5.0 Relic Weapon

[Bonbori]

poll the players, and then listen to what we have to say.

Give the players 3 choices and you'll end up with a 4-way tie and 10 mutually antagonistic factions that don't really care what they themselves get, as long as the others don't get what they want.

[Kirsten_Rev]

They do, but you know it fanny how the number of ppl that do the polls don’t every = the number playing 9/10. It take a lot more then a few 1000 players getting upset over it, to make SE stop doing something, they take the most of what ppl say on the forums and go form there to see if it will work and or help, not everything the players want can be add, do to it making it to easy for some or to head for others. Also you have to post you’re ideas in the right part of the forums to ever have SE look at it in the 1st places. Sometime you see polls on the said parts of the forums... lol

SE could easily post a form into the XIV launcher, Twitter feeds, etc. They could incentivize users if they wanted to, such as offering some sort of in-game bonus for providing feedback. There are plenty of options. Passively listening to the most opinionated members of the community can indeed provide skewed information - but they can fix that by asking.

Give the players 3 choices and you'll end up with a 4-way tie and 10 mutually antagonistic factions that don't really care what they themselves get, as long as the others don't get what they want.

If so, than SE asked the wrong questions. Properly structured questions will provide usable feedback for them - it has in the past, it has for other companies. This isn't some new idea - it's just one that SE has abandoned ever since ARR released, to the detriment of FFXIV, in my opinion.

Also, the community isn't nearly as fractured as your post would have people believe. It comes off that way on these forums because users are generally more opinionated, and because discussion is almost completely undirected. SE taking an active hand in framing the conversation would resolve both of these issues to a large extent.

[Kazrah]

Give the players 3 choices and you'll end up with a 4-way tie and 10 mutually antagonistic factions that don't really care what they themselves get, as long as the others don't get what they want.

Pretty much this, especially in a game where players only know what was placed before and clamor so hard for it that it bars devs from allowing new ideas to enter the series because players that want their "good ol' days" simply have no clue how XIV works.

At this point though, I wouldn't mind it if 5.0 either didn't provide a relic or only offered an actual item at the absolutely end of the expansion.

[Kirsten_Rev]

Pretty much this, especially in a game where players only know what was placed before and clamor so hard for it that it bars devs from allowing new ideas to enter the series because players that want their "good ol' days" simply have no clue how XIV works.

At this point though, I wouldn't mind it if 5.0 either didn't provide a relic or only offered an actual item at the absolutely end of the expansion.

The development teams behind more or less any consumer-facing piece of software have to deal with these types of issues. The vast majority have learned to solicit feedback. Even Microsoft solicits feedback now, and on a piece of software as complex as Windows - because they know that they have to. It's how products improve.

Regardless of that fact, I honestly can't understand this apparent inclination to throw in the towel just because people have disagreements on the forums. How does giving up and/or canceling entire segments of content help anybody? I intensely dislike Eureka, but I think FFXIV is better with it than without it - content is content, and there are plenty of people who managed to enjoy Anemos.

Also, as an aside: the FFXIV development team is never barred from doing something based on user feedback. They're the developers, and the buck stops with them. If they're not introducing new ideas, it's because they either (a) don't have them, or (b) aren't confident enough in them to take the risk. In either case, going back to the drawing board is probably a good idea. Feedback solicitation is to inform development, not control it.

[Bonbori]

The development teams behind more or less any consumer-facing piece of software have to deal with these types of issues. The vast majority have learned to solicit feedback. Even Microsoft solicits feedback now, and on a piece of software as complex as Windows - because they know that they have to. It's how products improve.

Regardless of that fact, I honestly can't understand this apparent inclination to throw in the towel just because people have disagreements on the forums. How does giving up and/or canceling entire segments of content help anybody? I intensely dislike Eureka, but I think FFXIV is better with it than without it - content is content, and there are plenty of people who managed to enjoy Anemos.

Also, as an aside: the FFXIV development team is never barred from doing something based on user feedback. They're the developers, and the buck stops with them. If they're not introducing new ideas, it's because they either (a) don't have them, or (b) aren't confident enough in them to take the risk. In either case, going back to the drawing board is probably a good idea. Feedback solicitation is to inform development, not control it.

Nobody is saying that the devs shouldn't be taking feedback. Obviously there are communication issues, obviously they are somewhat detached and obviously these things should be addressed.

But... I don't think directly polling the community would be a miraculous problem solver. In Business 101 they teach the famous idea that customers don't generally know what they want. People like to misinterpret that as "companies think their customers are idiots" but that's not what it's actually supposed to mean. What it means is that a customer doesn't know whether they like a product/service until they have used/experienced said product/service. Anything that the customer says they want, while they may think they want it with all their heart, body and soul, may end up disappointing them. Ultimately it is up to the company to analyse what their customers say they want, what they expect, what they already have, and figure out what it is that the customers actually need.

TL;DR: The way they take feedback has no bearing on anything. Changing their method of collecting it probably wouldn't improve anything simply because... the problem is not the feedback collection method, or even the demographics they collect it from. The problem, the reason why Eureka, why Diadem, why 1.0 happened, is probably down to whatever is wrong with their analysis of said feedback. If they don't understand what their customers need, they won't benefit from changing the way their customers get to yell at them about what they want.

[Reynhart]

At this point though, I wouldn't mind it if 5.0 either didn't provide a relic or only offered an actual item at the absolutely end of the expansion.

Other idea : Apparently, people really like the concept "upgradeable glowy weapon", to the point of doing a content they despise.

So, they could make several weapons of that kind. You could have a Primal weapon, where steps are tied to doing primals, Raid weapon for the normal raids (24 and 8-man combined), and the Alternate weapon for Alternate content like Eureka. This way, whatever content you like most, you'll always be able to build your own glowy weapon.
And you'd still have the tome weapon, that should be kept 10 ilvl lower than all of the others (Basically, no upgrade)