Lets address the other elephant in the room...NA forum Dev engangement

[Melorie]

Writing is all over the wall from who? The hardcore players who mostly post on the forums? Because I don't see any of this kind of stuff on Reddit/Discord or basically any other platform. Criticism sure. But not "OMFG THE GAME IS DYING!" at the exact same time multiple articles report how the game's population is continuing to grow, and it keeps raking in all these awards.

The moderation of /r/ffxiv is so bad that people actually have other subreddit in other to discuss the actual game instead of endless praising and fanart posts (/r/ffxivdiscussion). If you write anything that's not overly-positive you're downvoted to oblivion. Meanwhile in discord and even in twitter you actually had good discussions and criticism. There's plenty of discourse here that's not "the game is dying" as well, but people prefer to ignore it and instead talk endlessly how a certain person argument has no weight because it wasn't written in a specific way.

Anyway, this forum is heavily un-moderated and I do feel that devs barely read whatever is discussed here. I mean, anyone that plays a healer knows that, given the absolute silence to the hundreds of commentaries regarding the healer gameplay in this game. Still, it is the only official place to actually do that so can you blame people that keep trying?

What I find the most ridiculous though is how people blame the userbase for the state of complete abandonment this place is at. I mean, we pay for the game and for the sub, the bare minimum would be to actually have a moderated place where we can bring discussions regarding feedback and at least be considered. Yeah, mmo players tend to be lunatic and there is a lot of trolling but such is the case everywhere, in the whole internet, anywhere with a lack of moderation will be like that. If the forum is that way it is because the devs do not invest a single penny and attention in creating a healthy environment where players can be listened. They'll make a whole market campaign with jokes on twitter and all that jazz, but the actual official forum of the game is as if it doesn't exist. If you are not a "content-creator" or influencer, you won't be heard.

[Fyrebrand]

I'm not sure what you really are asking for. You want Yoshi-P and crew to learn English just so they can come say "hi" to Titanmen and Aveyond? How often are they supposed to do this? Daily? Weekly? How many hours of their work day should be spent on this? And do you want them to learn English just because you use the English forums, or do you think they should also have to learn French, German, etc.?

[Lium]

The entire Patch 6.3 Megathread got removed. All constructive criticism and non-constructive criticism with it.

Threads on the sub tend to get deleted for two reasons. The same topic is being repeated over and over again (which you see here because there is no moderation.) Or a thread, including a megathread, devolves into just trashing the game and/or a flame war erupts between two camps.

I've seen many threads over there that started with constructive criticism that became flame fests, and so unfortunately, the entire thing gets yeeted into the Lifestream by the mods.

[PeaTearGriffin]

Threads on the sub tend to get deleted for two reasons. The same topic is being repeated over and over again (which you see here because there is no moderation.) Or a thread, including a megathread, devolves into just trashing the game and/or a flame war erupts between two camps.

I've seen many threads over there that started with constructive criticism that became flame fests, and so unfortunately, the entire thing gets yeeted into the Lifestream by the mods.

Yes we all know this. The subreddit mods will do what they can to protect the games image which involves removing an entire thread with both constructive and non-constructive criticism.

[Melorie]

I'm not sure what you really are asking for. You want Yoshi-P and crew to learn English just so they can come say "hi" to Titanmen and Aveyond? How often are they supposed to do this? Daily? Weekly? How many hours of their work day should be spent on this? And do you want them to learn English just because you use the English forums, or do you think they should also have to learn French, German, etc.?

I really wish y'all stopped seeing a gaming company as "Yoshi-P, Soken and their dozen overworked friends". Drop that paternalistic vision, we're talking about one of the biggest MMOs in the marketing, made by one of the biggest gaming companies in the history. Have you never ever participated in other forums of other MMOs? Or other games, even? Or never seen the concept of community staff members, people that actually moderate threads or have the function of making this bridge of communication? Even private servers of dying MMOs have these. Even weird korean mmos have official discords, for example, with staff members that speaks english and help troubleshooting general stuff.

[MonteCristo]

I really wish y'all stopped seeing a gaming company as "Yoshi-P, Soken and their dozen overworked friends". Drop that paternalistic vision, we're talking about one of the biggest MMOs in the marketing, made by one of the biggest gaming companies in the history. Have you never ever participated in other forums of other MMOs? Or seen the concept of community staff members, people that actually moderate threads or have the function of making this bridge of communication? Even private server of dying MMOs have these. Even weird korean mmos have official discords, for example, with a staff that speaks english and help troubleshooting general stuff.

This^^^ You saved me time on the paragraph i was about to write. Ty

[Amenara]

But time spent on forum engagement is time that's not spent developing the game. I'd rather have them working on the game than wasting time justifying their design choices to players who are just going to find more things to complain about if they get the attention they're seeking.

Isn't that the purpose of hiring community managers? Engage with the forums to see what concerns and ideas there are from the community, find the useful information in the sea of threads and turn it into something that can be passed along to the developers. That being said, at the very least I'd love some more moderators in the forums.

[MonteCristo]

Isn't that the purpose of hiring community managers? Engage with the forums to see what concerns and ideas there are from the community, find the useful information in the sea of threads and turn it into something that can be passed along to the developers. That being said, at the very least I'd love some more moderators in the forums.

Absolutely and tbh given the amount of success this game has had its wild to me that were are even asking for community managers to begin with.

[Lium]

Yes we all know this. The subreddit mods will do what they can to protect the games image which involves removing an entire thread with both constructive and non-constructive criticism.

Welp. Then I don't know what to tell ya. Continue posting here where threads will likewise be just as effective as those on Reddit that were deleted? I.E. they will never be seen by anyone?

[Melorie]

This^^^ You saved me time on the paragraph i was about to write. Ty

At this point I can only feel like most people never ever interacted in other games forums. Because it's either this or they simply truly believe in the fairy tale of FFXIV being made by half a dozen people from an indie company. And even on that case, most indie companies actually have great channels of communication for their games through reddit/discord.