tell you what you already know. Ok you here go. "Things are subjected to change and please look forward to it." lol

But seriously they can't tell us everything because they are still working on it and it may change again. Then people would be crying about the new changes and saying "SE you don't constantly tell us everything you're doing and every change you make".

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Then perhaps if they don't want to bother telling us that they're fixing an awful design, they shouldn't show us the design in the first place.

And, again, "This thing might change" is very different than "This thing has changed." One is a vague statement of protection against bad feedback, the other is an actual statement of acknowledgment that says they're fixing an issue that a lot of their consumers are upset about.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

Again, Blizz ain't perfect, but they give infinitely more communication than we get from Square..

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No offense, but they tried to hide the change to Mob scaling their HP and dmg with your gear during PTR and completely ignored ANY feedback about it, then when they couldn't hide it anymore because it was blatant they said they had no feedback about it on PTR despite forums post about it, so I'm afraid I'll have to disagree, blizzard is simply the worst they only listen to what benefits them. BTW this was more obnoxious because it come right after they said they would become more clear about changes in development and PTRs.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

No offense, but they tried to hide the change to Mob scaling their HP and dmg with your gear during PTR and completely ignored ANY feedback about it, then when they couldn't hide it anymore because it was blatant they said they had no feedback about it on PTR despite forums post about it, so I'm afraid I'll have to disagree, blizzard is simply the worst they only listen to what benefits them. BTW this was more obnoxious because it come right after they said they would become more clear about changes in development and PTRs.

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For the 5th post now. Listening is not the same thing as communication. Blizzard communicates better, because they actually engage in dialogue with their playerbase. They do not engage in dialogue on every issue, but they do on many issues. They don't always make the right choices after the communication, but that doesn't mean they didn't communicate.

FFXIV often makes the right choices, and/or balances things well, in comparison. Though, conversely, they don't engage in dialogue with the playerbase at all. They only release 1-sided live letters on a frequent basis.

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Originally Posted by Selova

As someone that plays WoW along with this game, I can only laugh if you think that this is what lack of communication looks like. The fact is that the FFXIV playerbase is spoiled if you honestly think SE is lacking in the communication department. A lot of other MMOs would give anything to have the kind of devs that work on this game. You have no clue what real lack of communication looks like.

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Really? The info we get live letter is ego/fluff driven. The PvP section in WoW alone had more info and better communication in a patch then we have gotten since 2.0. As much as I hated that Crab icon from the dev team ( I don't think he ever brought good news) was solid explanation and reasons and response.

The OP is probably just miserable whm issue. They have a bad example of poor communication. A good example is when SE takes weeks/months to respond to any in game issue. Oh like any time they have housing issues. Servers have a bunch of house flippers, lets wait weeks to even respond. PvP ques bad pretend they aren't until they are forced to answer. Give lore as first reason forced to answer a second time oh, players cheat. I could go on. The OP is wrong but the forum hero worship of this dev team is just disgusting. People worked to send some sort of birthday gift to dev. They probably don't even pay that much attention to their Doctor and they help keep them healthy.

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Originally Posted by Serret

Just as an example: The infamous e3 footage for Gearbox's Aliens Colonial Marines was also said not to be representative of the final version of the game ^^
And in fact it wasn't. Leading to bait and switch remarks, to Gearbox having to deal with a massive backlash and leaving a huge stain in their reputation.

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The Gearbox thing was quite a bit different though. Generally speaking, a game that looks marvelous during it's alpha/beta stages that then turns into a sloppy mess that doesn't even remotely deliver to what was hyped by the developing company itself, is reason for outcry. That's a No Man's Sky situation right there lol. Hiding the finished product behind the veil of praising words and old footage. Add to that the fact that A:CM was revealed to be outsourced pretty much from start to finish, with little to no time for internal QA, was enough reason for fans to be left with bitter feelings, as their product was essentially half assed in a way that made people feel stupid (i.e. cheated). It's understandable that people wouldn't trust a company after that fiasco that they put themselves in.

