Open Message to the Developers

It was a mistake to post.

I got met with personal accusations and hostility, but I shouldn't have answered or gotten personal back.

Bye.

:|


(10haractersperpost)

Right. Anyway,

I get what you're going for here, OP, but this is not the time for praise. They've done some things right with this patch. I can't deny that. And I do appreciate those things. But sometimes a good old fashioned kick in the pants gets the ball rolling. Sometimes. That is what is needed right now.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

I haven't posted on Lodestone in a bit, and sort of expect this to get lost in the shuffle. I'm aware there's been a lot of criticism around the Hrothgar ears situation, Hrothgar/Viera hats generally, as well as housing lottery issues. My assumption is that there are likely some very stressed people on the FFXIV team tied to these subjects.

I'd just like to take a moment to say that while these are points that need to be addressed, I know I and many other fans still respect and appreciate you all a lot. We recognize that the developers work hard as well as sincerely, and we do appreciate when there's transparency about any problems that arise.

Please remember to take care of yourselves too. While there might be frustration tied to issues with the game it means a lot when those are recognized and prioritized as well. We also see how much effort went into the parts of the game that are going as intended, and appreciate that.

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These shitposts are getting out of hand guys

Stop excusing mediocrity. This community has such a problem with toxic positivity that y'all think they're immune to valid criticism and complaints. They need to be held accountable, and more than just a stale "sorry".

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

I haven't posted on Lodestone in a bit, and sort of expect this to get lost in the shuffle. I'm aware there's been a lot of criticism around the Hrothgar ears situation, Hrothgar/Viera hats generally, as well as housing lottery issues. My assumption is that there are likely some very stressed people on the FFXIV team tied to these subjects.

I'd just like to take a moment to say that while these are points that need to be addressed, I know I and many other fans still respect and appreciate you all a lot. We recognize that the developers work hard as well as sincerely, and we do appreciate when there's transparency about any problems that arise.

Please remember to take care of yourselves too. While there might be frustration tied to issues with the game it means a lot when those are recognized and prioritized as well. We also see how much effort went into the parts of the game that are going as intended, and appreciate that.

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While they have done amazing things previously, in regard to the Hrothgar, they had 3 years to deliver something to the Hrothgar player base. 3 Years and they give them hairstyles that removes their ears. They simply did not care. I am sorry deliver something like they did, they are going to have to accept the criticism and more and more issues are happening they kind of earned the criticism.

SE is not a bunch of kids playing around with code for the first time. You can’t keep saying “it’s okay” to every mistake that happens. Even Twitter is being ruthless towards SE right now and have this game trending in the spotlight in the worst possible way. Now is the time for them to really figure out how to fix this mess. Not receive more praise and comfort.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

I get what you're going for here, OP, but this is not the time for praise. They've done some things right with this patch. I can't deny that. And I do appreciate those things. But sometimes a good old fashioned kick in the pants gets the ball rolling. Sometimes. That is what is needed right now.

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Love Yoshi and the dev team. But time for a serious kick in the rear!!! I agree fully

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

Stop being spoiled and throwing tantrums. It's possible to do accountability without being a jerk about it. You sound like someone who hasn't actually experienced a mediocre or terrible property before.

I agree that the issues are issues and need to be addressed. Being an asshole about it isn't necessary here.

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What about what I said was "being a jerk" btw? I said they need to be held accountable, and they do. I said stop settling for mediocrity, which the recent Hrothgar and housing situation is. I hope YoshiP is paying you well because no one can be bootlicking this hard for valid complaints. Good things don't outweigh bad things, they are separate things.

It's really odd to me how some people act like they're personal friends with the development team. It's entirely possible to have respect for the developers whilst also expecting accountability if missteps are being made.

It's how any business works. The relationship between a customer and company is entirely a professional one. Exceptions only really exist in the form of smaller, local businesses where you build up a genuine rapport and get to know individual employees through the process of frequenting an establishment. That isn't the case of a big, very wealthy business such as Square Enix.

It's good to remember to show some appreciated to be fair. The constant abuse is probably part of why so many WoW devs stopped giving a crap about player feedback and stopped interacting with the playerbase. even going so far as to hurl insults. Criticism for these failures is justified but some of the rage is just ridiculous. If I failed to get my FC house I would be pretty gutted but still have more hope with lotto in future than placard clicking against bots.

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Originally Posted by EcoReck

What about what I said was "being a jerk" btw? I said they need to be held accountable, and they do. I said stop settling for mediocrity, which the recent Hrothgar and housing situation is. I hope YoshiP is paying you well because no one can be bootlicking this hard for valid complaints. Good things don't outweigh bad things, they are separate things.

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Agree that what you said is not in any way unreasonable. The devs are grown adults (or at least I should hope so) they do not need us coddling them. They do not need someone to "soften" the blow because at the end of the day they are being paid to put this game out, just as we are paying to play it. We are not entitled or spoiled to demand better from a service that we know is fully capable of doing so.

