Developer lack of communication

[Belhi]

The devs do pay attention to our concerns. Its pretty damn clear from what we hear in Live letters that they pay a lot of attention to community feedback, which frankly is the most important thing.

The reason devs probably don't communicate much, particularly through their CMs, is because they often don't 100% know for sure what changes they might make and any thing they post will be taken as gospel by the community even if they stress it only might be what they are doing. A lot of the time the only answer they can give is 'we are looking at it' and most people aren't going to be happy with that.

There is also the matter of language. CMs cant give us that much info and the devs who would be working on it speak Japanese. Holding a one way conversation means the CMs just need to convert our concerns into Japanese. Having a Dialog means they have to try and do that two ways constantly which is a lot more work for both sides and frankly the devs should be focused on developing not chatting with players.

The devs have also indicated several times answers to people's concerns often up front when they see the concern approach, and people chose to ignore it. Hell other players will explain the situation and just get dismissed as 'White Knighters'.

WoW does in some ways have better communication about upcoming launches but that is because they literally spoil everything about their approaching patches months before the bulk of players touch it. I find one of the things I like about FF14 is when I play the story I can be surprised without having to completely disconnect with the community six months before it comes out. I know pretty much the entire plot to Legion and I haven't even played it.

As long as they hear our concerns in the long run that is all that is important as far as I care.

[Moonlite]

The devs do pay attention to our concerns. Its pretty damn clear from what we hear in Live letters that they pay a lot of attention to community feedback, which frankly is the most important thing.

The reason devs probably don't communicate much, particularly through their CMs, is because they often don't 100% know for sure what changes they might make and any thing they post will be taken as gospel by the community even if they stress it only might be what they are doing. A lot of the time the only answer they can give is 'we are looking at it' and most people aren't going to be happy with that.

Really that is what you take away from the live letters and community management? You know how many times questions get ignored because they don't want to answer them. Or when they implement major systems and put little fore thought into how the community is going to play it and having someone who can respond.They can plan to hang out in Germany/UK/US but can't have a dev and translator when new content goes live. I don't mean a patch with two dungeons and some clicking on npcs.

Hunts and the pure server melting system they were at launch. No one could have fore seen it and been ready to respond? Housing and reclamation? Diadem v2 was slightly faster. But I chalk that up to timing/luck, not them planning and responding.

[Reaperking386]

Really that is what you take away from the live letters and community management? You know how many times questions get ignored because they don't want to answer them. Or when they implement major systems and put little fore thought into how the community is going to play it and having someone who can respond.They can plan to hang out in Germany/UK/US but can't have a dev and translator when new content goes live. I don't mean a patch with two dungeons and some clicking on npcs.Hunts and the pure server melting system they were at launch. No one could have fore seen it and been ready to respond? Housing and reclamation? Diadem v2 was slightly faster. But I chalk that up to timing/luck, not them planning and responding.

Devs have been paying attention to us and have made changes. A good example is the changes to summoner and bard. The Dev's do listen to us, but they do not have to listen to us all the time. If they listen to us all the time we would have romper wearing bunny boys running around our streets.

[Moonlite]

Devs have been paying attention to us and have made changes. A good example is the changes to summoner and bard. The Dev's do listen to us, but they do not have to listen to us all the time. If they listen to us all the time we would have romper wearing bunny boys running around our streets.

You consider expansion balancing listening? Listening would have been 3.1 Bard population has dropped off the face of the earth we fixed it. Two years for balancing REALLY REALLY. I want to type more really's. That is not a defense that's an example of not listening. Anything as simple as cast bar making it two patches is not listening. That is head in sand and hoping people adapt so you don't have to fix it. This is literally why I can't take any defense of the dev team serious.

[Welsper59]

You consider expansion balancing listening? Listening would have been 3.1 Bard population has dropped off the face of the earth we fixed it. Two years for balancing REALLY REALLY. I want to type more really's. That is not a defense that's an example of not listening. Anything as simple as cast bar making it two patches is not listening. That is head in sand and hoping people adapt so you don't have to fix it. This is literally why I can't take any defense of the dev team serious.

It's a priority thing. It always is, and it always will be. Conflicts with design goals are generally not going to be changed quickly if the current product is acceptable (it was). Minor balance changes or job-killing imbalances are often going to be addressed far sooner than later, simply because it's a quick tweak to static potency numbers that you can easily redo if it's still a problem. It'd be nice to fix any problem quickly, regardless of severity, but that's unrealistic to expect.

Listening and taking action are two completely different things. You are right, it is a "head in sand and hoping people adapt" situation. That's how it always is. If developers for any game have literally nothing better to do than immediately appeal to every criticism and adjust games based on the public's image (not their own), then the game has no future. If they simply listen however, they can prioritize things and watch how it unfolds over time. There's a strategy behind it, which as a saving grace for them, affords them time to work on other things. You don't want to knee-jerk reaction your changes because random people think something is bad. I would hope anyone sensible would agree with that. Hence why I'd argue they are listening. It's not an all or nothing thing. It rarely ever is, in life. Nor does it mean they must listen and act on everything. At that point, that's not listening, that's "obeying".