The devs do pay attention to our concerns. Its pretty damn clear from what we hear in Live letters that they pay a lot of attention to community feedback, which frankly is the most important thing.

The reason devs probably don't communicate much, particularly through their CMs, is because they often don't 100% know for sure what changes they might make and any thing they post will be taken as gospel by the community even if they stress it only might be what they are doing. A lot of the time the only answer they can give is 'we are looking at it' and most people aren't going to be happy with that.

There is also the matter of language. CMs cant give us that much info and the devs who would be working on it speak Japanese. Holding a one way conversation means the CMs just need to convert our concerns into Japanese. Having a Dialog means they have to try and do that two ways constantly which is a lot more work for both sides and frankly the devs should be focused on developing not chatting with players.

The devs have also indicated several times answers to people's concerns often up front when they see the concern approach, and people chose to ignore it. Hell other players will explain the situation and just get dismissed as 'White Knighters'.

WoW does in some ways have better communication about upcoming launches but that is because they literally spoil everything about their approaching patches months before the bulk of players touch it. I find one of the things I like about FF14 is when I play the story I can be surprised without having to completely disconnect with the community six months before it comes out. I know pretty much the entire plot to Legion and I haven't even played it.

As long as they hear our concerns in the long run that is all that is important as far as I care.

If I was the part of the dev team, I'd make sure things continue as is. Its actually hilarious the way yall freak out lol.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

For the 5th post now. Listening is not the same thing as communication. Blizzard communicates better, because they actually engage in dialogue with their playerbase. They do not engage in dialogue on every issue, but they do on many issues. They don't always make the right choices after the communication, but that doesn't mean they didn't communicate.

FFXIV often makes the right choices, and/or balances things well, in comparison. Though, conversely, they don't engage in dialogue with the playerbase at all. They only release 1-sided live letters on a frequent basis.

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Not saying they don't say anything, I'm saying that what they say holds no value because they will lie most of the time and if they do not lie they speak without anything to back it up which honestly it's worse.
There have been in the years many events where they blatantly lied despite playerbase calling them out, now I don't want to say FFXIV team didn't lied and I honestly don't care to cover them up, that's not my work, however I really don't think this dev team is worse than blizzard's
And on the infos topic honestly I just hope they won't tell us ANYTHING of the value of spells before an expansion releases in the future, consider how much immature we as players can be tbh

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Originally Posted by Belhi

The devs do pay attention to our concerns. Its pretty damn clear from what we hear in Live letters that they pay a lot of attention to community feedback, which frankly is the most important thing.

The reason devs probably don't communicate much, particularly through their CMs, is because they often don't 100% know for sure what changes they might make and any thing they post will be taken as gospel by the community even if they stress it only might be what they are doing. A lot of the time the only answer they can give is 'we are looking at it' and most people aren't going to be happy with that.

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Really that is what you take away from the live letters and community management? You know how many times questions get ignored because they don't want to answer them. Or when they implement major systems and put little fore thought into how the community is going to play it and having someone who can respond.They can plan to hang out in Germany/UK/US but can't have a dev and translator when new content goes live. I don't mean a patch with two dungeons and some clicking on npcs.

Hunts and the pure server melting system they were at launch. No one could have fore seen it and been ready to respond? Housing and reclamation? Diadem v2 was slightly faster. But I chalk that up to timing/luck, not them planning and responding.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

Really that is what you take away from the live letters and community management? You know how many times questions get ignored because they don't want to answer them. Or when they implement major systems and put little fore thought into how the community is going to play it and having someone who can respond.They can plan to hang out in Germany/UK/US but can't have a dev and translator when new content goes live. I don't mean a patch with two dungeons and some clicking on npcs.Hunts and the pure server melting system they were at launch. No one could have fore seen it and been ready to respond? Housing and reclamation? Diadem v2 was slightly faster. But I chalk that up to timing/luck, not them planning and responding.

