Treading Dangerous Ground

[Rydin]

I agree there should have been a poll on the matter.

At least then it won't look like a mistake on the developers' part, they just did what the players wanted.

Because people on the forum tend to agree and not be split 50/50 on every issue

Case and Point....
When SE changed all of the spells to use much more MP... an impromptu poll was set up on the forum and it was dead even, with hundreds of players chiming in, as to whether it was a good or bad change

[Biggs]

Maybe SE should conduct another player poll about this issue, and send out emails about it to get non-forum using players to participate... Or post it to the log in page for the game, that might get people's attentions..

I can't help but wonder if, the day he got on here and read all the negative feedback about his plan, he wasnt kicking himself for no having done so then. Like I said though, it is the potential for this sort of trend in desicion making to become more common that concerns me. As to the actual server merger issue itself, I could care less. I am on Kashuan for gods sake, I would have gladly taken ANY of those options and been pleased my server has been a freaking ghost town since last year.

Yoshi is reconcidering the server merge options because this is a community issue. Not a game play issue. There is nothing wrong with Yoshi stopping and listening to the community on this. Even if it's to vocal minority. It doesn't effect the state of the game from a fundamental aspect.

So by listening to the players on this matter isn't treading on dangerous ground.

If the dev team presented plans for new gameplay systems then retracted those plans because the vocal minority made a stink then yes, the dev team has lost thier backbone.

While the OP has a valid concern if this sets a new trend of Yoshi caving at every QQ that is made on the forums. But on the topic of server merege, You're making a big deal out of something that isn't that big of a deal.

aka much ado about nothing.

Well, when would you like to voice your concern over this sort of trend exactly? Maybe we should wait until they do it again and its to late to stop it over something much more serious next time? I am sorry, but this is an MMO, and to me, player population IS a gameplay issue. This isn't a single player RPG man. I pay a monthly fee to play as part of a community, not sit around Kashuan with only 15 other people talking about the first 2 weeks of the game when we had a few thousand people on our server like it was the good ol days.

If 5% care about the game as to check the forums, so be it. I'm sorry, but if you don't read and post here, you can't be considered as factor. More non factor. Probably could care less where you go. IMO more like 50% and not 5% are ative on the forums. Where did you get your % from?

I got my percentage from the creative portion of my brain that makes up statistics when none are given to me. I am pretty sure I even say in the OP that that 5% is comepletely fictional because SE doesn't give out any numbers. However, the original player poll showed 10's of thousands of hits, and I can assure you there arent 10's of thousands of people that post on here, and all the other forums combined. In an ideal world, there would be and we could all have a pleasant discourse on the state of the game and discuss ideas we may not see eye-to-eye on without flaming the crap out of each other the way we do on here. But the is reality, and the reality is many people want nothing to do with these forums because either they dont use forums and blogging as a means to communicate, or they dont want to put up with a ton of ass clowns that want to call each other white Knights, trolls, and fanboys ever time they dont agree with a post. They shouldnt be ignored or punished by SE for not wanting to deal with some of the crap on these forums. And while I don't have numbers, I can assure you that 50% of the people that play this game DONT post on here.

[Biggs]

here's another part about polls that are an issue. if you took a poll asking which version of a merge was wanted or even if a merge was wanted then chances are very good that the large servers would have just voted against a merge. looking at these forums leading up til they said they were considering merging servers it was likely 3-1 people opposed to having a merge in the first place.

people on large servers didn't WANT a merge.
people on small servers did NEED a merge.

an overall players poll may have decided the majority didn't want a merge even though some actually do need them to happen. a poll is only as good as the questions are worded. the original poll asked very vague questions and many people, including myself, voted for one thing and have regretted them since.

I wanted to respond to this post sooner DarkStar, but ended up going out with my family. I think exactly what you have stated here is an excellent example of the pros and cons of both the forums and the polls. I think that having both is necessary, because, as I have said before, the forums provide a place that players can post questions and concerns, but it shouldnt be used to make desicions concerning everyone in the game. So, as an example of what you have stated here, people from lower population servers use the forums to express their displeasure at having no one to play with (which is actually what happened). SE then see's that a portion of the community isnt enjoying the game, and then decides to merge some of the servers or offer a world transfer. Now, the players on the larger servers dont really feel the need for this, but they can see that there ARE players that do. SE then creates a poll that doesnt ask if there should be one (since they have already made that part of the desicion to do it), but instead creates a poll asking how BOTH communities (the underpopulated and those that are populated just fine) would like to go about fixing the issue for those that need it. Its about finding a balance and creating harmony for everyone. I certainly agree with you though that polls are only good if the right questions are asked in them, and I can see how the forums could be used by the devs to formulate those questions. PLus 1 on your post btw. You bring up some really good points. I dont want people to think (and some do) that I think polls are the end all be all of player communication, because they arent. There is a time and place for them, just like there is a time and place for using the forums.

[zaviermhigo]

I did not feel the need for a server merge, unless they can ensure some bonus to putting your retainer up in another city, at this rate I'm going to have to put my retainer up in Gridania or LL shout and tell people in Uldah, and offer them a tele to the city and hope they buy my stuff (/joke). But I do keep in contact with people on lower population servers, most of them were ready to reroll onto a different server, this saves them from it. I think we should just make the best of it, since it looks like they'll lean towards giving us some options.

