The Devs aren't your personal friends and valid criticism isn't "harrassment"

[CrownySuccubus]

Sure, but "I hate this and it should be fixed." doesn't really give the people receiving the feedback much to go on.

Sure, but that's usually not the customers' problem. If 3 out of 4 patrons don't like the way the food tastes in your restaurant, it's not their job to give the chef new recipes or cook it themselves.

If the chef expects his food to be an "acquired taste" that not everyone can appreciate, that's fine. The customer needs to take their business elsewhere, then. But the chef likewise can't then be confused and upset that nobody likes it.


EDIT: On a side now, your character is beautiful.

[Packetdancer]

Sure, but that's usually not the customers' problem. If 3 out of 4 patrons don't like the way the food tastes in your restaurant, it's not their job to give the chef new recipes or cook it themselves.

While I agree on that specific example, I'm not sure it applies here; people are mostly complaining because they do like the overall experience, but some aspect of it annoys them.

If the food in your restaurant is bad, that's a fundamental flaw in the core experience of your business; if a restaurant has bad food, people will just stop coming. (Unless it's an Arby's, due to whatever demonic pact that chain has made to stay open.) For FFXIV, I feel like that'd be the equivalent of the actual gameplay and game content itself not being fun, so people just... leave.

These are complaints about specific aspects of the experience; to use the restaurant analogy, I feel like it'd be like saying "I love the food, but the decor here sucks." or "I love the food, but there's just something visually weird about those plates they use." If the restaurant tries to address this by changing the decor, there's no guarantee that the change is what the customer (who gave no details) had in mind. ("UGH. When I left that comment card that the decor was bad, I didn't expect they'd remodel it to look like a TGI Friday's. Now it feels like a pawn shop exploded and embedded its contents into the walls...")

Or even just "I don't like your current menu as much"... okay, so they changed it up, and there's some cool new dishes, but what you really wanted was that amazing chicken and butternut squash dish they were serving two months ago, and that didn't end up back on the menu. Whereas "I really miss the chicken and butternut squash dish you used to have, is there any chance of it coming back?" is a lot more likely to produce the desired result.

You're definitely right that it's not the responsibility of the customer to tell a business how they should fix things. But if the customer provides no actual details about what specifically they don't like -- or what specifically they'd prefer instead -- there's also no real way for the business to read their mind and change in the manner the customer is hoping for.

EDIT: On a side now, your character is beautiful.

Thank you! I'm very fond of her; she's one of only a few characters of mine -- in video gaming, tabletop gaming, or even my own writing -- who I actually have artwork of. (Plus, she got to cameo in an FFXIV comic about healers!)