Lets address the other elephant in the room...NA forum Dev engangement

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Originally Posted by Lium

Writing is all over the wall from who? The hardcore players who mostly post on the forums? Because I don't see any of this kind of stuff on Reddit/Discord or basically any other platform. Criticism sure. But not "OMFG THE GAME IS DYING!" at the exact same time multiple articles report how the game's population is continuing to grow, and it keeps raking in all these awards.

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The moderation of /r/ffxiv is so bad that people actually have other subreddit in other to discuss the actual game instead of endless praising and fanart posts (/r/ffxivdiscussion). If you write anything that's not overly-positive you're downvoted to oblivion. Meanwhile in discord and even in twitter you actually had good discussions and criticism. There's plenty of discourse here that's not "the game is dying" as well, but people prefer to ignore it and instead talk endlessly how a certain person argument has no weight because it wasn't written in a specific way.

Anyway, this forum is heavily un-moderated and I do feel that devs barely read whatever is discussed here. I mean, anyone that plays a healer knows that, given the absolute silence to the hundreds of commentaries regarding the healer gameplay in this game. Still, it is the only official place to actually do that so can you blame people that keep trying?

What I find the most ridiculous though is how people blame the userbase for the state of complete abandonment this place is at. I mean, we pay for the game and for the sub, the bare minimum would be to actually have a moderated place where we can bring discussions regarding feedback and at least be considered. Yeah, mmo players tend to be lunatic and there is a lot of trolling but such is the case everywhere, in the whole internet, anywhere with a lack of moderation will be like that. If the forum is that way it is because the devs do not invest a single penny and attention in creating a healthy environment where players can be listened. They'll make a whole market campaign with jokes on twitter and all that jazz, but the actual official forum of the game is as if it doesn't exist. If you are not a "content-creator" or influencer, you won't be heard.

I'm not sure what you really are asking for. You want Yoshi-P and crew to learn English just so they can come say "hi" to Titanmen and Aveyond? How often are they supposed to do this? Daily? Weekly? How many hours of their work day should be spent on this? And do you want them to learn English just because you use the English forums, or do you think they should also have to learn French, German, etc.?

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Originally Posted by PeaTearGriffin

The entire Patch 6.3 Megathread got removed. All constructive criticism and non-constructive criticism with it.

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Threads on the sub tend to get deleted for two reasons. The same topic is being repeated over and over again (which you see here because there is no moderation.) Or a thread, including a megathread, devolves into just trashing the game and/or a flame war erupts between two camps.

I've seen many threads over there that started with constructive criticism that became flame fests, and so unfortunately, the entire thing gets yeeted into the Lifestream by the mods.

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Originally Posted by Lium

Threads on the sub tend to get deleted for two reasons. The same topic is being repeated over and over again (which you see here because there is no moderation.) Or a thread, including a megathread, devolves into just trashing the game and/or a flame war erupts between two camps.

I've seen many threads over there that started with constructive criticism that became flame fests, and so unfortunately, the entire thing gets yeeted into the Lifestream by the mods.

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Yes we all know this. The subreddit mods will do what they can to protect the games image which involves removing an entire thread with both constructive and non-constructive criticism.

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Originally Posted by Fyrebrand

I'm not sure what you really are asking for. You want Yoshi-P and crew to learn English just so they can come say "hi" to Titanmen and Aveyond? How often are they supposed to do this? Daily? Weekly? How many hours of their work day should be spent on this? And do you want them to learn English just because you use the English forums, or do you think they should also have to learn French, German, etc.?

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I really wish y'all stopped seeing a gaming company as "Yoshi-P, Soken and their dozen overworked friends". Drop that paternalistic vision, we're talking about one of the biggest MMOs in the marketing, made by one of the biggest gaming companies in the history. Have you never ever participated in other forums of other MMOs? Or other games, even? Or never seen the concept of community staff members, people that actually moderate threads or have the function of making this bridge of communication? Even private servers of dying MMOs have these. Even weird korean mmos have official discords, for example, with staff members that speaks english and help troubleshooting general stuff.

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Originally Posted by Melorie

I really wish y'all stopped seeing a gaming company as "Yoshi-P, Soken and their dozen overworked friends". Drop that paternalistic vision, we're talking about one of the biggest MMOs in the marketing, made by one of the biggest gaming companies in the history. Have you never ever participated in other forums of other MMOs? Or seen the concept of community staff members, people that actually moderate threads or have the function of making this bridge of communication? Even private server of dying MMOs have these. Even weird korean mmos have official discords, for example, with a staff that speaks english and help troubleshooting general stuff.

