Developer lack of communication

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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