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Devs have been paying attention to us and have made changes. A good example is the changes to summoner and bard. The Dev's do listen to us, but they do not have to listen to us all the time. If they listen to us all the time we would have romper wearing bunny boys running around our streets.

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Originally Posted by Reaperking386

Devs have been paying attention to us and have made changes. A good example is the changes to summoner and bard. The Dev's do listen to us, but they do not have to listen to us all the time. If they listen to us all the time we would have romper wearing bunny boys running around our streets.

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You consider expansion balancing listening? Listening would have been 3.1 Bard population has dropped off the face of the earth we fixed it. Two years for balancing REALLY REALLY. I want to type more really's. That is not a defense that's an example of not listening. Anything as simple as cast bar making it two patches is not listening. That is head in sand and hoping people adapt so you don't have to fix it. This is literally why I can't take any defense of the dev team serious.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

You consider expansion balancing listening? Listening would have been 3.1 Bard population has dropped off the face of the earth we fixed it. Two years for balancing REALLY REALLY. I want to type more really's. That is not a defense that's an example of not listening. Anything as simple as cast bar making it two patches is not listening. That is head in sand and hoping people adapt so you don't have to fix it. This is literally why I can't take any defense of the dev team serious.

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It's a priority thing. It always is, and it always will be. Conflicts with design goals are generally not going to be changed quickly if the current product is acceptable (it was). Minor balance changes or job-killing imbalances are often going to be addressed far sooner than later, simply because it's a quick tweak to static potency numbers that you can easily redo if it's still a problem. It'd be nice to fix any problem quickly, regardless of severity, but that's unrealistic to expect.

Listening and taking action are two completely different things. You are right, it is a "head in sand and hoping people adapt" situation. That's how it always is. If developers for any game have literally nothing better to do than immediately appeal to every criticism and adjust games based on the public's image (not their own), then the game has no future. If they simply listen however, they can prioritize things and watch how it unfolds over time. There's a strategy behind it, which as a saving grace for them, affords them time to work on other things. You don't want to knee-jerk reaction your changes because random people think something is bad. I would hope anyone sensible would agree with that. Hence why I'd argue they are listening. It's not an all or nothing thing. It rarely ever is, in life. Nor does it mean they must listen and act on everything. At that point, that's not listening, that's "obeying".

As you noted, you (or anyone) shouldn't be taking their defense as the only thing there is to it. They're not going to tell us exactly what's going on to the smallest detail, especially since it'd almost always involve something the public would not like but that the devs have to adhere to. The thing is, while it may not be all there is to the situation, I'd argue that it's at least a true statement in general usually. Your mention of two years for BRD was in regards to a major gameplay change that, while many did not like it (myself included), some did enjoy it. It didn't break the jobs ability to perform, obviously. What they did change frequently though was potency in light of the play style. They did the same for MCH and AST as well. Meaningful, yet simple changes that can result in consequence if left unfixed, like breaking the ability to perform effectively. They probably just decided from the beginning to let the turret playstyle linger through HW, in light of how fights were balanced and how they could freely change it with a new expansion.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

You consider expansion balancing listening? Listening would have been 3.1 Bard population has dropped off the face of the earth we fixed it. Two years for balancing REALLY REALLY. I want to type more really's. That is not a defense that's an example of not listening. Anything as simple as cast bar making it two patches is not listening. That is head in sand and hoping people adapt so you don't have to fix it. This is literally why I can't take any defense of the dev team serious.

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that has to do resources and they don't want to jeopardize the balance of the raid groups. the design was hugely flawed but it was functional. there's a difference between listening and doing. people who work for me can ask for raises/promotions, i always listen, doesn't mean i can always give them out when they ask.

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Originally Posted by Keramory

...Seriously I think people take this nonsense too seriously. It's a video game. You want to know why the devs don't take us seriously? Cause of the over dramatic reactions ideas of things that are not even out yet.

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Some of us have nothing better to do until 4.0 but be dramatic. But this time it's..really out of hand.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

This brings up a very important topic. Developer communication...