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This^^^ You saved me time on the paragraph i was about to write. Ty

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

But time spent on forum engagement is time that's not spent developing the game. I'd rather have them working on the game than wasting time justifying their design choices to players who are just going to find more things to complain about if they get the attention they're seeking.

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Isn't that the purpose of hiring community managers? Engage with the forums to see what concerns and ideas there are from the community, find the useful information in the sea of threads and turn it into something that can be passed along to the developers. That being said, at the very least I'd love some more moderators in the forums.

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Originally Posted by Amenara

Isn't that the purpose of hiring community managers? Engage with the forums to see what concerns and ideas there are from the community, find the useful information in the sea of threads and turn it into something that can be passed along to the developers. That being said, at the very least I'd love some more moderators in the forums.

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Absolutely and tbh given the amount of success this game has had its wild to me that were are even asking for community managers to begin with.

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Originally Posted by PeaTearGriffin

Yes we all know this. The subreddit mods will do what they can to protect the games image which involves removing an entire thread with both constructive and non-constructive criticism.

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Welp. Then I don't know what to tell ya. Continue posting here where threads will likewise be just as effective as those on Reddit that were deleted? I.E. they will never be seen by anyone?

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Originally Posted by MonteCristo

This^^^ You saved me time on the paragraph i was about to write. Ty

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At this point I can only feel like most people never ever interacted in other games forums. Because it's either this or they simply truly believe in the fairy tale of FFXIV being made by half a dozen people from an indie company. And even on that case, most indie companies actually have great channels of communication for their games through reddit/discord.

People trying to ignore the language barrier are still missing the point of it. We have translators for sure but I dont think them and the actual developers can come directly chat with us as frequently as we want because of it. It costs extra money to keep that sort of service running and while we love to meme that SE are a small independent company that they can afford to dump all their money into FFXIV (which is extremely stupid for them to do as SE also develops tons of other games besides FFXIV and it be a waste of their resources), you also got to keep in mind that the actual studio adheres to a limited set budget that they're given for their game. We have been told that thanks to FFXIV's current success this budget of theirs has increased (which I imagine is why we're able to get a full blown graphics update that they're currently working on in the bg) at least.

So the most we can do is to provide feedback, which is where the mods or whomever is in charge of collecting this data sends to the dev team which is then compiled with the rest of the other language forums of this game to figure out what exactly are the players wanting. The Japanese forums is easier on them because of course, its the main language and also a reliable nearby source for feedback on their end.

This is how game studios from different parts of the world work, they cant "unfortunately" all be english-speaking Americans with a studio close to home to directly chat with us and have a more forward communication. Same goes for Blizzard or Smilegate, who do think which audience will they be better communicating at directly with? Yeah, they're respective native audience

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

People trying to ignore the language barrier are still missing the point of it. We have translators for sure but I dont think them and the actual developers can come directly chat with us as frequently as we want because of it. It costs extra money to keep that sort of service running and while we love to meme that SE are a small independent company that they can afford to dump all their money into FFXIV (which is extremely stupid for them to do as SE also develops tons of other games besides FFXIV and it be a waste of their resources), you also got to keep in mind that the actual studio adheres to a limited set budget that they're given for their game. We have been told that thanks to FFXIV's current success this budget of theirs has increased (which I imagine is why we're able to get a full blown graphics update that they're currently working on in the bg) at least.

So the most we can do is to provide feedback, which is where the mods or whomever is in charge of collecting this data sends to the dev team which is then compiled with the rest of the other language forums of this game to figure out what exactly are the players wanting. The Japanese forums is easier on them because of course, its the main language and also a reliable nearby source for feedback on their end.

This is how game studios from different parts of the world work, they cant "unfortunately" all be english-speaking Americans with a studio close to home to directly chat with us and have a more forward communication. Same goes for Blizzard or Smilegate, who do think which audience will they be better communicating at directly with? Yeah, they're respective native audience

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Very true, after all Square Enix is a small indie company, please understand they cant have translators.

Maybe we should make a gofundme for them so they can hire some

/s

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

Very true, after all Square Enix is a small indie company, please understand they cant have translators.

