DT WoL Updates: Players want the diversity of features we once had

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Oh absolutely.
It is a balancing act when you design one game for a global community.

I just don't think that the DEVs read random complaint threads in the "general English" section.
If you want to reach them... honestly, outside of the dedicated feedback forum, I have no idea how to ensure that they see anything from a normal player.

JP or otherwise, although I could imagine that it is more likely that some of them follow the JP forum, since it is their native language.

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That's the problem right there; I highly doubt they have enough "western" staff to go through feedback and much less translators to translate them into japanese at a fast pace. Multi million/billion companies like to not hire and then wonder why revenue was down 10%-20% year over year.

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Originally Posted by TomsYoungerBro

Aren't you one of the people complaining about the DT story? Oh the irony

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Not going to fall into tears for an entire day over it. lol

Please feel free to add hypocrite to "creep", "psychopath" and "mean-spirited" while you are here.

I do hope that there's going to be some solution for the people who don't like how things are.
Personally I like the changes, However I'm somewhat disappointed that they didn't add any new faces or features . Sure we have options and lots of emo hairstyles , but overall the char creator is quite dated now,basically the same thing since ps3 .
A few new faces for each race, more features and some facial hair options for male characters wouldn't go amiss tbh.

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Originally Posted by Rekh

I don't think you understand statistics and psychology. In most "forums" whether in real physical life or digitally you will find both sides of the spectrum. Don't tell me the square enix lawyers don't pounce the forums when things are criticized. The forums are not "all angry people" as you're making it seem to be. Sometimes one side overtakes the other but that reflects the state of the product.

Not trying to sound condensing at all, but I highly dislike when people use statistics and psychology like you did; it's an attempt to discredit valid feedback.

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The person you're responding to actually has the right of it. From a psychology and statistics perspective, people with negative opinions are much more likely to actively and voluntarily seek out ways to voice their displeasure compared to people who are satisfied with a product. It's one of the reasons why many service providers actively solicit feedback from satisfied customers - they know extra effort and persuasion is generally needed for people to post positive reviews, while people with negative thoughts are more likely to do it on their own. All of those things to scan on your receipt, pop-ups you get, text messages linking you to a way to review something, etc....they're all done because businesses know psychologically that satisfied customers are much less likely to express their satisfaction without direct persuasion.

Without those prompts, reviews would not likely reflect the state of the product, but primarily those who are dissatisfied.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

The person you're responding to actually has the right of it. From a psychology and statistics perspective, people with negative opinions are much more likely to actively and voluntarily seek out ways to voice their displeasure compared to people who are satisfied with a product. It's one of the reasons why many service providers actively solicit feedback from satisfied customers - they know extra effort and persuasion is generally needed for people to post positive reviews, while people with negative thoughts are more likely to do it on their own. All of those things to scan on your receipt, pop-ups you get, text messages linking you to a way to review something, etc....they're all done because businesses know psychologically that satisfied customers are much less likely to express their satisfaction without direct persuasion.

Without those prompts, reviews would not likely reflect the state of the product, but primarily those who are dissatisfied.

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Those prompts usually incite negative emotions in people however. Like if I phone my mobile carrier, and have a generally negative outcome, but just go on with my life, getting a follow call/email/text to take a survey is just going to incite my anger again and I may rip into the "company" via the survey even if it wasn't the person on the other end's fault. These "how was our service" stuff generally solicits just as much negativity towards the company but it falls on the representative you interacted with or the store you dealt with. Hence, if you get a survey prompt, think twice about trying to rip into the company, because the company will see it as a reason to fire the employee or close the location rather than improve anything.

The right place to get feedback will always be:
- Company controlled forum
- Unofficial "fan sites" that have been blessed to "Exist"
- Unsanctioned media (Eg twitter, reddit, youtube)

But you have to understand the position of each place. The official forum, to operate needs to expend money on community management and keep people from becoming belligerent towards other customers and the company itself. Many small companies do not have "official" sanctioned forums/discords/etc because they can not afford to manage them. Many popular and semi-popular sites exist in this way because they are too popular to moderate without paid staff but not popular enough to make enough money from the ratio of spam to reasonable UGC to pay for the moderation.

Square Enix for it's part, has largely tolerated nearly every criticism, use and misuse of it's intellectual property, which is why it remains popular and people still buy it's games, even when some of the same criticisms would get other companies like EA or Ubisoft winning the "worst gaming company of the year" award. People generally like Square Enix. People like indie game companies, Square-Enix, SEGA, and Capcom. But that positivity is not endless, and any potential change in company management or project management risks destroying that positive sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Rekh

The forums are not "all angry people" as you're making it seem to be. Sometimes one side overtakes the other but that reflects the state of the product.

