We need better comunication with the Community team

[Vstarstruck]

Nobody outside can really say for sure, but there was a remarkable change where suddenly they had money for additional server capacity for houses and a plan of action for how to address the situation, none of which existed before.

To me, it looked a lot like the situation got the attention of a higher up at SE who asked "why are we getting this bad press and how can we fix it?" People talk a lot about budget issues, but when C-suite management wants a PR problem to go away, budgets can change real fast.

so the game IS UNDERFUNDED, nice, i knew this game should have less problems then it should have.

It at least feels like that. We always raged here when another plot war was over and most could not get their houses thanks to technical problems and the limitation on plots. Yet after years they only reacted after the shirogane disaster. The rage did not feel much bigger in the forum so the press probably did it this time.

The same with a post about the price changes for certain countries. We got no answer even when the forums were hot with rage and anger. Until their steam reviews tanked big by people giving them thumbs downs because of that. Suddenly we have them posting about it.

lol wow, in that case i def see this a real issue, despite some trying to put it down.

[Tridus]

so the game IS UNDERFUNDED, nice, i knew this game should have less problems then it should have.

I don't know that. But I believe it, based on what we see.

[Vstarstruck]

I don't know that. But I believe it, based on what we see.

I figured, but with the rest of this statement, the fact you even said that, seems you agree there is an implied meaning there that one of ffxiv's issue is being underfunded, yes?

[SenorPatty]

I figured, but with the rest of this statement, the fact you even said that, seems you agree there is an implied meaning there that one of ffxiv's issue is being underfunded, yes?

I think what Tridus is saying--which is also what I think-is that they had a regular budget, the game was not doing well, SE decided to throw money at the game until PR was fixed and then it went back to regular budget.

So basically, the game's got to get to a pretty bad point public-wise again for SE to throw more money at it. Until then, smooth sailing ahead (for them, not for us lol).

[Alleo]

I figured, but with the rest of this statement, the fact you even said that, seems you agree there is an implied meaning there that one of ffxiv's issue is being underfunded, yes?

I am not sure if they are underfunded or just dont feel like making changes until there is so much bad press that they are kinda forced to do something. For me (and not as a fact or something, just feelings) it seems that they want content to be in a certain way and when we as the customers dont like it they have a hard time changing some of them because that would go against their wishes. Sometimes it feels like I am playing FF Yoshida and not FF14.

[Tridus]

I think what Tridus is saying--which is also what I think-is that they had a regular budget, the game was not doing well, SE decided to throw money at the game until PR was fixed and then it went back to regular budget.

So basically, the game's got to get to a pretty bad point public-wise again for SE to throw more money at it. Until then, smooth sailing ahead (for them, not for us lol).

Yup. Housing sat as it was forever, which was absurdly under the required capacity. Shirogane happened, and it was still severely under capacity. The outcome that tons of people got nothing wasn't at all a surprise, it was called Shirogane Savage for a reason. The reason was given that they can't add more wards because it requires extra server resources, wards are always running, etc, etc...

Then it turned into a Class III Crapstorm, and suddenly money appeared to increase housing server capacity by 50%. More houses were added due to that than were added with Shirogane itself, when Shirogane was a big, marketed feature and the extra wave of housing was a reaction. They even said during that mess that they were procuring servers for the boost, which isn't free.

So it looks pretty clearly like when the bad PR escalated so much and people were rage quitting, the situation got high enough up the corporate ladder that someone said "here's money, fix this." It worked well enough, it's no longer a PR issue and a lot more people got houses. I don't know that everyone did, but I saw mediums open on Cactaur recently and got one, so it worked out for me.

[Theodric]

You only need to look at the backlash towards the way that European promotions were handled to see that the developers only lift a finger when there's bad press involved. None of the news sites bothered to cover the story of European players being screwed over by dodgy, awkward promotional campaigns that were far less smooth than what Japanese and North American players had access to. It took over six months for an official response from a member of the community support team (who I don't blame, since they likely can't do much on their own) and then it took many more months before the original campaign items were thrown onto the Mog Station.

Yoshi-P never brought it up in any of the Live Letters. Ironically, around the same time a portion of the Live Letters began to revolve around advertising additional merchandise to sell.

Unfortunately European players tend to be treated like dirt in MMO's. Unintentionally as an afterthought, perhaps...but still. It was the same in WoW, too. Which is strange given that we make up a notable portion of the player-base.

[Hestzhyen]

Yup. Housing sat as it was forever, which was absurdly under the required capacity. Shirogane happened, and it was still severely under capacity. The outcome that tons of people got nothing wasn't at all a surprise, it was called Shirogane Savage for a reason. The reason was given that they can't add more wards because it requires extra server resources, wards are always running, etc, etc...

Then it turned into a Class III Crapstorm, and suddenly money appeared to increase housing server capacity by 50%. More houses were added due to that than were added with Shirogane itself, when Shirogane was a big, marketed feature and the extra wave of housing was a reaction. They even said during that mess that they were procuring servers for the boost, which isn't free.

So it looks pretty clearly like when the bad PR escalated so much and people were rage quitting, the situation got high enough up the corporate ladder that someone said "here's money, fix this." It worked well enough, it's no longer a PR issue and a lot more people got houses. I don't know that everyone did, but I saw mediums open on Cactaur recently and got one, so it worked out for me.

I have to wonder how much of this is the corporate overlords being unwilling to put more money in and how much is someone not being able to request the money they need. I don't envy my managers- they had to get creative with the numbers, but between negotiating with senior management and presenting the data in the right way, they were granted the funds to start the process of doubling the size of our team (yay!). Who does this for SE at the executive level? How could they not see the simmering rage that was slowly building over years and not immediately think "I need to find the money to nip this in the bud NOW thanks to marketing showing off the houses when we have nowhere near enough capacity"? Did the teams in charge of community monitoring/engagement and Housing IT not communicate the situation? Did someone just hope it would work out somehow and not act? Or did they not know because they have better things to do than listen to us ***** and moan?

These questions are all rhetorical since we'll never know. But the point is that SE seems incapable of acting unless we revolt, and by that point there are probably going to be some heads rolling within the staff. There could be a lot of avoided grief and dismay (like the bunny outfit copy/paste reveal today) if they polled how we felt more often.

Riot randomly selects a small portion of their population after matches to ask them quick, one-question surveys after matches to get data (at least they started doing that shortly before I left). SE can do something similar - a short, targeted survey from a random sample to get a sense of what's going on if they don't want to engage us as a whole.

[Vstarstruck]

Riot randomly selects a small portion of their population after matches to ask them quick, one-question surveys after matches to get data (at least they started doing that shortly before I left). SE can do something similar - a short, targeted survey from a random sample to get a sense of what's going on if they don't want to engage us as a whole.

SE sometimes sends out survey after making a gm call to your email, but I have little confidence they get truly read and passed along.

[Theodric]

A simple opt in/opt out feature for surveys would be wonderful. As it stands, it's pretty hard to get our voices heard - especially when official Q&A sessions are at the mercy of the 'like' system. Legitimate issues have a habit of being overshadowed and when it comes to picking which questions to answer...many companies tend to avoid those that have the potential for negative PR. Furthermore, I'm often left baffled by the amount of questions that end up being answered as 'we can't tell you anything yet'. For story spoilers, it's understandable - but it's frustrating when a question that can't be answered gets picked.