Build Your Survey

Many are disappointed that the Anniversary survey is marketing in nature instead of for player feedback about the state of the game on the 10th Anniversary.

Even with a Q&A coming at the EU FanFest, most of us are familiar with the type of questions they choose to address at the events. We're not likely to learn anything useful regarding their reactions to our feelings about the state of the game.

Let's build the survey you think we should have been given. What questions should the developers be asking us that would let them get a better idea of how players feel about the state of the game?

Please try to phrase them in the form of a multiple choice question with choices that aren't biased in a particular direction (can be hard to do but try). Including "Other" with space for brief comments as an option is acceptable. Choices can also be as simple as "Yes" "No" "Does not apply to me".

Don't forget to ask questions related to content/features that you are enjoying as much as those that trouble you.

Also add in your suggestions for general category types for the questions such as Job Design, MSQ, Open World Content, etc.

If someone posts a question that you'd like to discuss, please make a new thread if a relevant one doesn't already exist instead of trying to discuss it in this thread.

Please post your questions by Saturday Sept. 16th, noon Pacific (though I can probably squeeze in a few questions that are a little late in being posted). I'll compile all the questions in the next post as long as they're relevant to the current state of the game or getting basic player demographic information from those responding.

Hopefully, it gets passed to the developers and gives them an idea of what players are most interested in and/or concerned about. Even better if it inspires them to release an official survey asking the player base what we think about the state of the game.

General Impressions

Are you happy with the job design in FFXIV?

• Yes
• No
• No Opinion

If Yes or No, please say why:


Are you happy with the content design in FFXIV?

• Yes
• No
• No Opinion

If Yes or No, please say why:


Are you happy with the direction that FFXIV is heading in?

• Yes
• No
• No Opinion

If Yes or No, please say why:

Are you happy with the job design in FFXIV? Y/N
Are you happy with the content design in FFXIV? Y/N
Are you happy with the direction that FFXIV is heading in? Y/N

I dunno, you can get down into the weeds and have it a 100 question survey. First three would actually tell them if there is a general consensus that the playerbase agrees with the developers or not.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

Are you happy with the job design in FFXIV? Y/N
Are you happy with the content design in FFXIV? Y/N
Are you happy with the direction that FFXIV is heading in? Y/N

I dunno, you can get down into the weeds and have it a 100 question survey. First three would actually tell them if there is a general consensus that the playerbase agrees with the developers or not.

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Those three but also add in a "why/why not" section to clarify. Because that needs to be done. Clarification.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

General Impressions
...
If Yes or No, please say why:

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Those are good.

Not that I fully agree it was neutral in tone or overall perfect, but Ty did one a while back here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...81#post6216481

I think some way of combining yours with some variation of that (with the scaling fixed, for example, note 1-10 instead of 0-10 and some other stuff) would probably lead to some half decent information. It would need to go out to the whole playerbase, though, not just people on the forum, since you're going to get really skewed results with the forum audience.

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As to your questions:

1) Mostly yes. I think that a lot of Jobs are too similar now and would like them to be more distinct, but I really like a lot of the designs. I especially appreciate straightforward Jobs a player can reasonably work out on their own without needing outside resources, such as WAR, WHM, and SMN, as well as ones that may have some higher end optimization but are reasonably straightforward and understandable in general, such as RDM. While I personally dislike the more convoluted ones like BLM and MNK, I appreciate that they are in the game for people who enjoy that sort of gameplay, and believe that it's good for the game to offer all kinds to appeal to all kinds of players.

2) Mixed. I feel that the lack of Exploration Zone in EW has shown that the game overall lacks "midcore" or "medium" difficulty content. There's no bridge between the super easy stuff like MSQ and the hard stuff like Savages, especially now that Extremes are basically Savage difficulty with coordination and body checks which used not to be staples of Extremes. Extremes need to be brought down in difficulty and "(Hard)" modes should be reintroduced to the game (the last we had was Thock ast Thock and Limitless Blue, which were really the normal modes of those encounters, and some of the (Hard) dungeons mostly in ARR and HW, with just a couple in SB being Fractal Continuum (Hard) and Saint Mocianne's Arboretum (Hard)...) as a step between MSQ difficulty and Extremes. This would create a lot smoother transition and overall content for more players to bridge that gap. Further, including Exploration Zones like Eureka and Bozja going forward in all future expansions to ensure there's that spread for casual through midcore to hardcore to mingle and play together and work together in content that offers each something of value in a repeatable format.

3) More or less, yes. Notwithstanding (2) above, I generally like the game overall, love the world and characters and most of the Job design, and think it's a fun and enjoyable game that I hope sticks around for a long time. I'd like it if it appealed to a few more types of player while not casting aside those who like it now. As long as it can do that, I'll be happy with it.

