We need better comunication with the Community team

[Solarra]

One of the things that attracted me to this game was the fact that the devs appeared to listen, and unlike other companies (Blizzard *cough*) didn't respond with snark when facing heavy criticism.

However, it's clear we don't get as much communication as we did in the early days and there does seem to be a disconnect between players and developers.

Off the top of my head:
-Nothing done about housing until it reached crisis point
-An FC 'ranking' system that is open to abuse, has been the subject of numerous threads on this forum and is still unchanged.
-Botting, again numerous threads on this forum airing concerns and no official response
-Diadem 1 leading to Diadem 2 (huge improvement in gathering but the same issues for the battle missions)
-Eureka
-The forum-post word limit
-Male glamours

I think the overwhelmingly positive response to the explanation we were given over the inventory changes shows that the community can accept unpalatable changes as long as we know the reason.
As things stand it's hard to know if we are being heard or not.

The fact that there seems to be more communication with the Jp player-base just rubs salt into the wound.
It would be cool to see GMs in game for fun stuff occasionally and it would also be nice to see official translations of interviews posted on the OF rather than us having to rely on fan-translations being posted.

[Remedi]

Not related to Solarra post which I agree but I feel like of late the thread has become more of a way to brood over perceived feelings of what the company does, which is why I said I was wary of surveys.
The fact that the company changed ways about housing or the braz/russian subs debacle should've been a victory for everyone yet this thread is saying that ppl in the forum were not heard. What if they both were heard?
Frankly it's easy to tinfoil hat things out of feelings, which is why I said that questionnaires won't really solve anything.
And TBH flooding threads with this kinds of brooding posts will not help either, since the good feedbacks and criticisms will be simply buried under those which in turn will make it more likely to community managers to ignore certain threads.

Frankly We as a community should push heavily for a more active community management not because the devs don't listen to us, but because we lack informations provided in jpn community.
We should ask for more informations on interwiews
We shold have something akin to what yoshi-P does in jpn on new year's eve. Granted it will be difficult but It's only fair.
We should also ask for a better internal comunication between the ENG community managers and the main dev team since apparently the ungarmax problems was also bottlenecked somewhere there

But imho just saying oh they don't hear us execpt during money loss or bad PR frankly is not helping and is counterproductive.

[Vstarstruck]

Not related to Solarra post which I agree but I feel like of late the thread has become more of a way to brood over perceived feelings of what the company does, which is why I said I was wary of surveys.
The fact that the company changed ways about housing or the braz/russian subs debacle should've been a victory for everyone yet this thread is saying that ppl in the forum were not heard. What if they both were heard?

not really, I point you to this:

Couldn't agree more.

Also, this isn't helped in the slightest by SE's tendency to pull a mea culpa whenever an issue begins attracting bad press beyond the forums. Housing is a good example, as is 1.x. This gives the distinct impression that players should go out of their way to raise hell whenever something goes wrong, because if they can make enough of a stink for some outside site like Kotaku to publish about it, they'll get SE to listen. That's a very, very bad incentive to give to your own player base.

[Remedi]

Tinfoil hat conspiracies =/= raising hell, beign critical of something doesn't mean using arguments without sources. 1.x, housing and the subs were a fact not something that players had come up because they felt it was that way, true that most criticism of housing could be better focused like asking the dev that since their goal for housing is actually harmful to their clients MAYBE they should reconsider it OR work harder to fix it and in that case we should get an idea on how they want to fix it, but I guess that's not very important since ppl don't ask those kind of questions and just mope around how shitty the system is

[Vhailor]

Tinfoil hat conspiracies =/= raising hell, beign critical of something doesn't mean using arguments without sources. 1.x, housing and the subs were a fact not something that players had come up because they felt it was that way, true that most criticism of housing could be better focused like asking the dev that since their goal for housing is actually harmful to their clients MAYBE they should reconsider it OR work harder to fix it and in that case we should get an idea on how they want to fix it, but I guess that's not very important since ppl don't ask those kind of questions and just mope around how shitty the system is

So, two things.

