The feeling of beeing Home ...

[hagare]

I am not here playing Derplander/Meteor/Hiro.

[Raoabolic]

The official forums likely have far less users than the FFXIV reddit and I wouldn't exactly call this place a realistic representative of the game's population as a whole when it's the same 50 or so people talking back and forth.

If your ideas don't do well when presented to a larger audience, maybe the problem isn't the audience but your ideas themselves.

Yes, but those 50 or so people are paying for admission. If they are going the route of listening to broad strokes rather than doubling down and reminding the playerbase that the forums exists then they might as well go f2p since that's the usual MO of f2p games.

[hagare]

Yes, but those 50 or so people are paying for admission.

compared to how many that pays sub but doesn't visit OF?

[Striker44]

Negative feedback has to exist somewhere. Whether you agree with the way people word their statements is another matter entirely. People have been ignored and feel like they’re not being listened to or that their feedback isn’t getting passed onto the proper channels. When you treat non-insignificant amounts of the playerbase like this, it diminishes the consumer-business relationship over time to the point where there isn’t one remaining any longer.

Hence why me and many others log in for minutes instead of hours each week, if even that.

There's plenty of constructive criticism on here that provides useful feedback. Look at the threads about particular race concerns, the one about desired QoL improvements, etc.. The simple reality is that the people attacking the devs or just declaring the story "bad" because it wasn't the story they personally wanted written...they are a minuscule sliver of a minority of the playerbase. And when someone reaches the point where they're just negative about everything, not only is the idea of taking a break that others have proposed a healthy thing, but the "feedback" itself becomes worthless. If you're just going to complain about everything no matter what unless we make the game exactly what you and you personally desire, then frankly your negative commentary isn't worth listening to.

See but I, THE PLAYER, was so looking forward to not having White Hair Hyur/Hyur Knockoff no.63338972 glommed onto me anymore and I wish my character had the agency to reflect that.

I really hate when people act like its good writing when your wol is sad about something in the story even if it violates your will as the player.

So, what you're saying is you want to play an RPG, a Role-Playing Game, but how dare you have to role-play? Interesting concept...

[Necrotica]

The official forums likely have far less users than the FFXIV reddit and I wouldn't exactly call this place a realistic representative of the game's population as a whole when it's the same 50 or so people talking back and forth.

If your ideas don't do well when presented to a larger audience, maybe the problem isn't the audience but your ideas themselves.

Reddit is a cesspool. I am fine with getting a variety of opinions, but reddit is moderated by batshit crazy wokeists. Hardly the best place to go for an unbiased opinion.

[TMW001]

Well its gonna be hard for them to top the previous antagonist we have peace with all nations, and beast races, all the Ascions are gone and what few are around are living lives as normal folk, primals won't be a threat any more and with races now know the proper way to summon we could expect these false gods to come to our side again maybe? I guess we can go back to the voidsent being bad guys unless they have a redemption arc too.

[Lauront]

The official forums likely have far less users than the FFXIV reddit and I wouldn't exactly call this place a realistic representative of the game's population as a whole when it's the same 50 or so people talking back and forth.

If your ideas don't do well when presented to a larger audience, maybe the problem isn't the audience but your ideas themselves.

What is the number of users on Reddit on any given day, on any thread? It's not anything like that figure it displays on the side, I can tell you that. In terms of people who speak, it's usually the same gaggle of redditors I see on a routine basis. Even the most upvoted threads at most reach 2-3k, and that's usually the very low hanging fruit, typically interviews, announcements, or popular memes or art; most threads on there get nowhere near that and don't even surpass double digits. These are figures which even a moderately sized discord server could influence, if so inclined. Secondly, are you positing that the audience in question (that subset of reddit users that actually engage again; not the supposed figure on the side) is reflective of the broader playerbase and therefore trying to argue that if ideas don't sell to it, it must somehow indicate they would not resonate beyond that?

I'll add, we could circumvent these sort of issues if SE was a bit more transparent about the surveys it conducts, where it could take reasonable steps to ensure it's dealing with representative samples, indicating what player opinion on various issues actually is, so we're not left playing these guessing games. Ideally, they should be conducting such research anyway to validate whether what they're hearing on social media sites lines up with what a more methodical approach would indicate.