[Riv]

I'd like to see more polls in general.

[Gramul]

I think these forums are a fine sample of the overall community.

I wouldn't be against an official poll, however.

[Hhaven]

Could not agree more. Thats why I like the player poll they took in the past. It touched on many key elements of the UI and gameplay, yet still left them to fill in all the other portions of the game that make it a FF title.

Dear FFXIV Team, more polls please =)

[darkstarpoet1]

I wanted to respond to this post sooner DarkStar, but ended up going out with my family. I think exactly what you have stated here is an excellent example of the pros and cons of both the forums and the polls. I think that having both is necessary, because, as I have said before, the forums provide a place that players can post questions and concerns, but it shouldnt be used to make desicions concerning everyone in the game. So, as an example of what you have stated here, people from lower population servers use the forums to express their displeasure at having no one to play with (which is actually what happened). SE then see's that a portion of the community isnt enjoying the game, and then decides to merge some of the servers or offer a world transfer. Now, the players on the larger servers dont really feel the need for this, but they can see that there ARE players that do. SE then creates a poll that doesnt ask if there should be one (since they have already made that part of the desicion to do it), but instead creates a poll asking how BOTH communities (the underpopulated and those that are populated just fine) would like to go about fixing the issue for those that need it. Its about finding a balance and creating harmony for everyone. I certainly agree with you though that polls are only good if the right questions are asked in them, and I can see how the forums could be used by the devs to formulate those questions. PLus 1 on your post btw. You bring up some really good points. I dont want people to think (and some do) that I think polls are the end all be all of player communication, because they arent. There is a time and place for them, just like there is a time and place for using the forums.

oh don't take my post the wrong way. i feel polls from the login screen should be a larger part of the game. i just wanted to point out a major issue with polls and how questions are worded.

if a poll is done the questions and responses need to be much more detailed than a basic "do you want drastic changes?", for example. one person may vote, yes, for one thing such as the stamina bar and others may hate the entire system from top to bottom so they vote the same way. if the developers want to use the polls to get peoples opinions on matters they should make the options detailed on what they actually have considered doing.

just remember the numbers we keep going by on the original polls are not the numbers that would respond to this one. the number of players overall have dropped drastically.

i agree that the polls should have been used through the community on the issue of merges because this is a major community issue. i just wanted to point out issues with the way the original polls were done with the vague questions and show that to get good polling numbers you actually have to give options so they can actually see what the community wants.

it's kinda like the polling numbers of:
do you think congress is doing a good job? no
do you think your representative in congress is doing a good job? yes

those results may show you hate the way congress is working, but since you support your rep and the majority supports theirs that will never change.

[KumaAkuma]

You know from that 4-option poll I really missed the option "Server merge? No thanks, not interested" You're right Darkstarpoet1, they should be more detailed & complete when asking questions and giving options. It shouldn't be like "Hmmm which option sucks the least since my option isn't there".

Same with having to pick between "major changes" and "no changes". There is always something people want changed so it's probably really tough to pick "no changes" (but that doesn't have to mean they want everything changed. It's not a carte blanche)

[darkstarpoet1]

You know from that 4-option poll I really missed the option "Server merge? No thanks, not interested" You're right Darkstarpoet1, they should be more detailed & complete when asking questions and giving options. It shouldn't be like "Hmmm which option sucks the least since my option isn't there".

Same with having to pick between "major changes" and "no changes". There is always something people want changed so it's probably really tough to pick "no changes" (but that doesn't have to mean they want everything changed. It's not a carte blanche)

that's what i was referring to. for examples in that first poll i did vote for drastic changes as well as most people.

i wanted:
more ways to level up(not only having leves as the only viable way to level)
fatigue done away(it was easy to have 6-7 classes fatigued every week)
market ward reforms(remember this is when we still had to walk the wards and check each individual retainer)
gathering changes(gathering then was super slow actions and on a successful gather at your level you got round 90 sp)
more content(back then we had nothing end game to work towards)
more mage weapons(the highest con or thm weapon was r44)
crafting changes(you still had to manually put each item in the box every synth)
constant game crash(no directx found)

there are some others i am sure i am forgetting, but you get my points. there's quite a few changes on that list and i consider alot of them game breaking with the original way the game was. i enjoyed the battle system the way it was, but i understand others hated it. there were no direct questions on the battle system, but people use the major percentage voted for change and there is no way to show what percentage of people actually wanted them other than the 24.2% of that poll that asked for battle changes. even of that 24.2% you don't even know what percentage of that wanted the extent of changes we got.

that's where vague questions can get very different results because there was no question of what percentage was happy with the battle system compared to the percentage that wanted change to it. even if the majority wanted changes that's still not broken down to what kind of changes they want. some may want the outdated turn based system, some may want a more action fps style system, some may have just wanted to have battle regimen fixed, and some wanted what we have now. those are completely different versions of a different system and the dev team has to guess what people wanted.