We need a community rep that interacts with the community

[JunseiKei]

So we do have them. Okay, that's good then. That leads me to my next question, which is: are they allowed to bring direct feedback to the devs? Doesn't seem like it to me, but I'm open to having my mind changed on that. I have to reiterate, because I know how these forums tend to go, I am not suggesting that each and every little issue should be addressed and forwarded. That would be next to impossible because anything and everything in this game can become a subject of annoyance to somebody. But at the very least, feedback on something that a huge chunk of the community has an issue about: surely that could at least warrant being forwarded to the devs.

Or maybe that does happen anyway and the feedback is either ignored, doesn't make it to the dev team, or is misinterpreted?

First of all, I can't know or say in SE's case. I just have a limited scope from experience from another company.

Second, feedback is a very broad term and I'm not sure if what you may be suggesting is something that is actively sought by the team to begin with.

What comes to mind when I see a player mentioning feedback being directed to devs usually comes off as armchair development. Things like where players are under assumptions that BETAs are meant for players to input what they like and don't like to developers when most of the time BETAs are being used to stress test servers and having players interact with systems and see if they come across additional bugs that need fixes that in-house testing didn't turn up.

This is also not assuming that posters don't try to make community reps answer for the developers (IE: "Mr. Community Rep, explain to me XIV's decision for _.") as they [probably] aren't privy to that information, or in the very least, able to communicate reasons to players as NDAs are a thing.

However, that doesn't mean feedback doesn't reach the devs. We've gotten items and changes from players before, but it's generally things that community has agreed upon through tons of replies (not necessarily threads; JP forums tends to keep threads with topics very concise while ours are often new thread spam).

In terms of 'feedback on something that a huge chunk of the community has an issue about,' this is a grey area. While companies like SE probably want player feedback, there's a simple fact that often gets overlooked in your statement. A 'huge chunk of the community' is not something players can actually identify as perspective is often skewed. SE would, however, be privy to information like engagement rates, clear rates, longevity of the content, push-back from players across all demographics and regions. Players tend to surround themselves with like-minded players and it can end up being an echo chamber with a perception that something is much worse, or better, than is actually is.

TL;DR:
Feedback does get back to the devs, but it's largely stuff that gets universally agreed upon by all regions.

[JunseiKei]

Separating these two responses.

~snip~

Comparing Digital Extremes and Square Enix is nowhere near the same thing. DE is a smaller company with one game. They tend to be more approachable; not to mention they don't have a language barrier between them and English speaking players as Rebecca Ford (you know, THE community rep of Warframe as well as the voice of Lotus and streams for Warframe). With XIV and SE being Japanese in origin, we are immediately met with a language barrier. The Japanese players benefit in XIV the same way English speakers benefit with Warframe.

Yeah, I remember slash, pierce and puncture reworks announced. Yes, they absolutely didn't address any of Warframe's issues. They wanted to add more dynamics that didn't necessarily make you kill enemies faster, and in a game where a level 100+ bombard kills you in one shot, these dynamics were just awful - ragdolling doesn't help you kill them faster, they actually make it harder. What's puncture's damage reduction on one enemy going to do when you're fighting 20? Slashing's more-amount-of-it-on-a-weapon-directly-effects-damage fed more into the power creep issues and still rendered tons of weapons worthless (and actually made some that were viable thanks for a certain mod - which has since escaped my mind because I haven't played Warframe since just before the two new eidolons were released on Cetus). They got a huge amount of push-back for it and pretty much all of their partners said it was bad and gave ways of fixing damage 3.0 that were reasonable. On XIV, hardly any players can agree on what would fix issues with the game or even what is actually bad to begin with (actually bad and not subjectively bad).

Some of your other concerns I addressed in another post in regard to BLU. This is an example of players wanting their feedback taken more into account in development; armchair development. Again, I point to the problem that players aren't privy to all of the information. What seems like BLU is starting to be received poorly, or "mixed," for North America, Japanese forums seem to be OK with BLU as it feels like it set the stage for more interesting and provides something for players looking for just something different to do. This is what I mean by players' views are very skewed and sometimes come from an echo chamber.

Also, Square Enix is a massive corporation, however I said above why DE can be closer with their community why SE's is very limited. The last time I saw a direct response on an issue with the game (other than the BLU experience thing), it wasn't even with the game but with ticket sales for FanFest Las Vegas 2018. Someone went to the JP forums and posted there. I believe it was Foxclon that said the teams that run the events are separate from each other and is not something they are directly a part of. This is more of SE is a massive corporation; DE is not. Warframe's TennoCon is done by the same staff that work on Warframe directly.

