Lost Ark has three CMs constantly replying to forum threads and address concerns

[GaiusDrakon]

And yes the live letters are valid to bring up because they're infinitely more valuable than CM's sitting around giving pointless statements.
I'd rather hear directly from the devs, the CM's usually either don't know or can't say anything 99% of what they say is essentially just pointless PR that means nothing.

I have asked for live letter translations for NA/EU Lost Ark in Lost Ark. I don't feel the need to state that here. I am not interested in pointing out how FF14 is superior to Lost Ark on the FF14 forums because that is absolutely useless and does nothing to advance the state of FF14. We don't need to pat FF14 on its back for every little thing that it does well. We don't need to treat FF14 like a little child that needs praise 24/7. I am only interested in pointing out the flaws and what it should improve on. The only time for praise is when FF14 goes above and beyond, shattering everyone's expectations. I do the very same in Lost Ark. I do not praise Lost Ark in the LA forums because that is pointless and a waste of everyone's time.

On the issue of live letters, the live letters and interviews that we get are far and few between. It sometimes takes months or even years before Yoshi P even comments on a serious topic. If you take a look at the undercut botting thread, there were absolutely zero responses to that despite accumulating hundreds of replies.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Market-botting

Such threads NEED to be addressed within a week at the latest. It has no business growing so large without any response from either the CMs or the developers.

The CMs need to provide prompt feedback to the community to tell us what concerns are heard and are in the pipeline to be addressed. The developers can then formally address them in live letters, blog posts, and patch notes. Both have a place and currently FF14 is doing TERRIBLY in the former. Because of this, some concerns don't even seem to be escalated to the developers at all.

[IdowhatIwant]

I am only interested in pointing out the flaws and what it should improve on. The only time for praise is when FF14 goes above and beyond, shattering everyone's expectations.

Sadly I think this has been a more recent thing. I used to be super excited about new content, until ShB was announced. ShB MSQ was way better than what I expected, but everything post 5.0 was not good IMO. EW I had high expectations, and I thought the MSQ was horrible and so far, 6.1 has been a good patch but lord the mistakes they have also made in this patch.

[Theodric]

Ahhh Yes, Lost Ark is the best of the best and in the best of MMORPG in these all years. Everything in that game are so perfect, gameplay, development team, story and graphic. It's better than this FF14.
And I quitted that the best perfect game for 2 months

Have you actually read Skiros' posts on Lost Ark? He's never claimed that the game is perfect, just that it does some things better and that FFXIV would do well to learn from that. Much like how Lost Ark could, in turn, learn from the things that FFXIV does better.

Which is essentially how any serious business operates. They have a responsibility to look at what competitors are doing and strive to do equally as good or better when it comes to areas of consumer concern.

Though I suppose I should expect brand loyalty from players who pick a character name based off two key elements of the franchise they're defending.

[Curisu]

The German CM does sometimes reply.
I remember that i once counted how many times we see normal CM replys in the forum and the most were on JP and just 1-2 less in the German section.
While English and French nearly never wrote anything.

[AkaeiNox]

It seems to be a bit easier to reach them on Twitter.
@FF_XIV_EN and @FF_XIV_JP
The forums are kinda dead.

[SwingLifeAway]

I am not interested in pointing out how FF14 is superior to Lost Ark on the FF14 forums because that is absolutely useless and does nothing to advance the state of FF14.

This highlights arguably the largest problem with this community. Criticism is suppressed as negativity and the game is coddled and developers put on a pedestal. This means that no meaningful feedback happens anymore, so developers start to feel like they don't get any real value from listening. And to be honest with all the shit takes I've seen in my three days on these forums, I could almost agree.

But yeah, they can definitely do better. Community managers and the LL don't have to be mutually exclusive.

[Kolsykol]

Snip.

No one really cares what CM's have to say, people only use them as a punching bag to screech and vent at, even the CM's for Lost Ark have had multiple mental breakdowns because of this.
The same goes for other games too, most games with active CM's reach a limit within the first year where the CM's have a mental breakdown because of how they're treated.
And it's also what they essentially exist for to give the illusion that you're being listened to and to try and put out fires because people can't behave like adults.
They're treated like a human shield at the front and constantly have to deal with and interact with the worst people in the community and rarely have much definitively to say.

I literally criticized Yoshida and their handling of things in the very comment you're responding to as well.
It's ridiculous to act like because someone is essentially criticizing how criticism ( which is usually '' criticism '' ) is being handled by the people on the Forum are some kind of ultra fanboy/girl who thinks that the devs can do no wrong.
The way people criticize things and what they choose to criticize on this Forum isn't productive in the slightest the overwhelming majority of it especially when something blows up is just pure venting and nothing else.
I dunno how anyone who's an actual adult can look at how people have been talking about the addons thing and not see that.
For all we know the CM's are actively choosing to not engage with us and I wouldn't blame them at all.

I think it's the height of naivety to think that active CM's here would do anything at all other than to give people a target to go after, that's what happens EVERY time in communities with active CM's.

This highlights arguably the largest problem with this community. Criticism is suppressed as negativity and the game is coddled and developers put on a pedestal. This means that no meaningful feedback happens anymore, so developers start to feel like they don't get any real value from listening. And to be honest with all the shit takes I've seen in my three days on these forums, I could almost agree.

But yeah, they can definitely do better. Community managers and the LL don't have to be mutually exclusive.

How can you even believe this?
Have you not been paying any attention at all to the Forums?
It's almost nothing but negativity.

Calling the devs incompetent and lazy or making bad faith and outright dumb arguments about how Discord is now banned isn't constructive at all nor meaningful feedback.
I don't see people push back when someone has legit constructive criticism handeled in an adult manner.
I see it when people are behaving like toddlers.

[Theodric]

It seems to be a bit easier to reach them on Twitter.
@FF_XIV_EN and @FF_XIV_JP
The forums are kinda dead.

It's not easier - they don't respond to anything that isn't just retweeting fan art from what I've seen or pulling that tiresome marketing trick where different branches within the company joke with one another in a cynical ploy to pretend to be down with the fans.

[SwingLifeAway]

It's almost nothing but negativity.

I love it when people prove my point in their own response.

[Vrankyl]

Having active CMs is a double-edged sword. In most cases they do more harm than they do good, as they mistype something and their statement is taken as law when they have no official standing to make said statement. CMs also have a tendency to go on power trips. Point in case? Look at Blizzard's history with CMs. They've had CMs go off on players, play god, give false statements, and that's just Ghostcrawler.