Trying to understand the negative posts I keep seeing about the Dev Team

[SenorPatty]

If you also look back on some recent interviews, you can see how the devs are just not keen on player feedback. It's like they just look at metrics without actually understanding what those metric means. They ask for feedback but it feels like they're just looking for the simplest idea to implement and go "hey look guys, we listened, see?".

I can't comment on the lack of content, as a lot of people decide for themselves what is content and what isn't but I can say for certain that the formulaic content argument definitely holds water. Neglected content is another. Wheb Yoshida himself says GC needs a change up, you know it's neglected.

Also everything else Hyomin said is fairly spot on.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

If you also look back on some recent interviews, you can see how the devs are just not keen on player feedback. It's like they just look at metrics without actually understanding what those metric means. They ask for feedback but it feels like they're just looking for the simplest idea to implement and go "hey look guys, we listened, see?".

I can't comment on the lack of content, as a lot of people decide for themselves what is content and what isn't but I can say for certain that the formulaic content argument definitely holds water. Neglected content is another. Wheb Yoshida himself says GC needs a change up, you know it's neglected.

Also everything else Hyomin said is fairly spot on.

A prime example of this is the devs repeatedly doubling down on Pagos with cryptic responses: "Players just haven't found the efficient method yet!" If it's over a month and no one has figured out how your system works, perhaps it's not well thought out to begin with? Complexity for the sake of complexity isn't depth. Alas, this has become a more common response lately, which only infuriates already frustrated players.

As for lack of content. I am someone who does a little of virtually everything, PvP notwithstanding, and I simply run out of things to do before the first month ends. Of course, Eureka was intended to fill this gap but enough has been said about Pagos' issues to fill two novels. I cannot say whether it's the formulaic nature of things or the lack of content outright, however there just isn't enough to do anymore. With the relic held hostage, I am little need to run old content. Which only makes the drought feel worse. Now I do appreciate I am someone with a lot of spare time, thus I will always run into spurts where I've done everything. I have no qualms with that starting to happen say... 7-10 weeks into the patch. When it happens after two... there's a problem.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

I'm pretty much with @Stormfur, @Vidu and a little bit of what @Hyomin said on this one(can't quote due to character limit)

Yes there are a lot of valid complaints,but as I've learned through my interactions with other fanbases like say....Smash Bros(It's not an MMO but it's an example more fitting to what I wanna say)There are just as many inconstructive complaint as there are constructive criticism

The Eureka complaints I absolutely agree with.........but the alleged "lack of content" is a bit absurd(see competitive Smash players for example for such complaint)

Sure the pace of releasing content slowed down....but that's an eventuality for a game running for 6 years now(8 if you count 1.0) to slow down updates until a big patch or an expansion come by.Raiding isn't the end all be all "hardcore content" to enjoy and while not every quest in the game is a winner there is still so much to do and play through.

I'll criticize Square for their mistakes till the cows come home(and I've been doing so before I even started XIV this year)....but I wouldn't go as far as saying the XIV team is lazy

I'm gonna put the blame on the higher ups and management of Square as they seem to either not give the XIV team enough resources and staff.....or pull away resources from the game to keep other mediocre titles supported like FF15 and some of the mobile games(15 in particular has been pretty bad about this both before and after the end of its development)

I hope they start addressing the complaints asap cuz.....14(beside Octopath Traveler) is the only Square Enix game that I enjoyed since .....2008 probably as it's the only thing from this company I'm willing to support and I don't want them to ruin it

[Alleo]

Well we had flops like Diadem and gave huge amount of feedback in this forum. Then Diadem 2.0 happened..we still gave feedback and hoped for something better with Eureka..Only to have something which is often called Diadem 3.0. Things like that makes it feel like they dont really listen to our feedback and just do whatever they want even if most of the playerbase dont like it.

At the same time there is the feeling (if this is true or not remains to be seen) that they are listening more to their japanese fanbase and only do something if they complain enough. Even if that might not be true they are imo really bad at communication. We had threads about different problems that went on for ages with pages full of angry customers and either received no message at all or some way too late. Its also a bit bad to see some of the reactions from Yoshida in interviews. I find some of them to be a bit harsh on the playerbase. Also we had threads with questions that we could ask for liveletters but often they dont pick those with the most likes...