The same thing with Spellbreak - you can literally play the game with the devs. It's because they are still massively small. Back before Fortnite blew up, my husband and I could directly communicate with Epic Games on the Save the World Campaign because the game was tiny (and next to their engine, there's very little Epic was working on at the time).

[KageTokage]

I'm still flustered that the most word we've gotten regarding the rampant botting problem over the past few years was what may as well have just amounted to "We're trying. Please understand".

[DrWho2010]

do you really think they're going to detail a plan of dealing with bots that would some how some way get rid of them once and for all, and then post it for all to see?

or do you just want them to come on here and say "sorry we're bad at this game, guess we can't do it properly so we're deleting everything bye"

lol

[JunseiKei]

do you really think they're going to detail a plan of dealing with bots that would some how some way get rid of them once and for all, and then post it for all to see?

or do you just want them to come on here and say "sorry we're bad at this game, guess we can't do it properly so we're deleting everything bye"

lol

When I see posts like the one you're addressing, I tend to think the person has reported certain players they think are botting (and might be), but might be manually turning the bot on and off or otherwise supervising it. Those are ... also much harder to find and deal with. Especially if someone made their own program. Or they're not actually botting.

[Nedkel]

We have already few, but noone knows why they never write anything.

[SaitoHikari]

Speaking as someone who did act as a community rep of sorts for an official forum for a different MMO at one point (and also possessed forum moderation powers, short of outright banning people from the forums): It's a much harder task than you'd imagine.

As a community rep for that game, I was not hidden away, but I did sort of take it upon myself to act as an intermediary between the community and the localization team in ways that were admittedly beyond my scope (even going as far as to play in the Korean version to prepare the localization team for future content 4+ months in advance, as content was staggered throughout all the versions of the game in the world). Not really to the developers though - we couldn't tell if most suggestions we had in NA were lost to the ether, either due to the language barrier and/or the developers having a different set of values/priorities than the NA playerbase. Probably the latter, considering it was a Korean F2P game and the disastrous condition the game is in now.

More importantly, should a community rep make themselves public, a certain cult of personality begins to form around them, either assigned by the community itself or otherwise. They are no longer impartial the moment they become known. Doubly so if they actively played the game. People can and will try to worm their way into their good graces using whatever means possible, and really, really lash out the moment they come back with bad news. Another person who held a position like mine for that game had people manage to stalk her facebook and spam vulgar edited photos of herself all over the forums at one point. And all for what?

The localization team and developers usually aren't as blind as you'd think. Whether our concerns are high enough priority for them to do something about it, or they believe they know of something we don't that may allay our concerns in the long term, it's probably not something for us to know. Doubly so because of the language barrier and the NA playerbase likely having a different set of values than the native JP playerbase. After all, our community has proven time and time again that we do certainly value concepts like glamour and cosmetics more than the actual gameplay-related questions that actually do get addressed on JP-side.

[KageTokage]

do you really think they're going to detail a plan of dealing with bots that would some how some way get rid of them once and for all, and then post it for all to see?

or do you just want them to come on here and say "sorry we're bad at this game, guess we can't do it properly so we're deleting everything bye"

lol

I'd mostly like some indication as to whether or not anyone is even reading the reports people are sending in because there's veritable mountains of evidence to suggest someone is botting, yet they rarely ever seem to actually pin down any of the ones that matter and instead mostly go after the instantly replaced RMT-related bots.

Normal MMOs usually have two-way communication when it comes to all reports in general, but XIV remains an oddball in this regard for whatever reason. If I had to guess it's because of how limited the workforce of the STF is compared to the GM team.

When I see posts like the one you're addressing, I tend to think the person has reported certain players they think are botting (and might be), but might be manually turning the bot on and off or otherwise supervising it. Those are ... also much harder to find and deal with. Especially if someone made their own program. Or they're not actually botting.

I see supervised bots on a regular basis, but realistically, they can't be watching them all day long and they thus settle into a fixed gathering rotation late at night which indicates that they're not being monitored anymore.

I specifically make it a note to point this out in my reports, but it hasn't actually helped get any of them banned, sadly.

Identifying them is...not difficult. At all.

[JunseiKei]

After all, our community has proven time and time again that we do certainly value concepts like glamour and cosmetics more than the actual gameplay-related questions that actually do get addressed on JP-side.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah... after 2 years of asking about the status of the male bunny outfit and not asking actual questions of the game or story when presented to the NA player-base, I can definitely say I am actually embarrassed to be part of this side of the community.

[NanaWiloh]

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah... after 2 years of asking about the status of the male bunny outfit and not asking actual questions of the game or story when presented to the NA player-base, I can definitely say I am actually embarrassed to be part of this side of the community.

Can't help but chuckle when someone points out the truth.