That can't actually be reading these forums...can they...?

[UBERHAXED]

So endgame = actual players. And also no date > some data? I'm not sure how you are increasing the validity of your statement that JP has more players. The JP player market may be their designed market and preferred playerbase but that has nothing to do with the number of players.

While I would debate that incorrect data is worst than no data, that's not relevant here. I'm speaking purely from an efficiency point of view. I know that most players actually come from the US (if not the majority, it's the largest minority) but JP by itself is a good representation of a majority, and as an added plus, its native language. Talking specifically about the US (I guess you can use NA as a whole), since we have freedom of speech and we are a country of immigrants, our opinions will likely differ from each other and we will end up with contradictory feedback. Since Japan is has more of the hive mind (not saying this is bad) mentality due to lack of the former, it's easy to take the opinions of a smaller group here and be confident that it will represent the opinions of a larger group. So for efficiency sake, they would (and rightfully should since it's more efficient in every way) just look at a few sparse topics in the JP forums and compile feedback based on this. Rather than try to read hundreds of threads with differing opinions and flaming (they tend to keep relevant stuff in one topic, rather than making 10 topics and also stay on topic in the posts) then try to make a decision as to which side they should take, then go to the translator and hope the rather colorful English actually convey what we want (we also tend to use sarcasm a lot in English, which doesn't help...).

The obvious solution is to:
1. Not make 10 topics on the same subject and just keep posting on the same topics
2. Keep irrelevant stuff (e.g. ad hominem) to a minimum and post what you want them to actually take back to the dev team
3. Be serious when posting. All it takes is for them to take one sarcastic comment seriously, and we get the opposite of what we want because that's exactly what we said. This also means eliminating the troll topics and troll posts.

[enthauptet]

The obvious solution is to:
1. Not make 10 topics on the same subject and just keep posting on the same topics
2. Keep irrelevant stuff (e.g. ad hominem) to a minimum and post what you want them to actually take back to the dev team
3. Be serious when posting. All it takes is for them to take one sarcastic comment seriously, and we get the opposite of what we want because that's exactly what we said. This also means eliminating the troll topics and troll posts.

Choosing a group because they have a singular vision is pointless because it would give you a result with no actual value. That's like conducting a medicinal trial with no base group. Your other points are fine but that is what the community team does to a certain extent, they extrapolate general opinions from the feedback provided. But anyway yes I agree the community could do a lot to not be a bunch of jerks to each other and attempt to search to make fewer more concise topics.

[Serilda]

I'm pretty sure the way it works is that S-E outsource the forums to the community management team. Our reps seem to be in the US, and occasionally they will escalate things up to the people in power and we either get a GM post about an individual case or an official response saying that our comments have been noted with some feedback if there's anything they're allowed to say in response.

You have to remember that a lot of issues like the housing mafia simply don't exist on Japanese servers as problems, so while it seems as though everyone on some servers is suffering it's actually a minority overall and player issues like that should probably be a lower priority than crippling game issues. Hopefully the new apartments will make this kind of behaviour less rewarding because it sounds ridiculously jerkish. It's every bit as difficult for someone from a relatively troll-free society to anticipate how nasty some players will be to one another as it is for people used to trolls to imagine how the culture on a Japanese server works. I remember when Diadem Hard was revealed and people on the English forums started speculating about FCs selling slots to people without workshops out of greed; I never even imagined that possibility in spite of my years playing games.

I wouldn't really want the actual devs to try wading through the forums to find the useful information as it would probably depress them (and they should take some time away from the game when they're not working on it for their own sakes). There are a lot of awful ideas amongst the important ones. I think this system works ok so long as people keep their campaigns civilised, informative and all in the same thread so the community team can easily spot the major problems affecting large numbers of people without investing hours into putting all of the puzzle pieces together.

[AlexiIvaniskavich]

OP - About a month after I purchased my medium house (june), I made an in game comment to my FC mates that I would pay extra (like 10 times the current cost extra) just to have the merchant not look like a generic slob off the street.... though I would love to lay claim to our fancy servant we have today, it is less likely that there is someone trolling my FC chat on a random day.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the users (not mods) on the official forums are hiding in plain sight and report certain ideas up the chain. Of course the vast majority of ideas will get cut, but hey, we can dream.

[Seiryuukishi]

Think on it like this...
You have billions of dollars to your name and could afford to have anything you wished. So you decide to buy a huge plot of what you believe to be beautiful land. Let's say... two hundred acres. Now you want an enormous house built on it for your family, and I mean ENORMOUS. So you hire a team of ten contractors each with their own team of construction workers. You throw your ideas at them as to what you want done and while half may say it can be done the other half may tell you it is impossible with the equipment they have. Now you have a conflict and the ground work isn't begun.

The trouble is what seems viable to you may not work largely as a whole. That is to say, what looks good on paper may not translate into 3D rendering. Whether that is real life construction or game code. What I am getting at is this: It is not that they don't read or are not receptive to ideas but they have to consider their limitations when considering the overall impact on the game. While I am sure they'd love to have a near infinite amount of housing wards, plots etc. think of how that would impact the function of the game as a whole. It worked in past games because rendering wasn't as strong as it is with more modern MMOs. Just like running a ton of background windows will cause lag within the game because of processing, over coding will cause servers to bog down.

[AnimaAnimus]

I'm sure they do read this thing, but it sometimes feels like the NA and EU crowds are, which make up over half the games population, not being heard. Now sometimes that is a good thing since the NA crowd is always the one to QQ about difficulty and ask for nerfs because, lets be honest, we have a lot more difficulty working together, helping someone that isn't ourself and want to put in the least amount of effort possible. Which is mostly a cultural thing, especially for the younger generations who are not held as responsible or made to work as hard as even genX was. It's the whole, trophy for participation thing, which is a bunch of boo imo.

However there are many hotly debated topics, like whether or not it is against tos to sell a house, that they wont give us an answer on or respond to. Nor does the NA team really say much at all, esp comparted to the jp forums, so it just feels like they don't give a hoot enough to even scan this part of the forums or are willing to take the time to send a short answer to the NA team to translate to us. It's different now since they had the Q&A posts but the dev tracker is usually a wall of jp text and literal weeks can go by without a peep from the NA/EU teams.

I just wish we could have some questions answered and have a little more of a dialogue with the dev team, even if its just short answers to burning questions. Because it feels terribly one sided atm

[UBERHAXED]

But are you going to take the opinion of a random person in a thread with 5 replies, or a random person in a thread with 300 replies? It doesn't help they it's not really visible what they should be looking for. People are also assuming that the community team has forum data organized by date (unlikely considering the shear amount of necro replies they make). It's likely that they organize by number of replies or likes before thread become really visible. Sure we can technically have 100 people this forum that have that opinion, but 1 topic with 100 replies is probably more visible, given the way they organize their data, than 10 topics with 10 replies.

[Malzian]

Dear lords....

Yes, they read the forums. Bayohne has said multiple times -ON AIR- in Duty Commenced, at Live Letters and other places that the Community team reads the forums and passes feedback on to the Devs. They don't read -every- post of -every- topic, but they do go through and keep up to date with what people are saying on the forums as it's one of their main venues for customer feedback. They also do a good job of taking necro threads and reburying them as well as removing overly hostile and otherwise offending threads. That's the Community's teams main job...