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That is a dangerous fallacy. Yes, you have all sides on a forum, from hardcore whiners to diehard white-kights. But consider this:

1) only a tiny subset of the player base even cares about out of game resources. Typically the more hardcore kind. That introduces the first level of bias.
2) whether it is in shops or movies etc, people far more likely to complain than to state their satisfaction. This introduces the second level of bias.

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That's the problem right there; I highly doubt they have enough "western" staff to go through feedback and much less translators to translate them into japanese at a fast pace. Multi million/billion companies like to not hire and then wonder why revenue was down 10%-20% year over year.

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Given that community reps etc. are the kind of jobs where large corporations start to skimp on personnel, yeah I do think that is the case.

Still, even then: community reps won't bother to translate and relay random "my lips are different, FIX THIS SHITE, SE!!11" whine posts.

You'd need to write well thought out, constructive criticism AND need to see to it that it gets enough traction to be noticed and perceived as urgent enough to be passed on.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Oh absolutely.
If you want to reach them... honestly, outside of the dedicated feedback forum, I have no idea how to ensure that they see anything from a normal player.

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There is no dedicated feedback forum for game features.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/forums/663-Feedback

You can't post in the top level of the forum, and the three subforums are obviously unrelated to the game. There is a forum for posting bug reports, but since "my WoL looks different" is within the bounds of what they said would happen with this update, it would not be a bug. We could try our luck posting reports pointing out everything that changed but that would just get them moved to "Not a bug report." I've seen people suggest running complaints through Google Translate and posting them to the JP bugs section and it honestly reads like satire.

Speaking of, I've heard it both ways whether or not the devs consider feedback from non-JP sources. But I don't speak Japanese and I'm not going to run everything I say through a translator knowing full well it'll come out unintelligible.

Also, it's clear that they listen to feedback from somewhere, although frankly it's most likely just a roll of the dice that they see specific posts show up in their Twitter feeds. Like, how the hell did they catch wind that people with hole-phobia would get the heebie jeebies from the SGE icon??

Anyway, I'm under no illusions as to whether this thread will be seen by devs, which is why I'm not addressing the devs but the forums as a whole. I made this thread because it's become clear that too many people are taking the wrong approach by simply posting about how their WoL changed.

If we want our WoL's unique features back, we need to propose solutions, and the only feasible solution at this stage is to introduce more customization options.

I want to see the theme of criticism shift from "revert my WoL" to "add new customization options" because frankly the former is just not gonna happen. Criticizing the changes without offering a workable solution is as good as just whinging. So again, I don't think the devs will see this thread or even get a summary. My hope is that someone who sees it will learn from it and post something on Twitter that a dev then notices.

Off topic, but I have one more thing to say about bug reports:

Even if you did post a bug report in the JP forum, there is no reason to think that the devs would be reading that forum. Community moderators read the bug reports, check whether it exactly matches the format and provides all information, and if it's an actual bug it goes to "Accepted Bug Reports" at which point they probably file an internal ticket for the devs.

If you run your complaint through Google Translate and you do not have a video showing exactly what you need to do to trigger a graphical glitch then the chance it'll get accepted is zero. If you want to report a bug just post it in the English forum, but if you want to whinge don't waste the JP moderators' time.

So seriously, stop telling people to Babelfish their way onto the JP forums, and call people out who suggest doing it. It's stupid.

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Originally Posted by Caesius

If we want our WoL's unique features back, we need to propose solutions, and the only feasible solution at this stage is to introduce more customization options.

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Would be nice but peeps have been clamoring for more customization option (especially Au Ra in terms of Horn / Face shapes) for what now? close to 10 years?

I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. DEV resources are probably bound upgrading current item stock for quite a while.

Totally agreed on the machine translated posts. Do not do this. If you've ever played a machine translated JP visual novel .... you know why. :'D

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Originally Posted by Granyala

That is a dangerous fallacy. Yes, you have all sides on a forum, from hardcore whiners to diehard white-kights. But consider this:

1) only a tiny subset of the player base even cares about out of game resources. Typically the more hardcore kind. That introduces the first level of bias.
2) whether it is in shops or movies etc, people far more likely to complain than to state their satisfaction. This introduces the second level of bias.


Given that community reps etc. are the kind of jobs where large corporations start to skimp on personnel, yeah I do think that is the case.

Still, even then: community reps won't bother to translate and relay random "my lips are different, FIX THIS SHITE, SE!!11" whine posts.

You'd need to write well thought out, constructive criticism AND need to see to it that it gets enough traction to be noticed and perceived as urgent enough to be passed on.

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Thing is, unless we work at square enix no one really knows where they actually read feedback.
Moreover, subset is a good sample size of your overall customer base, this is basic statistics.

Remember FFXIV 1.0? It wasn't those that quit that made the game better. It was those who stayed, both the loud lawyers and the loud critics.