(1) The only difference between raising hell and conspiracy theories is the accuracy of the complaint, really. Which again comes around to the problem of SE's lack of communication: we don't have any real idea of the facts surrounding any given response by the development team. Housing is a great example here; you bring up the notion that perhaps both sides were heard. Well, you're right - maybe they were. But nothing SE has done clarifies this for the players. Going off the evidence we have - which is correlative at best - there's at least a 50/50 chance they only paid attention because it became a PR nightmare away from the forums.

Don't you think it would have been nice for SE to shed some light on this decision? A simple statement - a short apology, thanks given for the feedback of players across venues (3rd-party media, the Official Forums, etc.), and a commitment to react more proactively in the future - would have done an immense amount of good. But no such statement exists, at least to my knowledge. There was simply a Live Letter response about new Wards being added. So the community was left in the dark, completely unable to determine whether or not there was a conspiracy afoot, or whether SE just decided to listen for once.

(2) Your posts have seemed to lament the negative nature of the community. May I ask why you believe this to be a productive discussion to have? It feels as if you think the community should make an effort to police itself and put on its 'nice' hat in order to coax SE to the table in terms of community outreach. I question whether this is a realistic goal, and whether you believe it's reasonable for a company to maintain a clearly problematic policy just because people are being critical.

[Hestzhyen]

Tinfoil hat conspiracies =/= raising hell, beign critical of something doesn't mean using arguments without sources. 1.x, housing and the subs were a fact not something that players had come up because they felt it was that way, true that most criticism of housing could be better focused like asking the dev that since their goal for housing is actually harmful to their clients MAYBE they should reconsider it OR work harder to fix it and in that case we should get an idea on how they want to fix it, but I guess that's not very important since ppl don't ask those kind of questions and just mope around how shitty the system is

You're probably referring in part to one of my posts with the tinfoil hat stuff, I think... especially the one where I was wondering about who controls how much money SE gives the game and if the execs in charge of asking for more can do their job properly.

That's all it is though, just idle speculation. We know nothing about the company's internal politics and metrics, and that's the norm. But I wonder how much is cultural differences and how much is sheer arrogance when they don't seem to react at all unless there is a PR fiasco at-hand. They rarely engage us or ask for our opinions and when they come out with stuff that few people this side of the ocean asked for a lot of us will start to get heated. Who wanted this content in in this way? We didn't hear anything! Must have just been JP players asking or SE thinking they know best. And then there's the somewhat common sentiment that for all XIV earns, it doesn't see much since the lion's share gets funneled into other projects... again, not unusual in the slightest for a large company with many products like SE, but maybe they could be a bit more transparent about what we can expect. A lot of people really like this game and get irritated when the same excuses are handed out every time someone requests a useful feature or improvement. We didn't get the money for more housing servers until the community was absolutely livid and telling the world about it. It shouldn't have to get that bad before funding is found, you know? Why did it get that bad? Where was the break-down? Someone was stonewalling someone, whether it be funds or passing on information, and we have no way of knowing.

The first time I genuinely got annoyed with SE's communication was during Raubahn Savage last year. In my mind the town was burning while SE occasionally poked their head out of the ivory tower to tell us so sorry, please wait, stop playing while they fix it. I totally get the difficulty and the company's frustration with that issue too- I work on the other side of the fence as an IT professional myself, and sometimes all the users can do is stew while the crew scrambles to fix the issue. But SE communicated terribly during that issue. There were no public status updates, infrequent messages only telling us to wait, and the apology didn't come until 24 hours in. You never want to give your users an ETA until things are in the final testing stage so I didn't expect one, but I did expect a more hands-on approach than what we saw. Since then I've been much more critical of the company... if they don't give us information we can only speculate, but I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt like I used to anymore.

