FFXIV And Feedback

[Balmung_Griffin]

As I said on a previous thread, this is something that was on my mind for quite a while, so I'll get direct to the point.
Giving feedback to FFXIV team is...a frustrating experience. Looking at the official forums, I can't help but notice a feeling of disconnect between players and the dev team.
This is a feeling that I also share, and it's bothering me enough to say that this will be my last thread here.

I'll try to break up my thoughts:

1. We feel that our feedback is not valuable to Square Enix

Oh, boy, I'll put this out of the way first.
Putting feedback out here or in game actually feels like a massive waste of time, even more so, when we see threads making anniversaries with 0 acknowledge from the team. Hrothgar/Viera woes? No luck! A PvPer begging for balance patches that don't take 6 months plus, and breaks something else? Too bad! Wanting a job/combat design that make our crystals shine bright? Join the queue and stand a line. Net code issues? What is that?
If you're not raising an issue that is a critical bug (or is JP forums), you're out of luck, come join us screaming at clouds.

2. Unfocused feedback

I really think it's nice to have forums and there's valuable feedback to be found here, but I can't shake the feeling, a more direct, feature focused feedback would go a long way.
For example, we have the new exploration zones, and it would be great if we had a survey to really capture what players think and want. Making direct questions with yes/no answers or 1-10 scale of satisfaction would paint a better picture than loose feedback on the forum, as threads tend to derail quickly.
If they did this with Deep Dungeons, I don't think that we would have the exactly same stuff for the third time (and maybe it would not be dead already).


3. Beta Features and Test Realms (Test Instances)

This is important, my biggest criticism of FFXIV team is how they're constantly looking to capture lightning on a bottle and most of the time failing hard at that.
I mean, If we could test a slice of Island Sanctuary, the moment we'd reach the spreadsheet simulator, they'd know that was not what players were looking forward to it.
I can say the same of Lord of Verminion, Chocobo Racing, First Diadem and so on. Instead, they went all in and it's all dead and abandoned.
Remember when they found out that player enjoyed jumping puzzles and then proceed to make every new Gold Saucer minigame a jumping puzzle? Yeah.
A slow rollout of features would give time to actually adjust things and give it a chance of success, and it really highlights the need of a more focused feedback.

Remember portraits? What the hell happened there? Just a classic example that feedback was all over the place, and they actually did not implement the easiest fix ever.
Get the picture of your adventure plate and apply as default portrait for all jobs independent of gear.

4. Sharing feedback with us

Acknowledging feedback is important, however, it doesn't mean you have to go and do everything that was requested.
To illustrate a great example of this, last year Capcom released a beta test for Monster Hunter Wilds following with a player survey.

I've played the beta and responded the survey and as an Insect Glaive main had several issues that I highlighted on my response.
My first surprised was that Capcom addressed feedback response during a lengthy Community update video, and I was shocked of how many things they addressed following players feedback.
It's important to note that I'm not saying that MY individual feedback was taken in consideration but as part of a whole.
There was even a situation where they actually did not go through a change based on feedback and explained why and would keep monitoring as we play the game.
This is actually great as it shows awareness, care and most importantly a vision that the team is following. As I said before not all feedback have to translate in changes, but it's really, really nice to have it addressed.


I can't stress enough how great it felt, seeing how willing they were to communicate with the player base.
It even reminded of 1. X era Yoshida. Where has he gone?
I mean c'mon, every couple of months we have a Live Letter, we definitely could have a segment to addressing feedback there, maybe cut back on the 40-min merchandising segment?

Well, I think those points are a good kick-start for a discussion. I'd like to know what you all think about this!

[Exmo]

I agree they should schedule time each live letter for addressing feedback. It could be 5 minutes where they list suggestions players have made and say "sounds good, we'll look into it" or spend 15 minutes talking more in depth as to why a few feature requests are not likely to be implemented.

That said, a ton feedback on these forums is just wrongheaded and useless. Like the classic "Get better netcode" as if you can go down to the local netcode market and buy 5 buckets of their finest netcode. And we already see that a lot of people here act in bad faith and do not listen to the reasons the devs have given on why long standing requests have not been taken on board. So I think it would be an exercise in futility in trying to appease these people.

[Kaurhz]

Acknowledgement alone would go a long way, yes.

But I am going to be the pessimist and just say this has all but practically expired. People have been leaving feedback for years, so that which was constructive, passionate and actually meaningful is now just replaced with downright apathy, pessimism and downright aggression, and honestly... I don't really blame people for it, because they are acknowledging very little of it.. I feel more that they ask people to leave feedback here, not because they genuinely collect it, but because it is an 'engagement' factor for the forums.