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....

https://i.makeagif.com/media/1-19-2016/PPNeY5.gif

You know this is not a SE only problem lots of game developers do it show off trailers or game footage sometimes years before the game comes out and then later when actually comes out things been changed or completely cut from the game. As for XIV I agree with some other posts about how people over react way too much.

There has been some bad communication for a while now. But the thing that would probably rectify it, and I am baffled they stopped doing it, is player surveys on the state of the game and it's future. They did some surveys back in the 1.X days, which is why it's odd they don't ask for our feedback anymore. More and more I question how much the devs care or even want feedback, as I have quit in the past and there was no exit survey. Even now I am letting my sub lapse just a bit till SB, and there was nothing but a joke of an exit survey. This to me is baffling as every major MMO I played had some form of a survey to try and better understand why you were quitting and what would get you back.

Now of course it doesn't mean they will interpret that data in a meaningful way, but at least shows some semblance of caring why people are leaving.

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Originally Posted by Zhexos

Greetings!

First off, thank you all for the continued feedback regarding the upcoming changes to white mage in Patch 4.0. We've been reading through it all and sharing it with the team.

As some have already pointed out, Yoshida recently made a comment about how casting Cure II will now grant a lily 100% of the time. The information and data revealed during the recent media tour was from a build made in late April, and various actions have been modified since then. While we continue to collect and relay your valuable feedback to the dev. team, we ask you to keep that in mind and hang tight a bit longer, until the finalized information is revealed in the patch notes.

10 more days till the early access!

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Hey look you got your feedback. We can go back to being a happy forum now?

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Originally Posted by RukiaFae

Hey look you got your feedback. We can go back to being a happy forum now?

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Oh but the Dev's dont communicate..
Nope I dont see anything...
/facepalm

I swear sometimes they have to get hit with it, in the face, with a wrecking ball...

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Originally Posted by Vespar

Oh but the Dev's dont communicate..
Nope I dont see anything...
/facepalm

I swear sometimes they have to get hit with it, in the face, with a wrecking ball...

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Someone could say that Zhexos is not a dev, but a forum rep.
So, let write more pages into this thread until a dev write something in japanese ^^

This thread is entirely nonsensical.

So many other games would just give you a CGI trailer, maybe some in-game footage and that would be it.
Stuff like skill potencies and rotations wouldn't even be touched.

Be thankful that you know the rough idea of what a good portion of the skills do, and what the general mechanics are about.
There is inevitably going to be some rebalancing through the first couple of patches, and if WHM is really in such a sorry state - it will get looked at after release when everyone has had the chance to play the "final" version of the revamp on the 16th.

You watched the letter with the understanding that potencies and skills aren't final and will likely be adjusted between when they were released and launch.

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Originally Posted by Altena

This thread is entirely nonsensical.

So many other games would just give you a CGI trailer, maybe some in-game footage and that would be it.

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And a few of those games get sued or get tons of bad media coverage. Alien Colonial Marines was one in particular that got sued because what they showed off wasn't anything in the game, both the recent Call of Duty and Battlefield 1 had some scrutiny, though BF1 sold well there was still people mad at the fact nothing in the trailer was game footage. Halo 5 was another one, showing constant trailers of Master Chief and Locke doing battle, but they never fight except I've brief moment toward the end of the game. Want other ones? The Division, Watch Dogs, and Ghost Recon, coincidentally all big Ubisoft games have had tons of backlash for showing off different builds of games or not using any footage at all.

You can't blame people for getting sick of game development companies doing this, it's not ok for a company to show you a game engine trailer and then the entire game isn't even close to that level. If many other types of professionals from doctors to mechanics, sold people on false pretenses, everyone would be up in arms. So why do game devs get a pass?

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Originally Posted by Jetstream_Fox

snip

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Then people should only watch the "Revolution" musicvideo. All what the video show will be in the game for sure.

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Originally Posted by Felis

Then people should only watch the "Revolution" musicvideo. All what the video show will be in the game for sure.

