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

[Roegadyn_Bear]

Oddly familiar gripe from an oddly similar individual.

I thought Skizzle disappeared, but behold, there he is once more in the flesh and in disguise!

I'll go get the delicious buttery popcorn!

[Xerius]

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.

I think you may be reading too much into what the vocal minorities are saying and assuming that they reflect the opinions of the entire community.

[IndigoHawk]

OP has upvotes because it sounds tough, but it's actually terrible advice. OP says "Don't listen to players! Make stuff in a bubble that has problems! Be arrogant and make the game fail like 1.0!"

Casual Alexander was a good idea. Still is. The problem is Alexander story isn't good. SE listened to players but executed poorly. That bleeds over into Savage, too.

SE should have easily realized that neighborhoods would never meet player demand for housing. SE should have made instanced housing for players and neighborhoods for FCs.

SE does some things well, but has blind spots. It doesn't listen to players on some issues and continues forward with plans that won't work. Saving FFXIV was a miracle, but now SE is in danger of becoming too conservative and repeating the same formulas and mistakes.

Keep on listening to players, learn from mistakes, and execute better. Don't become an arrogant failure like the OP suggests.

[Tsunenori]

I have to agree with others who say that the original post is not a good design philosophy. This game was built from the ground up based on player feedback, and version 1.0 existed because of ignored player feedback. If anything, FFXIV is the poster child for how listening to your players creates success from failure. One only needs to look at its competition to see where developers ignored the concerns and pleas of their players and where that got them in the long run.

Developers shouldn't compromise their vision for the sake of a few voices on the forums, however they should also consider the wants and needs of their players when designing content for the future. Forum feedback is one method of delivery, as is polling and data delivered via players in-game through actual gameplay. Ultimately it's not any of us but the developers themselves that have data on how people play the content in their game and it's up to them to make good decisions based on that. Making the argument that vocal minorities on the official forums (and the forum userbase itself being a minority) leads to schizophrenic design is just as much of a fallacy as the very posts and people being lambasted.

[Jim_Berry]

The hardcore players wanted content that separated them from the casuals. They get it and are still complaining. Some complaining that they can't get many people together to clear the content. Well, since they asked to be separate from the casuals, this is what you get.

[Asmodai]

SWTOR was another game where the player base was totally ignored for a long time after launch.

Casuals killed SWTOR. When all the hard core raiders leave a game it messes up everything from running content to the economy. Then games slowly die. When everything that is posted is a request to add a bunny race instead of actual content you know you cant listen to those people.

[Asmodai]

I have to agree with others who say that the original post is not a good design philosophy. This game was built from the ground up based on player feedback, and version 1.0 existed because of ignored player feedback.

1.0 existed because fanboys cant keep their trap shut. All of the problems of 1.0 were pointed out but then people were running around showering praise on the devs telling them how awesome the game was were drowning out the people who were pointing out real issues.

[Yeldir]

I gotta agree with the OP 100%, and I don't do that very often!

Heh. What's up, Ilitsa? How's do you like Heavensward so far?

[Dererk]

The hardcore players wanted content that separated them from the casuals. They get it and are still complaining. Some complaining that they can't get many people together to clear the content. Well, since they asked to be separate from the casuals, this is what you get.

I'm not going to separate this stuff into 2 Separate play styles.

But it was the people who wanted to watch a coil movie that complained about not having an easier version.

Now we have 2 separate versions of Alexander where you had to do the normal story version for weeks to gear for savage. And this was SE idea of to get people in to help the uhhh well HELL in just going to say it. The bad players who can't find their way out the front door even if they had a map and Siri telling them step by step instructions.

Oh ya and the people who didn't want to dedicate themselves to it. oh ha also those people who have what limited playtime? But to those people will not going to experience everything deal with it.

In the end what happened is these people got their cake ate it while the rest got stuck with the crumbs called savage mode.

[Immut]

I think you may be reading too much into what the vocal minorities are saying and assuming that they reflect the opinions of the entire community.

I think that's what SE is doing.