I do think it's a bit silly to make a post like this when people are this upset about something. They had a job and they messed up. This is the reaction you get and for a programming error like this to not be caught in QA. This whole situation is pretty scuffed.

Also Jelly bean hair :-\

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Originally Posted by Aelin_Ashryver

It's good to remember to show some appreciated to be fair. The constant abuse is probably part of why so many WoW devs stopped giving a crap about player feedback and stopped interacting with the playerbase. even going so far as to hurl insults. Criticism for these failures is justified but some of the rage is just ridiculous. If I failed to get my FC house I would be pretty gutted but still have more hope with lotto in future than placard clicking against bots.

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I would avoid talking about the WoW developers given how out of touch they have become for the longest time. Whereas the current situation kind of shows a similar trend with how little foresight these implementations had behind them.

OP I have to say the issue here really is the time of you putting this out. You're seeing the situation that is unfolding and people are justifiably upset. Now is not the time to be like "oh hey but this was good! I can see the effort you put out." And someone said, in a fashion, that it kind of isn't the time to be putting out positivity and you responded with hostility.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

'If I don't agree then it's a shitpost.'

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I mean, you have to admit its looks a bit like a shitpost. From your character card you're clearly a casual player, and you're downplaying the mistakes that the developers have made, which is a classic casual move. Come on it totally looks like a shitpost

At least give those that was clear winners their plots for FC/Playerhousing or something, it would be a nice token for once that actually showed some care, if it is the cost of the plot because funds was taken back, then i tis no problem to those that want the house to cough up the amount again.

Giving this 50/50 chance to either the game keeps the plot or the player wins it, is unbearable, there MUST be logs you guys can use to state these claims... and at least remove the salt for those, where it was only one who put in a lottery ticket, with all the respect to the community.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

The jelly bean hair is awful and needs to get fixed, 1000% agree.

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How could you say it's awful?! The widdle devvie-wevvies tried weally hard on it!

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

This is deranged and people don't seem to have any concept of mixed opinions anymore. Have fun with you homogenous one-dimensional opinions and rage I guess.

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So you posted an extremely hot take in the middle of a community wide firestorm...and you received back lash in return. It shouldn't have been unexpected.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

I'm deleting this message here until I can figure out how to scrap the thread completely. This was stupid.

The original message was that while there's a lot going on and the devs have done well in many areas, it's still important to fix issues with housing, hrothgar ears, and hats for viera and hrothgar. I expect the devs to fix these things and it seems pretty clear how mad the community is about it. I don't think screaming at people gets points across better so wanted to try and express it like they're people who messed up.

I wasn't pissy enough and underestimated the behavior on lodestone. Don't worry, this will be gone as soon as I find the way to get rid of it.

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That's not what you said...

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I haven't posted on Lodestone in a bit, and sort of expect this to get lost in the shuffle. I'm aware there's been a lot of criticism around the Hrothgar ears situation, Hrothgar/Viera hats generally, as well as housing lottery issues. My assumption is that there are likely some very stressed people on the FFXIV team tied to these subjects.

I'd just like to take a moment to say that while these are points that need to be addressed, I know I and many other fans still respect and appreciate you all a lot. We recognize that the developers work hard as well as sincerely, and we do appreciate when there's transparency about any problems that arise.

Please remember to take care of yourselves too. While there might be frustration tied to issues with the game it means a lot when those are recognized and prioritized as well. We also see how much effort went into the parts of the game that are going as intended, and appreciate that.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

This is deranged and people don't seem to have any concept of mixed opinions anymore. Have fun with you homogenous one-dimensional opinions and rage I guess.

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the devs might be over stressed and true bugs happens,
but not those kind of simple bugs where Q&A would simply find them, for a system developed by a huge company that supposedly have many devs over a few months such a simple bug should not have been passed to a patch. simple.

Here's my open letter:

Dear devs,

I love this game. Please stop fucking up housing, though. If you finally got around to fixing Living Dead, you can fix this.

Regards,
Azira

I would be a lot more sympathetic to the devs assuming they can show signs of competency. To the layman, it looks like they can't even design a working random number generator. That's just embarrassing no matter how people try to spin it. Now people might have gotten houses not because they won fairly, but due to bias in the broken system. So they either rollback, fucking over people who won the house, or don't roll back, fucking over people who didn't win the house. They might even have to rerun the lottery again, wasting people's time. Either way, someone is getting screwed over. Square messed up big time, no empty platitudes are gonna hide that. If i messed up that much in my job, heads will roll.