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Revolutions would serve as a great game trailer. Even better than the reveal trailer, since it used actual in game footage, the Revolutions trailer is likely the most accurate look at the game. But why was a trailer promoting a song, using more up to date game footage, but a key video depicting very important job changes, allowed to use old builds portraying as new?

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Originally Posted by Jetstream_Fox

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There is an advertisement out at the moment for the new Hyundai i30.
It shows the car falling from a ridiculous height (like a comet) and smashing into the ground and driving away.
You think that car can actually do that?


It's marketing.

I mean the CGI Stormblood trailer isn't in the game. Not even as a CGI cutscene.
The devs stated over and over that the content was "still in development and subject to change". It "wasn't final".
Last minute balancing and adjustments are bound to happen.

What we have been shown was content from April. They were previewing what they had back then, for a game that was still in development.
All of the content was subject to change, and that was announced a hundred times.

Would you rather they showed us nothing? Or some cheesy action-trailer showing us a character with a hidden UI running around the new zones?

Be thankful you have as much information about the battle system changes as you do. It's not false advertising.

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Originally Posted by Jetstream_Fox

And a few of those games get sued or get tons of bad media coverage. Alien Colonial Marines was one in particular that got sued because what they showed off wasn't anything in the game, both the recent Call of Duty and Battlefield 1 had some scrutiny, though BF1 sold well there was still people mad at the fact nothing in the trailer was game footage. Halo 5 was another one, showing constant trailers of Master Chief and Locke doing battle, but they never fight except I've brief moment toward the end of the game. Want other ones? The Division, Watch Dogs, and Ghost Recon, coincidentally all big Ubisoft games have had tons of backlash for showing off different builds of games or not using any footage at all.

You can't blame people for getting sick of game development companies doing this, it's not ok for a company to show you a game engine trailer and then the entire game isn't even close to that level. If many other types of professionals from doctors to mechanics, sold people on false pretenses, everyone would be up in arms. So why do game devs get a pass?

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Because the games that deserved actual backlash (to the extent that the legal system became directly involved) was relevant to the product itself. I noted this earlier in this thread, but A:CM was a different and clearly substandard game at its core compared to the demo. Nearly everything about what made the demo appealing did not make it to the final product. The demo showed Xenomorph AI actually react to the situation, instead of blindly charging forward. It showed great level experience that weren't in the game and graphic quality that stood above and beyond expectation. Add to that Randy Pitchford's false commentary through interviews and making-of promotions that used the demo, rather than anything akin to the final. Everything that would make a modern game appealing. Sadly, they even went to the extent of hiding the fact they outsourced nearly all of the game, despite claims through those interviews/promotions that they were implying it was developed in-house.

The situation here is absolutely nothing like that. What we have here is the equivalent of a gun in Halo not functioning exactly as we'd see in a demo. That's all. That's why the devs here get a pass. People making comparisons between those games and what is happening here is ridiculous and evident of folks who are 1) making a big deal out of what is essentially nothing and 2) failing at understanding the situation. Part of said failure being their lack of remembering that this is an MMORPG. Nearly everything about the gameplay (besides the genre itself) is subject to change for better or worse.

Edit: For clarification, my mention of "nothing" there is referring to severity, rather than discontent. Express concern and all that, but people should learn to not treat it like some kind of crime against humanity. This game, like many others in the MMORPG genre, are known to adjust things or make changes... in case anyone forgot.

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Originally Posted by MisterLucie

There's literally a giant post right on the front page of MMO-champ with a blizzard dev having a conversation with the elemental shaman community about what they feel is wrong with the spec and what Blizz is doing to tweak it. There's a large amount of notes not far under it regarding upcoming raid design and changes being made to it.

I wonder if there's a class community in 14 that could really benefit from a dev speaking to them about their distressing changes right now? Hmm.

