Will there be any more player polls for Yoshi-P to get feedback?

Hello everyone,

I was browsing through some of the old threads that came about before the launch of ARR and found that it was interesting that Yoshi-P gave players of 1.x polls to find out how they would like the game to be shaped.

This looks like a great idea to get player's expectations and desires instead of trying to decipher some of the complex ideas coming from threads. I'm bringing this up now because the player base that existed before launch and after launch may have changed so there maybe be some skewed response to the requests of previous poll results.

Some old polls results:

First FFXIV Players' Poll results (01/21/2011)
http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...98e4034b898102

Second FFXIV Players' Poll results (03/03/2011)
http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...16083b634f7678

Third FFXIV Players' Poll results (05/28/2012)
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/46535

Forth FFXIV Players' Poll results (06/04/2012)
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/46936

I think this one shows a good example of how the community may have changed:

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

10. If the current target claiming system were done away with, would you prefer for content such as dungeons and battle to be converted into instances as much as possible?
* "Instances" refer to those events and areas that can only be occupied by a single party, or certain characters, at once. This serves to prevent players from competing with one another for the same enemies, for example.
http://static.finalfantasyxiv.com/to...96074756711197
The people have spoken. As such, we'll be operating under the premise that new PvE content, such as dungeons containing sought-after loot, will be instanced.

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Now the players who took part in this poll question at the start of 2012 have been the major reason we now have instances in just about every aspect of battle content.

I respect that Yoshi put forth directions to Matsui to design content to be instanced because of the people's decisions here. However, now that the player base has had experience of what instance content means/feels like, their desires for future content may or may not have changed. The idea is to be up to date on this form of direct feedback at least.

I honestly think the polls were just a way to make it seem like we were taking part. As far as all the systems outside of combat/dungeons go, he didn't listen to us for even one second.

I distinctly remember the community asking for more content for gathering. What'd we get? An incredibly reduced, braindead system that has no purpose at all.

He won't do another poll because "too much stress." If not the too much stress excuse, pick one of the other ridiculous excuses he's fed us with in the past.

Please look forward to it.

It wouldn't matter because the forums are never a good representation of the player base. We're a big minority and at most our opinions only serve as a guideline. Also, the only section they really pay attention to is the suggestion forum.

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Originally Posted by LlenCoram

I honestly think the polls were just a way to make it seem like we were taking part. As far as all the systems outside of combat/dungeons go, he didn't listen to us for even one second.

I distinctly remember the community asking for more content for gathering. What'd we get? An incredibly reduced, braindead system that has no purpose at all.

He won't do another poll because "too much stress." If not the too much stress excuse, pick one of the other ridiculous excuses he's fed us with in the past.

Please look forward to it.

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Yoshida: Even now, RMT can create bots to get around the timing of actions. What we don’t want is to have fishing become stressful. It is supposed to be a relaxing thing. Pressing extra buttons for actions is going to create that stress

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I'm glad we still get to press buttons sometimes, but I'm afraid that'll disappear too!

I want another poll, all day long I see people complain about the very same things and Yoshi-P doesn't seem to have any interest in fixing it because it's working as intended. Just look at the dev tracker from yesterday where they said they have no plans to re-introduce repairing others' gear because "people won't use the feature anyway". Yet in the auto-translator there are phrases like "Can you repair it for me?". All I see is ridiculous excuses to avoid implementing things that should always have been there. Maybe a poll could make them change their minds about certain things ("We have no plans to add more content for diciples of the land/hand").

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Originally Posted by Gwaeron

I'm glad we still get to press buttons sometimes, but I'm afraid that'll disappear too!

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That one quote by him always pissed me off the worst. Pressing buttons isn't stressful. Losing a fish because you didn't press a button isn't stressful. Pressing buttons period isn't stressful. You know what it is?

Gameplay. It's gameplay. Because this is a videogame. The fact that I'm sitting in a chair, wrapped in a blanket at home with a roof over my head is relaxing. The fact that I have enough time in the day to play a videogame at my leisure, that I have enough money to afford a computer and electricity and internet to play said videogame, THAT'S relaxing. The game itself is relaxing. I play a videogame to play though. If I lose a fish because I didn't press a button, or I pressed the wrong button, or, gods forbid, I haven't yet learned how to fight that specific fish, isn't stress. It's gameplay, and it would make me say, "Crap, I need to learn this. Good thing that was my fault and not the systems!"

All of his excuses are blatant, bold-faced lies. The truth behind all of them is that they don't want RMT to run the show, and the easiest way to do that is to punish the players. That's it. It's laziness, pure and simple.

Having people vote would be fairly terrible considdering the amount of blatant trolling on these boards...

It would have the same impact as Ukraine voting if they want to be a part of Russia again, when 80% of the people living in the country are russian.

