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

[KokonoeAiyoko]

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.

From reading that it seems as if they look at player feedback as an afterthought. They seem to listen, but this shows more of their "playing it safe" implementation, so if they do end up "listening", the communities desires aren't resonating with them. There is also is no real telling how well our community leaders really do here because you can see very well from the history of these forums that the community leaders kinda cherry pick comments or unimportant things that most people are not concerned with.

I'd say this doesn't really debunk anyone's concerns.

[Kosmos992k]

From reading that it seems as if they look at player feedback as an afterthought. They seem to listen, but this shows more of their "playing it safe" implementation, so if they do end up "listening", the communities desires aren't resonating with them. There is also is no real telling how well our community leaders really do here because you can see very well from the history of these forums that the community leaders kinda cherry pick comments or unimportant things that most people are not concerned with.

I'd say this doesn't really debunk anyone's concerns.

I think that depends on how significant you feel that fan feedback should be.Theinterview outlines that they already have a gameplan for the rest of 3.x and the expansion, those things won't change on the basis of the short term concerns that are predominant in player feedback. However, it's plainly obvious that they see player and fan feedback and communication as a priority. The very fact that they have weekly meetings and staff who actively gather player feedback shows that not only are they listening but they are seeking out the feedback beyond their own foruums. What more do you want? Sometimes when you ask the supreme being for something, the answer is 'No'. But that doesn't mean your request went unheard or had no impact, it may be that the change cannot be made short term, but in some future patch the suggestion/requestmade has an impact on some new feature or content.

Honestly, people need to understand that the develoeprs cannot put up neon signs saying "This change was the result of post #348876 made by 'Hugh Jengine' of the Groundswell server". Nor can the devs work in changes in exactly the way requested or the time frame an individual desires. that doesn't mean the feedback is not heard.

[Erudito]

I would give them a 3.

While I know they listen to us but just don't act often because our requests can be a little selfish or crazy, I cannot help but feel that our Japanese brethren get a higher priority.

Please don't shoot me, its just how I view the situation.

[odintius]

I would rather they listen to JP more their more coherent in their forums structure compare to western were all over the place with ours with tidbits of useful feedback here and there IMO of course a 2 I say /shrug.

[Windi]

From reading that it seems as if they look at player feedback as an afterthought. They seem to listen, but this shows more of their "playing it safe" implementation, so if they do end up "listening", the communities desires aren't resonating with them. There is also is no real telling how well our community leaders really do here because you can see very well from the history of these forums that the community leaders kinda cherry pick comments or unimportant things that most people are not concerned with.

I'd say this doesn't really debunk anyone's concerns.

Doesn't sound different from any other company. Keep in mind what these guys tell the community is basically what their NDA's allow, and since they're trying to keep a professional image, on top of going through MOUNDS of feedback per day, they're bound to come across as detached to an extent.

[FunkyBunch]

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

I never said they were ALL garbage. I said there was TOO MUCH garbage.
Most of them are not valuable. You can pretend that every grumpy person has information that is useful to you, but that doesn't make it true.

For example:
14 out of 20 threads on the front page of the Dungeons Page are all PoTD complaints. And there were really only 3 unique ones which should have really been contained to one thread. 11 of those threads I would consider garbage as it's just repeated noise already discussed elsewhere.

[MistyMew]

I rate them at about a 3/5

Not too bad but a lot of room for improvement, we have some awfully good ideas that go largely unnoticed, and left totally void from any dev or CM input.

Which is why I think here we tend to repeat and make thread after thread about the same thing, we don't get any answers!

Most times we never even hear a reply or statement (good or bad) we are left hanging unsure if it is even recognized or noted, whereas I think the jp don't have to wait a year+ for a comment or statement.

They don't have to repeat and keep asking because their ideas get feedback.

A heck of a lot more communication would go a longggg way in here. ^^


Mind you I would rate most mmo about the same, wow is horrible for ignoring their player base and being cocky and arrogant and unprofessional, they hide on loltwitter, rift team is a tad better then ffxiv imo etc... none are really good at it ..meh

("listening" does not have to = complying to what we ask!!! I simply mean "hearing" us, communicating that they even have read ideas or give a crap lol...giving ideas any chance in hell to possibly happen one day, heck even to hear "no never is better then silence/ignoring.)

[Remus]

I will give a 2/5. They listen but the only time they mainly listen is when the topic is about glamour or new emotes. The amount of times i see them reply to these topics is quite saddening too be honest. People make other types of topics which people have long discussions on but nothing from the devs or community team is said. When a new glamour thread is made after 2 pages community team reply... I have given up.

During beta and early days of ARR there was so much communication between the community and the team but now its just terrible in my opinion. I would be glad that they say they have no current plans for something right now but give feedback to the dev team so it actually seems like they have looked at it. Staying silent doesn't help at all.

I might be wrong but their job is to communicate with the community and pass on feedback and so far in my opinion it has gone downhill. People have given their issues with raiding for example and how it could be improved but nothing has happened with it. If people don't get some form of reply from devs or community team people just give up and not bother talking about it because it seems like they don't listen and the thread dies.

[Kaurie]

I never said they were ALL garbage. I said there was TOO MUCH garbage. Most of them are not valuable. You can pretend that every grumpy person has information that is useful to you, but that doesn't make it true.

For example:
14 out of 20 threads on the front page of the Dungeons Page are all PoTD complaints. And there were really only 3 unique ones which should have really been contained to one thread. 11 of those threads I would consider garbage as it's just repeated noise already discussed elsewhere.

Firstly, you provided examples and said they were garbage. This implies posts similar to your examples are garbage. I countered that point and provided reasoning why it is useful.

Second, your example here shows how you're again throwing out valuable data. If 14/20 of the threads on the front page are complaints about PoTD, then clearly there is something wrong with PoTD. You go on to say how there is repeated noise, but repeated complaints mean that the complaint is felt by more than just a single person - again valuable information. While it may not be useful to you to read the same complaint over and over, it is important for a dev.

[FunkyBunch]

Firstly, you provided examples and said they were garbage. This implies posts similar to your examples are garbage. I countered that point and provided reasoning why it is useful.

Second, your example here shows how you're again throwing out valuable data. If 14/20 of the threads on the front page are complaints about PoTD, then clearly there is something wrong with PoTD. You go on to say how there is repeated noise, but repeated complaints mean that the complaint is felt by more than just a single person - again valuable information. While it may not be useful to you to read the same complaint over and over, it is important for a dev.

Sigh, I'm talking about how to most effectively communicate. Rewriting the same argument, less coherently and spamming the front page of the forum with the same complaint (especially when 12 of the OPs had already commented in the other threads) when you can accomplish the exact same thing AND cut down on dev reviewing time so they have more time to actually respond is "garbage".

If I made 100 threads about how I want contact lenses to be available doesn't make my idea more likely to be listened to, all I've done is create an unconscious bias against my idea. Thread count is nearly useless information.
Thread count with different originating poster information is no more valuable than response count in a single thread with different response authors.
However, by spreading out the topics unnecessarily you limit the ability of the playerbase to respond, read, "like", and focus feedback on posts which dilutes the data and makes the correlation of data more difficult. It also increases the chance that a good post will be missed by both the community and the developers. Which is why I called them "garbage".
Basically you're robbing yourself of the opportunity to give the DEVS the most appropriate and accurate feedback.