I can accept reasons as to why they can and cannot, but if many of the excuses narrow down to the same thing, e.g., legacy or spaghetti code, then it is honestly something they need to invest in. For a game that aims to run another decade, I don't think they can use these same excuses long-term and have a good product, especially that long term.

[ovIm]

Acknowledgement alone would go a long way, yes.

But I am going to be the pessimist and just say this has all but practically expired. People have been leaving feedback for years, so that which was constructive, passionate and actually meaningful is now just replaced with downright apathy, pessimism and downright aggression, and honestly... I don't really blame people for it, because they are acknowledging very little of it..

Remember when Yoshi-P claimed the RMT Whispering issue was not so bad until he himself got whispered during a server visit? Or when players asked for a EU-located Datacenter because of lags, then got to meet with a solid "the game is designed for 200ms ping", then Yoshi-P experienced the lag during an EU event and surprise, we got a DC located in Europe?
Hells, people are still asking for a better way to queue oGCD skills because of network problems, and the last information we got on that front was that the issue was not reproduceable (for the testers in Japan).
Or, my favorite example, the devs ignoring the positive feedback of Vipers gameplay design because a play tester thought it was too busy, changing the class not even a month after release despite many many voices begging the class not to be changed?

A better way to get feedback would surely help to visualize it, yes, but before that, Square Enix needs to decide what kind of feedback they truly want to listen to, because currently, it seems like they are ignoring everyone.

[Yeol]

The developers have to be selective about feedback as well. They've made questionable job changes and blamed it on players' feedback. I don't know whose feedback they're listening to. Oftentimes the players are wondering that themselves. "What feedback? Who asked for this?"

[Red-thunder]

Your earnestness is wasted since they do not care about FF14. They are prioritizing two other unannounced games.

[genuine_stranger]

It would go a long way if they would make official polls for the internal feedback they collect and see if the playerbase feels the same about them, and only then decides to implement them or not, or in an altered form.

[Jeeqbit]

I can't help but notice a feeling of disconnect between players and the dev team.

I feel that Q&As in the past did often help with that. Yoshi-P has even let people send him tells in the game before and just answered them. During Covid, he became a little bit of a livestreamer and actually read things in the stream chat but I don't see it very much now because of how formulaic the liveletters are.

So it would be useful if they would read stream chats, receive questions in tells on stream and do reddit Q&As. There are other game developers that do this because it's the most direct way to interact with people.

At the same time, I feel like if they got all the hate I actually see in stream chats and on the forums, it would be difficult to sift through it to find an actual proper, considerate and decent question.

when we see threads making anniversaries with 0 acknowledge from the team.

What is strange is that they do respond to some of them when they get 100 pages. There are many that reach 100 pages that I understand them not responding to, because sometimes they are just pure hate threads.

But in the case of Hrothgar and Viera hats, it's been pretty reasonable because modders have literally adapted the hats for Hrothgar and Viera - I believe a single person did this and SE has an entire team that believe they can't.

Net code issues? What is that?

Code is one of the things I am struggling to understand their problem with. I did a little test in Sastasha and however many enemies I pull, it takes 3 seconds to iterate through them and kill them. We are talking about server machines that can do billions of iterations per second. It's the same with applying knockbacks or raid buffs. I know it is handling all the battle activity going on, but it's 2025!

If you're not raising an issue that is a critical bug (or is JP forums), you're out of luck, come join us screaming at clouds.

I think they would benefit from a proper issue tracker. The forums aren't working as that.

I mean c'mon, every couple of months we have a Live Letter, we definitely could have a segment to addressing feedback there

That would be a good idea. I remember seeing it at fanfests and events where players asked questions in real and it's oddly missing now.

[Azurarok]

The last time they did a full-on Q&A involving the forums they twisted and cut the healer question short in translation and we got the "If you want engaging healer gameplay go play Ultimates" response.

Speaking of which it's been a while, did they use to do them more often?

[Red-thunder]

The last time they did a full-on Q&A involving the forums they twisted and cut the healer question short in translation and we got the "If you want engaging healer gameplay go play Ultimates" response.

Speaking of which it's been a while, did they use to do them more often?

They did them way more often. I didn't realize the last Q&A was the one with the healer questions lmao.

I won't be surprised if that's the reason they stopped doing Q&A's. Not worth the potential backlash. This game's playerbase is like sheep - they don't need a Q&A to feel like the developers care about feedback. They just assume so even if CBU3 is leading them to slaughter.