Quote Originally Posted by Packetdancer View Post
You would be surprised how many individual developers will read the forums about the games they work on, whether or not they actively post there. It's sometimes useful to get a sense of what players like and don't like.

(Admittedly, you would probably not be surprised by how many individual developers eventually stop reading the forums about the games they work on.)

There is a game-related product which I work on (hardware, since these days I work in embedded systems rather than at a game company directly) where I actively hang out on the forums for it and basically pretend to be just another poster. (Much to the continued amusement of the project lead.) But seeing stuff there does give me an idea for what things might need to be tweaked, and also has let me give folks tech support (under the guise of just being an experienced user of said gaming product). But I've also seen people who have a bug (or want a feature) to post nuclear meltdown threads demanding it and threatening that "the dev team better listen to their users or else", and I promise you that when I encounter those... well, like I said, you probably wouldn't be surprised how many individual developers eventually stop reading the forums.

(I always go back, eventually, but...)

This may be less relevant for FFXIV than some, given the potential language barrier, but I'd still be surprised if the number of folks on the team who read these forums -- even if they just silently lurk -- was zero.
If it is true I am surprised tbh.. I am developer (not a game developer sadly) my self but I don't read any kind of feed back unless it is coming from lead dev's room. If they are doing it kudos to them for their passionate work.