Letter from the Producer, XXIII (01/23/2012)

[DeadRiser]

You're not the only one playing this game..some people actually care for the development team? What's wrong with that?

I never said anything was wrong with caring for the team. I even said it myself that I respect the team for what they do for this game.

But I also have an opinion that I don't deem it necessary to post personal experiences where the majority obviously sees it as info on the future of the game.

It's funny that all the people having disgust for the community are attacking the community themselves and doing nothing more than digging the same hole.

[Elexia]

I never said anything was wrong with caring for the team. I even said it myself that I respect the team for what they do for this game.

But I also have an opinion that I don't deem it necessary to post personal experiences where the majority obviously sees it as info on the future of the game.

It's funny that all the people having disgust for the community are attacking the community themselves and doing nothing more than digging the same hole.

It's why I asked you the same question you asked:

"What's wrong with them doing it?"

Nothing wrong with people only caring for information much like there's absolutely zero wrong with Yoshida posting a "personal" letter. Remember the original intention of it...communication and to let people know who he is and what's going on. They still have to pass PR but they are HIS letters...though I bet if Blizzard did something like this more frequently people would have zero complaints.

[Tahldon]

It's a shame that there are people in the world who don't care about anything past their own fingertips. If you guys are trolling in an attempt to get a cheap laugh (as most of you trolls do these days), then your attempts fall on deaf ears. You're being completely cold-hearted and selfish. So what if there was no information about FFXIV in the dev letter, there was information about the development team that works on the game in there.

Yoshida decided to share, with the community, some personal information and wish us all a happy holiday. The reason why it was so late was, obviously, that he was hospitalized for overworking himself to make the community happy. Of course, one can't please everyone all of the time and what-have-you, but you guys could at least stop being silly for once and show some regard for another human being. Would you like it if you, working whatever job you work, overworked yourself to the point of hospitalization for your fellow employees (or customers, depending on where you work) and people didn't give a damn if you died or not?

That's probably a silly question to ask anyway, considering how cold some of you are being towards this situation. And it's understandable that we're paying for the game, yeah, that's all fine, you're paying. But that doesn't turn people into your slaves.

Some of you make my stomach churn with how ridiculous you're being. It just doesn't make sense. To be able to sit there and type out some of the things that we've read in this thread... possibly as crazy as the things people write on Youtube comments. Awful, awful stuff.

[darkstarpoet1]

Maybe then I won't get all my hopes up then. I mean that's what I check the lodestone for, UPDATES on the game and what's to be expected.

Don't take this as a personal attack to you or the team. I respect what they do for this game, but this is something I don't care for. What's so wrong with that?

there's nothing wrong with not liking this letter. this letter would have been just as good going on their twitter page. i AM NOT a friend of yoshi nor the dev team. i am a paying customer that wants info on the game i am paying for. i hold them to the same standard i do any other company that i am paying for a product. i DO NOT care what they are doing on the information letter. that type of information should be on their personal twitter accounts for anyone that wants to read about it.

the problem is there has been many things people have been waiting on this letter for and of course none of that information was even touched on. it is not a good business practice to do when you are now officially charging people for the game.

[Elexia]

it is not a good business practice to do when you are now officially charging people for the game.

Neither is pulling what SWTOR did in downgrading it's quality for launch, but they did it. It's not about business practice, what's going to happen to SE? They'll get sued for not writing "Jobs will come out February 16th"?

They JUST updated with the chocobo information and showing that armors for your chocobo will be coming in patch 1.21, clearly they'll still update lodestone with info about patch 1.21, no idea why people act like it's the end of the word or unprofessional to write a personal letter to your playerbase.

[darkstarpoet1]

Neither is pulling what SWTOR did in downgrading it's quality for launch, but they did it. It's not about business practice, what's going to happen to SE? They'll get sued for not writing "Jobs will come out February 16th"?

They JUST updated with the chocobo information and showing that armors for your chocobo will be coming in patch 1.21, clearly they'll still update lodestone with info about patch 1.21, no idea why people act like it's the end of the word or unprofessional to write a personal letter to your playerbase.

as a super for the construction company i work for if my paying customers came to me looking for info and asked me what was the status on the job they were paying me to complete it would be very unprofessional to say anything like this letter.

