The New Sage Icon, Thoughts?

[Vahlnir]

Absolutely none of that contributes to the point of my comment which was that there is no good reason for them to milk an icon change for positive PR when they are swimming in good PR at the moment which is a logical line of thought compared to a decision to lie, creating possible trouble in the future if exposed and fabricating a problem where there is none when it's been shown that the company can simply go "we decided to do this" and aside from the usual bellyaching about change (which is happening anyway), players wouldn't even blink.

Where businesses are concerned there is no such thing as too much good PR.

[Theodric]

Where businesses are concerned there is no such thing as too much good PR.

From their perspective, certainly. From the perspective of customers who genuinely desire a healthy product, however...

It's a matter of equilibrium. Mindlessly bashing every decision made by the development team isn't a good thing, though nor is praising every last little decision. If anything, the latter is more dangerous since it leads development teams to pander and be led astray thinking that everything they're doing is great because even constructive criticism is drowned out as a consequence.

The situation gets further complicated when accounting for different tastes, desires and red lines.

[Krotoan]

Where businesses are concerned there is no such thing as too much good PR.

Business are concerned with Return On Investment as well and the weight of fabricating a lie to create that good pr is a bad one. So far the FFXIV dev team has had aversions to outright lying about things from the get go (though I have noticed several earlier promises have been conveniently forgotten). I don't think I've heard of them doing more than some smoke in regards to why things change, never just making things up.

Businesses in general do always have their own interests in mind for every decision.. but I cannot see how trying to spin this into some sort of PR boost benefits them more than creating a landmine that could explode later hurts them. EA said this? Would be skeptical. Coming straight from Yoshida? ... I have a little faith that this is more of a accommodation for something that might be a problem later than some sort of masked internal decision and grab for MORE good PR in a period in which all they have to do is keep their current standards and everyone seems to be doing the PR for them.

There's being safely skeptical about things that directly affect you, and then there's coming up with accusations like "changing the Sage icon is a design decision warped into a PR grab".