Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[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.