SE: Holding back information won't stop criticism, it will only delay it and is bad.

[frostmagemari]

Is it? If the large majority of people just voted for Astrid (for whatever reason) then wouldn't they be better off catering future events to the people that AREN'T complaining on the forums? It has the obvious "Not everyone liked this." type of feedback that they should consider, but that's probably the most useful thing that the topic has accomplished, imo. There haven't been any wildly creative ideas in there. I disagree that "most" of it has been useful.

No, they wouldn't be better catering to the people that aren't on the forums.
If they go by in-game numbers, they get no feedback as to why Astrid got her numbers. Was it because she was a female character? Was it because she had the easiest access to the red dyed outfit and people wouldn't have to waste time dying one of the other outfits? Was it because people actually liked the character? Was it because people thought the other choices weren't likable?
We do not know; the forums and peoples discussions give insight to to that. And while people say that the forums are only 5-10% of the actual user base, that is only in terms of the amount of interest they put into the game beyond the game itself; It is still a cross section of the community and can be used to guide future decisions based on the feelings and opinions discussed.

[AnimaAnimus]

If people voted for her because she was closer to talk to, that's useful feedback.

Bert was literally outside the gate, you had to walk past him to get to her.

But I digress. It's no surprise that SE's wall of silence is expanding. Yoshida said a lot during the v1 to ARR transition that never came to fruition. But the problem with that is not that they were not able to do what they promised. Its that they never mentioned it again and refused to acknowledge any questions on the various subjects.

Telling us "hey we tried but we cannot get this to work, but look at this new thing we are working on" would go a long way as long as they were able to deliver on those promises more often than not. Instead they decided to just not talk to their customers and it makes them feel shady. Frankly I do not trust Yoshida anymore. While once I thought he was a rock star, now I think he is just a shill. A one hit wonder that did an amazing job at rebooting the game but has no idea how to manage it for a lifetime. I would love to see a new perspective and someone with some fresh insight take at least partial creative control. Someone with some people skills who is not afraid to talk to us like people and customers. Someone who can talk to journalists and not get all bent out of shape if they ask hard questions or go off the SE approved script. Someone who can produce some exciting content that is not just the same thing as we always get or allowed to be released broken. A lot of the new content we have gotten over the years from Diadem to Eureka to Blue Mage, has just shown they are completely deaf to their community and clearly have a severe QC issue.

Them being even less willing to talk, just proves so many things. Mainly that they cannot take criticism and no matter what you do, you are going to get criticism. You just need to be a big boy and learn how to take it and what to do with it. Esp when you are in a field such as game design. If all you want is rainbows blown up your backside, you are going to crash and burn sooner or later as the reality that you are not as great as you think you are, gets hammered home. V1 should be a lesson learned. They didn't talk to us then and now its happening again.

Just waiting for the next fatigue system to be implemented...

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

There's a ton of doomsaying going on in here, though I expect it these days. People love to find anything to complain about, to the point where actual legit criticism gets overshadowed.

Maybe let's start making less whiny threads and more actual feedback threads guys. Then maybe you'll see results.

[frostmagemari]

There's a ton of doomsaying going on in here, though I expect it these days. People love to find anything to complain about, to the point where actual legit criticism gets overshadowed.
Maybe let's start making less whiny threads and more actual feedback threads guys. Then maybe you'll see results.

I wouldn't call being opposed to a company's declaration that its plan is to give us even MORE silent treatment in terms of what to expect from the game as doomsaying. Frankly, i think it is useful feedback that the company should listen to; and if you don't count that as legitimate feedback, i don't know what you ever would count as legitimate.

[RyuDragnier]

I wouldn't call being opposed to a company's declaration that its plan is to give us even MORE silent treatment in terms of what to expect from the game as doomsaying. Frankly, i think it is useful feedback that the company should listen to; and if you don't count that as legitimate feedback, i don't know what you ever would count as legitimate.

The playerbase likes to overreact to everything. I don't blame them for not telling us exact numbers for changes until the patch is out, that way any doomsaying is dulled pretty quickly by the actual ingame number crunching that we can do immediately when servers come up.

On the separate state of Astrid and the Valentione's event...bad planning more than anything. I hope next time they use 3 girls or 3 guys, no mix, to avoid things being skewed too heavily.

[Valorak]

You don't need to suggest ideas to give useful feedback. The devs seeing that people voted for Astrid based on color is useful feedback. If people voted for her because she was closer to talk to, that's useful feedback. If they voted because she's a girl, that's useful feedback.

It gives a better understanding of what not to do if you want to avoid creating another extremely biased vote.

Yeah that's true(ish), although with how limited of a pool there is of people coming onto the forums to admit "I voted because I didn't read", I question how valuable that is. What's the split between people that picked Astrid because they liked her idea, people that picked her because they just like Astrid, people that didn't read and just clicked through randomly, and people that just wanted red/rose on their gear, etc? There are enough variables in there that they would basically just be guessing at which one was the most important factor if they wanted to fix that. If the only things that 24 pages of community feedback yielded was that some people didn't like it, and that Astrid won because of a bunch of reasons that we have no way to quantify, then idk, that still doesn't seem particularly fruitful to me.

I'm definitely not saying that the that the dev team is perfect at communication or that the community doesn't provide valuable feedback at times, but I don't think that it's as often as people like to believe, and I don't agree that players need to be constantly kept abreast of every design decision that the team makes. The devs still provide more regular updates in communication than any MMO that I've ever played. Typically a Live letter every 2-3 months and 3 physical events per year.

[linay]

If they both listened and implemented changes at a significantly faster pace, I would agree. Say the Summoner nerfs are far too severe and the job is now the weakest Caster without question. If by 5.25, they were buffing it, people wouldn't be far more forgiving. That hasn't been in the case. Barring extreme examples, they often dig in their heels and refuse to do anything. Players told the dev team Red Mage was too weak for a year before they finally gave in—but not before hand waving complaints with nonsense that Verraise was it's utility. Monks have been complaining for years now and still, nothing. Sadly, the dev team has a rather poor record when it comes to listening to community feedback.

Actually, it's the opposite. If they were faster at implementing changes, then you would want to know sooner so they could even have time to make the change before it's even released.

But since they, for better or worse, take their time (with notable exceptions), then it doesn't matter that they don't give the details until the preliminary patch notes at the earliest since you shouldn't expect any change any time soon anyway.

Shouldn't be waiting for patches to fix everything.

I don't think they necessarily do, just depends on how long it takes. But my point was about the game not being a static product, not about actual patch numbers.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

Hmmm... I saw a decent amount of people complaining about the writing (although there was also voter bias in some of those posts too); But I also read enough of that topic to know that the majority of posters were there to complain about people being too lazy to read text, or claiming that people had just picked Astrid because she was a girl, or that she was familiar etc. There was also a fair number of people proclaiming their hatred for office/work romances, and a smattering of people admitting that they just picked her because they knew her/wanted the red clothes. Personally, I didn't find much criticism in that topic that I would consider to be constructive. Definitely not enough for 24 pages and one or two spin-off topics.

You conveniently forget to mention that, because of what happened with Astrid's landslide victory, no one can experience Bert or Rodrigault's storylines in the game ever.

[DBriggs304]

Works out. Most players only complain cause everyone else is. If their response to players at large is acceptable when a change isnt the best, then this isnt an issue.

Yoshi is the LAST one that I would ever think doesn't care about our input.

[Gojin]

Things being like this is good though, means I can invest less time and money into this game. See you all next expansion.