"well i know your trying to get this building up and on a time table and it is january 23, but see we all went out for the holidays. i spent so much time partying i spent a week in the hospital. here's pictures of another of the group working to get your product complete. as you can see he was so wasted that he had a tie he hung around his head and appears to be just before passing out."

i know this is not what was stated, but it is how it would be taken by my clients. if they expect info from me on my monthly report to them then that is a good business practice to have it prepared and give it to them. if i wanted to talk about going off and donating money to charity that is what people use things like facebook and twitter for. they already have a twitter account setup and there would be zero problems with them posting personal info like that there.

[Chezen]

there's nothing wrong with not liking this letter. this letter would have been just as good going on their twitter page. i AM NOT a friend of yoshi nor the dev team. i am a paying customer that wants info on the game i am paying for. i hold them to the same standard i do any other company that i am paying for a product. i DO NOT care what they are doing on the information letter. that type of information should be on their personal twitter accounts for anyone that wants to read about it.

the problem is there has been many things people have been waiting on this letter for and of course none of that information was even touched on. it is not a good business practice to do when you are now officially charging people for the game.

This past week I had to take a trip and stayed at a hotel. The cleaning lady and I got into a conversation about how she had been working 9 days in a row, and also was cleaning up a house she would be moving into. There was no purpose to this conversation, just a little care for someone else, a perfect stranger. Paying someone is no excuse to treat them like they are your personal slave.

If you want Yoshi-P to treat you like you are nothing more than an object from which to extort money, I suppose that is your prerogative. But I want an environment in which we are all friends and family to some extent, albeit a dysfunctional one maybe. I like these letters and I'm glad to hear of the well-being of the team.

[darkstarpoet1]

This past week I had to take a trip and stayed at a hotel. The cleaning lady and I got into a conversation about how she had been working 9 days in a row, and also was cleaning up a house she would be moving into. There was no purpose to this conversation, just a little care for someone else, a perfect stranger. Paying someone is no excuse to treat them like they are your personal slave.

If you want Yoshi-P to treat you like you are nothing more than an object from which to extort money, I suppose that is your prerogative. But I want an environment in which we are all friends and family to some extent, albeit a dysfunctional one maybe. I like these letters and I'm glad to hear of the well-being of the team.

once again you cannot read what someone says. i have already stated that putting it on a personal level would be fine, but it should be put on social networking such as twitter and facebook. you enjoyed talking to the cleaning lady, but if you had called down to room service to order food and instead of taking your order they just talked about random stuff you don't care about and hung up on you without ever taking your order then you would be quite annoyed.

[neizero]

there's nothing wrong with not liking this letter. this letter would have been just as good going on their twitter page. i AM NOT a friend of yoshi nor the dev team. i am a paying customer that wants info on the game i am paying for. i hold them to the same standard i do any other company that i am paying for a product.

/nod

A lot of people here sound like they've never gotten out of their house...

Welcome to the real world, where deadlines are not moved back just because you have a cold, and where customers are entitled to respectfully demand information and updates on products they pay for.

I haven't seen a single post here being disrespectful to Yoshi p or the development team, they just say "keep your personal stuff to your facebook, we don't care" which is a perfectly valid point, yet a LOT of abuse coming from the SE fanboys, as if someone had insulted their whole family. Sad people.

[Elexia]

/nod

A lot of people here sound like they've never gotten out of their house..

Agreed, like the ones that get pissed off a developer writes a formal letter to his players rather than about gaming information.

Welcome to the real world

Yep, welcome to the real world, where humans exist and can post about their development team enjoying a holiday prior to work restarting or the fact the director/producer was bed ridden.

Funny story:

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/pos...-a-heroic-one/
http://www.relic.com/news/September-...od-Fundraiser/

This has nothing to do with the game he's working on, i.e any future updates or patches and it clearly wasn't unprofessional for the folks at Relic to post about it too.

Why is what Yoshida posts about deemed unprofessional or bad business practice?