Treading Dangerous Ground

[Gramul]

I think these forums are a fine sample of the overall community.

I wouldn't be against an official poll, however.

[KumaAkuma]

You know from that 4-option poll I really missed the option "Server merge? No thanks, not interested" You're right Darkstarpoet1, they should be more detailed & complete when asking questions and giving options. It shouldn't be like "Hmmm which option sucks the least since my option isn't there".

Same with having to pick between "major changes" and "no changes". There is always something people want changed so it's probably really tough to pick "no changes" (but that doesn't have to mean they want everything changed. It's not a carte blanche)

[darkstarpoet1]

You know from that 4-option poll I really missed the option "Server merge? No thanks, not interested" You're right Darkstarpoet1, they should be more detailed & complete when asking questions and giving options. It shouldn't be like "Hmmm which option sucks the least since my option isn't there".

Same with having to pick between "major changes" and "no changes". There is always something people want changed so it's probably really tough to pick "no changes" (but that doesn't have to mean they want everything changed. It's not a carte blanche)

that's what i was referring to. for examples in that first poll i did vote for drastic changes as well as most people.

i wanted:
more ways to level up(not only having leves as the only viable way to level)
fatigue done away(it was easy to have 6-7 classes fatigued every week)
market ward reforms(remember this is when we still had to walk the wards and check each individual retainer)
gathering changes(gathering then was super slow actions and on a successful gather at your level you got round 90 sp)
more content(back then we had nothing end game to work towards)
more mage weapons(the highest con or thm weapon was r44)
crafting changes(you still had to manually put each item in the box every synth)
constant game crash(no directx found)

there are some others i am sure i am forgetting, but you get my points. there's quite a few changes on that list and i consider alot of them game breaking with the original way the game was. i enjoyed the battle system the way it was, but i understand others hated it. there were no direct questions on the battle system, but people use the major percentage voted for change and there is no way to show what percentage of people actually wanted them other than the 24.2% of that poll that asked for battle changes. even of that 24.2% you don't even know what percentage of that wanted the extent of changes we got.

that's where vague questions can get very different results because there was no question of what percentage was happy with the battle system compared to the percentage that wanted change to it. even if the majority wanted changes that's still not broken down to what kind of changes they want. some may want the outdated turn based system, some may want a more action fps style system, some may have just wanted to have battle regimen fixed, and some wanted what we have now. those are completely different versions of a different system and the dev team has to guess what people wanted.

[KumaAkuma]

Yeah that sounds about right.

Offtopic: In general I think they really go overboard with changes (Like the battle system). A lot of things could have been solved just by doing some balancing / making some adjustments, instead they throw out the baby with the bathwater and restart from scratch. And still no fine-tuning! It's just one systems that's "meh" replaced by another system that's "meh" (with the added excuse "It's new. Give it some time."

[NefarioCall]

I'm under the impression of what some other intelligent forum goer mentioned before me;
If you're in favor of option 4, then you must have no friends in this game.

[SirOleas]

I'm under the impression of what some other intelligent forum goer mentioned before me;
If you're in favor of option 4, then you must have no friends in this game.

I think that's overly simplistic to think.
Some people were/are just fine with option 4 period. They are confident they can move to a new server with their friends, or in the case that they don't have friends, it's a fresh start for them. But the downfalls to option 4 are very obvious once one puts aside how they feel and thinks about the entire picture.

For example: I am fine with option 4 because it presents me the option to move with my LS, which are the only important people to me on the game currently. However, it cannot be ignored that other players have many linkshells, some of which are very large making option 4 a nightmare. Option 2 throws a bone to those players, keeping parts of option 4 throws a bone to players in a more simple situation.

It's not about having no friends, or having a ton of them. It's about looking at the entire picture, not just your specific situation.

Let's get past the rather insulting assumption that everyone who likes option 4 is a complete loner/crazy/human hating player.

Lol

[Biggs]

I'm under the impression of what some other intelligent forum goer mentioned before me;
If you're in favor of option 4, then you must have no friends in this game.

