Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[Vhailor]

@Vhailor: You do have a point, even though I have a hard time believing that someone that plays games for fun or is a fan of something can truly be 100% objective. I am not saying that one cant see the faults of a system (like you pointed out with the exp ratio) and imo its probably easier with something like a movie but a game?

For example if you hate plattformers and yet you have to review one. Can one be truly objective in it? Isnt there always a part that will influence this? In the end I believe that fun alone is not good but still something that SE can use for future content.

I imagine reviewers have to do this all the time. I'm sure organizations like PC Gamer or IGN or whatever try to place people into their 'preferred' areas, but what if nobody on the staff particularly loves racing titles? They still have to review it, and their reputation will be dinged if they don't offer a reasonably objective analysis. I'll admit it's a lot to place on the shoulders of forum-goers, but this is why I think SE has to take action themselves. They're the ones working on FFXIV, the ones who will be tangibly impacted if the game begins to falter or fail. Their livelihoods are on the line: they arguably can't afford to take a simple-minded approach (are people saying it's fun or not upon release).

If someone posted that they found Eureka fun, then for us this is not really a deep look at it but SE can say that this person liked the way it was done. So if more people are of this opinion they know that their content works because people find everything as fun. If someone writes that they dont like the content itself but found it at least fun with friends, then SE can take from it that some people will do content that they dont like if they can do it with their friends. If someone writes that they did not find it fun because of x then SE might know that x might not be the way to go and can conclude what the people might like instead. All of this was founded on the feeling of fun with the input of why its fun or why its not.

I'm not so sure this is the case. The problem here is a lack of visible alternatives. SE would be making a massive assumption if they judged a 'this is fun' message as 'we did good, let's keep at it', which is something I feel they've done for quite some time now in XIV. To again use Eureka as an example, let's say someone tells SE 'yeah, this was fun.' Well, the next question would be, how fun? Are we talking a 6/10 review, 7/10? Is it an 11/10? Without knowing even that surface level of detail, the feedback almost has to be discarded entirely; it's useless from a development-guidance standpoint. So, yes, you're right that SE can view this as evidence of a job well done - but they really shouldn't.

About Eureka and its content: Well in a recent interview they said that they have forseen that people might react that way (Fate trains) and even just wait in town for a spawn, so can it be really objective broken if they have forseen it and are fine with that? I do agree though that bugs exists and those might count into buggy content.

I'd be interested in the source here, but I'd suggest that this actually worsens the situation. It means they're either lying to us to save face, or they actually outright ignored a strongly likely outcome from a balancing perspective in order to release content in a problematic state. I'd prefer ignorance to intent, speaking personally. I'd also hesitate to define 'broken' content as something SE didn't intend or foresee. I mean, Microsoft surely foresaw many of the downsides to imposing forced updates on Windows 10 users. That still doesn't excuse them from the myriad problems that arose from this process, particularly in the first couple of years of Windows 10's lifespan. Broken design is broken design: the intent and supporting design / development didn't match the outcome, in a way that proved problematic to a non-trivial population of end users. Foreseen or not, it's still a problem.

But yeah maybe we are talking about the same thing in a different way. In the end its important to ask if they take our feedback into mind and listen because we players are the most important part in this (without us they could not produce the game further) and for me it feels like they dont often listen that good. I mean otherwise I just question why we have something like Diadem 2.0 if they did..

I think we are. I think if we contrast what we have right now with what we had when 2.0 was being developed and just after release, we'll note there's less player feedback, less community outreach. During ARR's development and aftermath, Yoshi-P stressed the value of not developing in a bubble. By all appearances, he's no longer practicing what he preached. Oh, sure, he's still doing the 'Live' letters, he's still doing the media appearances, but they're all so carefully insulated and controlled, they aren't achieving the desired result.