As you noted, you (or anyone) shouldn't be taking their defense as the only thing there is to it. They're not going to tell us exactly what's going on to the smallest detail, especially since it'd almost always involve something the public would not like but that the devs have to adhere to. The thing is, while it may not be all there is to the situation, I'd argue that it's at least a true statement in general usually. Your mention of two years for BRD was in regards to a major gameplay change that, while many did not like it (myself included), some did enjoy it. It didn't break the jobs ability to perform, obviously. What they did change frequently though was potency in light of the play style. They did the same for MCH and AST as well. Meaningful, yet simple changes that can result in consequence if left unfixed, like breaking the ability to perform effectively. They probably just decided from the beginning to let the turret playstyle linger through HW, in light of how fights were balanced and how they could freely change it with a new expansion.

[SendohJin]

You consider expansion balancing listening? Listening would have been 3.1 Bard population has dropped off the face of the earth we fixed it. Two years for balancing REALLY REALLY. I want to type more really's. That is not a defense that's an example of not listening. Anything as simple as cast bar making it two patches is not listening. That is head in sand and hoping people adapt so you don't have to fix it. This is literally why I can't take any defense of the dev team serious.

that has to do resources and they don't want to jeopardize the balance of the raid groups. the design was hugely flawed but it was functional. there's a difference between listening and doing. people who work for me can ask for raises/promotions, i always listen, doesn't mean i can always give them out when they ask.

[Belhi]

Really that is what you take away from the live letters and community management? You know how many times questions get ignored because they don't want to answer them. Or when they implement major systems and put little fore thought into how the community is going to play it and having someone who can respond.They can plan to hang out in Germany/UK/US but can't have a dev and translator when new content goes live. I don't mean a patch with two dungeons and some clicking on npcs.

Hunts and the pure server melting system they were at launch. No one could have fore seen it and been ready to respond? Housing and reclamation? Diadem v2 was slightly faster. But I chalk that up to timing/luck, not them planning and responding.

Would you prefer a developer to be adjusting content due to feedback from the CMs or would you prefer them to be talking on forums (slowly since they don't actually read English and there are 3 different forums they would have to read)? Even then they wouldn't be able to give any definitive promises or assurances till they looked at what they could adjust. Then there is the fact that the official forums are actually a pretty small part of the player base and their draw feedback from multiple other sources. Lets not forget that often feedback can be contradictory or unfocused.

I say they pay attention to feedback because Yoshi P has referenced conversations on the official forums several times during interviews and Live letters meaning the CMs are doing their job. The CMs are the communication point for players, particularly in English speaking countries since the devs aren't native English speakers, and I would prefer if they mainly get involved in discussions when they have some solid information to contribute rather than just popping in to give vague assurances which won't satisfy anyone or people will take as ironclad promises that they clearly aren't. Development teams need to be extremely careful what they say because players almost always take anything said as a promise or a guarantee. If Yoshi said 'We might look at a glamour system' you would have people posting a couple of months later complaining that Yoshi P promised a glamour system and that the dev teams break their promises.

Alterations are generally slow because any change they make requires a lot of checks to make sure it doesn't break anything else. MMOs are extremely complex games technically speaking and one small change can throw a lot of other things out of whack. You don't do sudden turns with an MMO without risking breaking things and making the situation worse. They address stuff but they take the time to make sure what they are addressing and consider how to and how they can address it.

It is easy to say they communicate. Any little info or gesture can count.

I wonder how many 'we are looking at the issues' you would get before you started say they need to stop saying they will do something and do something. that is usually what happens with little gestures.

[Moonlite]

snip.

I would prefer that they plan to have the appropriate staff available when they make a decision that is probably iffy. I swear for all the "I love online games. I play online games. I am a gamer" They have very little touch on things that are going to go bad. Hunts a mob the whole server can get credit on. That isn't going to turn pout poorly. X amount of houses to be released on servers that have 10 times the amount of players and a login server that can't handle the stress. Houses open for reclamation over Xmass. Diadem giving raid level items in random drop. These aren't even balance issues. They are awesome game design that is going to cause the player base to be upset. In fact they should also have more GMs on when introducing this type of content.

Instead of all this promo pre SB. A launch job guide made by the dev team would have been way better. Because we needed SE to spend the money and time putting on 3 fanfests with so much info. The media tour the time spent at E3. Maybe work on game release game promo after.

Also the fact other games have ptr limits some of the crap that goes on in the forum. Might be time to evaluate why that works so well for other games. But oh no the lore. Heaven forbid someone knows someone dies. As if they aren't coming back two patches anyway. I swear people need to think about what quality story telling is. This is no better then those soap operas that used to air.