Square Enix now threatens to send players to jail for criticizing their employees

[Merrigan]

Considering we're talking about a company whose response to a fall from grace is to mimic a toxic 2010s Western development studio, yes, it is about criticism, since the kind of toxic developers we're talking about take any response other than gleefully facediving into whatever slop they present us and giving thunderous applause as harassment. None of this would be a big deal to anyone if it wasn't for the behavior of a few of SE's employees post-DT release, Yoshi-P included. We've seen how dev teams that behave like they have been interpret what's harassment and what isn't, and their definition is very broad.

Very unpopular opinion on this forum: even if it were indeed a matter of criticism (which it isn't, given the article posted), then the ultra-negativity present on this platform almost justifies the response. It's not a round of applause that's being asked for: it's just, perhaps, something other than a constant cascade of more or less politely worded complaints.

Is the company trying out a new format (chaotic raid)? It's not going to work, the content is too hard, not enough, not tenable in the long term. New forms of quest? No, not like that! I don't like the old format, but I don't want the new one either! (cf : The Endwalker quests, which have been terribly badly received). A zone like Bozja? If it's released too soon, people will complain about the monotony of this content. Too late? That's a sign of studio disorganisation. Improved graphics? Characters are no longer recognisable, heresy! Not improved? ‘Say, it's about time you took another look at the performance of your SE graphics engine!’ So yes, each of these complaints is not made by the same person... But when you're on the other side of the fence, you don't remember the pseudonym. You don't know whether it's Merrigan complaining about the healers, or Drimm moaning about the standardisation of classes. What you do know is that people have complained about the standardisation of classes and healers, and Merrigan and Drimm have merged into a single entity called the ‘community’. And this entity is NEVER satisfied. NEVER.

There's a world of difference between asking for acknowledgement that there's a modicum of work behind this game (which there is) and asking for unbridled adoration. Yet the forum as a whole barely acknowledges the former most of the time. You add to that an incredible general lack of understanding of how this type of studio works (which can sometimes lead to outlandish requests) and you certainly get an impression that must be that of a teacher facing a bunch of ungrateful, bawling kids.

[Drimn]

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I don't think you'll find many people here that don't understand what hard work it is making a game. The closest I've done when it comes to game dev is making some "lights out" game with 25 buttons in Visual Basic when I was younger. It is incredibly hard work. But it's hard work that we pay $15+ a month and $60+ an expac for. They provide a service, we provide patronization for said service. That's how client-business relationships work. And it's not our business or our problem how the studio functions behind the scenes, but it is our problem when something we're loyal to, that we've invested many hours and lots of money into patronizing isn't up to the standards we expect, that they've set for us in the past. I get that mistakes happen and setbacks happen. I knew DT was going to be a blowoff expac after the Endwalker finale of the first arc, even if I think there's a lot wrong with it that I worry will continue to be poorly executed when the story gets higher-stakes. But for every criticism you see on here, you see someone that still wants the game to be the best it can be, that still wants SE to succeed and still wants FFXIV to be relevant in the gaming sphere. If they didn't care anymore, they couldn't post on here because their sub lapsed.

I'd like to think a company like SE has analysts to figure out what exactly "the community" is saying from a macro standpoint and interpret it for the team. Again, I don't know how the sausage is made behind the scenes, and for all I know all of our posts on here are just cries into the void while they do what they think is best with or without our input.

[Merrigan]

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The majority of gamers aren't developers, scriptwriters, concept artists or any of the other professions related to games. I'll bet you anything you like that almost everyone on this forum has never actually developed a game. And the very fact (without wishing to be unpleasant) that you're comparing your development experience (solo experience, on an indie game) with the management of such a gargantuan game is already a sign of misunderstanding. Because the problem here is not the mastery of a code, but the coordination between the different departments and the visibility on the entire product.

‘That's how client-business relationships work".

Customer relations mean accepting feedback. But it doesn't mean that you have to kiss every customer's feet, accept every proposal, or even lie down when the customer in question gets fussy (which, I repeat, is very often the case here). It also implies that the feedback in question is clearly formulated. Which is not the case here either. And for good reason: the community is diverse, and does not have the same expectations. Look at the war between ‘hardcore’ and ‘casuals’.

I'm not trying to say that SE is all rosy, but having been on quite a few MMORPG forums, I can understand why you end up not listening to your community. Between the unreasonably salty posts; the ones that are simply dirty ideas; contradictory requests ; trolls; people who don't understand what the game means from a technical point of view; and of course the time it would take to sort out the really good ideas from exchanges like the one we're having (which have nothing to do with the evolution of the game), and you end up with an incomprehensible mishmash that's of little interest from the point of view of SE.