The forums are flawed as the main way to collect player feedback.

[Turtledeluxe]

I don't personally think pointing to the Census and referring to the player MC (which I assume is what they mean by reviews) are memes or bad faith.

I also find it interesting that regional bias is being claimed, when JP forums agree with OP here that the 7.1 changes are bad. The major push to decrease mount tilt came from US forums before the feature even went live. I remember.

Also they do have a survey for players who quit. If you are someone who wants that. As I keep saying.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

I don't personally think pointing to the Census and referring to the player MC (which I assume is what they mean by reviews) are memes or bad faith.

I also find it interesting that regional bias is being claimed, when JP forums agree with OP here that the 7.1 changes are bad. The major push to decrease mount tilt came from US forums before the feature even went live. I remember.

Also they do have a survey for players who quit. If you are someone who wants that. As I keep saying.

I don’t think surveying people who quit only is a good enough at all. I thought that went without saying since a big point in my OP was wanting the get the opinion of the average player. Both the forums and exit surveys are skewed

[AnimaAnimus]

They also gather information from reddit and twitter, as well as youtube and twitch, which is also highly skewed. There is no solid way to collect information, but I am willing to put more stock into a place that doesn't have a downvote button that can negatively effect someone's account or an account that makes it easy to dox someone. So, unless they do surveys the forums are actually the best way to gather feedback. Like it or not, the lack of a downvote button that messes with accounts and the lack of an easy way to idenify someone that lets some fragile fanboy from bringing the drama into and effecting that person's real life let's a lot of us be a lot more open to our true feelings of the state of the game and have a lot broader of a conversation. There will always be trolls, but that is just part of the internet and you will find that anywhere.

There is no way to get away from bad faith actors, but other forms of social media have a lot more of that. If we were able to speak openly about things we dislike on other sites without it directly effecting our accounts or life because we said something some manchild did not like, than those other sources would also be a lot more valid. Just because there is a lot of criticism on here, literally the only place we can post criticism safely, that doesn't mean everyone is a bad faith actor or that there are more bad faith actors than other places.

Imo they should do surveys of both active and inactive players every couple years, esp at the mid point and the end of an expansion, but that takes time and money and if there is anything the past couple expansions have taught us, it's that SE is willing to put neither of these things toward FFXIV.

[Raraka]

They could copy the voting booth from Runescape 1-to-1 (including the lack of polygons!) And it would be a net positive

They could use it to ask abot how players feel about changes, or about what players want in the future

Give it an archievement called "I Voted!" And a buff for the day when a vote is held (free teleports, longer food, exp buff), and that should be enough incentive to get players to participate

Of course, options such as "I dont care" or "I dont play this job enough" should be avaliable to avoid people from voting random things to get the buff, but eh, it would still be better than nothing

[Supersnow845]

Simply the game needs a way that people who want change can go to and put in their feedback and have square able to tangibly show how upon clearing certain barriers that feedback can be implemented

Such as OSRS’s suggestions become polls, people vote on the polls, if it clears then a Jmod opens a line of discussion and that content WILL be released barring any extenuating circumstances.

The forums fail and the nebulous belief that they also pull from twitter, reddit and YouTube also fails because square never proves connection between what people ask for and what they implement and show no pipeline for refining feedback that doesn’t feel like they are still responding to feedback from 3 expansions ago

People shouldn’t need to come here and shout into a void hoping they are the random person that square picks as the basis for their changes that probably don’t even align with the feedback you offered. There needs to be a pipeline

[DPZ2]

Census shows theres just 600.000 players

I'm not sure which "census" you are referring to. Please let us know.

MMO Populations is loosely based on Social Media references, which is why it references a bit more than 200,000 active players.

Steam Charts lists an average of about 18,000 daily players via Steam over the last 30 days. Since there are non-Steam accounts on PC, PS5 and XBox, this doesn't track extremely well other than to suggest the number of daily players is pretty much the same as it was a year ago during the November timeframe. It's a mixed bag.

*
FFXIV Census [ https://ffxivcensus.com/ ] hasn't been updated since just before 7.0 release, at which time there were 1.4 million players recorded. Note this number was derived from the same sources as the Lucky Bancho census.

Lucky Bancho has a popular population census (latest was released on 4 November). It is gleaned directly from Lodestone entries and has certain "requirements" to be counted as an active player (listed below).

From a machine translation of this page [ https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archiv...1096.html#more ]:

The criteria for determining the active character that is the base of the 1.15 million active characters and 950,000 golden characters are as follows.

The maximum level is 70 or more (not including 70 just) OR Jobs that cannot be released in the free trial OR FC affiliation*

HP, level, and experience have fluctuated since the last survey (8/27).

Since the last survey, the number of minions and mounts you have has changed.

New characters that were not present in the previous survey

Characters with Lodestone profiles, minions, and mounts in full

Possession of at least one mount

Excludes characters who use jumping potions (IL390 with a maximum level of 70 when collecting data, IL530 with a maximum level of 80, IL660 with a maximum level of 90) in the job when retrieving data.

[Volgia]

The forums are not a good resource of feedback, and it's because as players we aren't developers. We don't really know how to create, balance or guide a game to become fun and enjoyable, all we can say is if something felt fun, unfun, janky or if we liked it or didn't like it.

To give an example, a lot of people here will tell you there's nothing for casual players to do. They will name the amount of time it realistically takes to eat through the content is no more than 10 hours this patch. But the casual players I know aren't here complaining about this, they don't have the time. They'd rather go in and play the content and when they get bored or when life calls they go do something else.

Which means that the people who are complaining about "nothing for casual players to do", aren't playing the game casually, so their feedback is just not useful.

EDIT: This place is for you to vent out your feelings off the game and that's fine and valid.

[Eraden]

The forums are not a good resource of feedback, and it's because as players we aren't developers. We don't really know how to create, balance or guide a game to become fun and enjoyable, all we can say is if someone felt fun, unfun, janky or if we liked it or didn't like it.

To give an example, a lot of people here will tell you there's nothing for casual players to do. They will name the amount of time it realistically takes to eat through the content is no more than 10 hours this patch. But the casual players I know aren't here complaining about this, they don't have the time. They'd rather go in and play the content and when they get bored or when life calls they go do something else.

Which means that the people who are complaining about "nothing for casual players to do", aren't playing the game casually, so their feedback is just not useful.

Mao nots know how to make game. Mao only knows what Mao likes and Mao dislikes in a game. From gameplay perspective, Mao does not likes MSQs in FFXIV. Mao DOES likes MSQs in WoW. Mao does not Glam and dye systems in FFXIV. Mao DOES like glam and dye systems in GW2. Mao HATES DDR-Style boss fights in FFXIV and how Devs tryings shape jobs to fit DDR. There! Is Mao feedbacks! Mao does nots like playing FFXIV anymore.

[Volgia]

Mao does nots like playing FFXIV anymore.

Then what are you doing here?

[TomsYoungerBro]

its not just forums. Reddit, twitter, etc. is also bad. It should be done via in-game polls to players who actually play the game. There should also be restrictions to providing feedback (1 character per account, character has to have certain level requirements, etc.).