On a scale of 1 to 5-- Do you feel SE listens to their western players? State why.

[Velhart]

Wait? They ban you for giving feedback on the forums?

It depends on how you presented the feedback. If you used offensive terms or attacked a particular employee at SE, it is against ToS and can result in you getting banned.

[Stormfur]

I'd give them a 2.5/5. Not because I think they cater to the JP population more than NA/EU, but because they try to work these things in so quickly, the end result often goes over like a lead balloon. Examples:

1) We say: We want a mini game with pet battles using minions. They respond with a weak minion based RTS that's bland, meaningless and nearly impossible to play on a controller. It's not like you can evolve your minions or make them stronger when you leave LoV. No real reward or meaningful progress to it = no participation.

2) We say: We want a never-ending dungeon with progressively harder monsters. They respond with Deep Dungeon which gives us precisely what we want, but it's rather copy/paste except for the difficulty. There's no real sense of wonder or awe.

They want us to get excited about these things because it's one more way we can sink our time and skill into something as they work on other things. If they were to truly make LoV meaningful (evolving pets, minions that actually fight with you or can duel against other players, etc) it would punt the game's balance out a window. You think it's bad having to juggle balance for these classes? Add in over 100 minions.

Same with DD. Had they taken the time to really make it part dungeon, part puzzle-solver, part exploration as we'd hoped for, it probably would have taken 6 months to a year or more to program in all those variables. And if they had told us that, we'd have taken our pitchforks and torches to SE's corporate headquarters -- so I don't blame them for not revealing more!

It's just disheartening because the game could be so much more, but they keep putting out these half-baked results based on ideas from all players, and as a result everyone thinks they're not paying attention.

[Kaurie]

Point 1-Because it's about everything all of the time, in multiple places with multiple threads. And 95% of the time there's not even a coherent argument about it. It's just whining.

Point 2-Because in every instance I've seen, the player didn't actually quit, they just wanted attention and to flame bait.

Also, It's not useful information if it's things you can't fix.******* This is what people don't seem to understand.
SE is not going to completely re-write the game from the ground up, again because one guy in Cleveland thinks the 1-Tank,1-Healer,2-DPS meta is stupid.

When half of your feedback is from 10-20 grumpy players who are literally unhappy about everything, it's not useful information.
I work in data and customer feedback/quality assurance, I recognize when feedback is about wanting something fixed or is just an unhappy person and their feedback has nothing to do with the product.
Which is the problem I was alluding to. The majority of feedback I have seen is useless feedback, and even when there is legitimate feedback it is lost in the noise with the angry people being angry at "insert new feature/event" here. You can't fix problems for those people no matter how much you want to.

While I understand your frustrating reading these, I still disagree with the premise that SE should ignore them. They may not be great to hear, they may conflict with each other, they may be incoherent and they may be written in rage. However, there is still useful data that can be collected and interpreted.

For example, they can see things like:

• Likes on a post that either support or oppose a feature or content
• Number of threads that support or oppose a feature or content
• Details regarding why specific people oppose certain content

and so on..

For example, they could see the repeated threads popping up and consistently hitting over 100 pages on healer DPS. There is a huge divide on this issue and it's really an issue in their game design that promotes issue.

For example, they can see people who are consistently posting how they are 'bored with the game' and then read the details on what they think of all the content (i.e. dungeon design, diadem reception, raid participation etc.)

Ultimately, the devs should be reading 'between the lines' and looking past some of the emotional walls lining many of the posts. They should be flexible in their game design to adapt to feedback.

Ignoring a post because it is written poorly is not in the best business interest of the company. It may be something that you and I don't care to read, or become frustrated by reading, but the devs have to think a little differently than you or I.

[FunkyBunch]

SNIP

I think you're missing the point. I never said that they should ignore every post ever.
I said the community is part of the problem in why we don't get more dev feedback.

Because you can't respond to twenty threads about why "incoherent argument about why PoTD is bad".
However they listened anyway and tweaked it so the boss gives you upgrades. Same with Moonfire event incoming fix.

I'm not saying they ARE ignoring the threads, I'm saying WE WOULD GET MORE FEEDBACK if we posted better.
I have read quite a bit of "I'm not happy with the game because sux k thx bai". I don't have time to read every post, and the Devs don't either.
It's about allocation of resources, how much time do you spend allocating to 1/8th-1/4 of your player base when half the complaining posts are from the same 20 unhappy people who are disappointed all the time about everything?

I just am stating, as an observer who happens to do this for a living, if we get attention it's because we're lucky and SE is doing a good job filtering through all the crap.

I don't disagree with you that there's good information, I disagree that ALL information is good information.

[Kosmos992k]

I'd give SE and Yoshi-P good marks for listening, they have repeatedly demonstrated that they do listen, despite the impatience of people raging that they do not responed immediately.