Your forgetting those of us that occupy super low population servers (like mine) that would gladly take ANY of those 4 options over what we have now. Not to mention, how hard is it to say, "hey friends of mine, I am moving to server 6."? Thats pretty much what I said to the friends I play with on this as well as those taking a break, and with the exception of a few of them, each of them were just fine with that. If they don't want to move with you, then they won't be missed for very long. Thats besides the point though, this room shouldnt decend into a debate over which server merging option is the best. There is already 50 or more of those up and running.

[Northman]

I think Japanese players are a big majority and in this case they really got angry cause they are very social. Many of them wrote even first time to forums. So I think this was the reason to change. But it is true that more polls are needed and players sd be listened more. And simple reason is that in this game we all have been all time beta testers. And we are today. The forum posts are very valuable to the devs if they only would use their round organs near nose.

[syntaxlies]

Greatings Forum readers and devs! While I am aware that there are more than SEVERAL posts right now that deal with the current World Merger, I would like to start by saying that, while I will site that as an example, the purpose of this post is to discuss the use of these forums as a means to change the game as a whole, and why I believe that to be a mistake.

After posting the direction Yoshi had chosen to do the world merger, the forums lit up with people flaming the way it was to be done. Every individual that plays this game and pays a fee is TOTALLY entitled to their opinion, and no one should be able to say otherwise. That being said, I was very dismayed to see that the very next day, Yoshi made a post that hinted at flip flopping on using option 4 because it "appeared" that most people liked option 2. I am more than willing to acknowledge that a majority really would like option 2, however, using these forums as the SOLE basis to make a decision like that sets a very dangerous precedent. These forums and the people on them represent a VERY small percentage of the actual player base. So essentially, according to the statements made in his post, Yoshi will be using 5% (a fictional number since I actually don't have any numbers to go off of) of the player base to make a decision that effects the OTHER 95% percent of us.

I feel that the fair way to make large decisions that effect the entire community as whole when asking for input is to use the player polls they have used in the past, and only those polls. These polls don't require you to be a member of any particular guild or forum, the only requirement is that you are a paying customer of their product. The polls have you check from a selection of options that COMPLETELY take emotion out of the equation. While I know that the dev team hopes to conduct a merge by march, and that, regardless of anything we say, they may be moving forward with that, I can only hope that in the future, when making decisions that affect the entire community, they use a fair and neutral tool to do so. It was my understanding that the direction the game is heading now is a direct reflection of the polls that have already been taken, and I can only hope that they will continue to shape the game in this method. While I certainly agree that these forums are a great tool to recieve and answer questions and concerns of the community, they should never be used to make large scale decisions that affect a much larger portion of the player base.

I would like to take the time to thank anyone that has read this lengthy post, and once again, I would like to thank the dev team for putting all of their heart and soul into making this the game we all want it to be. (Especially since it seems to be effecting some of their health in a very negative matter. That, more than anything, shows me how hard they must be working to turn this game around.)

Thanks again,
Biggs

Edit- The post I am citing by Yoshi P can be found on page 16 of this thread:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...004#post549004

hmm, im not sure if listening to the negative outcry of the community and coming up with a plan that benefits everyone would be considered dangerous ground. In fact id say coming up with a have ass plan and telling the community to deal with it might be more dangerous.

[Forte]

Totally Off topic: Hey Biggs After the Dev figure out what there doing to appease EVERYONE (lol) what server are you going to go to if you pick and if not and they change to 2 merging into one mind if me and turt move to yours or you at us would be nice to have people we know

On topic: I can see how the forums would be bad and a good thing. I can see them being a good means to judge an idea or a concept (kind of like a verbal test server). The only thing is the forums are only a limited view of players so shouldn't be consulted 100% and if so they need to add in game polls to make it so everyone has a voice for fairness. Other then the lack of fairness it seems nice to actually have a voice in the making of a game you play.

Now for the down side I dont want the creativeness of the Dev's to be limited to are unwilling to try new things or ideas just because its hard to do or understand. It is there game not ours they should have final and total say and if people are to busy arguing of something it binds up the Devs on one issue instead of moving on to other issues we want or they want too fix.

All in all I want them to take are opinions and listen to them and mold a game we can enjoy but dont listen to every loud mouth forum troll that wants this or that changed just because they dont like it or cant get use to how it works.