Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[Aerlana]

his facepalms were glorious.

And all prepared.
He doesnt choose directly the question, but he says to people doing it what kind of question... He just have to say "stop taking all time the same, even if they are the most popular" to have different one... And miracle, they will choose other questions!

If they take all time the same, it is because they are allow to(or more... they have to)

The questions chosen are generally those with most upvote... Simply... just change the way they chose (with "most upvote but we dont already answered in the 12 previous month" for exemple) and finally... we will have some interesting live letters...

[Aerlana]

I think Q&A's would be more productive for all parties if other questions would be asked other than the usual.

There is many questions each time, and some quite... problematic for Yoshida.

But, all questions are choose before the Q&A... the matter is when they have to select which question. They go on those because easy answer, that will disappoint just part of people, and no matter. but other big questions...

SE is smart. SE choose the question they want to answer... lets see the male bunny outfit, we had 3-4 time an answer, saying "will come, they are working on blablabla" to finally have nothing more that what we already had for ladies... But the time to answer this question, is a time not alowed to more serious questions...

[Ameela]

"We can't add more options to the character creator because displaying so many characters would get harder if there's too many differences between them"

*proceeds to add new hairstyles every patch*

[cicatriz313]

It looked like they just chose the most upvoted comments. So if it's anyone's fault it's anyone who upvoted questions that had been asked before.

[Squintina]

It looked like they just chose the most upvoted comments. So if it's anyone's fault it's anyone who upvoted questions that had been asked before.

That is not accurate.

I know at least one question (one of mine that was chosen) had 22 upvotes - whereas another one of my questions (that wasn't chosen) had 38 upvotes. There were a variety of questions from other players that I would have liked to see answered but weren't picked that had 24-40 upvotes. For example, literally the second question had 29 upvotes and it was about healer job balance - why wasn't that chosen over my 22 upvoted one? Or the 32-upvoted one about whether the "6 months to overhaul DRK" would mean there was a chance that it might be in 4.4"?

And the "replay story instances" question? That one had 30 upvotes. Once again, there were other questions upvoted higher than that one too.

So no, it's not a pure "these are the top questions".

They also didn't give a topic. Usually for the Q&A, the first post will say a topic. This time it was literally "Ask your most burning questions" - a free for all.

Besides, they should be picking questions they want to answer, not just questions that have high upvotes, because most people do not read past the first 5-10 pages and the last page (at any given time). Which means people who aren't among the first one are at a disadvantage when it comes to having their questions picked even if they were good.

There is one thing you're sort of right about, but I'll spin it in a different way, about the community's upvotes.
Rather than blaming that those are the highest rated I'll point this out: The highest rated question had 106 upvotes. There are thousands of players, yet this is the highest upvote. (And it wasn't chosen. Admittedly it was about the greed in alliance, but that would have been such an easy answer "We just put Need back in so please enjoy". ).

That we don't get more people willing to upvote questions they approve of...well..I think anyone who hated the questions picked should ask themselves: did I go through even 10 pages worth and upvoted the ones I liked and submitted what I thought should have been asked? Anyone who didn't participate in the process has NO right to complain.

[Rofel]

Yes, they are.

This more or less summed up the QA.

Thanks, made me spit my coffee!

[cicatriz313]

That is what I was trying to get across, that people are complaining about the questions asked when they asked the questions that were popular. Not all of the questions that were popular, but the questions asked were more highly upvoted than the average. So it's less about what the developers or the community team is doing wrong and more about the questions we are putting forth to them.

[Squintina]

That is what I was trying to get across, that people are complaining about the questions asked when they asked the questions that were popular. Not all of the questions that were popular, but the questions asked were more highly upvoted than the average. So it's less about what the developers or the community team is doing wrong and more about the questions we are putting forth to them.

And I'm specifying that it's not the questions themselves, as there were plenty of good questions provided, but about people not bothering to upvote.

And it's also about SE filtering based on what they want to answer.

[Fawkes]

People who complain about the type of questions asked usually seem to think a good question would be something like "what are the next new jobs going to be" that would never get answered randomly on a live letter.

[Stormfur]

I wish we could get a Community Manager in here to shed some light on how questions are chosen. If anything, that would help give us, the community/players, some guidance as to what to ask and how to phrase it so that the likelihood of it being asked would be higher.

I mean, yeah, they said "ask your burning questions" rather than around a certain topic, so it was pretty much a free-for-all. But I wish the community specialists would step in and say something like:

"Hey, we know X is important to you and we've noted that you've asked about it often. We're currently working on changes to X in the coming months, so please stay tuned as we'll have more information to share then."

Or even if it's not about 'kicking the can down the road', they could say something like:

"We understand that Y is important to players and it's important to us, too. Although we currently have no plans to integrate Y, because of (reason), rest assured that we hear you, and due to the nature of game development itself, this may change in the future."

I mean, that at least gives us a semblance of a yes/no and that our feedback is valued instead of "crickets".

Granted, the community managers' hands are probably tied too because things can EASILY get lost in translation/taken out of context. For example --

I asked a question about Gold Saucer rewards being updated to have a new "big shiny" thing to aim for. Perhaps it wasn't asked because (as an example) they're working on updates to the saucer that won't be live for another 3 months, but it may take as long as 6 months.

If they had said "we're working on adding new rewards to the saucer, but it will be a few more months until they are live" all the community would hear is "blitzball is coming".

See what I mean?