On a scale of 1 to 5-- Do you feel SE listens to their western players? State why.

[Kaurie]

Sigh, I'm talking about how to most effectively communicate. Rewriting the same argument, less coherently and spamming the front page of the forum with the same complaint (especially when 12 of the OPs had already commented in the other threads) when you can accomplish the exact same thing AND cut down on dev reviewing time so they have more time to actually respond is "garbage".

If I made 100 threads about how I want contact lenses to be available doesn't make my idea more likely to be listened to, all I've done is create an unconscious bias against my idea. Thread count is nearly useless information.
Thread count with different originating poster information is no more valuable than response count in a single thread with different response authors.
However, by spreading out the topics unnecessarily you limit the ability of the playerbase to respond, read, "like", and focus feedback on posts which dilutes the data and makes the correlation of data more difficult. It also increases the chance that a good post will be missed by both the community and the developers. Which is why I called them "garbage".
Basically you're robbing yourself of the opportunity to give the DEVS the most appropriate and accurate feedback.

I think I mentioned it previously, but maybe I didn't, I agree that most posts on these forums are not written effectively. That said, it's not our job to write effectively, it is squares job to determine what we want and to give it to us. We can try to be clearer, but realistically, that isn't going to happen. The posts are not garbage, for the reason that the there is important information for the devs, and that they should be reading it all. If they cannot read it all, they need more manpower.

It would be a worthwhile investment, as increasing sales is not as important as customer retention at this point. Square seems to not be concerned with customer retention outside of Japan, and that is the point of this thread. The information is there for them, they just need to actually go through it.

I disagree with your assessment that spreading out topics limits the ability of the playerbase to respond. I think that having multiple threads can actually help narrow down what is exactly wrong. For example one thread may say AB is wrong with the game! Another thread says BC is wrong with the game! In both threads people are arguing back and stating how AC is great. In reality, B is the issue, but neither thread were able to get down that detail on its own. You're saying the issue is there is a LOT of data. As you get more data, outliers become less of an issue and correlation becomes easier to obtain. The issue is not that there is a lot of data, the issue is that the developers are ignoring most of it.

So in essence, yes, I agree that people could write more effectively, but I disagree that what they are writing can be classified as garbage.

As a final note, I think a large issue is that these forums do not provide polling options. It would cut down on the required writing immensely if there was an ability to add them.

[TroySoFab]

Gonna say somewhere between a 1 and a 2. There have been many requests here on the forums that have fallen on deaf ears. We rarely even get moderator/dev responses in threads anymore.

OF COURSE they do.

All the nerfs we're getting, even in the easiest of easy content? All Western players complaints.

Yeah, probably the only reason why I'd maybe give them a 2.

[Deceptus]

1.

There is next to no feedback on forums despite mountains of evidence of bad gameplay systems and terrible job changes.

They absolutely DO listen to the Japanese playerbase more and for a global company that's simply unacceptable.

[Theodric]

I'm going to give it a '2' out of '5'.

It's not that the development team do not listen to the Western player base. It's that, like so many other companies in the present day, they're seemingly much more concerned with dubious optics on social media instead of what legitimate fans of their product actually want to see.

This is evidenced by the confusion expressed in interviews whenever a hot topic of debate is brought up. The infamous facial hair customisation is an excellent example - it's been requested for years around these parts and if feedback had truly been gathered and passed along to the development team then they would have been aware of it much earlier.

It's also further evidenced by some of their responses to current world affairs. It's a video game at the end of the day - and a significant portion of their player base are not, in fact, concerned with the narratives pushed heavily through predatory social media communities such as as Twitter.

Even legitimate issues and queries related to the game are not graced with a timely response, if at all - such as the lengthy wait for European players to get access to promotional campaigns for special mounts.

It's a real shame. Early on in the game's second chance communication appeared more humble and forthcoming. Even the tone of Live Letters happened to be different - whereas now a lot of time is spent not talking about the game itself or plans for the future but encouraging players to purchase merchandise.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I’ll give it a 2. I think they listen to their jp community the most, but they also seem to listen to twitter a bit which is…unfortunate to say the least. The fact they’ve abandoned their own forums in favor of twitter and reddit is sad and poor development practice.

[TeraRamis]

Stop replying to this idiotic, thread-bumping troll. Please, FFS, report TroySoFab.

[Elizasylen]

0. In my 8 years playing this game I have never saw a shred of evidence that they ever cared for the opinions of EN/EU, the only time they have is when they aligned with JP and JP pushed the issue.

[Deveryn]

Yoshi regularly makes reference to the western audience. We read about it here and there as well. Reaper is a western request. IS was handled as casually as intended in the west. We're getting one of two DC additions. Yeah... this take never checks out.

It only appears like JP is favored because JP has their shit together when it comes to feedback.

There would definitely be more of an impact if things didn't descend into the ego-driven mudslinging show that is any discussion on any topic. Clearly state your intentions and an item will be addressed. The Q&A on the 14 hour broadcast features more evidence of this. Notes were taken on certain items to go back and explore. Info is easier to receive and disseminate when it's not covered in shit and swears.

[MonteCristo]

The fact that this question is even being asked should be a clear indicator. 0

[VelKallor]

What they could do to improve? I'd personally like to see the NA/EU community teams interact more with their respective communities, both WoW

Blizzard

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