[MikkoAkure]

What is the number of users on Reddit on any given day, on any thread? It's not anything like that figure it displays on the side, I can tell you that. In terms of people who speak, it's usually the same gaggle of redditors I see on a routine basis. Even the most upvoted threads at most reach 2-3k, and that's usually the very low hanging fruit, typically interviews, announcements, or popular memes or art; most threads on there get nowhere near that and don't even surpass double digits. These are figures which even a moderately sized discord server could influence, if so inclined.

A game community can be more than just talking about criticisms all the time. Just like how here some of the biggest threads here in the OF are screenshot threads. I don't have/use Reddit and Twitter because I don't care for catgirl fanart and don't care for the platforms in general, but I won't deny that that's probably where the majority of the players interact with the community and it's not here.

It's also funny that you bring up Discord when you and your buddies have a Discord that is promoted in here for the people who all have a problem with the game and tend to reply back-to-back from each other. I don't think the anti-Zodiark, pro-Mommy or "white knight" factions are energetic enough for a Discord considering anti-how-the-story-went people in any media are much more driven, but even if they theoretically did and went in specifically downvoting ideas they didn't like, you would think there would be other groups doing the same thing but upvoting. And ultimately Reddit is a pure democracy and if more people don't like it, it will end up in the negative or at 0 likes but with hundreds of comments.

Can't speak to how the FFXIV main Discord goes though since I don't use it either.

Secondly, are you positing that the audience in question (that subset of reddit users that actually engage again; not the supposed figure on the side) is reflective of the broader playerbase and therefore trying to argue that if ideas don't sell to it, it must somehow indicate they would not resonate beyond that?

I'm sure that SE isn't blindly choosing Twitter or Reddit on a whim. They themselves can certainly see how many people are using the forums and made a decision to not use this as a gauge of the audience reaction compared to the others. That said, I don't think Yoshi-P is specifically targeting Reddit users when he puts together ideas for the game, that's conspiracy theory nutter talk. But it can certainly be used as a test how things will be received and to SE, an OF forum user's money is the same as a Reddit user's money.

If anything, we're further down the rabbit hole since everyone here is already paying while non-players could be in the Reddit checking it out. How many times have you yourself said that you were going to quit but you're still here? I remember you making a big deal about leaving in the first Endwalker rant thread in December, but here you are still. Meanwhile I have spent years asking my brother to play the game with me to no avail because he doesn't like MMOs, but he was convinced to play after spending time on Reddit and seeing the reaction to Shadowbringers there. He never bothered to make an account for the official forums, and out of the people I interact with in-game and out, I'm the only person I know who even bothers with the forums and was told it's a cesspit, but all those people still post things from Reddit and Twitter in our group chats.

[aveyond-dreams]

Cool story, all I know is that I haven’t been listened to and that my feedback and that of others has seemingly not been passed on or acted upon in favor of people who are overwhelmingly positive and largely unwilling to scrutinize the areas in which the game could stand to improve.

So I choose to log in to just turn in leves but am otherwise spending my time playing other games. A lot of us are at different stages of exhaustion with Endwalker with some people having more patches left in them before they fully quit. At this rate the game stands to lose me well before 7.0 releases.

Treat your customers better.

[Lustre]

Well its gonna be hard for them to top the previous antagonist we have peace with all nations, and beast races, all the Ascions are gone and what few are around are living lives as normal folk, primals won't be a threat any more and with races now know the proper way to summon we could expect these false gods to come to our side again maybe? I guess we can go back to the voidsent being bad guys unless they have a redemption arc too.

Pretty wild they wrapped up every single remaining plot thread within a single expansion just to harvest streamer reactions and push box sale figures up. We all know those stories weren't finished (garlemald+provinces/ascians/beast tribes/grand companies) and yet now we stand staring at probably the last remaining thread from ARR, the voidsent. Considering the 13th was suggested in ShB role quests with about as much subtlety as a hammer to the face, I wasnt surprised to see it become the first thing after EW. But after all the streamer reactions have been siphoned, and the heat dies down, what is left exactly? A villain of the week scenario where we kill a generic big bad every expansion? More features directly from FF11 (see mog garden/ island sanctuary)?

I am firmly of the opinion that Endwalker is to FF14, what Cataclysm was to WoW which was the end of the "golden era".

+1 to the point Aveyond just made, I have a couple of patches in me left before I leave for good. If I didn't like my FC and in-game friends so much, I probably would've skipped all of the patch content after 6.0. If 7.0 is more of the same stuff we've been receiving, I think I'll go play ESO or something instead.