EDIT:

Oh, one other thing to add to (2): Criterion could REALLY be flexed for this. Right now, it has an MSQ difficulty, a Savage difficulty, and a Savage difficulty with a timer. Given there are already multiple versions of this content, it should not be difficult to add a step between the MSQ and Savage level. That would be yet another bridge and should be even easier to do than any of the other proposed stuff. (Don't get me wrong, I want those, too, but this would also be a nice addition IN addition to that.)

I think these are great questions but rely a lot on someone reading the "Why or Why not?" section. Asking about the "Direction of the game" is just way too broad and is a question that could be interpreted so many ways, it would be hard to use the results.

If they got millions of replies, it's unlikely most of the "why or why nots" would end up being read or processed in a meaningful way. Unfortunately I think they'd need a very long and detailed survey, probably asking multiple questions about the content released each expansions, to hopefully get multiple choice answers the tallies of which could culminate in accessible feedback.

Maybe also things like "On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "I hate it" and 10 being "I love it and want more", how would you rate:

* Island Sanctuary
* Criterion Dungeons
etc.

Follow this up maybe with: "How much time have you spent on X system?" 0-10 hours, 10-50 hours, 50+ hours...or whatever.

Or, "How much solo content do you want offered beyond the MSQ?" and have some choices for that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

I think these are great questions but rely a lot on someone reading the "Why or Why not?" section. Asking about the "Direction of the game" is just way too broad and is a question that could be interpreted so many ways, it would be hard to use the results.

If they got millions of replies, it's unlikely most of the "why or why nots" would end up being read or processed in a meaningful way. Unfortunately I think they'd need a very long and detailed survey, probably asking multiple questions about the content released each expansions, to hopefully get multiple choice answers the tallies of which could culminate in accessible feedback.

Maybe also things like "On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "I hate it" and 10 being "I love it and want more", how would you rate:

* Island Sanctuary
* Criterion Dungeons
etc.

Or, "How much solo content do you want offered beyond the MSQ?" and have some choices for that.

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Fair enough.

One thing I learned from Ty's survey and mine done at the same time - long form answers feel really good for respondents to fill out...but are REALLY hard to parse. In Ty's survey, for example, you can see overall satisfactions and stuff (the results are on that link towards the bottom of the post), but then there's the long form answers. While there are some things that seem to be repeated (a LOT of people want Energy Drain decoupled from AF, for example), the qualified (as opposed to quantified - numbers) answers are way harder to parse. "Oh, you say you want more DPS buttons but you want to heal more...what...what does that look like?" Same with the Reddit polls we ran in conjunction with it, where it was often hard to classify people's answers when you get something like "Do you like the current state of healers? I hate how simple WHM is. I find AST is too busy. I think AF should be decoupled from Energy Drain, but I also want Miasma 2 back but I also want encounters to do more healing and I don't like Jobs being braindead but WAR is my favorite healer". There are a lot of mixed signals making it WAY harder to do anything useful with that feedback outside of identify some keywords/phrases here and there that you see repeat a lot.

...which is harder than it seems since respondents write their responses in all different ways. One might list WHM then SCH then AST then SGE, another might list SGE then WHM than AST and leave off SCH completely. Some might mention their views on DPS first, others healing first, others encounters first, and leaving off some of the others. Some might write extremely short "I hate it" while others may go into extreme length.

It's why so many surveys use multiple choice but not long-form answers, like as not. But that limits the survey quite a bit and you have to make sure to offer a lot of options so that you cover all the major bases, and you might still miss something.

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TL;DR: Polls are hard.

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EDIT:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

A nice start would be asking more serious questions that what your Aetheryte is though.

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To be fair, this might have more to do with something else, like trying to figure out what kinds of zones/environments people like/would like to see more of and why.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I'm thinking 4-5 choices like

Very Satisfied
Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
No Opinion

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Though not ALWAYS, I GENERALLY dislike that. I think a scale from 1-5 or 0-10 is better, since it allows more nuance. "I kind of am satisfied, but am I VERY satisfied or more neutral? But there's not a neutral option. So do I answer no opinion, satisfied, or dissatisfied?" It's also why I dislike the "dislike, slightly like, somewhat like, really like" "scale" that some pollsters like to use. "Does slightly like get counted with somewhat, or with dislike? Is it three versions of like or is the slightly counted as negative? What if I only kinda like it but I DO like it and don't want to get counted as on the negative side?"

With a 1-2-3-4-5 (1 hate, 2 dislike, 3 neutral, 4 like, 5 love) or a 0-10 (0 being hate, 10 being love, 5 being neutral, and giving people 1-2-3-4 and 6-7-8-9 flavors of dislike/like to really express their views) being far better, I think.

I agree polls are hard and for them to be useful I'd imagine there needing to be like 100 questions lol. At that point though people might just close out of it.

I just really don't trust them to have a staff that can read hundreds of thousands or millions of responses in text and do anything with that amount of feedback though. It's a really hard balance.