[Vstarstruck]

You're probably referring in part to one of my posts with the tinfoil hat stuff, I think... especially the one where I was wondering about who controls how much money SE gives the game and if the execs in charge of asking for more can do their job properly.

That's all it is though, just idle speculation. We know nothing about the company's internal politics and metrics, and that's the norm. But I wonder how much is cultural differences and how much is sheer arrogance when they don't seem to react at all unless there is a PR fiasco at-hand. They rarely engage us or ask for our opinions and when they come out with stuff that few people this side of the ocean asked for a lot of us will start to get heated. Who wanted this content in in this way? We didn't hear anything! Must have just been JP players asking or SE thinking they know best. And then there's the somewhat common sentiment that for all XIV earns, it doesn't see much since the lion's share gets funneled into other projects... again, not unusual in the slightest for a large company with many products like SE, but maybe they could be a bit more transparent about what we can expect. A lot of people really like this game and get irritated when the same excuses are handed out every time someone requests a useful feature or improvement. We didn't get the money for more housing servers until the community was absolutely livid and telling the world about it. It shouldn't have to get that bad before funding is found, you know? Why did it get that bad? Where was the break-down? Someone was stonewalling someone, whether it be funds or passing on information, and we have no way of knowing.

The first time I genuinely got annoyed with SE's communication was during Raubahn Savage last year. In my mind the town was burning while SE occasionally poked their head out of the ivory tower to tell us so sorry, please wait, stop playing while they fix it. I totally get the difficulty and the company's frustration with that issue too- I work on the other side of the fence as an IT professional myself, and sometimes all the users can do is stew while the crew scrambles to fix the issue. But SE communicated terribly during that issue. There were no public status updates, infrequent messages only telling us to wait, and the apology didn't come until 24 hours in. You never want to give your users an ETA until things are in the final testing stage so I didn't expect one, but I did expect a more hands-on approach than what we saw. Since then I've been much more critical of the company... if they don't give us information we can only speculate, but I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt like I used to anymore.

SE really did drop the ball with the responses at that. I was shocked to see no type of reimbursement at all to show they really meant it. (free week sub, month, something) For me they only said "we are sorry" because they had to at that point in an attempt of damage control, not that it felt sincere. It would of felt more sincere if they did more communication, as you pointed out during and while it was happening. I do not think that kind of error in 2017 should be happening.

Tinfoil hat conspiracies =/= raising hell, beign critical of something doesn't mean using arguments without sources. 1.x, housing and the subs were a fact not something that players had come up because they felt it was that way, true that most criticism of housing could be better focused like asking the dev that since their goal for housing is actually harmful to their clients MAYBE they should reconsider it OR work harder to fix it and in that case we should get an idea on how they want to fix it, but I guess that's not very important since ppl don't ask those kind of questions and just mope around how shitty the system is

I am sure they could done more for SB, since it only repeated the issues in HW, most likely why outside media was nailing on them at that point.. past that I really do not get the point of your post, they could done more sooner (before outside media started to nail them) if they really took in feedback here and that function they have in the game.

[Remedi]

So, two things.

(1) The only difference between raising hell and conspiracy theories is the accuracy of the complaint, really. Which again comes around to the problem of SE's lack of communication: we don't have any real idea of the facts surrounding any given response by the development team. Housing is a great example here; you bring up the notion that perhaps both sides were heard. Well, you're right - maybe they were. But nothing SE has done clarifies this for the players. Going off the evidence we have - which is correlative at best - there's at least a 50/50 chance they only paid attention because it became a PR nightmare away from the forums.

Don't you think it would have been nice for SE to shed some light on this decision? A simple statement - a short apology, thanks given for the feedback of players across venues (3rd-party media, the Official Forums, etc.), and a commitment to react more proactively in the future - would have done an immense amount of good. But no such statement exists, at least to my knowledge. There was simply a Live Letter response about new Wards being added. So the community was left in the dark, completely unable to determine whether or not there was a conspiracy afoot, or whether SE just decided to listen for once.

