Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[polyphonica]

How can something appeal to that wide range of people, and still find time for the community manager to sit there for 10 minutes, explaining the changes, showing that he understands what people want and complain about (esp on the remark on the eagle cannon to golems) When you see someone talk in that way, it really shows they listen to people.

Honestly, part of this is just cultural and due to the language barrier. A lot of the long explanations that are provided (for example, during Patch Note readings, in interviews, staff server visits, and the like) are in Japanese and not officially translated. Sometimes when they are officially translated (like Live Letters), they'll summarize a 5-minute explanation and try to "cover the main points" so most of the nuance and detail is lost. And then there are times when the translation ends up missing or slightly misinterpreting the original point (due to lacking technical background or whatever), or a fan translation makes a mistake but sticks in everyone's mind. I'm not trying to say this is a "valid excuse" for the miscommunications that occur; Square Enix is a big company and they need to figure it out. But, it's definitely a factor that creates a larger perceived barrier among English players when they compare to English developers.

[BreyVoreas93]

I would have to agree they are out of touch. Ive played since beta and honestly I am tiring of the same formula each patch. They are afraid to take risks on content, it’s a bit ridiculous that we have to wait 1-2 months after a patch (4.3) to get Heaven in High and the Eureka Pagos...The communication is never very good either, how bout a road map for content? What happened to blitz all? What happened to Ishgard housing?? At this rate I can’t inagine people will wait around doing the same things in the game hoping for something else...guess we will see.

[Marxam]

I would have to agree they are out of touch. Ive played since beta and honestly I am tiring of the same formula each patch. They are afraid to take risks on content, it’s a bit ridiculous that we have to wait 1-2 months after a patch (4.3) to get Heaven in High and the Eureka Pagos...The communication is never very good either, how bout a road map for content? What happened to blitz all? What happened to Ishgard housing?? At this rate I can’t inagine people will wait around doing the same things in the game hoping for something else...guess we will see.

Well they went from designing an engaging game to a watered-down theme park. I refuse to believe that Yoshi P or really any legacy game developer is out of touch but rather they are fully aware of their situation and as a business create products to entice excessive purchases from players. Things like dyes, exclusive mounts, retainers, etc. are only a few examples. I've been playing since 2.0 beta and what sold me on the game at the time was that it was fun engaging and I felt like progress actually mattered. Things like Coil or relics and just the general difficulty of the game in the vanilla form was exciting. I remember having to stop outside of demon wall just to formulate a plan of attack. That sense of teamwork is non-existent outside of savage raids which makes this game feel so empty now. No sense of achievement because there was no adversity to overcome and that's what killed it for me.

However I'm already sobering up to the fact that I feel like SE is set on turning FFXIV from a cash cow to a cash farm and any semblance of player experience is almost out the door. It's far more obvious now with patches feeling more and more empty, content spaced out even farther within patches, and adding a dye option to gear introduced in a previous patch which should have been done in the first place. The latter is what irks me the most since adding the ability to dye is now considered mandatory among the playerbase given how huge glamours are. I'm always pissed to get a sweet looking gear only to find out it can't be dyed but a few patches later it can be.

I digress, but I personally don't think that the FFXIV team is out of touch but rather are fully aware of what they are doing and we are all just addicted to it. Once my 3 months are up (which I sorely regret buying) I will have to seriously consider what to do with this game I used to enjoy playing.

[Remedi]

Though it's worth noticing that 2.0 release was something that would've been panned by players and citics were it any other game, half of 2.1 content was content that was supposed to come with release and that was pushed back for several reasons.

I wouldn't consider the release of 2.0 enticing or very fun tbh, if it wasn't for wow having that nice idea of wod I might've stopped playing ffxiv

[Maero]

It is pretty clear that perhaps some of the staff should be moved on something else and have new people with fresh ideas brought to the table.
From fetch quests to tying in content to fates just as a few examples. The Monster Hunter World Cross Over seems like it will be fun but all other non FF related cross over events, please no more. lol

[Remedi]

It is pretty clear that perhaps some of the staff should be moved on something else and have new people with fresh ideas brought to the table.
From fetch quests to tying in content to fates just as a few examples. The Monster Hunter World Cross Over seems like it will be fun but all other non FF related cross over events, please no more. lol

Maybe you mean main devs as the staff has already quite a bunch of ppl rotating according to the list of new ppl in the credits of SB (and even between 3.0 to 3.3)

[Remyogic]

It's not that the developers are out of touch...........

It's that the FFXIV community has successfully relegated itself to the status of "mostly white noise".

Seriously, look through the history of these forums, the one thing the community has proven to the Devs throughout 2.x, 3.x, and 4.x is that it doesn't matter what they do, we are going to find someway to complain about it.

[Hamada]

Honestly, part of this is just cultural and due to the language barrier. A lot of the long explanations that are provided (for example, during Patch Note readings, in interviews, staff server visits, and the like) are in Japanese and not officially translated. Sometimes when they are officially translated (like Live Letters), they'll summarize a 5-minute explanation and try to "cover the main points" so most of the nuance and detail is lost. And then there are times when the translation ends up missing or slightly misinterpreting the original point (due to lacking technical background or whatever), or a fan translation makes a mistake but sticks in everyone's mind. I'm not trying to say this is a "valid excuse" for the miscommunications that occur; Square Enix is a big company and they need to figure it out. But, it's definitely a factor that creates a larger perceived barrier among English players when they compare to English developers.

You are right it is not a valid excuse and here to simply explain why that happens. As you said they need figure out a solution, and for them to do so, we need to point out it is a problem.

[Stormfur]

the one thing the community has proven to the Devs throughout 2.x, 3.x, and 4.x is that it doesn't matter what they do, we are going to find someway to complain about it.

If I were a developer on the team, I might want to stay as far away from the forums as possible, because everything I'd create would be bashed and trashed I hope that they know that the forums are a small (albeit mightily vocal) part of the fanbase, and often when you truly love some part of the game, you say nothing because you're so immersed in it.

I do wish they'd swing by the PVP forum more often though...

[Adelaide3]

It's not that they are out of touch, it's that they found a way to turn a profit out of this game by creating the same exact type of content over and over again since the release.

The framework is there and set in stone, all they have to do is plug in that new dungeon, a 24 person raid or whatever is supposed to be released that patch cycle. It's all just boss fights aswell and they all look like they didn't take long to create either.

They have content planned out for next two years and they're able to do that because they are going to give us the same framework that we have always been given.