Why not have -Weekly- OFFICIAL dev polls?

[Azurymber]

I don't see how anyone can argue that the game would crash and burn if it was designed to make players who play it happy.
If it implements what players actually want instead of what the dev team -thinks- players want, then there would be 1000s of happy players, who in turn wouldn't cover the forums in pessimistic negative topics, making others perceive the game to be better.

Further, by going by a "plan" the dev team may waste significant time on aspects of the game that only 5% of players actually enjoy. And knowing what current players enjoy and don't enjoy would give them an idea of what new players would like.

Side quests and guild tasks seem to be the best examples of what could have been done better if these polls had existed.
From what i've read on these forums and heard in game, very few people like or even bother to do sidequests since they essentially take a long time for a few lines of lore and give no "real" rewards.
And guild tasks seem pretty pointless since you get a small reward for an expensive or harder-to-get item when you could just craft a cheap item 1 or 2 times and get the same essential reward.

Lets just say for the sake of argument that only 5% of players like both of these things.
But if SE doesn't know that they might devote hours to adding in new sidequests or creating guild tasks for DoW jobs, preventing them from implementing something that 95% of people may want (like chocobos).

Even if the dev team doesn't listen to people and goes by a "plan", knowing how people are reacting to their plan and to the game will help them make a better plan for the future.

And one last argument to those who say the dev team has a plan and its important to ignore what we want and to focus on that plan:
Tanaka had a plan.... in my opinion he had a pretty good plan... and what happened there? an Epic Epic failure.
Plans are -RISKY-, by understanding your players, you can greatly reduce that risk.
If Tanaka knew ahead of time how much of a problem surplus would have caused he could have changed the system quickly and avoided many negative reviews of the game. Instead he chose to leave surplus in and tell reviewers to "hold off for a few months". Clearly that didn't work too well.

[Elexia]

I don't see how anyone can argue that the game would crash and burn if it was designed to make players who play it happy.

Because players only think of themselves, not the game.

"I want this!"

"I want that!"

Not everyone wants the same thing and the game would need things that benefit everyone, e.g having a responsive UI would be a lot less of a want compared to how people want content and jumping, they'll overlook the important thing and go for things they want.

Tanaka had a plan.... in my opinion he had a pretty good plan... and what happened there?

XIV got rushed out ahead of scheduel (this can't be denied, all evidence of higher up intrusion (wada) is there.) hence the whole "please wait a month to review the game" thing because they weren't done even debugging the game.

Plans aren't risky or else games are never made in the first place.

[Azurymber]

Because players only think of themselves, not the game.

"I want this!"

"I want that!"

Not everyone wants the same thing and the game would need things that benefit everyone, e.g having a responsive UI would be a lot less of a want compared to how people want content and jumping, they'll overlook the important thing and go for things they want.



XIV got rushed out ahead of scheduel (this can't be denied, all evidence of higher up intrusion (wada) is there.) hence the whole "please wait a month to review the game" thing because they weren't done even debugging the game.

Plans aren't risky or else games are never made in the first place.

-Many- games fail to regain their costs. So yes, plans -are- risky. If plans are not risky then i highly suggest you develop a plan, go to a bank for a loan, and create a game. If it's not risky then you are pretty well guaranteed a profit.

the idea that players only think of themselves is exactly what benefits the game. People who are self interested will vote for what they want. If 95% of people all want the same thing, then implementing it will improve their gameplay.
Its much like the capitalistic concept of "greed is good" where people acting in self interest end up benefiting the economy by optimizing it.

Even if the UI sucks, if 90%+ are ok with it, and 90% want chocobos, it makes sense to implement chocobos. If the devs think a good UI is important for new players then they can just ignore the poll. But at least they know current players don't care about the UI and they should therefore not try to focus attention on changes to it.

[Onidemon]

Because players only think of themselves, not the game.

"I want this!"

"I want that!"

Not everyone wants the same thing and the game would need things that benefit everyone, e.g having a responsive UI would be a lot less of a want compared to how people want content and jumping, they'll overlook the important thing and go for things they want.



XIV got rushed out ahead of scheduel (this can't be denied, all evidence of higher up intrusion (wada) is there.) hence the whole "please wait a month to review the game" thing because they weren't done even debugging the game.

Plans aren't risky or else games are never made in the first place.

Completely agree, plus the people here on the forum don't represent all the player nor the millions of gamers that SE is trying to bring in the game. If they based all of the development based on the polls from most of you here this game will turn into FFXI-2, aimed at a niche market... completely turning off casual players and having to spend hours to find a party or fight for a whole day to defeat a single NM so no thank you. The developers are paid to do that job and have the experience to do so.... 99% of you don't.

[Elexia]

Completely agree, plus the people here on the forum don't represent all the player nor the millions of gamers that SE is trying to bring in the game. If they based all of the development based on the polls from most of you here this game will turn into FFXI-2, aimed at a niche market... completely turning off casual players and having to spend hours to find a party or fight for a whole day to defeat a single NM so no thank you. The developers are paid to do that job and have the experience to do so.... 99% of you don't.

Heck the only thing about turning this game into "XI-2" I agree with is bringing over the basics that XIV got horribly wrong. Like the linkshell system while a step forward, was large leaps backwards in terms of basics. Same with the "search" system the game had. I do read lightly about the "Make this XI-2!" because I think most are referring to post abyssea FFXI which shovel gear down your throat for almost no work lol.