Why this Live Letter Matters

[Renathras]

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Meh, sometimes we get useful information from them. I'm just saying if there's an "we recognize people are upset", it TENDS to come from those. Liveletters are infomercials for upcoming patches. That's what they've been for most of the game's history and all of its modern history.

The other thing, besides interviews, that does what you're asking are Letters from the Producer (the written ones), like where Yoshi P apologized to basically the world for not having enough servers and outlined their plans to help in the short and long term after the EW launch craziness. So that's a possibility as well.

While I DO think a lot of things people here complain about are likely not shared by the playerbase at large, I do think some things have drawn enough notice they might be mentioned. Particularly, even the generally happy-go-lucky big content creators have been complaining about no grindable content and the Relics being a tomestone freebie.

...don't get me wrong, I don't mind them adding a Tomestone weapon that doesn't require timegating (I'm perfectly in favor of this, in fact), but I don't think the Relics should be that. They should be content for people to really sink their teeth into and spend time working on, especially if they want to collect more than one.

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EDIT:

IDK if people in FF14 realize how bad their reputation is among the MMO players in general.

The reputation is different, not bad.

FFXIV's community isn't as toxic as WoWs was when I left, and League of Legends is FAMOUS for having a toxic culture.

FFXIV's culture is known as being welcoming and generally hyper-happy and friendly. The only "complaint" is people that don't like that complaining it's too happy (this is more people playing games where their fellow players AREN'T and trying to cope/be jealous of another game where players actually enjoy the game they're playing...), or "toxic casuals", which is super rare unless you're being a jerk to people, and is also FAR less destructive to a game than toxic elitism is since it's inclusionary rather than exclusionary.

While people accuse the community of being against any criticism of the game, that's never been true - again, if you're not being a jerk about it. I've long offered various criticism of the game and never been attacked by the white knight brigade because my tone was neutral and hopeful and I wasn't "Yeah, this community sucks and the Devs don't know what they're doing or are just in it for the money". That's "being a jerk about it", and will get you destroyed in ANY gaming community where the players don't all hate the game and developers.

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No community is perfect, but a game known for happy and helpful people that don't want people berated for being casual and just having fun isn't a negative thing, no matter how hard people want to spin it as such.

[hunkygladiator]

even the generally happy-go-lucky big content creators have been complaining about no grindable content and the Relics being a tomestone freebie

You can quote me on this. There's a 50% chance Yoshi P will address this issue and if so he might apologize, he's going to say "we wanted a story-based relic/accessible relic/relic anyone can get with any content" but he will not be addressing the real root issue that people want exploratory zones or some combat equivalent.

They have adeptly dodged questions like these for nearly a decade at this point.

Every time they answered questions on healer concerns they've dodged it like this. They simply don't want to explicitly say "we heard your complaints and we disagree/don't care".

Yoshi P is first and foremost, a savant at PR and customer relations.

[Renathras]

Well, first, he's unlikely to "apologize" and doesn't need to. It's not something an apology needs to be done for. A simple "We decided to try this due to feedback from prior Relics, but we'll probably be doing something different next time" would address the problem. I hate the mindset people have these days of "Say you're sorry!". Many things aren't matters of, nor need, apologies. And I hold this as a standard life rule, not related to this game. You apologize if you hurt someone, not if you designed content in a game that people found somewhat meh.

Every time they answered questions on healer concerns they've dodged it like this. They simply don't want to explicitly say "we heard your complaints and we disagree/don't care".

This is more complicated, since there's a problem that's hard to address. The Healer community has several splits in it, and they're trying to figure out how to address all of them. High end players tend to have different complaints than most players in the community. A lot of Healers don't want or enjoy DPS rotations while some do and want to be more Support roles than Healer roles, or some hybrid Healer/Buffer or Healer/DPSer. So the issue is they're trying to address all sides but for whatever reason haven't been able to frame the question or their responses that way, and I'm not quite sure why not.

I think it's because they've decided the majority like healing as it is (for whatever reason/metrics they have), and that the vocal are the minority, but they also don't want to be callous and say "No one cares or agrees with you, we're going to play to the 80%" or something like that. I think the (likely mistranslated) "go play Ultimate" was a reflection of this idea of "For content we're making that few and only the high end do, we encourage you that want that content to play that content. For stuff we're making for more of the playerbase to engage with, we aren't going to do what you want because the majority doesn't want it."

This place - and many online forums about games, for that matter - tends to be an echo chamber, but it likely doesn't represent the general playerbase. None of us can prove it either way, SE has metrics we don't that they use (whether accurate or inaccurate), and they still are mindful of the game's history with Cleric Stance and how deeply that divided the community.

Their issue there is less they are dodging the questions and more they know the answer won't make the people asking it happy and don't want to upset them and are trying to make some content that's engaging to them. UNfortunately, even that content isn't engaging to them. /shrug

[hunkygladiator]

Their issue there is less they are dodging the questions and more they know the answer won't make the people asking it happy and don't want to upset them and are trying to make some content that's engaging to them

That is literally "dodging the question".

Anyways, I just used healers as an example. My point is more that these interviews and live letters are PR campaigns. Even the letters from the producer and public apologies are carefully choreographed PR campaigns, designed to elicit hundreds of videos on how "Yoshi P truly is a director that cares" from the YouTubers. If anyone wants to actually read tea leaves from these PR campaigns (like OP) so be it but vets know the drill at this point.

Also it's just funny if any Western game corporation had developers spending their free time making glowy primal weapons, the media will be outraged and call it inhumane working conditions, somehow since it's Japanese and because they presumably did it out of their own volition for the love of the game, it's being praised and people cheer on Yoshi P and the game devs for overworking. That was back in like HW/SB ish.

Now, in EW, apparently everyone knows they simply love the game so much and work too much so they need some healthy work-life balance and it's praised as a progressive statement against JP work culture.

Lol OK. The cognitive dissonance is just staggering. But honestly it just reflects insanely good PR.

[Semirhage]

"toxic casuals", which is super rare unless you're being a jerk to people, and is also FAR less destructive to a game than toxic elitism is since it's inclusionary rather than exclusionary.

Is it? Or is it simply favoring one toxic group of people over another? True, toxic elitism trends toward being openly mean to other people, but if FFXIV's community is anything to go by, toxic casualism is a breeding ground for smug passive-aggression. I don't find all of FFXIV's community's TOS-sanctioned sneering and snotting about "endgame raiders" from people jealous about other peoples' accomplishments to be inclusive -at all-.