Live Letter translations on Twitter are not acceptable

[Tadacho]

This honestly really sucks. What they post on Twitter are literally 1 sentence promotional "this content, coming soon!" with a screenshot. The Live Letter is - like you said - 120 minutes of information and conversation. It's really unfair that we have to miss out on all that extra dialogue just because laziness/they assume we all watch the mr happy recap video.

Meanwhile the community itself sits there translating it word for word, hosting streams, doing videos, creating discord servers. Honestly, the community team is lucky this happens (though it's out of necessity anyway and for that they should be ashamed).

Hell, the community team even outright employed one player doing unofficial translations to join the community team. Can't remember his name unfortunately but it's true and he used to be the guy we relied on for unofficial translations 2 years back. Which is proof there's at least one guy on their team who can do English translations on the fly.

[BunnyChain]

Hell, the community team even outright employed one player doing unofficial translations to join the community team. Can't remember his name unfortunately but it's true and he used to be the guy we relied on for unofficial translations 2 years back. Which is proof there's at least one guy on their team who can do English translations on the fly.

Really, what happened to that guy? Never heard of him since. >.>

If the community team is unsure of what the people want, take a look at the unofficial translations. Live translations with translated small talk.

If you want to know the interest compare the numbers:

Official:
300? audience watching live letter (according to the number shown in recap video)
4.000 views on twitch so far
No official youtube video yet
Last live letter: 16k views
(One would guess that many don't tune in at all since you can't understand the majority of it anyway.)

1 Unofficial Mr.Happy recap video:
19000 views on the 1day? old video
Last live letter: 37k views
(Keep in mind people watching the official live letter very likely tune in into the unofficial translations.)

The question is: why is a game doing such a poor job at communicating with the majority of their audience?


p.s. seriously, even the forums feel super limited with their 1000 character limit and you want to squeeze the translations into the 400 character format twitter supports?

[MistakeNot]

I wish they would just give up this nonsense with "Live Letters" and instead give us ordinary letters.
Not only is streaming/video a highly inefficient way of providing information in the first place, but trying to do it live also adds problems for everyone that do not speak the language used - which in this case is the majority of the playerbase.

Much better to give out a plain text letter, which can be translated in advance, so all the languages supported get the same information at the same time.

[kikix12]

Um...Seeing as live letters have live audience out there...I'm pretty sure the reason why they are there is just an extra way for Square Enix to make money off of tickets...and get extra advertisement for their events/merchandise that they are paid of, instead of paying for. That's why they are live and not pre-made. For a spectator of a live stream, it doesn't make much of a difference whether they watch the stream or a recording of it. They don't accept questions from streamers, do they?! I don't think (but can be wrong) that they accept questions from audience either. So yeah...It's just a publicity stunt for money.

[Kerwin]

They compile the important info a week later or so on a forum post. It's a Japanese game afterall. Though I still feel like a faster translation could be done

[Vaer]

Really, what happened to that guy? Never heard of him since. >.>

He is on the community team now. He posts on these forums sometimes. Lately I haven't seen them around much. The team must be preparing for Fanfest I guess since it is 7 months away.

[Nezerius]

Number comparisons

You have to keep in mind that most JP players aren't going to be watching it through Twitch/Youtube Live, since the Live Letter is also being streamed on Niconico (sort-of the JP version of Twitch).
If I'm looking at the Niconico page correctly (since I can't read Japanese, but it does list a number of views), it's showing 54593 views.

[AkashiXI]

I can’t help but be frustrated at some of the Eastern’s company policies like this. They make every non-Japanese consumer feel like they’re second rate customers, and they’re always a step behind other companies (European and Western developers) when it comes to communication. I’m not asking Square to conform to my mentality, or anyone else — I’m asking them to treat their customers like equals. I shouldn’t have to search reddit or go to MrHappy’s YouTube channel for an unofficial translation... they should provide it for us.

Unfortunately this is Square, who has been notoriously bad with their PR ever since circa 2003 with FFXI. I hope for the best, but I always expect the worst.

[Aerlana]

When we had this on forum, we had translated fresh information (before there was the "definitiv" translation) but ... it doesnt makes a free marketing.

When you see those tweet, you could, maybe... retweet those, and then, making more and more hype on twitter. . .

[BunnyChain]

You have to keep in mind that most JP players aren't going to be watching it through Twitch/Youtube Live, since the Live Letter is also being streamed on Niconico (sort-of the JP version of Twitch).
If I'm looking at the Niconico page correctly (since I can't read Japanese, but it does list a number of views), it's showing 54593 views.

Yes, and how do these poor translations communications efforts affect the JP players?
These numbers do show however, how different the interest is in the live letter across the communities. And what could be a possible cause for that I wonder...