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

[Kohl]

It's also used in social media (and beyond) to manipulate people to your side.

At this point who cares if someone is mean to you on the internet? If they go beyond that then that's stalking which is illegal and, more than likely, the authorities can help you with. Any social website worth it's salt has a block button and at the very least just ignore the jerk and keep scrolling, lol.

I care. It's a concern. The more it is ignored the more it happens. Sure, there could be a percentage of people being manipulative, so what. I'd rather find out if someone needs help or not than ignore the person in need.

[DiaDeem]

It's not about people complaining, but rather how some are doing it.

A: "REEEE GAME GOING TO DIE EVERYTHING BAD LAZY DEVS DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING OMG DO AS I SAY AND CATER TO ME OR GAME DOOMED I'VE CALLED IT SINCE HEAVENSWARD NOBODY LISTENED GAME WILL DIE LIKE WOW HALF THE PLAYER BASE WILL LEAVE OMG YOSHI BAD LISTEN TO ME REEEEEE


B: "Hrothgar hairstyles are just plain bad. Imagine if Lalafell or Miqos lost their ears with a new hairstyle. They need to do better, because this is just not acceptable."


See the issue??

The devs are still people that can make mistakes. Being firm about a complaint as a paying costumer is one thing. Acting like an enraged entitled child is an entirely different one.

[Manofpassion]

"Oh. Youre one of THOSE undesirables" Is basically what I heard from reading that statement lol.

Those disgusting Europeans, the filthy underbelly of humanity! We must destroy them all! Mwahaha! Evil!!

[Packetdancer]

A bit off topic but, it's not exactly the players jobs to come up with solutions to things they don't like. Nor does every feedback need to contain a detailed read out of how they think it should be resolved.

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

And if you leave it up to them to figure out what you would not hate, they may not be right. People spent Stormblood complaining that most of AST's cards were useless and the only one that was worthwhile was the Balance, coming up with ways to avoid using other cards, etc., and generally saying that the cards should be changed because an increase in damage would always be more useful than utility cards. So in ShB, we got an AST where all the cards were variations on the Balance (i.e., damage boosts); this absolutely addressed the previous complaint ("only damage boost cards are worthwhile"), but people then complained that this was not the change they meant and now AST cards were boring.

You're not obligated to provide suggested resolutions to things you're unhappy about, obviously. And if you're just venting because you're full of emotions and just need to go GRAAARH *frustrated flailing*... then sure, vent.

But if you're only venting, either don't expect developers to act on just venting with no actual feedback to act off of... or else be prepared that if they do act to change things as a result of said venting, what they figure will address the topic being vented about may not be what you actually wanted addressed.

[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!)

[Imoen]

snip

Sure, but to shut down opinions or to suggest they shouldn't give one because they don't give a detailed solution is silly, not everyone necessarily knows a potential solution, nor should they be expected to give one. Which is what I was getting at with that. Nothing more, nothing less. I wasn't suggesting people that do give their idea of solutions shouldn't.

The most important feedback you can give is "Why" you don't like something. Simply stating you don't like something is not worthless though, it gives an overall gauge of how people are feeling about something. Giving a solution, may or may not be useful at all, but if you want to give one, ya by all means do it. That's great. Just don't go setting yourself up for disappointment and expecting them to do what you suggest for any number of reasons you don't see under the hood. Game studios are creative environments, there is no shortage of "ideas" and "solutions" going around. It really comes down to who pulls the trigger on things and decides how much attention things are given.

[Thatusernameistaken]

The recent issues such as housing, hrothgars, healing, or lack of job depth are all valid points of concern.

"But death threats" what death threats? This always gets brought up in this discussion when people in the community have issues with something in the game, yet there is never any of these type of comments in criticism thread. It's a baseless scapegoat that is constantly used to dismiss points of discussion and criticism.

These people need to stop taking these valid points of criticism as a personal attack to themselves nor do they need to find every excuse to let them slide. We are paying for a service and they are paid to provide a service.

Ah yes, yet another dehumanizing thread dismissing the toxic nature in which criticisms are presented by mentally unstable "adults" on the internet. Devs are people too, regardless if we're paying them or not. Everyone knows criticism is fine, the problem is the presentation. We didn't need another thread that's probably intentionally missing the point again.

[Broken_Wind]

It's not about people complaining, but rather how some are doing it.

This 100%

And to the "Devs are not your friends" comment, take a look at Square Enix as a whole compared to FFXIV. Yoshi-P and his team are what is in between us and Square Enix. They may not be our friends, but we should want them on our side.

[Vahlnir]

It's not about people complaining, but rather how some are doing it.

A: "REEEE GAME GOING TO DIE EVERYTHING BAD LAZY DEVS DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING OMG DO AS I SAY AND CATER TO ME OR GAME DOOMED I'VE CALLED IT SINCE HEAVENSWARD NOBODY LISTENED GAME WILL DIE LIKE WOW HALF THE PLAYER BASE WILL LEAVE OMG YOSHI BAD LISTEN TO ME REEEEEE


B: "Hrothgar hairstyles are just plain bad. Imagine if Lalafell or Miqos lost their ears with a new hairstyle. They need to do better, because this is just not acceptable."


See the issue??

The devs are still people that can make mistakes. Being firm about a complaint as a paying costumer is one thing. Acting like an enraged entitled child is an entirely different one.

You're correct, at least to a point. But more than a few things have gone unaddressed in an acceptable way (or unaddressed entirely) for years now. We've tried being nice. We've tried offering honey instead of vinegar. That hasn't worked, so...what choice do we have other than to be a bit angry about it? Obviously some are taking it too far, and that's not okay, but neither is how we are being treated as customers. It has gone from "Hey guys, it would be nice if..." to "Um, can you guys do something about this?" to "DEAR LORD, HEAR US!"