Why this Live Letter Matters

[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.