At the rate this patch is going, with the bard glitch and the housing glitch, the hilidibrand quests are gonna be an unplayable mess. I personally am nostalgic for the days of 6.08. Less content, sure, but at least it worked. There is a time and place for dev appreciation, and I can tell you everyone into housing aren't feeling appreciative at all.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

"The original message was that while there's a lot going on and the devs have done well in many areas, it's still important to fix issues with housing, hrothgar ears, and hats for viera and hrothgar. I expect the devs to fix these things and it seems pretty clear how mad the community is about it. I don't think screaming at people gets points across better so wanted to try and express it like they're people who messed up."


"I'm aware there's been a lot of criticism around the Hrothgar ears situation, Hrothgar/Viera hats generally, as well as housing lottery issues", "these are points that need to be addressed", "it means a lot when those are recognized and prioritized as well." --> it's still important to fix issues with housing, hrothgar ears, and hats for viera and hrothgar.


Saying "I expect the devs to fix these things and it seems pretty clear how mad the community is about it. I don't think screaming at people gets points across better so wanted to try and express it like they're people who messed up," isn't me asserting I explicitly stated those things originally. That's my overall opinion and where I was coming from. Honestly I underestimated people's behavior because I haven't been on lodestone.

Oops.

Throw me in e-jail forever.

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They’re two completely opposite statements.

One is: “The devs have done a lot of good, BUT right now there’s a lot going on that they need to work on and address

while the other is: “There’s a lot going on right now that needs to be worked on and addressed, BUT the devs have done a lot of good.” Your emphasis in your first message was this, indicating a need to acknowledge the devs great actions in previous years.

Whereas your new message reads as though, WHILE you acknowledge the dev’s actions, they don’t particularly matter when we’ve got a sh*tshow going on right now.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

I think you misunderstood the original message, or maybe I wasn't clear enough in expressing my own thoughts. I specifically meant that the devs have done a lot of good, BUT they need to work on and address the problems with hrothgar/viera and housing. Like that was the entire point of the post for me. If you don't believe me there's nothing I can do about it, but sincerely that was my intent.

I do think the devs actions matter on other areas. I think both the good and bad things matter. Right now there's a major problem, they have for the most part been good about fixing things in the past but have let this slide when they shouldn't have. So now they need to make fixing this a top priority. They built up a lot of good faith from players but this is bad, and it seems like it is a point where they could justifiably lose good faith if they don't take it seriously. So I meant to urge taking it seriously without being extreme or nasty in expressing that, because honestly I think that approach is less effective.

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Then say what you mean initially, rather than not. In your attempt to sugar coat what you were saying you ended up saying the opposite of what you meant. Your original message *wasn’t* what you said it was, and the initial response was to your ORIGINAL message, which missed its mark.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

I think you misunderstood the original message, or maybe I wasn't clear enough in expressing my own thoughts. I specifically meant that the devs have done a lot of good, BUT they need to work on and address the problems with hrothgar/viera and housing. Like that was the entire point of the post for me. If you don't believe me there's nothing I can do about it, but sincerely that was my intent.

I do think the devs actions matter on other areas. I think both the good and bad things matter. Right now there's a major problem, they have for the most part been good about fixing things in the past but have let this slide when they shouldn't have. So now they need to make fixing this a top priority. They built up a lot of good faith from players but this is bad, and it seems like it is a point where they could justifiably lose good faith if they don't take it seriously. So I meant to urge taking it seriously without being extreme or nasty in expressing that, because honestly I think that approach is less effective.

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true and its good that you are positive about it, just remember housing is an issue that was complained about for years and the lottery system is something they developed for months with "testing" now the bug we see here is when one person enter the lottery and loses, its basically a bug where a small test of 1 person should have caught up to it,

add this to the fact that housing is an issue that goes around for years especially how limited housing in ff14 is (including limited very limited huge houses) and having land plots issues along the fact its not instanced housing like in other mmos which allow every player to actually have a house and you get very (and probably rightfully so) angry players.

They can't be working that hard if they can't make a random number generator work kek

I know in the live letter yoshi p said that the patch is being knowingly shipped with some issues, but with issues this bad they really shouldn't have. It seems like all the time and effort was spent on the alliance raid and adventurer plates, and I really like both. Those two work very well. But if the rest of this patch is gonna be a coin flip on whether the new content works or just straight up breaks, this is gonna be the worst patch in recent memory. I wouldn't rule out data center travel just straight up transferring you to another data center, with no possible way to get back.

This is also supposed to be the patch that starts the next era of ffxiv, the exciting start of a new beginning. If there was gonna be a patch that demanded extra thought and care, it's gotta be this one. If this is our newfound adventure I would like to book a return ticket and go back home please.

Oh wait, I can't go home. The devs don't know how to make a simple lottery. Another homeless night in limsa then.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

Dude thank you. I'm actually kind of shocked by the recent stuff because they don't normally screw up this hard. It seems like they addressed PVP which was a huge issue, but the level of screwed up housing is defies belief.

