SE, the time has come to ignore everything your players say.

[Yeldir]

You wanted to implement reclamation long ago. The player-base whined, and you backed down. Now you're doing it anyway, and your hesitation caused some serious damage to the housing availability and subsequently compromised your vision of workships and airships.

Your players asked for a coil everyone could enjoy. You gave it to them. Now they're complaining that Savage Alexander is rehashed, uninteresting. The same people have turned on you for giving them what they wanted - now they're crying a return to coil-raids, or worse, a medium Alexander.

They wanted less gear disparity between casuals and hardcore players. Now they're looking at savage itemization, declaring meh, not worth it, can just get 210 next content patch, and they're blaming you for this.

Stop doing anything anyone asks you to do. Make the game you feel is the best, the most interesting, and the most compelling. Your players do not know what they want. They need to be led by your designs. They will complain no matter what. But the only way you will lose subscribers is by allowing their insanity to water down your creativity and production values.

[Nomad-phx]

Yes. Just yes.

[Morningstar1337]

You wanted to implement reclamation long ago. The player-base whined, and you backed down. Now you're doing it anyway, and your hesitation caused some serious damage to the housing availability and subsequently compromised your vision of workships and airships.

Honestly I'd peg that point of no return at the moment Personal Housing was a thing

Your players asked for a coil everyone could enjoy. You gave it to them. Now they're complaining that Savage Alexander is rehashed, uninteresting. The same people have turned on you for giving them what they wanted - now they're crying a return to coil-raids, or worse, a medium Alexander.

Wait, asking for midcore content is a bad thing now?

They wanted less gear disparity between casuals and hardcore players. Now they're looking at savage itemization, declaring meh, not worth it, can just get 210 next content patch, and they're blaming you for this.

I'm not sure that inherent aspect of vertical progression could be blamed on Alexander Savage (at least not alone)

Stop doing anything anyone asks you to do. Make the game you feel is the best, the most interesting, and the most compelling. Your players do not know what they want. They need to be led by your designs. They will complain no matter what. But the only way you will lose subscribers is by allowing their insanity to water down your creativity and production values.

Can it wait until we get enough Armory chest space to gear all the classes? :P

Also you do realize that there will be torches and pitchforks and paranoia about reverting to 1.0 heading your way right? Also you forgot the Cashshop

[Yeldir]

I'm no SE apologist. The personal housing incident was a disaster and no blame for that one rests on a single player of this game.

[NovaLevossida]

Take all the vacations you want!
Delay content; we won't mind!
Repeat the same content cycle as 2.x!
Don't implement unique traits and abilities on armor!
Stick with vertical progression and quickly outclassed armor and soon-to-be-irrelevant content!

[Dotsusama]

Actually, the only way they can truly benefit from listening to their player base is to actually listen to more than just the ones that make demands on the forums, ask questions at their live streams, or attend their events. A survey email or in-game tool available to all to use at any time (but also with regular specific polls when patches hit) would be nice.

I know the company is capable of doing this, because it recently happened. I was asked to fill out a survey in S-E's Final Fantasy Portal app, and it gave me plenty of space to talk about my experience using the app, its related games, and also offer up suggestions. And not but a short time afterward but a patch came in with one major mechanic change for their Triple Triad app that no doubt everyone is enjoying, and some other fixes.

Coincidence? I don't think so. They ASKED, we ANSWERED, they LISTENED.

[BreathlessTao]

...lol. They've been pretty disconnected from us for quite a while now. The three things you mentioned are basically all that was asked for and got done - take a look at all the issues and the suggestions to deal with them, take a look how rational a lot of those is, and yet none of it is even being worked on. Random minor things get noticed, like "oh you want an umbrella? ok we'll see what we can do", or "oh you want flowers in your hair? ok, forwarded to the team"... The glaring issues though? Nope. Either not even acknowledged, or outright swept under the rug with one of the unholy trinity of excuses.

Can even refute the three you mentioned: reclamation should have been implemented together with the system itself, considering the resources and the lack of availability, it never should have been up for debate at all; players wanted a "coil" they can enjoy, but that was on SE, considering how the actual Coil's story really tied into that of ARR's - people rightfully felt they were missing out on things (and, well, Alex normal's design isn't much to write home about to begin with, can't be surprised that making damages bigger and adding a few more wipe-AoEs ain't saving it); less gear disparity, I think, comes down to details like dyeability, actual upgrades, and how those are handled - that in itself is quite frustrating and "meh" on a few levels. So there you go.

[seraseth]

in-game tool available to all to use at any time (but also with regular specific polls when patches hit) would be nice.

I don't know why more games don't use something like this. It's a way to get feedback from players from somewhere you know they're going to be: in game!

No small sample sizes from forums or other sites, being in game it's connected to your account so they only get one answer per person, and it's from players who are currently active in your game.

Seems a no brainer to get quick easy feedback from real players (and being in game, more likely players will answer since they don't need to do any extra work to go to a different site).

[Fynlar]

OP, I like you.

[Gralna]

I'd say if SE wanted to really get a feel for what the community wanted, they'd have a short survey everyone would have to do on their next login. Know of a few MMO's that have done this, and taking 5 min every 3-6 months to provide feedback to the game, isn't really that big of a deal.

Listening to just what's posted here on the forums, or from events, is only what a vocal minority is asking for.