What would they vote for? Certainly not what's in the best interest of the people actually enjoying the game.

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Originally Posted by Surian

Having people vote would be fairly terrible considdering the amount of blatant trolling on these boards...

It would have the same impact as Ukraine voting if they want to be a part of Russia again, when 80% of the people living in the country are russian.

What would they vote for? Certainly not what's in the best interest of the people actually enjoying the game.

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They would vote for what they, themselves would like in the game, as they should do. If someone disagrees, they'll vote for another option.

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If the current target claiming system were done away with, would you prefer for content such as dungeons and battle to be converted into instances as much as possible?

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What other option would there be? If they got rid of what it had, then for a real vote, you would actually need 2 options. Not a, yes = Instaces, No = ???.

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Originally Posted by NovaUltimatum

[...] now that the player base has had experience of what instance content means/feels like, their desires for future content may or may not have changed.

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I can vouch for that.

Well, that is to say, I don't hate the instanced content. I hate how it's the only major thing to do.

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Originally Posted by Skyhound

It wouldn't matter because the forums are never a good representation of the player base. We're a big minority and at most our opinions only serve as a guideline. Also, the only section they really pay attention to is the suggestion forum.

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They could advertise the poll in the launcher though, and presumably get non-forum people to participate.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

They could advertise the poll in the launcher though, and presumably get non-forum people to participate.

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I believe they did with the previous polls as one of the questions was 'Do you read the official forums?' to which nearly 5% responded 'Never.'

I had forgotten about those, though I think I actually participated in them all. Looking back over them it's surprising just how much they followed the results of those polls. Many of the questions show overwhelming support for the systems we have in place now, though they were almost all multiple choice questions so I suppose it really shows that people were in favor of these systems over anything else presented.

A new poll to see how people like the current systems, what they want changed, if anything should be changed back, etc. would be interesting to see.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

They could advertise the poll in the launcher though, and presumably get non-forum people to participate.

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Yep. That would certainly help.

Here's how you really manage to get the poll to all of the players:

Advertise in the launcher, on the forums, on the Lodestone, on Mog Station, send an email to registered account holders.

Have the poll accessible through your Square-Enix account. This way you can ensure that each customer/account holder participates only once. (Fine, multiple times if they have more than one account, but hey, if they're paying for it, sure, who cares.)

Another player poll would be great, but, as we've seen, I feel like they structure the questions so they get the response they want, rather than the response we want them to get ^^

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Originally Posted by LlenCoram

Gameplay. ... The game itself is relaxing. I play a videogame to play though. If I lose a fish because I didn't press a button, or I pressed the wrong button, or, gods forbid, I haven't yet learned how to fight that specific fish, isn't stress. It's gameplay, and it would make me say, "Crap, I need to learn this. Good thing that was my fault and not the systems!"

All of his excuses are blatant, bold-faced lies. The truth behind all of them is that they don't want RMT to run the show, and the easiest way to do that is to punish the players. That's it. It's laziness, pure and simple.

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To elaborate on what Llen might be referring to.
Looking at fishing, or even DoL in general, FFXIV 1.0 had split it up into main hand and off hand. If you didn't want to learn anything at all, you could have just gone off hand, which were spear fishing, quarrying, or harvesting. Those were along the lines of FFXI gathering jobs. Granted you get different items, but the two distinct gameplay was there. The main hand DoL were fishing, mining, and logging are all ideally the same mini-game, which played like a 'Hot and Cold' guessing game.

ARR fishing is now more along the lines of a simplified version of FFXI fishing, minus the part where you actually had to put some effort into reeling in the fish. Fishing gets the worst out of all the other DoLs, since there are no abilities you can use to increase your chance on anything. You can only hope for an HQ, and hope your mooch catches another HQ to double mooch.

The problem I personally had with DoL in 1.0 was that the gameplay didn't change at all no matter what class you were on, or what level you were at.
It only gave more chances to guess if you were at a higher level, and perhaps a larger guessing margin. Besides that, playing the same mini-game for each class until level 50, which was boring for me.

That isn't saying ARR did it any better in terms of gameplay. However, they did make it quicker and easier to gather the items you want.
Though, I do wish they would have done the same thing and split main hand and off hand for two different types of gameplay.

Clip of SAO which might have been poking fun of the crafting system.
http://youtu.be/LYkOWjOkCgs?t=8m50s

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Originally Posted by TrystWildkey

Another player poll would be great, but, as we've seen, I feel like they structure the questions so they get the response they want, rather than the response we want them to get ^^

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This has been a huge complaint of mine because I really hate how politicians use it in debates, giving people a false sense of power in "deciding" the questions when all it is is the questions are already pre-screened and chosen but they can say "these are people submitted questions." Having said that it's the same thing that happens with the Live Letters and us asking questions, all the questions they're going to answer have been chosen already but we as the community are given a chance to "ask" the tough questions.

