Zepla's Dawntrail MSQ Analysis

[Eyrilona]

Wouldn't polling the players be more effective? Streamers have to produce content that people watch and, equally important for the algorithm, comment on. When content is algorithm-driven. it need not provide helpful feedback to the devs.

Yes, it would be, but they don't do those. They should, but they don't. So to predict the future we have to look at what sources of feedback do get to the devs, and that makes this relevant.

[Mawlzy]

Yes, it would be, but they don't do those. They should, but they don't. So to predict the future we have to look at what sources of feedback do get to the devs, and that makes this relevant.

Interesting. This might explain a fundamental problem. Reacting to feedback from content creators who, however well-intentioned and articulate, are fundamentally selling the product of themselves, strikes me as a horrible way of course correcting.

Is there any other industry in which this would be regarded as normal?

For example, if the ownership of premier league football clubs based their decisions on highly-informed and articulate podcasters, the average tenure of a EPL football manger would be 2-3 months.

[hydralus]

It also just seems like a review about the main story? That thing's already been done. It can't be changed. They messed up and now it's done, and it's a little naive to think that any sort of 1 hour breakdown will fix... anything.

[Jeeqbit]

Wouldn't polling the players be more effective?

I have received surveys before and they did a general one for Final Fantasy (poll of the general public, not of players) to inform the decision to develop Duty Support for the MSQ, but they seem infrequent.

Streamers have to produce content that people watch and, equally important for the algorithm, comment on. When content is algorithm-driven. it need not provide helpful feedback to the devs.

While true, it varies whether the content creator actually cares about this. Some of them are happy with their following and only really want people to follow them if they are interested in what they are, rather than them covering subjects they don't care about.

For example, MTQ has mostly only ever made guides. She could chase every trend, every meme, every drama and make a video about it to increase views, but she just kept it to guides. MrHappy has had a podcast for years that hardly gets any views (despite them being a great listen) because it's 1-2 hours long.

There are actually a lot of FFXIV creators like that. They are just making what they want to make. Of course they want to make it presentable and watchable, but not at the expense of quality.

And Zepla's video is over 1 hour long. If you care about views and metrics, you definitely do not make a 1 hour video. People don't have the patience to watch for more than 10-20 minutes (I certainly don't). I only got through it by treating it like a podcast while I was tabbed out doing other things with 2x speed.

No, because even with polls with thousands of votes, you'd only get a vague answer and idea of what players found displeasing

This is true about polls as much as it is statistics. It's subject to interpretation. And many companies interpret their stats and polls wrong. That is where empathy - actually being able to read the emotions and issues going on among customers - is crucial. And in my opinion that's why Yoshi-P doesn't chase stats and metrics and polls too much, and instead just goes off his intuition.

The problem with going off intuition now is that the playerbase is split. No matter what they do, a segment of the playerbase will be upset about it. You see that play out with relics (easy vs grindy to get), difficulty levels (make dungeons harder vs people finding Dawntrail dungeons too hard), time commitment (this is too grindy vs there's nothing to do).

If we disagree with Zepla, or any content creator on any point we can always put our own 2 cents in and have others agree with our disagreement.

Exactly this. That's what the like button on the video, the comments section, or the comments in this thread are for.

Reacting to feedback from content creators who, however well-intentioned and articulate, are fundamentally selling the product of themselves, strikes me as a horrible way of course correcting.

It's going to be more informative than polls. Also, content creators for most games should know they are in a position where they basically represent the community and thus they often commit to doing just that and pointing out issues that, even if they don't care about it, the community perhaps does and wants them given voice.

One way or another, I'm pretty sure Yoshi-P just goes off his intuition, based on what journalists ask him, random FFXIV videos his team watch, his own observations of players in the game when he's playing, and summarized feedback.

It feels like decisions often follow a viral video, a viral sentiment you see everyone saying or an issue brought up by a journalist. So if it's an issue but it doesn't actually go viral, it doesn't tend to get addressed.

[Eyrilona]

It also just seems like a review about the main story? That thing's already been done. It can't be changed. They messed up and now it's done, and it's a little naive to think that any sort of 1 hour breakdown will fix... anything.

It isn't feedback to go back in and fix what they messed up in 7.0, it is feedback to tell them why people didn't like 7.0 the way the devs thought they would, and what they need to do better, before they get 8.0 locked on for another mess as well.

[hydralus]

It isn't feedback to go back in and fix what they messed up in 7.0, it is feedback to tell them why people didn't like 7.0 the way the devs thought they would, and what they need to do better, before they get 8.0 locked on for another mess as well.