A nice start would be asking more serious questions that what your Aetheryte is though.

I'm thinking 4-5 choices like

Very Satisfied
Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
No Opinion

should be sufficient to get a general idea of how a player feels on a given content/feature. The general impressions questions are just that - general impressions. That's why other questions that are more specific would be needed. Break down what is causing satisfaction/dissatisfaction with job design rather only than leave it to an AI to look for common keywords in the comments areas.

This is still intended to be a collective effort. I have my own questions I'll add to it (more demographic in nature but I'll hit on things like crafting/gathering and open world content) but I want to give everyone their own opportunity to add in what questions they think should be on a survey of players.

Also, it can go beyond just "do you like this content" type questions. There are other things that have been brought up in the past like "character privacy" (if someone is removed from a friends list, it's not getting removed on the other player's list), UI design, etc. Those are also things that can affect perception of state of the game.

I'd probably place additional questions about more specific content after those 3

Deep Dungeons
Exploratory zones
Criterion dungeons
trials
raids
Extreme/Savage/Ultimate
Glamour/Dye system
Character creation options
etc...

The 3 given set up a good overall start for a general consensus however a list of more specific follow ups will help the people going through the responses figure out the specific areas more in need of tuning/work, while also saving the people doing the surveys time composing a wall of text explanation after each of those 3 responses to put context on the option chosen.

I feel like a survey like this would benefit as @Zephyr mentioned on a 1-10 scale with 10 being the best.

Questions I'd like asked:

• How do you feel about the overall state of the game?
• How do you feel about class/job balance?
• How do you feel about how a class/job plays?
• How well did you like/receive the new dps class Reaper?
• How well did you like/receive the new healer class Sage?
• How well did you like/receive the reworked Summoner?
• How well did you like/receive the changes to Samurai?
• How well did you like/receive the changes to Paladin?
• How did you like the introduction of Island Sanctuary?
• How did you like the introduction of Variant and Criterion Dungeons?
• How much did you enjoy the MSQ (6.0)?
• How much did you enjoy post-MSQ (6.1-.4)?
• How much are you looking forward to 6.5's MSQ?
• How much did you enjoy the new Hildibrand questline?
• <insert crafting related questions I am not qualified to ask here>
• How well did you like/receive the new Relic?
• How much are you looking forward to Dawntrail?
• How excited are you for the new graphical update?

With those 1-10 questions asked I would then have a few questions with a 500-1000 (or however much) limit added at the end:

What would you like to see more of in Final Fantasy XIV?

What are your hopes/wishes for Dawntrail?

And the bigguns I guess:

What role do you most often play in Final Fantasy XIV (choose 1):

• Tank
• Healer
• DPS

What thoughts do you have upon your chosen role this expansion?

What would you like to see with your chosen role next expansion?

I forgot to add the rework to pvp to my list.

Add that in there too I guess.

Nuance means nothing if there isn't some standard that differentiates why someone would pick a 6 instead of a 7. You could have 2 players that feel the exact same way about something but they will pick 2 different numbers because the numbers represent different things to each of them.

Increasing the number of potential responses also increases the amount of time it's going to take to complete the survey. It's generally easy pick how you feel when you're asked to choose from Hate, Dislike, Neutral, Like, Love. You read the question and your mind is generally going to immediately jump to one of those for an answer. If confronted by a "rate 1 (worst) to 10 (best)" scale, unless you totally love, totally hate something or have absolutely no opinion about something, you're going to sit there trying to decide what number is the best.

It's usually better to keep things on the simple side. If there is nuance that is helpful to see, it should be revealed through the answers to more specific questions.

I'll work on adding in some of the new questions getting posted.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

I forgot to add the rework to pvp to my list.

Add that in there too I guess.

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Not being a PvP person, what rework are you referring to or is it just a general "does PvP need to be reworked" question, in which case it's helpful to know if you're referring to map design/objectives, job design or something else.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Not being a PvP person, what rework are you referring to or is it just a general "does PvP need to be reworked" question, in which case it's helpful to know if you're referring to map design/objectives, job design or something else.

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The entire PvP overhaul they did. Changing all the classes to the smaller set than we used to have in Shb.

+ the inclusion of Crystaline Conflict (another pvp piece of content I forgot to add) and its ranked version that was added this expansion.

In short the questions I'd have rather have asked would be:

• Overall balance of the game
• New content added the current expansion specifically
• Ones that touch upon each part of the game for everyone (from MSQ to battle content to pvp and crafting etc)
• And perhaps a few targeted questions that may need a 500-1000 character limit such as the "State of Role" question

If they want to add in questions about mounts/minions that the player base would like as in the current survey fine, but if you're going to do that also add questions about:

• Hairstyles people would like to see
• Glamour gear (from other FF titles or just in general)