Live Letters - Why No More Live Letter Questions?

[wereotter]

Why not Western questions? One word. Peaches.

[ItMe]

Why not Western questions? One word. Peaches.

One word. Huh?

[Veritas-Ancora]

The responses in that thread were actually quite on point. The OP merely got angry because they were getting pushback on their claims of 'degeneracy' and such. They threw a little hissy fit, deleted their original post and ran off. Same happened recently with a fellow who mucked up his use of a free Fantasia and came onto the forum spitting fire at SE demanding a new Fantasia, same thing, he got pushback, deleted their post and ran off.

It's people looking for an echo chamber and 'poor guy' posts, what they get instead leaves them frustrated and so they make some claim about 'spam' or 'this wasn't meant for any of you, but for a dev' and turn up their nose petulantly.

That's good to know, I joined in late. I'm reading the last two pages about that thread and was like, "What even is this about? I don't see a common theme." So I went back to the first post and it was already gone with that post that the last two pages had nothing to do with what was originally stated. It was weird that it was still floating at the top of the front page, but I think the link is gone now.

[Veritas-Ancora]

Why not Western questions? One word. Peaches.

Oh man I remember that.

Though to credit, this wasn't a Letter to the Producer Live, that was actually in Boston MA (funny enough, when that photo of Yoshi P and I were taken).

In-person Fan Festivals bring out some weird questions from the audience. I remember yelling out, "WHYYYYYYYYYYY" LOLOLOLOL. At least in the forum system, he could pick and choose, and it wasn't dealer's choice to the audience.

[linayar]

This is a Japanese game, and many of the development team do not speak English. This is understandable. What I worry about is how the questions/suggestions from the English-speaking forums are rarely brought up compared to previous years (first 5 years since ARR), which is a substantial number of subscribed players.

In the Live Letters, we hear terms like "this has been a much-requested item from the community" but it's rarely something we see on the English forums. Typically the suggestions came from the Japanese forums (understandably so).

My concern is that, even if you don't use any of our questions, anything we post on here isn't necessarily being heard. I know Yoshi P used to ask one of my questions on several LLs when the Live Letter thread was ongoing, and a lot of other excellent English-posed questions posted were answered too, and that felt wonderful.

We felt like we were heard.

But when there's thousands of forum posts that aren't keenly watched like that Live Letter thread, really good suggestions get buried very quickly. There's a lot of really great suggestions that died because they were bumped off the first page from threads that already had hundreds to thousands of posts, and a typical forum structure just doesn't feasibly build that developer-player trust. If it's not on Page 1, people aren't going to go looking for it. No comments, no upvotes, never seen again. Great suggestions that otherwise had 40-50 upvotes now sit on Page 2 to disappear. These great ideas had credence during the Live Letter threads. We'd have upvotes all the way up to page 50.

Especially during COVID, when the virtual fan festival was a place to ask questions, there's a lot of questions built up that will likely never be answered. And that was half the fun of the Fan Festivals: the interaction.

I worry that this, too, will be dropped to Page 2 and forgotten (hopefully enough posts/comments will keep it alive long enough for folks to notice), as this is how the system of forums is built. If there's not enough traction within the first few hours of posting and at an ideal time, it dies. Not because it wasn't a great idea, but because that's how forums work.

But if the moderators are watching this, please forward this to the devs.

They have specific threads for asking questions meant to be answered in live events.

Here is the English version:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...mmunity-Events

So I think it's not a matter of being overlooked, but that there are too many specific questions being asked across the various languages, some of which might not even be on topic to the event.

[DrWho2010]

Well, hopefully you can get some questions in the live q&a that's going to happen at the digital fan festival.

[Deceptus]

Probably Yoshi (and by extension, SE) finally had enough of players asking the same old tired questions over and over again which Yoshi has repeatedly answered, answers the player community refuses to, or at least doesn't want to, accept, and so keep asking in the vain hope he'll change his mind.

Do you honestly think the questions aren't pre-screened? It's not like they pick a random question.

[Iscah]

Do you honestly think the questions aren't pre-screened? It's not like they pick a random question.

Of course the questions are screened, but people will ask and re-ask the sort of things that are obviously going to get rejected, then complain that their questions are being deliberately ignored.

There's a post at the end of the thread for the Q&A with Banri Oda (from after the interview aired) complaining that it was all lore questions. In an interview with the head lore creator.

[Awha]

Maybe they just did not want to get a bunch of housing and missing gender related questions.

And peaches questions.

[Nightroad]

Do Otters eat peaches now?