But it's all story related, yeah? They're not talking about the other bits of content that actually make it a videogame, it's about the story. It reminds me of Red Letter Media and how they trashed the Prequel Star Wars movies and a lot of their points were very well made. Flash forward to the sequels and a lot of those prior issues were gone, but now it's just a different flavor of bad. Yeah it's easy to point out when something doesn't work but unless you're in the writer's room (which there will be several people involved, of course), just how much will really be accomplished? Even good writers who have a history of being able to connect with their audience will write slop every so often.

[JimCasey_RF6]

What took her so long to make that video? The Dawntrail MSQ discourse has already came and went. Ohh that's right she plays WoW now, instead.

But it's at least a constructive analysis of things rather than the vague statements made by everyone else.

Wow Jeeq, I didn't realize you had such a crush on Zepla that you make completely inaccurate remarks such as this. To correct you, there were plenty of players who detailed exactly why Dawntrail flopped on the official forums and other places like reddit. For you to not acknowledge that knowing how much time you spend on the official forums is a bit telling.

[ReynTime]

A lot of players in this forum and the subreddits made detailed explanations of what they thought was wrong about Dawntrail. They weren't "vague" at all.

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

I'm listening, and will be listening for awhile yet, but I'm not hopeful for any deep insights here. It's mostly surface-level complaints without an attempt at a deeper understanding as to why she doesn't like the things she doesn't like. That's no shade at Zepla, for what it's worth; that's the same level of analysis most people give.

I think there's a crucial lack of understanding of the functions characters serve in Dawntrail. Erenville, for example, is written as your travel buddy and tour guide, but his literary function that of the omniscient narrator for the first half of the story: he gives you, the player, context about the continent and its peoples that you need, but have no way of knowing (without the story being 80 hours long, at least). His mother, Cahciua, serves the same literary function for the second half of the story. It's a great parallel! Sadly, the second half of the story was too rushed, so Cahciua often feels like she's going beyond gap-filling narration to simply spewing out constant lore dumps, which weakens her effectiveness. But Zepla doesn't really touch on anything like that. She's just like "I liked Erenville's mom because of this one line she had in Living Memory." ...okay, great.

The most interesting thing that she's touched on so far was the "speak with three farmers" quest in Heritage Found, noting that it was extremely boring to do when she was in this crazy new zone and her head was filled with questions. I think it's a brilliant underpinning of Dawntrail's main problem. It's hard to explain why succinctly, but the long and short of it is that, in the past, and especially in HW and ShB, the game has been good at having the main characters lead the Player Character to discoveries or along courses of action that you, the human player, want to make or take. When you, the human, are thinking, "I want to do X," and Alphinaud or Y'shtola or G'raha or whoever are like, "We need to do X, come along, Player Character," you think, "YES! WE DO NEED TO DO X!" and it feels great.

Dawntrail is the furthest from that the game has ever been, and "speak with three farmers" is just the perfect example of that. You, the human player, are thinking, "we need to learn more about these devices and what's going on with the passage of time here," but then Sphene says, "We need to learn how crops are watered here." You're thinking "NO! WE DO NOT NEED TO DO THAT!" But the Player Character has no agency; they're just the output of a video game character creator to which the video game's main camera has been affixed. So you must go learn how crops are watered. And it feels like crap. And there is a LOT of that in Dawntrail.

Edit: credit to Zepla, she does, shortly after the hour mark, mention this lack of freedom/agency as a player in the face of actions you're forced to take but don't want to as a major issue. Kudos to her for that.

[CNitsah]

Wouldn't polling the players be more effective? Streamers have to produce content that people watch and, equally important for the algorithm, comment on. When content is algorithm-driven. it need not provide helpful feedback to the devs.

I don't know, how many people have you see saying the problem is Wuk Lamat : but you could remove Wuk Lamat, and every problems would be still there. Players are very good at blaming symptoms, but a lot of them don't try to go further. Some of us try to do it, but in the end, we're one voice lost in thousands. How many constructed review have been burried under hundreds, even thousands of "Wuk Lamat suck".

Despite not covering every problem, it's good to have a few people with a voice we know is listened by the devs analyse things a little further than pointing at the symptoms, especially when they echo something said by many in the community.

But I can see how this could also be a problem. Xeno, for exemple, tends to mainly talk to the raider part of the community, and it would probably end making the game disservice to base your change only on what he is saying. Where do those streamer come from, who they represent matters, and how their video are recieved by the community has to be taken in account. That's why I think those reaction tread matter.