(2) Your posts have seemed to lament the negative nature of the community. May I ask why you believe this to be a productive discussion to have? It feels as if you think the community should make an effort to police itself and put on its 'nice' hat in order to coax SE to the table in terms of community outreach. I question whether this is a realistic goal, and whether you believe it's reasonable for a company to maintain a clearly problematic policy just because people are being critical.

1) raising is hell is fine if done for achieving something and it requires specific demands, saying that the company won't change ever frankly serves nothing really, because MAYBE they'll change in some way but they'll lack focus input from us.

2) What's wrong with the community policing itself? My concern is that negaitive posts will simply bury feedbacks and demands in obscurity since misery loves company ppl really like to come together to create echo chambers.
Since the goal of this thread is sound AKA getting the eng community team to be more active about us it should aim for that.
But if you think that's unreasonable then by all means.
In fact I see ppl only quoting my second post and not my first where I said what we should ask off them, because apparently I'm not negative enough and I'm ruffling some feathers by saying that it's pointless to brood in idle speculations.

Which leads me to wonder if ppl wants more informations really. I think that if we really want more communications we should really push for that and not beign derailed by anything else and since the goal of the thread seemed to me sound it pains to me that many feedbacks on the topics are becoming drown in idle speculations and tinfoil hat conspiracies.

[Alleo]

But the problem is that we are not a single unity but a huge bunch of individuals who are from different countries thus also different traditions and upbringings. Thus for some a post might sound really negative or aggressive while for the person itself its just the way they react to things. Putting on tin foil hats and pointing out how more communication or even surveys could still be bad also does not help a discussion (just saying). The same with going into topics and point out how negative a community is. If this has nothing about the topic itself (like a thread about the community) this only turns it into a off topic discussion or starts a flame war. I mean if I go into a topic where someone complains (with or without great feedback) about something and I just write how horrible this community is and that they will be never fine with that, I am not helping the topic at all. It does not give a point on how I truly see it, it can start arguments that are unnessary and it paints a whole community with too big of a brush. Maybe that person never complained before and suddenly is put with the part of the community that constantly complain for the sake of it. That is far from fair but is also done. We have the forum mods that should be enough to police this place and they do delete posts or topics if they are too bad. And if someone is truly just trolling or using personal insults we can point this out to the mods too. Other than that its not our job to police the place and it should not be that way. Because who decides what is still fine and what not?

I have been part of this forum for some time and honestly in my opinion the ones that often dont help a topic are those that attack the person behind a post or that cant accept negative feedback. I have seen enough great threads that had good feedback but you had a few individuals that took it way off topic by putting down the feedback as nothing but hate and rage. Yes there are posts that are nothing but hate with no feedback but there are also more than enough posts that started as a rage thread and turned into a interesting discussion with good points. And if someone says they hate x then this might not be the most valuable answer ever but its still an answer. SE might not get feedback on how to make it better but if for example you have someone posting that they hate something and get a huge amount of likes..they still know that there is maybe something wrong with it.

About this topic having speculations and stuff: If you want to post an argument you often need examples. Thus people are using old situations where the communication was bad as examples and I am not really sure how this takes a way from the topic itself. Honestly the ones that are off topic at least in this thread are the ones that took one example (Eureka) and tried to spin it into another such thread. Otherwise it did stay on topic enough and did show how SE kinda lacks in that part.

[Stormfur]

I'm just kind of sad that this thread has spanned 25 pages without any community team input. I wish they could just pop in and say something more than "we hear you and we're gathering your feedback". I wish they were more specific, like:

We're keeping a close eye on your feedback for Eureka: Anemos. Specifically, we're looking at X, Y, and Z. The dev team is looking at Y in particular and coming up with alternatives to (whatever).

That way, they aren't saying anything definitive, but are also telling us what feedback is getting relayed.