It seems like they're trying to fix a lot of things at once while releasing new content, and I figure resource management + covid aren't easy. Imo if they can't get something done in the time frame they intended saying so is better than sending out content with major problems. And it absolutely worries me that some of the response so far (on hrothgar ears) seemed to be making excuses. I don't think people are wrong for being frustrated or angry and calling that out. To me, there's just a huge difference between 'angry, insisting this get fixed' and 'absolutely enraged'.

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that level of incompetence is nothing new when u see how healers being treated by SE and yoshi p.
i am one of the absolutely enraged but im on the healer issues enraged, seeing the sam kaiten getting healer treatment, hrotager hairstyle the "off with their ears" treatment and now housing lottery bug. i relate to people anger cause i feel the same when it comes to the strange and quite out of touch changes they did to all the healers. its nice you are at a positive spot and believes in them but the rest of us got worn down with each action stranger then the other and repeated after they undo the bad change/implementation the devs pulled over the years and continued with the hollowed sentences of "look forward to it" or "wait till you try it before complaining".

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Originally Posted by Manofpassion

I wouldn't rule out data center travel just straight up transferring you to another data center, with no possible way to get back.

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Sign me up.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

I don't get the sense SE wants a pissed community, and I also seriously don't think lashing out in this case would help fix things the same way yelling at a waiter doesn't make an out-of-stock menu item appear.

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I think you cannot see the forest through the trees if you're talking about SE not wanting a "pissed community". The entire point of the outrage is that the positivity for this game has been actually incredibly abundant. I don't really want to bring him up, but when Asmongold played FFXIV it was embarrassing, you had so many players defending the game as if it was something they needed to die on a hill for. This has plagued this game for as long as I can remember (6-7 years at least at this point).

The better analogy would be that the complaints are customers and SE are the cooks and the waiters. Just because the establishment or in this case the business has been very good historically, that doesn't mean they get to use that as if they're playing on house money. Defending a MULTI million dollar company who pushed out a non-tested, non-thought over system, a system that should have been added YEARS ago, because you want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The entire reason is that SE assumes the community won't be pissed, because they simply have historically been good. Cut them a break, they've been good in the past you say. Nah? It's not acceptable.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

As a serious question, has there been any request on lodestone for transparency on the logistical issues/immediate obstacles so frustrated community can possibly step up as an added resource to help problem solve? Or possibly, if they're seriously having trouble, some way to invite people within the community who have expertise and are invested to join SE working to fix things?

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It's possible to go to Square Enix's website and apply for jobs. There are always plenty for FFXIV especially in Japan, but the problem of course is that they require you to speak Japanese and live in Japan, so a lot of the people who play could never get them.

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Originally Posted by Jaywalker

I guess another difference here is that if I go to a restaurant (like playing a game), and there's a problem that needs attention--I generally try to be understanding as long as the issue is addressed and without extra charge/penalty to me for them fixing it. I've worked food service and shit happens sometimes, same as I've worked creative fields. It shouldn't have gone wrong in the first place, but if it does my reaction is 'okay fix this'. It takes a hell of a lot for me to react with rage. I'm still insisting the problem gets fixed. I'm just not cursing out the staff calling them all donkeys or whatever.

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If you've worked in the food service, you should know that if someone has failed a service, like in any industry for that matter, you don't just get to take the money and say that's life, get over it and move on. The entire point is that this should have happened a long time ago and this should have been done in an appropriate and delicate way, this did not happen and like everything, oh, they'll get to it ... in a patch, a major patch, which could be a couple months or it could be like the Hrothgar hair, 3 years. Ultimately, it's just the way it goes? I just don't see how anyone could defend such a stance and people are right to be bothered by these recent events, this seems like after the success of EW, they've become lackadaisical and out of touch with their own playerbase, well at least the playerbase who doesn't make excuses for them every time something will go wrong.

I've done it, I don't think there's anything wrong with defending a company who has had a track record, the issue is that if we cannot complain now, there is NEVER a good time to complain. It's time to take a stand that these things aren't acceptable. SE/Yoshi P loved telling the community that with EW, they've had the highest subscriber count ever, things are going well. Cool, why are things getting worse then? And why is it acceptable to accept less when the community is contributing MORE and moreover, how long will this take to fix or be remedied? I don't think it will at this point, so it's better to let the community vent their frustrations even if it's albeit dramatic, than to just throw it back in our faces like a company that doesn't care.

I think it's much more healthy for the community to be vocal, even if it's in a negative way, than to have a multi billion dollar company brushing it off and acting uninterested, jaded and out of touch which is how this looks like. Yoshi P loves talking about how vital WoW was in the rebirth of FFXIV and that's cool and all... But if you know how WoW is currently with regards to their development team, yeah, the current development team is quickly following in their footsteps.