Public Discussion: Community Feedback - Is it being heard?

[Avenger]

While I do know they have listened but also implemented players suggestion in the past, I also feel success can lead to arrogance. Perhaps it's not arrogance but ignorance though. When healers say they want to DPS, it's more along the lines they are bored and want to do something else than cast Heal 1 and Heal 2.

If they would just communicate with the players either with direct contact or through survey, it would mean they could get the heart of many issues. Instead we get half arse attempts at trying to make players happy and ends up making matters worse.

Off the top of my head I can think of many interactions where players requested things and SE responded in some way. This may not be 100% correct but I think it captures the flavor of what I am trying to say:

Players asked for DPS meter. Yoshi-p initially said it would be doable via an eventual client-side add-on mechanism, but ultimately decided in favor of no DPS meters ever, citing bullying concerns.
Players asked for BLU. SE delivered limited job (showing their vision for BLU is very different from FFXI's.)
Players asked for full BLU job like FFXI. SE said nope, limited job. (They liked a BLU that could learn tons of skills and become unbalanced vs. standard jobs.)
Players asked for viera. SE delivered limited races of f viera and m hrothgar and said "no more races" citing ongoing/multiplicative resource development cost/effort.
Players asked for viera and hrothgar headgear. SE said no but then delivered some headgear, apparently via an internal skunkworks project.
[... many additional examples deleted for brevity]

The examples indicate (to me at least) that SE often seems to hear player requests, but doesn't necessarily respond with the exact action that players are requesting (or demanding), and they usually have some rationale for doing so. That doesn't seem unreasonable. It also doesn't seem unreasonable for some players to comment if the response isn't what they wanted (even if it is what they are getting for now) or if they do not find the rationale compelling. However, I think they could perhaps publish a FAQ on some of these issues explaining the rationale for each decision. And as I mentioned I like the idea of periodic/monthly Q&A managed by the regional community teams to augment the limited number of questions which can fit into a producer live letter.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Yes, in terms of sample size. We are players, players who were asked to provide feedback here, by the developers. That, in and of itself, should be enough, but if you want numbers, numbers were provided earlier in the thread, and it was acknowledged, even then, that there are other considerations to take in. Nevertheless, we're not an insignificant set of people, and the feedback provided does have worth, even if you don't like that.

You're the one creating new goal posts and then moving them in order to prove some inane point and be able to say "well it's like I said," so if that was your goal, you certainly did that.



Are they? That'd be interesting, actually, but I guess I wouldn't be too surprised, as it is a bit larger of a platform and not quite so archaic as these forums.

I never moved goalposts lol, I was simply pointing out that the metrics being used were poor choices.

People here tend to think loud voices mean lots of support, its usually not the case though.

[MintnHoney]

I never moved goalposts lol, I was simply pointing out that the metrics being used were poor choices.

People here tend to think loud voices mean lots of support, its usually not the case though.

Meanwhile, again, the metrics being talked about were related to what would be a proper sample size, and, therefore, used number of individual users, opt-in, clustered, or otherwise. In fact, it was a discussion of whether or not feedback presented in the forums should even be considered of any large significance or worth, because the amount of users represents a small number of users who touch the game. We were not talking about like to view ratios, or how well certain feedback was followed or received, and we had long since agreed that there would never be total unanimity, so, again, goalposts.
Although bringing up such metrics does lend credence to the forums actually being a significant source of feedback that should be considered and respected rather than shat upon, so, in the end, you actually further substantiated my point.
Again, good job on that, and thank you for your service.

This is a discussion forum, particularly the general discussion forum, where people were told to go and provide feedback, and do. But at the same time, it's still a general discussion forum, which will be used for many different things. Not everyone is going to come here just to complain, not everyone is going to come here just to sing praises. Not everyone is going to leave a like on an ongoing thread whose topic that they agree with, and not everyone who reads or views the forums will even have an account to do so. Furthermore, not everyone who doesn't leave a like disagrees with a topic of discussion, although they may have their own feedback to present. How significant that makes an individual thread is certainly up for debate, but it wasn't the cross I bore.

[Rolder50]

Isn't stuff on Reddit often heard more than on these forums?

Perhaps, but they're too busy posting the same generic catgirl commissions over and over to post anything productive.

[SturmChurro]

I do not believe a lot of it is, no. If it is, it's being ignored.

[Iscah]

There are 5k thread views and the highest like count on the front page is 41.

Thats less than 1% view to like ratio... On the forums.

Threads views or views-to-likes ratio are not a helpful metric because (I am fairly certain) the view count goes up every time someone goes into the thread to read additional replies.

People can only ever give one "like" to the opening post but could account for a hundred views of a long-running thread.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Threads views or views-to-likes ratio are not a helpful metric because (I am fairly certain) the view count goes up every time someone goes into the thread to read additional replies.

People can only ever give one "like" to the opening post but could account for a hundred views of a long-running thread.

I dont think it works that way. At most it would be IP based, which is generally how it works afaik. Since you can view a thread without having an account.

I know each view of a thread by the same person doesn't count each time, since you'll see threads with only 2 views despite opening the thread on different devices (from the same network on the same account).

Either way, they say they base non-bug feedback based on thread size and likes.

Just having a busy thread but no likes means there arent that many people actually agreeing. A lot of the complaint threads, for instance, are full of replies and very busy, but its a small group of people continually replying, and a few randoms spread within.

[SturmChurro]

Either way, they say they base non-bug feedback based on thread size and likes.

Just having a busy thread but no likes means there arent that many people actually agreeing. A lot of the complaint threads, for instance, are full of replies and very busy, but its a small group of people continually replying, and a few randoms spread within.

We are seeing more and more likes on these "complaint" threads, than we used to. A lot of people are leaving likes, but not replying. I know this forum has many lurkers. I've met more lurkers in-game who know of me, than active users.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

We are seeing more and more likes on these "complaint" threads, than we used to. A lot of people are leaving likes, but not replying. I know this forum has many lurkers. I've met more lurkers in-game who know of me, than active users.

That's why initial posts will have the majority of likes, but actual engagement drops massively past the first (default) page or 2. I don't think many edit the replies per page from the default 10, so even some of the threads with 2-300 likes on the first few comments drop massively to 20-30 on the next set of 10, and then even less the further you go.

I'm not saying lurkers don't like posts, I'm saying the community team bases the feedback it takes back to the dev team on engagement and likes. And in a lot of these threads, there's not much engagement outside of small groups.

[SturmChurro]

That's why initial posts will have the majority of likes, but actual engagement drops massively past the first (default) page or 2. I don't think many edit the replies per page from the default 10, so even some of the threads with 2-300 likes on the first few comments drop massively to 20-30 on the next set of 10, and then even less the further you go.

I'm not saying lurkers don't like posts, I'm saying the community team bases the feedback it takes back to the dev team on engagement and likes. And in a lot of these threads, there's not much engagement outside of small groups.

I'm just not sure if a lot of it goes to the devs regardless of how popular it is, at least on the forums. Like I was saying earlier, if it is, it's getting ignored, because there are some really glaring issues, that the community has repeatedly given feedback for, for years, that just isn't really acknowledged. Yoshida has repeatedly said he was "surprised" to hear about certain feedback. It has to be a really viral issue to get a response and even then, depending on what it is, it can be very subdued.

As for the 10 posts a page, I do not believe people do edit that. If you are at the bottom of the page, you will likely be ignored unless someone else quotes you later. People do read the threads, but it's typically whatever is on the last page at the time, and usually what's on top. Heck, I don't read most posts, and even when I go back pages, I am skimming through them. I often read things wrong, because of the speed at which I am going through some of these replies.