Despite players having voted for instanced fights in that example poll, that's all we really had in 1.23. We had instanced fights whether it was Van Darnus, Garuda, Good King Moggle Mog XIIth, Artifact Armor fights, Hamlet...but I don't think those players voting could have pictured what 2.0 was going to be. As far as things had been discussed I'm sure most assumed it was going to be like 1.23 but without the animation lock. When it comes to "dungeons" and "battles" I don't think anyone was thinking that beastmen strongholds and the open world dungeons (Shposae, Cassiopea Hallow, etc) were real "dungeons" and should be instanced to reduce competition.

Also agreed with everything LlenCoram has said. DoL was made so easy that it's actually more stressful because the markets have been destroyed, only reason I even DoL anymore is to get my map everyday and while looking for that map I'll gather shards.

I would love to see another player poll for post-ARR developments, especially for the 1.0 veteran players. I think it would be a good way to see how the community feels about what things were improved with the transition to ARR, and what things still need to be improved, changed, or retained from 1.0. I've always tried asking questions on those threads they put up before a Live Letter, but to no avail... :(

They should build a system where once you complete the survey your character receives a one off item in game via moogle mail. That would get most of the player base to take part.

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Originally Posted by NovaUltimatum

I respect that Yoshi put forth directions to Matsui to design content to be instanced because of the people's decisions here. However, now that the player base has had experience of what instance content means/feels like, their desires for future content may or may not have changed. The idea is to be up to date on this form of direct feedback at least.

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Most of the playerbase most likely doesn't care about most content being instanced. That's a complaint that I honestly never see while playing the game.

I seriously doubt that people want to be competing in the overworld for mobs.

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

I seriously doubt that people want to be competing in the overworld for mobs.

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Then... just get rid of the claim system. Seriously, I don't know why it still exists.

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Originally Posted by Surian

Having people vote would be fairly terrible considdering the amount of blatant trolling on these boards...

It would have the same impact as Ukraine voting if they want to be a part of Russia again, when 80% of the people living in the country are russian.

What would they vote for? Certainly not what's in the best interest of the people actually enjoying the game.

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Originally Posted by Skyhound

It wouldn't matter because the forums are never a good representation of the player base. We're a big minority and at most our opinions only serve as a guideline. Also, the only section they really pay attention to is the suggestion forum.

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quoting you both since undoubtedly neither of you played in 1.0 nor took part in those polls. the polls were done as part of you logging into the game. it asked you to take part in the poll and had a link that you manually had to click to get past if you weren't interested. it stated how important all the opinions were and the stupid thing is the vast majority of people i know that took the polls back then are no longer even in the game.

the polls were not done as part of the forums as they are a small minority, but they were part of the actual game that people signed into and played. if you are saying a poll now would be worthless then you are stating the results of the previous polls that resulted in arr were worthless as well.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

They could advertise the poll in the launcher though, and presumably get non-forum people to participate.

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they actually linked you to the poll from the launcher. in 1.0 the poll popped up after signing in just like the maintenance messages pop up now. you had to manually bypass them after reading them if you did not want to take part in them.

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

Most of the playerbase most likely doesn't care about most content being instanced. That's a complaint that I honestly never see while playing the game.

I seriously doubt that people want to be competing in the overworld for mobs.

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It's not that they don't care. It's that they don't know of anything better. They're mostly casual players, so they aren't in the mindset of inventing games or software. As a grad student studying software design, I can tell you that the key to understanding what content is going to work is not by doing what the playerbase necessarily says, but rather understanding why the playerbase is saying what it is saying. In rare instances, they are the same thing.

Also, any overworld content that gets players out there and doing stuff together would be a good thing, because there are a ton of assets not being tapped right now in terms of art and music. People just ride by almost everything because it is unimportant. It's also hard to stop and appreciate a monster when all of them can be stomped into the dirt as easily as the last. A giant turtle is only slightly tougher than a marmot of equal level.

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Originally Posted by darkstarpoet1

they actually linked you to the poll from the launcher. in 1.0 the poll popped up after signing in just like the maintenance messages pop up now. you had to manually bypass them after reading them if you did not want to take part in them.

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This is exactly how I would suggest they re-apply the approach and now that we have a new batch of PS4 players as well, what better time to learn what they would like for future content than now.

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Originally Posted by Tetsaru

Then... just get rid of the claim system. Seriously, I don't know why it still exists.

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Well considering if you do enough damage to a mob someone has 'claimed', you get the rewards for that mob too. It's effectively saying; you've done enough to help with this mob, here's the rewards. I think healer emnity helps towards it too as long as you tag the mob, but yea, the claim system is all but non-existant in the game as is.