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

[Etiken]

100% agree! Take QOL suggestions into consideration but follow your own gut when it comes to major content.

[RussW]

There is one company that has done the modern MMO thing properly, I think SE is well aware of this and Im sure theyre taking notes. Let SE do what they are doing because they arent so far off track.

[Nicobo]

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.
...

You made a mistake. YoshiP explicitly stated ARR would not do that when implementing housing.
There for "You wanted to implement reclamation long ago" actually was what the "hearing player-base whined"

[Yeldir]

You made a mistake. YoshiP explicitly stated ARR would not do that when implementing housing.
There for "You wanted to implement reclamation long ago" actually was what the "hearing player-base whined"

He also stated personal housing would be its own thing. SE says a lot of stuff.

I was referring to reclamation system as disclosed during the previews of the housing system, before housing was out, but after ARR was released. You have seen these, yes?

[Ibi]

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.

Why do people continue to treat the player base as though it's a hive mind, where there's only a single opinion on any matter?

The people who were asking for a Coil everyone could enjoy were the people who were unable to experience Coil as it was implemented.

That's a completely different group of people to those that are currently lamenting that Savage does not give the same kind of experience as Coil. The only people who'd know it's a different experience are those who actually experienced both, which, by definition, does not include the group of people who were unable to experience Coil as it was implemented.

The same applies to the other issues you've mentioned. By and large, the people who are happy with the status quo probably aren't spending all that much time on the forums either praising or complaining about the content; most of the comments on the state of a particular piece of content are coming from the people who aren't satisfied with its current state.

When SE announces/implements a different direction for content, the people who previously weren't saying anything (because they were fine with it as it was) now start posting their displeasure with the new direction. It's rare that you'll find an individual who was asking for a specific change now voicing their displeasure when that particular change is made.

All of which ignores that sometimes the specific implementation SE chooses may not align with the requests the player base was making. I don't think most of the people who were looking for interesting stats and customization of gear, for example, are jumping for joy that they can now add materia to their tomestone/raid items, even if it's a baby step in the right direction for that particular request.

[Hayward]

-snip-

This post is so full of it a whole box of Ex-Lax couldn't clear it out.

First, who are you to determine who does Story Mode Alexander? Second, who are you to determine who should or shouldn't experience content?

Posts like yours are the EXACT reason the devs should not go out of their way to cater to these wannabe "pros".

[Morningstar1337]

Why do people continue to treat the player base as though it's a hive mind, where there's only a single opinion on any matter?

I'd like to direct you to the Strawman fallacy. Once you know what it is you'll find your awnswer

[Malzian]

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. ... They ASKED, we ANSWERED, they LISTENED.

As much as I favor this and would like to see it implemented, I would personally rather them do the one QOL fix that everyone really wants... Right click -> Report as Real Money Trader (and add to blacklist).

[FriendlyUncle]

OP hits on something else. 90% of the forum posts are complaints or negative or whining disguised as feedback, while maybe 5% are actual constructive criticism and 5% are positive feedback.

The numbers are inverted when you go on a community like Tumblr, where 90% of the posts are positive - people having fun, role playing, enjoying the content, sharing in-game victories etc, and less than 10% are constructive or destructive criticism.

Maybe it's because the complainers feel that the official forums are the best place to make their voices heard, but what we see on the OF is pretty much the opposite of the feelings of the wider player base in other venues.

Just because it is a complaint or negative doesn't make the feedback not valuable. To a developer with millions sunk into a game it might blow seeing a ton of posts saying 'The game is shit because of Y' but they can get a consensus on what people are unhappy about or feel could be done better. Just because Tumblr makes everything seem like sunshine and rainbows doesn't mean its a better community or even more helpful as feed back to the devs. If all we do is kiss ass and give reach arounds then as far as they are concerned all is great and wonderful and fine. No adjustments needed, right guys?

See original launch for details. OF has some stupid shit posted on here now and then, but there are at least people posting legitimate issues such as the re-hashing of content structures, raids being singular rooms with boss after boss, lack of itemization, the making of content obsolete after 3 months or in some cases on launch, scripted encounters and raid mechanics, stats that are not useful, class imbalance, etc. And yeah, the official forums are for game feedback, because I'm sure the devs would love to troll through Tumblr and Instagram to get feedback on their game right?

Tumblr is but one small chunk of the community and I'll leave it at that. But jump on Reddit, or Facebook, or BG, SA, or any other community and take a look at what they have to say. Pretty sure you will find just as many complaints and positives there. I'm curious what would happen to someone on Tumblr in a FF14 community if they started to speak out about bad design choices/unfun parts of the game, because I've heard plenty of horror stories where groups like that turn on one black sheep out of the group. From what I've seen of a lot of large groups in Tumblr, it is a with us or against us mentality. Hardly the place I would go to for reasonable and balanced discussion of well, anything.

[Saseal]

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,

SE did similarly for FF15 after the demo was released with FF Type-0 HD. I took the survey for FF15 demo and watched the vid of their review of all the results - over an hour length. I was -incredibly- happy with this. First, I was surprised they had a survey, but expected nothing to come out of it. Just "Thank you for your time." at the end of the survey and all would be forgotten. But some time later (I forgot how long after), they had a whole conference displaying pie charts of the multiple-choice and Y/N questions answered by people, by region (Asia, Europe, Americas), and went through each. Then they went through some of the common complaints and critiques that people had written in.
It must have been a lot of work, but I felt so appreciative and happy to see that what I and others thought was even poked at. They talked out and analyzed each section.

If they did this every once in a while and got the stats of what the majority thinks (rather than just the few that scream the loudest on a forum) by posting on the client patcher and advertising a survey for the general masses, they might have a clearer picture of what the community - and not just the forum community - wants.