Letter to the Developers

[SeleneVenizelos]

Dear Developers,

Whenever patch notes are added the most striking thing I notice is the majority of modifications come off the back of topics posted on these forums. Unfortunately the greater majority of people who use these forums are those looking for somewhere to whine, troll, flame and insult people, rather than spending their time actually playing the game.

There are many people playing and enjoying the game, whilst adapting to the many updates being made. Nobody can deny the game is heading in a positive direction with much more enjoyable content now than there's ever been and plenty for veteran, novice, hardcore and laid back players to get stuck into.

These players don't come on the forums and whine. They play the game and enjoy it.

Thread after thread is being made by people who complain about what they don't like about the game, scarcely in a constructive or helpful manner. They use these forums as a means to whine about every minor detail that doesn't meet their expectations.

Nobody is denying they have the right to express their opinions.

However, when most of the modifications in patches come as a result of these threads, I worry for the future of this game. As a regular player of this game who is enjoying the many changes you are making, I strongly urge you to stop caving in to the pressure of the vocal, rude and ignorant minority and start trusting in your ability as developers. The players who don't spend all their time browsing these forums complaining about every little detail are playing the game and enjoying it.

Look at how many people are playing this game and look at how many of them frequent the forums. Numbers speak for themselves; they are just too busy playing the game and enjoying it to spend their time whining.

Please, developers. Stop caving in to the whiners and stick to your insticts. Everytime you update content you're caving in to the people who spend their time patrolling these forums for the latest victim to troll and insult. These people are not willing to adapt to or enjoy the game, and insist on seeing the absolute worst in everything you do.

These are not the players you want to please. The ones who play the game and enjoy the game are the ones you want to cater to, because it's those players who have, are and will stick by you whilst you slowly turn this game into the perfection we know you're capable of.

Fourteen is a beautiful game right now with plenty to do and plenty to enjoy. It is and will only get better. Please stop listening to the vocal minority before it's too late and you start undoing the wonderful work of the past six to eight months.

Thank you for what is becoming a wonderful gaming experience!

(And special thanks in advance to the trolls and whiners who will inevitably enrich my point. )

[Vahzl]

^ Agreed to a huge extent, but still amongst the Twilight angst and sandy lady bits, there is the OCCASIONAL piece of feedback that is valid.

The problem is, those who are happy keep at what they enjoy, those who aren't complain.

[Betelgeuzah]

Accepting the status quo won't make the game any better.

The developers aren't perfect, and somebody needs to be there to point out their shortcomings so they can fix them.

At the end of the day it's ultimately their call whether something is changed or not. They are aware of the consequences, they aren't stupid.

That's what you're saying though. They're stupid enough to listen to the "ignorant minority" (probably the group you happen to disagree with) and what they're doing is bad for the game. You're essentially accusing them of being bad developers for not seeing the good from the bad when it comes to criticism.

That's pretty rude of you.

All the changes based on feedback so far are slightly adjusting the implemented features, not completely replacing or altering them. That's because the developers don't (and should not) need us when dealing with the big picture. They need us to take care of the details, whether it is Karakul Fleece or Aggro icon size.

[FNXIV]

Which modification were made that reflect the forum whiners with this patch?

[OMEGA_HACK]

First, I take insult to this because I play the game when I have the time, and browse the forum when I just don't have enough time to commit to XIV.

Second, you yourself are posting on the forum which puts you in part of the--and I quote--"vocal, rude and ignorant minority" and seeing that your not on your first post leads to question it even more.

Third, the "voice" of the people on these forums (Save Gifthorse/force/blahblahblah) play the game, I myself have rerolled my character 3 times to experience each and every big recent patch, because I've wanted to experience the game as a new comer would. So I find it a little rude of you to make assumptions on why I suggest/complain about a feature in the game.

Fourth, this game is sadly in its later beta stages at best (Yoshi-P even stated himself, look it up, that the game was only around 50% complete) so they need as much critical objectification as they can get, they are smart people (you can see clearly by the fact they are a gaming company that has existed for quite some time now and is managing to gobble up a bunch of smaller gaming companies) they can weed through the legitimate problems and the whiners/QQers with ease, I am sure.

Fifth, you have pretty good writing skills compared to some people that frequent these forums.

[Nikita]

I am generally fine with most of the changes they make. However, the majority of my posts are made when I am bored at work. If I could play FFXIV at work that would be awesome.

Anyway, I am sure there are plenty of people in the same boat. And really, just because someone has something negative to say doesn't mean they aren't playing. There are a few, though.

[Teakwood]

I'll admit that this thought has, in fact, gone through my head in the past, but so far the community team have been pretty good at sorting out legitimate, meaningful criticism of stuff that actually -is- suboptimal from random QQing and "baw the game is changing, I learned to like having my fingers slammed in a car door, baw".

Have a little faith in the community team, they're part of the dev team too!

[northernsky]

If you know how to extract relevant and constructive comments from the lot these forums are an insanely useful mine of information.

You should not pay too much attention to trolling and whining, I'm sure the devs don't.

[Neptune]

I completely agree. In my judgment there are about 125 bad apples on this forum and it's important that the dev team distinguish between their crying -with motivations that are easy to detect- and the attitude of the actual players of this game who mostly don't post on the forums.

Forums can be used to accurately gauge player reactions, such as when a player notices something flawed in game and makes a thread about it on the forum.

Topics made with the purpose of encouraging the removal of something in the game that affects player status should be rightfully ignored by the dev team when making decisions on assigning priority to patch contents.

[AshToreth]

(And special thanks in advance to the trolls and whiners who will inevitably enrich my point. )

Judging from the 'likes' the OP has achieved in the short time it has been posted, i would suggest that those that responded negatively, are those that the OP is suggesting that SE ignore.
Gotta love that!