FFXIV is becoming a grind fest with little enjoyment.

[Nalien]

Untill we get some kind of a poll I really don't know what the majority wants..

Oh damn, that's something they really need to copy from XIV, as in 1.0... When Yoshida commented that he didn't need polls anymore, because he had the forums for feedback, I was honestly amazed... He doesn't seem like a stupid man, but that comment was just... Well it was incredible, for the wrong reasons... As if everyone uses the forums. As if these forums are in any way coherent... "71% want X, 17% Y, 12% Z" sends a very clear message, making sense of these forums? The work of madmen. No offense, Community Reps.

Lords of Verminion is perhaps the perfect example. When that April Fools joke hit, people begged for it, and people got it, and many (at least on the western side of things) didn't really like it... Too much complexity, amongst other things... There was no real feedback on what people wanted from Lords of Verminion, and it was essentially just a vocal minority asking for it. Had they done a poll though? Then they'd know how many would actually play it. They'd know what kind of content people would want from minion battles (and I can't help but guess something more akin to Pokemans would have ranked far higher than Verminion). And so on. They'd have solid information, to go over and interpret, and make the ideal piece of content as a result.

Lol, have you seen how the hairstyle contest went?

It was based on which you "liked" last, rather than total # of like ... or a poll

This forum has no proper polling method, and a serious poll shouldn't even take place here to begin with, since only a minority visit the place. Should be an optional survey somewhere around log in, that way at least everyone can have their say.

They did proper polls in the past, and it lead to a fairly successful launch. The fact that they've since abandoned doing them, and are arguably still working off very outdated results (IIRC, Dark Knight ranked highly on what Jobs people would like to see way back when), is really quite worrying... They took their tiny playerbase back then, got consist and meaningful information from a poll, and made A Realm Reborn with it. Then they got far more subscribers than they could ever dream of, and they stopped caring about player feedback.

Sure, they listen here occasionally, and sometimes give us feedback, but that isn't player feedback, that's forum feedback. They have no idea what their current playerbase wants, because they've never asked. At best, they know what the forum wants, but as highlighted by this and every other thread, the forum wants different things. They have no meaningful way to determine what content they should work on. How do you make heads or tails of some of these threads? "Some people want this, and some people are against that idea", that isn't remotely useful information.

They only listen here occasionally, too. If they listened here all the time, do you think we'd effectively have Atma again? This forum hated Atma, I imagine a poll would have reinforced that view, but they didn't do a poll. If they did a poll they'd have to act upon it, they'd have no excuse for adding it in again when the poll clearly shows everyone hates it. Instead they "listened to the forums", and conveniently turned a blind ear when it suited them.

Doesn't even need to be a bulk poll like 1.0s, since I imagine that would be hell to work through given the games newfound success. This game doesn't even have a "Why are you quitting?" poll, something like that should be absolutely essential to any MMO, heck any business. If there is a trend in why people are quitting, you absolutely want to know what that is, so you can address it to retain/win back customers. Instead they spend their time making Verminion trailers... Sigh...