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

[MistakeNot]

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.

Another problems is that lots of players treat "We are planning to do X, Y, and Z" as a promise that X, Y, and Z will happen. A plan to do something is not a promise it will happen.

[SaberMaxwell]

Another problems is that lots of players treat "We are planning to do X, Y, and Z" as a promise that X, Y, and Z will happen. A plan to do something is not a promise it will happen.

They also rarely update on those plans, host no official translation on liveletter (leaving the non-JP community to play cross-language Telephone with each other), and play coy with any information they do have. See: "Dancer should have been a healer" debacle; they let that one fester for so long when they could have come out ahead of it and stifled expectations (and thus, backlash).

Healers have been the most frustrated role of players in the game, and they're given basically no communication whatsoever. What makes people think that giving that same treatment to everyone will result in anything good?

[Stormfur]

I do think YoshiP and the team care about our feedback -- but caring about it and actually implementing it are two completely different things. That's because we all see things the way we'd like them to be, and the devs are having to listen to this feedback from not just players of different skill ranges and backgrounds, but different channels too. I hope they NEVER "just listen to the Discord" because as popular (and as right) as it might be, it doesn't speak for everyone.

I seem to remember there was some MMO, years ago, that had something like a council of players that they would occasionally run things through. Not like a play-test server but just a small group of dedicated players. Kind of like a customer focus group. They had a lot of good suggestions that were implemented. But over time, it created a big chasm between them vs. everybody else. It became more about what these players wanted vs. what would be good for everyone.

Sometimes though, I'd really love to know their rationale behind things. I know them explaining why they did whatever probably won't change my stance on the issue, but it helps to get their perspective. At least I know where they're coming from.

[RyuDragnier]

Healers have been the most frustrated role of players in the game, and they're given basically no communication whatsoever. What makes people think that giving that same treatment to everyone will result in anything good?

It's not, but the players twist anything that is said against the devs to make them look bad, so sadly it's safer just not to say anything. It's a trend I've noticed the past decade, with the players just wanting to complain about everything, because they expect everything to appeal to them specifically. The problem being that not everything done is going to be something everybody likes. People need to accept that instead of trying to start a bunch of drama over something they don't like every single time it happens.

Note that there ARE exceptions to this, most notably when the said thing is disliked greatly by the playerbase. See Diadem nerfs for an example.

[Nandrolone]

Player is not always right.

Unless you don’t like paying bills and earning money, then yes, your customers are indeed always right.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Unless you don’t like paying bills and earning money, then yes, your customers are indeed always right.

No. No they are not. This is a thing that consumers came up with to justify their behavior when they are complete and utter jerks to customer service reps or local management over silly things.

[RyuDragnier]

Unless you don’t like paying bills and earning money, then yes, your customers are indeed always right.

Nope, the customers can be dead wrong, and anybody who has worked in any kind of job that deals with customers can tell you that. You see some of the most ridiculous things, them getting angry over things out of your control, trying to manipulate you to get discounts, and asking for things that your store obviously doesn't carry.

[Valorak]

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.

Well, sorry but I wasn't trying to comment on every individual post. The main point of this thread is to question how dialed in players need to/deserve to be on the dev team's plans, and how useful the online player-base is to feedback. However, if you want me to address that then sure:

It's pretty customary for the losers of a vote to not receive what that they were after. If they were just going to put everything in the game anyway then what would have been the point of a vote?

I voted for Rodrigault, but I don't mind that his quest wasn't put in the game. It made the vote more real and more fun to me, and I still got that dapper looking set and could run the special duty.

I thought the whole thing was a fun idea, even if I figured that Astrid would win. I personally appreciate that they still try to add new things and change up the seasonal events.

[Sated]

It's pretty customary for the losers of a vote to not receive what that they were after. If they were just going to put everything in the game anyway then what would have been the point of a vote?

True but that's only part of the concern though. SE still spent time developing and writing content that they knew 2/3 of wouldn't be seen.

I think ideally, that content wouldn't have been locked behind a vote. Players could try the path they wanted to and the "vote" from choosing and playing it would only affect something superficial like the color of the decorations, to see which was most popular - completely unrelated to the path players experienced individually.

It would have meant no development time would go to waste, players got to see the idea they supported play out, and we'd still get to see who was most popular of the three on each server.

Instead we only got somewhere between 1~2 of those things, depending on what unknown percentage actually wanted to follow through with Astrid's idea, so it feels like the idea was only half-executed.

[Divinemights]

Unless you don’t like paying bills and earning money, then yes, your customers are indeed always right.

I can tell you for fact that they are not.
Right now the motto is client is not always right but we will pay the respect by listen to what they want to say