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

[Kes13a]

the question is, why would they?

I do technical support for a software company, I fix customer issues all day long.

Developers are typically never allowed to speak directly with customers unless it is an issue with workflow on the user end that the developers need a better insight into. The main reason is, they may not have people skills for one, two, that they may say something that is misunderstood or taken as a promise to fix something which currently cannot be fit into the development sprint. If a dev is required, it would be on the technical support side... not General.

on these forums, you have people dissecting every little thing Yoshi says, an inference is taken as gospel truth and assumptions about meaning run rampant. There is little constructive that can come out of developer involvement here and I would not expect to ever have one visit. Thats not their job, plain and simple.

a reasonable expectation would be to actually have involved community managers, which we do not. THEIR job is to pass along concerns issues etc for assessment by those who tell the developers what to fix, develop or implement. I dont know about the Japanese forums, but interaction with community managers for the english forums is an area for improvement. Moderation is rare, and I do not recall ever seeing a community manager get involved, but again, not sure that would happen in General.

I think expecting a developer to engage on any subject in General, regardless of language, is an unrealistic expectation. Let them do their job, and their job is not to engage with the player base in general chat.

[Alleo]

What is there to even engage with here?

I want to agree and yet I also think that the forum getting that bad is also because we barely have any engagement with the FF14 team here. Maybe we would get less troll threads if they get shut down by moderators and the people constantly starting them get punished. (Instead of you know the ottergate)

I think the posts themselves would also be better if people would face more consequences if they use personal attacks in them. But honestly right now its so easy to just troll and attack others that its no wonder that long time posters leave and that we have barely any interaction with the team.

[Atelier-Bagur]

the question is, why would they?

I do technical support for a software company, I fix customer issues all day long.

Developers are typically never allowed to speak directly with customers unless it is an issue with workflow on the user end that the developers need a better insight into. The main reason is, they may not have people skills for one, two, that they may say something that is misunderstood or taken as a promise to fix something which currently cannot be fit into the development sprint. If a dev is required, it would be on the technical support side... not General.

on these forums, you have people dissecting every little thing Yoshi says, an inference is taken as gospel truth and assumptions about meaning run rampant. There is little constructive that can come out of developer involvement here and I would not expect to ever have one visit. Thats not their job, plain and simple.

a reasonable expectation would be to actually have involved community managers, which we do not. THEIR job is to pass along concerns issues etc for assessment by those who tell the developers what to fix, develop or implement. I dont know about the Japanese forums, but interaction with community managers for the english forums is an area for improvement. Moderation is rare, and I do not recall ever seeing a community manager get involved, but again, not sure that would happen in General.

I think expecting a developer to engage on any subject in General, regardless of language, is an unrealistic expectation. Let them do their job, and their job is not to engage with the player base in general chat.

This is honestly the best take, because youre right, the issue here are the community managers not interacting as much, not the devs themselves.

I dont know if its due to their regulations for the job or what not where theyre only allowed the bare minimum of interaction but I agree that this needs to change as people here dont feel like theyre being listened.


Although I also will say that with a lot of things with this game, were most likely due to our feedback so I still believe that they ARE listening. Just that they are being very transparent about it and that leads to the distress here.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Do not anticipate engagement until and unless you can read, write and speak Japanese.

Many North Americans are so entitled that they expect the rest of the world to use English as their primary language.

I don't expect them to use English as their primary language, that would be silly.

I do however expect them to use English as a language, so that they can read feedback from everyone.

[DPZ2]

I do however expect them to use English as a language, so that they can read feedback from everyone.

To which I refer you to:

Every single time a English writing poster starts complaining about lazy developers, their actual point gets ignored. Every time Square Enix is the subject of derision, the actual point gets ignored. Every time players take sides and prepare for War, the actual points get ignored.
...
I'm sure someone reports on general themes. Personally, I would not translate English posts from these forums into Japanese for all the money you might care to throw at me. It's much more difficult than running things through Google Translate.

[Kes13a]

I dont know if its due to their regulations for the job or what not where theyre only allowed the bare minimum of interaction but I agree that this needs to change as people here dont feel like theyre being listened.


Although I also will say that with a lot of things with this game, were most likely due to our feedback so I still believe that they ARE listening. Just that they are being very transparent about it and that leads to the distress here.

I am not sure either, reality is, if you are being hired as a "community manager" the expectation is... you actually communicate. I dont know if its the same for all the forums they run, but whomever the managers are, they are overpaid since there is nittle to no involvement by them as far as I know. That is a failing on their part, and their managers and ultimately, their direction from SE. I wouldnt expect them to weigh in on EVERY topic, but they should be around enough that the player base that posts here know who they are.

[Raven2014]

on these forums, you have people dissecting every little thing Yoshi says, an inference is taken as gospel truth and assumptions about meaning run rampant. There is little constructive that can come out of developer involvement here and I would not expect to ever have one visit. Thats not their job, plain and simple.

This is probably the biggest reason IMO, at least I know it would be if it were me. The way people dissect, pick apart every thing, not even word, but gesture and body language ... why would anyone sane would put themselves into that situation?

Even the Q&A during the live letter is already something that's rare by industry standard. I hope they will continue doing it, but the way some people treat it ... let just say if one day Yoshi decided he doesn;t want to that anymore, I wouldn't blame him, not one bit.

[Arzalis]

To which I refer you to:

This clearly doesn't happen though. I've said for a long time and still maintain whatever team compiles feedback on the NA forums isn't great at it.

You tend to see it at fanfest when an NA player asks about something and it's clearly the first time YoshiP has even heard of it, despite being a popular topic here. Not only that, there are very obvious occasions when there are issues that get ignored until the JP player base starts talking about it too (like the PLD issue in Onsal Hakair.)

I don't blame the devs, personally. I blame whoever is supposed to be relaying information to them.

These forums are also basically unmoderated. I think it's pretty apparent no one on the US side does anything here. I couldn't even tell you who the US community manager is without looking it up, which is really odd for a game forum.

[Lium]

I mean, there’s also the fact that forums are a relic of the past. A few other MMOs that I play do not even have forums anymore.

Their CMs/mods etc. are all on social media where they can reach a much wider audience.

[Escence]

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.

I will say that even on (/r/ffxivdiscussion) that you cant talk about things going on in the game when Rin Karigani was outed again for showing poor behavior again to someone in the community the mod removed the post and it was not promoting a witch hunt. Just like on the main subreddit you cant talk about certain people being assholes you have to post about certain unless when mods are ok to talk about certain events.