Maybe we should make a gofundme for them so they can hire some

/s

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How dare you suggest that SE's earnings be used on something to improve the game! That money should go straight to the shareholders! /s

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Originally Posted by Lium

Welp. Then I don't know what to tell ya. Continue posting here where threads will likewise be just as effective as those on Reddit that were deleted? I.E. they will never be seen by anyone?

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Hey at least we can talk about things like this here without worrying about having our threads deleted.

I'm curious do the devs interact with the community in Japan in the forums. I've been here a long time and don't recall any interaction other then a post or two that is pinned to the top of the forum.

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Originally Posted by PeaTearGriffin

Hey at least we can talk about things like this here without worrying about having our threads deleted.

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I'm pretty sure I just saw a few complaint threads deleted on r/ffxiv and even/ffxivdiscussion

They're really moderating the shit out of them right now. lol

Having devs be in here directly is unrealistic. What is a realistic expectation is to have english community managers who engage with us and relay our concerns and such to the developers.

I have never seen an official post on here except for the odd time a thread gets locked.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Having devs be in here directly is unrealistic. What is a realistic expectation is to have english community managers who engage with us and relay our concerns and such to the developers.

I have never seen an official post on here except for the odd time a thread gets locked.

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And for a game as popular as ffxiv i truly feel it is unacceptable that english community managers are non-existent. How do we even know our concerns are heard atp?

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

Very true, after all Square Enix is a small indie company, please understand they cant have translators.

Maybe we should make a gofundme for them so they can hire some

/s

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Naw, I would rather you open a gofundme so that I can help pay for you to get better responses that arent overused and outdated.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Naw, I would rather you open a gofundme so that I can help pay for you to get better responses that arent overused and outdated.

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Boohoo, maybe stop trying to defend a company like Square acting as if they cant afford translators, poor little Square Enix are too poor, maybe they should increase the sub price and the mog shop prices since obviously they have money issues right ?

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

Boohoo, maybe stop trying to defend a company like Square acting as if they cant afford translators, poor little Square Enix are too poor, maybe they should increase the sub price and the mog shop prices since obviously they have money issues right ?

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All they gotta do is release an undyeable one piece glamour and people will eat it up

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

They asked a question. I was answering them, not harassing them personally. There is a difference.

Downvoting is a tool ripe for harassment. The correct option, as here, is to put the person you don't want to read responses from on 'ignore'.

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the whole game is a tool ripe for harassment, guess it needs to be shutdown

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

Boohoo, maybe stop trying to defend a company like Square acting as if they cant afford translators, poor little Square Enix are too poor, maybe they should increase the sub price and the mog shop prices since obviously they have money issues right ?

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How about stop acting like an annoying Karen all the time then? Almost every post I see of you is always acting like an entitled....well I shouldnt say anymore or else the mods will have a field day with me lol

We agree with tread. Enix Squared needing reward best General Disgust forum posting with key to city. Otherwise what is point of forum meme. Can not become famous like the streamer.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Look at the state of the forums for the last couple years and that's all the reason you need. At least general discussion.



Troll threads, a zillion complaint threads because everyone needs to make their own special thread on the same topic because their opinion is more important.



People bumping 10 year old threads for no reason.



What is there to even engage with here?

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Tbf, maybe if the forum was better moderated it might actually be better looking, but so far as I can tell the moderators are nearly as absent as the devs.

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Originally Posted by Iyrnthota

Tbf, maybe if the forum was better moderated it might actually be better looking, but so far as I can tell the moderators are nearly as absent as the devs.

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Maybe it's just too much work for whoever handles here to manage + didn't SE already reject Yoshi's request for more funding/being able to hire more people?

I wouldn't be shocked if they (whoever is a CM for here) just don't view it as worth it to babysit this forum 24/7 and weed through dozens of pages of stupidity/whining/trolling just to find out if a thread is relevant or not. Or, they simply just might not be able to keep up with our never-ending new threads since I believe our forum is the most active out of them all (?).

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Maybe it's just too much work for whoever handles here to manage + didn't SE already reject Yoshi's request for more funding/being able to hire more people?

I wouldn't be shocked if they (whoever is a CM for here) just don't view it as worth it to babysit this forum 24/7 and weed through dozens of pages of stupidity/whining/trolling just to find out if a thread is relevant or not. Or, they simply just might not be able to keep up with our never-ending new threads since I believe our forum is the most active out of them all (?).