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I am going to clarify a few things, and MisterLucie I am just quoting you to provide context to my response.
FFXIV has live letters, with Yoshi-P and that is something far more relevant than a single developer, and he does it way more often. SE has both written and live responses to the community all the time, I honestly don't think you can compare Blizzard to SE because they are not nearly as interactive. SE also goes all over the place for the fan festival, listening and communicating with the playerbase.

For those that don't know, when you create a PV or in this case a Preview of the game to be presented you have a team that puts it together in conjunction with development. They were never going to have the latest version, and the warning that things are subject to change is simply because when they bundled it up back in April they had no way of knowing how much would change. The game was essentially a closed beta at that point, no one should expect every aspect to be done.

It is understandable to be emotional, but before you go on a mission to burn the world to ash, it would be helpful to analyze what you are truly mad about. I saw youtube videos on every class, minus black mage and there was plenty of complaints about white mage, but they also mentioned... well everything is subject to change and no values are permanent. It is also hard to say at what stage when they bundled up the game for the preview that the white mage even was in completion. They had more then a month to finish up classes and their are a lot, some were going to be further along then others.

Lastly unlike Blizard the dev's have a language barrier, They can't just read what you say, or even respond to you efficiently. How many people can scroll over to the Japanese forums, read their posts, and then respond to them? Let alone be a developer for the game in question where mistranslated become Lies. Watch, Listen, Think, Feel

This is of course... just my opinion so feel free to scroll to the next post ^_^

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Originally Posted by Vespar

Oh but the Dev's dont communicate..
Nope I dont see anything...
/facepalm

I swear sometimes they have to get hit with it, in the face, with a wrecking ball...

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I am saving this for when the next housing fiasco gets ignored on the forums so I can link back to how awesome communication is. Also maybe for the next Diadem because that has been pure gold so far. Or maybe when the bots are rampant in N than leveling rdm/sam to 70 and that gets ignored.

It is easy to say they communicate. Any little info or gesture can count.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

Really that is what you take away from the live letters and community management? You know how many times questions get ignored because they don't want to answer them. Or when they implement major systems and put little fore thought into how the community is going to play it and having someone who can respond.They can plan to hang out in Germany/UK/US but can't have a dev and translator when new content goes live. I don't mean a patch with two dungeons and some clicking on npcs.

Hunts and the pure server melting system they were at launch. No one could have fore seen it and been ready to respond? Housing and reclamation? Diadem v2 was slightly faster. But I chalk that up to timing/luck, not them planning and responding.

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Would you prefer a developer to be adjusting content due to feedback from the CMs or would you prefer them to be talking on forums (slowly since they don't actually read English and there are 3 different forums they would have to read)? Even then they wouldn't be able to give any definitive promises or assurances till they looked at what they could adjust. Then there is the fact that the official forums are actually a pretty small part of the player base and their draw feedback from multiple other sources. Lets not forget that often feedback can be contradictory or unfocused.

I say they pay attention to feedback because Yoshi P has referenced conversations on the official forums several times during interviews and Live letters meaning the CMs are doing their job. The CMs are the communication point for players, particularly in English speaking countries since the devs aren't native English speakers, and I would prefer if they mainly get involved in discussions when they have some solid information to contribute rather than just popping in to give vague assurances which won't satisfy anyone or people will take as ironclad promises that they clearly aren't. Development teams need to be extremely careful what they say because players almost always take anything said as a promise or a guarantee. If Yoshi said 'We might look at a glamour system' you would have people posting a couple of months later complaining that Yoshi P promised a glamour system and that the dev teams break their promises.

Alterations are generally slow because any change they make requires a lot of checks to make sure it doesn't break anything else. MMOs are extremely complex games technically speaking and one small change can throw a lot of other things out of whack. You don't do sudden turns with an MMO without risking breaking things and making the situation worse. They address stuff but they take the time to make sure what they are addressing and consider how to and how they can address it.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

It is easy to say they communicate. Any little info or gesture can count.

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I wonder how many 'we are looking at the issues' you would get before you started say they need to stop saying they will do something and do something. that is usually what happens with little gestures.