Urgently Change your Approach SE

[BreathlessTao]

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Aye, let's consider it a theme park then. What do we have? Numerous rides and attractions, to almost every one of which at least one of these is true: can't get on it on your own; additional celestial amount of tokens as fees for no real reason; either die on it or not, nobody can tell; has people queued up for by the thousands, with only a few dozens of seats available. You can grow your theme park to gargantuan sizes, if most people will only be able to get on the scattered merry-go-rounds, to gawk at the luckier minorities on other rides, they won't be having fun. Or, you know, yeah, you can forbid people from getting on certain rides, but on what basis would you do that when everyone pays the same entry fee? People don't go to theme parks to see the same one attraction over and over and over again (everyone can have favourites, obviously, that's a different matter); they go to theme parks to get on as many things as possible (and the older visitors, to see the new stuff especially, if at least once).

As for the time investment - for someone who can play 70-100 hours a week, 2-3 hours of "work" (it shouldn't be "work", it should be fun) might seem a minimal time investment; for those who can only be online 30-40 hours, or even less, sorry to say, it's a much bigger chunk of time. And yeah, I agree, hardware limits are nothing new. Which is exactly why it's baffling that we're still getting that as an "explanation" to why this can't be done and why that can't be done either and oh why that other thing is impossible as well. I'm pretty sure the number of beta applicants was / could have been / should have been an indication of things to come. The login-issues plaguing early access and the following few weeks were / could have been / should have been indications of things to come. And so on. Yet, since then, for more than a year now, it still doesn't feel like anything's being done about these issues (we don't know, because they don't tell us anything; they added more servers, that was about it, but it clearly didn't/can't solve everything).

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1) Let's be specific: we get plenty of "we did this" and "we're going to do that" from the developers - "updates", indeed. That's not communication; communication is a two-way street. That's just them informing us about what's ahead, it's just reports. (Check the general opinion on instances considering personal houses - from those involved, I'm quite certain the majority would have preferred that instead of what we have now.) As for the lead developer replying within 24hrs in all languages to the housing debacle (ohmahgad!) - they say they monitor the forums for feedback, and with that in mind, if you really believe they didn't know what they were about to do would cause major ××××storms, then you're just unbelievably naive. That reply was just another apology (lost count of how many apologies they had to issue by now - if you communicate, that does not have to happen this often), with no real explanation in it and showing only sign of them being adamant about going the way they want to (re: instances vs wards). Also, it was only a proper reply in the Japanese forum, where it is actually a standalone sticky of its own. Wait, even there it's only a post buried on page 14 of a thread that's currently 73 pages long. As for the other languages, it's not even posted via his account (something I'm sure is not technically impossible).

2) I'm not saying these things have no place in MMORPGs. I'm saying that gating basically every single general fun content behind these is just ridiculous (you really think chocobo dyeing, for example, should be as overcomplicated as it is? or simple glamours, for that matter?).

And I already talked about hardware limitations; as for the transparency... yeah, it's the most transparent thing saying "we're going to implement this", only to get, months later, something like "well we wanted to implement this, but we couldn't because hardware, but hey /hugs for y'all". Indeed.

Also, congrats for your PUG clears. Must have either an immense amount of patience or just immense amount of luck. My experience with PUGs, 9 out of 10 times, is that everyone just expects everybody to know everything, and when the first try is a fail, half of the group just ragequits. But yeah, good for you. /thumbsup

[reality_check]

That's not communication; communication is a two-way street.

There are plenty of examples where the developers have listened to the player feedback.

When players complained about repair costs siphoning their gil, they were adjusted. When players complained that Ramuh was not worth the effort, they boosted the rings to level 110, turning some of the rings into BiS for certain jobs. When players complained about Garuda and Titan HM both dropping level 70 weapons, they adjusted Titan's weapons to level 80. When players complained about Allagan weapons being same item level as Relic +1, they boosted Allagan weapons to level 95. When players complained that Warriors were not good enough tanks for their strategies for certain duties, Warriors became significantly better at tanking.

I honestly don't think you'll be happy and until they completely redesign the whole entire game based on your whims.

[Teryaani]

There are plenty of examples where the developers have listened to the player feedback.

Sure. I'm in the camp that is pretty happy with the dev response most of the time. I do see where some of the complaints are valid and it's important to take SE to task when they slip, especially when you start seeing responses like Yoshi's "unclear" one. If you don't, you end up with Blizzard and nobody wants that.

When it was apparent to the developers that the housing wasn't going to go the way Yoshi had stated it was, that should have been made clear to the player base that the reality on the ground had changed. Players would have been annoyed, but it would have averted a large amount of rage.