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I've spent time on forums which were both busy and well moderated by mostly volunteers. It's possible, they're clearly just not interested in that level of engagement.

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Originally Posted by Iyrnthota

I've spent time on forums which were both busy and well moderated by mostly volunteers. It's possible, they're clearly just not interested in that level of engagement.

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Volunteers from where? You think they'd trust people on here or the community in general to do it? xD

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Volunteers from where? You think they'd trust people on here or the community in general to do it? xD

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It was more an example of what others have achieved with less, not a suggestion.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Guys, we're all super entitled for speaking English on the English forums. We should feel terrible and endeavor to speak another language ASAP.

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Tbh, all of humanity should endeavor to learn and speak another language.

the question is, why would they?

I do technical support for a software company, I fix customer issues all day long.

Developers are typically never allowed to speak directly with customers unless it is an issue with workflow on the user end that the developers need a better insight into. The main reason is, they may not have people skills for one, two, that they may say something that is misunderstood or taken as a promise to fix something which currently cannot be fit into the development sprint. If a dev is required, it would be on the technical support side... not General.

on these forums, you have people dissecting every little thing Yoshi says, an inference is taken as gospel truth and assumptions about meaning run rampant. There is little constructive that can come out of developer involvement here and I would not expect to ever have one visit. Thats not their job, plain and simple.

a reasonable expectation would be to actually have involved community managers, which we do not. THEIR job is to pass along concerns issues etc for assessment by those who tell the developers what to fix, develop or implement. I dont know about the Japanese forums, but interaction with community managers for the english forums is an area for improvement. Moderation is rare, and I do not recall ever seeing a community manager get involved, but again, not sure that would happen in General.

I think expecting a developer to engage on any subject in General, regardless of language, is an unrealistic expectation. Let them do their job, and their job is not to engage with the player base in general chat.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

What is there to even engage with here?

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I want to agree and yet I also think that the forum getting that bad is also because we barely have any engagement with the FF14 team here. Maybe we would get less troll threads if they get shut down by moderators and the people constantly starting them get punished. (Instead of you know the ottergate)

I think the posts themselves would also be better if people would face more consequences if they use personal attacks in them. But honestly right now its so easy to just troll and attack others that its no wonder that long time posters leave and that we have barely any interaction with the team.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

the question is, why would they?

I do technical support for a software company, I fix customer issues all day long.

Developers are typically never allowed to speak directly with customers unless it is an issue with workflow on the user end that the developers need a better insight into. The main reason is, they may not have people skills for one, two, that they may say something that is misunderstood or taken as a promise to fix something which currently cannot be fit into the development sprint. If a dev is required, it would be on the technical support side... not General.

on these forums, you have people dissecting every little thing Yoshi says, an inference is taken as gospel truth and assumptions about meaning run rampant. There is little constructive that can come out of developer involvement here and I would not expect to ever have one visit. Thats not their job, plain and simple.

a reasonable expectation would be to actually have involved community managers, which we do not. THEIR job is to pass along concerns issues etc for assessment by those who tell the developers what to fix, develop or implement. I dont know about the Japanese forums, but interaction with community managers for the english forums is an area for improvement. Moderation is rare, and I do not recall ever seeing a community manager get involved, but again, not sure that would happen in General.

I think expecting a developer to engage on any subject in General, regardless of language, is an unrealistic expectation. Let them do their job, and their job is not to engage with the player base in general chat.

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This is honestly the best take, because youre right, the issue here are the community managers not interacting as much, not the devs themselves.

I dont know if its due to their regulations for the job or what not where theyre only allowed the bare minimum of interaction but I agree that this needs to change as people here dont feel like theyre being listened.


Although I also will say that with a lot of things with this game, were most likely due to our feedback so I still believe that they ARE listening. Just that they are being very transparent about it and that leads to the distress here.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

Do not anticipate engagement until and unless you can read, write and speak Japanese.

Many North Americans are so entitled that they expect the rest of the world to use English as their primary language.

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I don't expect them to use English as their primary language, that would be silly.

I do however expect them to use English as a language, so that they can read feedback from everyone.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

I do however expect them to use English as a language, so that they can read feedback from everyone.