Coincidentally, today I ran across an interview with Yoshida-san where he talks very specifically about player feedback. The interview was published by PC PowerPlay on July 20, 2016. So it is right on the mark and as up to date as we can get.

Here's the link;
Interview: Final Fantasy XIV's Naoki Yoshida

And here are a few quotes to chew on;

PCPP: How much does player feedback help to shape the updated content for the game?

This is a difficult question to answer as the amount of feedback we incorporate into the game is in no way fixed. However, one particular thing is how we are constantly striving to make the user interface more comfortable and intuitive, so this is one area where feedback is very highly valued and quite a considerable amount of feedback is addressed in each new patch. When we make new content we always make sure to study all the previous feedback we have on things like player responses to the reward balancing on previous content or any proposals for tweaking that players think needs doing, even if the new content in question is completely different to past areas. However, whether individual feedback points are addressed and implemented or not is something we consider very carefully. This is because of the slightly different perspective that the development team has. We tend to be quite strict about what systems go in, as we have to maintain the world of Eorzea going into the future, while many players feedback tends to only consider what would be good in the short term.

and...

PCPP: What’s the process for picking which player feedback items are prioritised over others?

We don’t just look at the feedback we get on the forums but have a dedicated FFXIV community team who also check message boards like Reddit etc. and collate together the voice of the players, then analyse what they are saying and pass on a report to the development team and myself. This team has dedicated regional staff in many locations such as Japan, North America, the U.K, and we also collect feedback from South Korea and China via our operating partner companies in there.

All the feedback is listed up every day and urgent issues will be looked at by the development team when they get together the next morning for their regular meeting. Outside of that framework we also hold a separate discussion based around player feedback every Thursday when the development leads get together for the operations meeting. This is when each individual section makes the decisions as to how the feedback will be addressed and the priorities for what gets seen to first will be set down by myself.

There is more in the interview, so take a look. One thing is clear to me though, all the assumptions that people make about community managers and feedback, or not listening to one community or another are thoroughly de-bunked.

[Kallera]

Kosmos, I gather thing is part of their justificarion behind time and content gates as well as using fate farming and hunts over and over. There comes a point when one has to ask: When is "taking the long view" too long? Is burnout from running content the expected norm?

[Kosmos992k]

Kosmos there comes a point when one has to ask: When is "taking the long view" too long?

I think that depends on context. If you are talking about the suggestions that players make to satisfy their specific desire and/or issue, then I think you always have to take the long view because as developers they have to consider the knock on effects on other content/systems with ay change made. That appeared to be the context that Yoshida was using.

In more general terms, I think they have to balance the long view vs the more short term view. If things are not working, if there are problems then they must be fixed, but knee jerk reaction to fix something needs to be balanced by a more measured reaction to ensure that nothing is done that breaks other things. When I think about the many millions of lines of code that make up FFXIV I shudder at the thought of the integration and regression testing that must be done when making core changes or introducing new systems into the game. That requires a long term view.

I do agree though, that they should have short term objectives and goals and be a bit more responsive to issues. Even so, I know that they always have to consider the long view for the reasons outlined.

[Mugiawara]

It depends on how you presented the feedback. If you used offensive terms or attacked a particular employee at SE, it is against ToS and can result in you getting banned.

You also need to be really careful with discussing things with others on here. People are so quick to report you just because they dislike what you said.
Happened to my friend once and he didn't say a single insult. I've read why he was banned. It's hard to convey text at times but if you're that offended then
maybe people need to stay away from the forums, people have opinions! A shocker I know.

[Kaurie]

I think you're missing the point. I never said that they should ignore every post ever.
I said the community is part of the problem in why we don't get more dev feedback.


Because you can't respond to twenty threads about why "incoherent argument about why PoTD is bad".
However they listened anyway and tweaked it so the boss gives you upgrades. Same with Moonfire event incoming fix.

I'm not saying they ARE ignoring the threads, I'm saying WE WOULD GET MORE FEEDBACK if we posted better.
I have read quite a bit of "I'm not happy with the game because sux k thx bai". I don't have time to read every post, and the Devs don't either.
It's about allocation of resources, how much time do you spend allocating to 1/8th-1/4 of your player base when half the complaining posts are from the same 20 unhappy people who are disappointed all the time about everything?

I just am stating, as an observer who happens to do this for a living, if we get attention it's because we're lucky and SE is doing a good job filtering through all the crap.

I don't disagree with you that there's good information, I disagree that ALL information is good information.

Huh? No you said that they are garbage posts, and they are not garbage posts. I provided reasoning explaining why they are valuable.

[Shori]

2/5
alot of the devs posts and updated on the lodestone stating 'after feedback/suggestion' or such like its 9/10 stuff JP have requested not EU/US