Public Discussion: Community Feedback - Is it being heard?

[Raoabolic]

The devs were shocked at how both the NA and JP communities collectively asked if it was an april fools joke when they showed off the new Hothgar hair. Are we really wondering if they are listening to the community? lol
The game is far from perfect and there is a reason we still log on but let's not delude ourselves, we are just the passengers, Yoshida is the driver, and SE is the guy who owns the bus.

[Jeeqbit]

From a guide of Stormblood Scholar, using The Balance's Opener

Those were inherited from the DPS class Arcanist, a problem they obviously weren't happy with so they decided to stop letting it inherit from Arcanist.

A better example would be White Mage in Stormblood, which had 3 DoTs and that was about the busiest it ever got. It's evident that how busy both of them were in Stormblood was seen as a problem by SE and addressed in Shadowbringers like a lot of other issues were.

Just because a lot of people on the forums liked how busy they were doesn't mean that everyone who plays the game liked it and there can be regional differences as well. Even if this is something that SE didn't listen to, it doesn't change all the other things that they did listen to over the years.

[Doragan]

Just because a lot of people on the forums liked how busy they were doesn't mean that everyone who plays the game liked it and there can be regional differences as well. Even if this is something that SE didn't listen to, it doesn't change all the other things that they did listen to over the years.

I do believe all regions were unanimous about this, though. The french forums quite died during ShB due to its feedback not being heard. And yeah, they used to be quite busy.
I think it shows that the dev team just doesn't know when to stop removing things, and really expect the playerbase to adapt every time. Except when it comes to Black Mage, that is.
"Breaking down the healers for building them better" and "but they're focused on balancing the current healers!" my ass. Please. The dev team has eyes. They can read.

To get back to the OP, yes, they do listen. They were swift to rectify issues like Broil IV's SFX on release. They even finally made blood weapon (and soteria, surprisingly) on a stack system. Misery is just DPS neutral now. They listen to feedback, for sure.
But no, about things like gameplay, balance adjustment, they don't usually care. Not much they could do about SCH, after all. If you want to DPS more while playing a healer, just pick Sage when it releases!
They listen. But if they disagree there's an issue, so they won't do anything about it.

[gotaname1]

Considering how aggresively topics discussing recent events are being suspiciously burried.... no one officially gives a F

[MintnHoney]

I have a hard time believing that community feedback is being seen, even if it can be misconstrued that a reaction to an embarrassing display, which subsequently gets thrashed upon by social media and gaming news outlets, is "listening to community feedback." If, for some reason, they really are regarding feedback, then they are being very selective and filtering out whatever else they believe can safely be ignored so long as they can misdirect any malcontent from bystanders with shiny new toys or an emotional display or call to action.

[Jandor]

I'd be very surprised if they were reading this forum, I certainly wouldn't if I was a dev.

[Dionysius]

Recent lottery system to replace the placard spam, umbrella, wings, Ishgard housing, etc are from players feedback, it takes sometime for them to listen, people just forgot about it then move on to the next requests once it's implemented.

[Jeeqbit]

If, for some reason, they really are regarding feedback, then they are being very selective and filtering out whatever else they believe can safely be ignored

I would expect that to be exactly what they do. They can't possibly listen to every single person when not everyone agrees and even when feedback is unanimous, sometimes the request is difficult, impossible or not a wise idea. Sometimes players are actually wrong and sometimes developers do actually know better.

[Mosha]

It's arbitrary when you consider most the playerbase doesn't engage here. When they see what they don't like in the game, they simply leave. Oh how quickly we forget that it's by the dev's admission that this is the truth. Yet it vanishes from you people's memory the moment it runs counter to praising the game unending.

"Just you". I can't navigate the forums for you. If you're truly so ignorant as to the common complaints that stretch as far back as Stormblood, I can only applaud your density and hope you continue to enjoy this game on your own grounds. As long as you have yours, nobody else matters, after all. We've had one of the largest losses of players after the WoW exodus with people dismissing it as "There's always a drop in players after enough time in expansions." True enough, but am I to believe that returning to the normal lull after an at least doubling of our populations is normal? I'd hesitate to call this the death of the game, but clearly something is wrong if it pushes away borderline the same amount of people and some change we got in the exodus.

You are really obnoxious tbh I wouldn't listen to your feedback just to spite you if I was dev.

[TheGrimace]

I'm gonna say the devs aren't listening or aren't properly receiving feedback unless we get Kaiten back for Samurai by 6.2.

I will also say that the community leads are not giving the forums enough attention. I understand that there's a language barrier and information has to be cleared ultimately with Yoshida, but they could atleast give us word more often when they see issues the playerbase is dealing with and intend to forward such problems with the development team. This used to happen sparingly in the past, but nowadays we're almost never dropped a line.