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To which I refer you to:

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

Every single time a English writing poster starts complaining about lazy developers, their actual point gets ignored. Every time Square Enix is the subject of derision, the actual point gets ignored. Every time players take sides and prepare for War, the actual points get ignored.
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I'm sure someone reports on general themes. Personally, I would not translate English posts from these forums into Japanese for all the money you might care to throw at me. It's much more difficult than running things through Google Translate.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

I dont know if its due to their regulations for the job or what not where theyre only allowed the bare minimum of interaction but I agree that this needs to change as people here dont feel like theyre being listened.


Although I also will say that with a lot of things with this game, were most likely due to our feedback so I still believe that they ARE listening. Just that they are being very transparent about it and that leads to the distress here.

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I am not sure either, reality is, if you are being hired as a "community manager" the expectation is... you actually communicate. I dont know if its the same for all the forums they run, but whomever the managers are, they are overpaid since there is nittle to no involvement by them as far as I know. That is a failing on their part, and their managers and ultimately, their direction from SE. I wouldnt expect them to weigh in on EVERY topic, but they should be around enough that the player base that posts here know who they are.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

on these forums, you have people dissecting every little thing Yoshi says, an inference is taken as gospel truth and assumptions about meaning run rampant. There is little constructive that can come out of developer involvement here and I would not expect to ever have one visit. Thats not their job, plain and simple.

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This is probably the biggest reason IMO, at least I know it would be if it were me. The way people dissect, pick apart every thing, not even word, but gesture and body language ... why would anyone sane would put themselves into that situation?

Even the Q&A during the live letter is already something that's rare by industry standard. I hope they will continue doing it, but the way some people treat it ... let just say if one day Yoshi decided he doesn;t want to that anymore, I wouldn't blame him, not one bit.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

To which I refer you to:

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This clearly doesn't happen though. I've said for a long time and still maintain whatever team compiles feedback on the NA forums isn't great at it.

You tend to see it at fanfest when an NA player asks about something and it's clearly the first time YoshiP has even heard of it, despite being a popular topic here. Not only that, there are very obvious occasions when there are issues that get ignored until the JP player base starts talking about it too (like the PLD issue in Onsal Hakair.)

I don't blame the devs, personally. I blame whoever is supposed to be relaying information to them.

These forums are also basically unmoderated. I think it's pretty apparent no one on the US side does anything here. I couldn't even tell you who the US community manager is without looking it up, which is really odd for a game forum.

I mean, there’s also the fact that forums are a relic of the past. A few other MMOs that I play do not even have forums anymore.

Their CMs/mods etc. are all on social media where they can reach a much wider audience.

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Originally Posted by Melorie

The moderation of /r/ffxiv is so bad that people actually have other subreddit in other to discuss the actual game instead of endless praising and fanart posts (/r/ffxivdiscussion). If you write anything that's not overly-positive you're downvoted to oblivion. Meanwhile in discord and even in twitter you actually had good discussions and criticism. There's plenty of discourse here that's not "the game is dying" as well, but people prefer to ignore it and instead talk endlessly how a certain person argument has no weight because it wasn't written in a specific way.

Anyway, this forum is heavily un-moderated and I do feel that devs barely read whatever is discussed here. I mean, anyone that plays a healer knows that, given the absolute silence to the hundreds of commentaries regarding the healer gameplay in this game. Still, it is the only official place to actually do that so can you blame people that keep trying?

What I find the most ridiculous though is how people blame the userbase for the state of complete abandonment this place is at. I mean, we pay for the game and for the sub, the bare minimum would be to actually have a moderated place where we can bring discussions regarding feedback and at least be considered. Yeah, mmo players tend to be lunatic and there is a lot of trolling but such is the case everywhere, in the whole internet, anywhere with a lack of moderation will be like that. If the forum is that way it is because the devs do not invest a single penny and attention in creating a healthy environment where players can be listened. They'll make a whole market campaign with jokes on twitter and all that jazz, but the actual official forum of the game is as if it doesn't exist. If you are not a "content-creator" or influencer, you won't be heard.

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I will say that even on (/r/ffxivdiscussion) that you cant talk about things going on in the game when Rin Karigani was outed again for showing poor behavior again to someone in the community the mod removed the post and it was not promoting a witch hunt. Just like on the main subreddit you cant talk about certain people being assholes you have to post about certain unless when mods are ok to talk about certain events.