Also as an EU player I do kinda feel like a third-rate customer in this game. Be it with limited items, Chaos turning more and more into a meme because of it being so bad and more.

They also have the problem with turning this more and more into a cash cow, and on top of that they do lie to us (or turn on their words) especially when its about housing.

So I dont hate them or anything but I also not that happy about some of the work they do and kinda cringe a bit about the worship, especially for Yoshida. We should be respectful but also should be able to post about the flaws too.

[Lastelli]

For those players that started their adventure in eorzea during ARR, it's seriously starting to feel like the dev team is just out of ideas and is focusing more on how to make us spend more money on optional stuff while keeping us hooked with rng based rewards and artificially diluted progression systems than on creating fresh and entertaining content. SB is basically a carbon copy of HW at this point, content lacks creativity and ambition, with the possible exception of ultimate raids.

Finally, the bad habit of locking good stuff or desired items behind unsuccesful content just to force players to do it is getting out of hand. They may see some results in the short term, with higher participation in eureka, pvp or whatever, but in the long term this will probably just alienate players. Unfortunately, it's pretty obvious that ffxiv is not a priority for SE anymore.

They're also going too far with mogstation optional items, and they seem to not listen to feedback at all. I think many players just hoped that ffxiv would become a very important game for SE after arr success, but it's becoming more and more apparent that they just consider it a steady source of cash to be used to finance other projects that doesn't require additional attention.

[Edax]

Well we had flops like Diadem and gave huge amount of feedback in this forum. Then Diadem 2.0 happened..we still gave feedback and hoped for something better with Eureka..Only to have something which is often called Diadem 3.0. Things like that makes it feel like they dont really listen to our feedback and just do whatever they want even if most of the playerbase dont like it.

At the same time there is the feeling (if this is true or not remains to be seen) that they are listening more to their japanese fanbase and only do something if they complain enough. Even if that might not be true they are imo really bad at communication. We had threads about different problems that went on for ages with pages full of angry customers and either received no message at all or some way too late. Its also a bit bad to see some of the reactions from Yoshida in interviews. I find some of them to be a bit harsh on the playerbase. Also we had threads with questions that we could ask for liveletters but often they dont pick those with the most likes...

Also as an EU player I do kinda feel like a third-rate customer in this game. Be it with limited items, Chaos turning more and more into a meme because of it being so bad and more.

Something I've noticed when on the World of Warships forums. Wargaming is a Russian company, and us on the NA have to deal with the fact that problems on the NA server can get exacerbated because balance issues are made worse because the devs only listen mostly to the Russian feedback. This becomes a big problem when the RU server has a completely different playstyle then the NA server, and underperforming ships on our server end up getting nerfed because it was performing well only on the RU server.
So I can understand why SE listens mostly to the Japanese playerbase, it's where SE is from. However, the devs in World of Warships do a far better job at communicating with the community contributors, who make videos explaining the dev's intent and explaining the situation. And the forum moderators also pass along information from the devs to the players in response to the latest controversy or questions. The Devs themselves in Wargaming also make videos about development, so we understand just how many hours it goes into modeling just a single ship. Even if the players of World of Warships don't agree with the devs, they understand the situation. I'm just not getting that with FFXIV at all. It feels like there's an Iron Curtain between the NA players and the FFXIV devs.

[Deceptus]

- People not understand that certain adjustments take more time than they'd like to - while this isnt an excuse for ignoring certain jobs for a whole expansion, sometimes I'm getting the impression that people think everything should be magically fixed to their likings in two weeks and dont realise that system and the like need to be thought through - job balance, housing issues... they cant just "fix" either of that with a quickhotfix.

This would be believable if their "fix" for BLM and SAM wasn't a 3% total dps increase by adjusting potencies. That's just numbers.

[Vidu]

That is one complaint I think is valid as well but I don't blame this on the Dev Team I blame it more on the higher ups at SE not devoting adequate staffing/funds to FFXIV.

As I said - I do consider those complaints valid most of the time. Specially now with Stormblood and them cutting back on content for the mess that is Eureka.

However I'm struggling a bit to take them serious if they're coming from someone whos ignoring most of the content alltogether, aka a person who only has one job at level 70, hasnt set foot into any raid, hasnt gotten any primal-mount, no crafting/gathering classes, maybe not even finished one beast tribe... I could continue my list, but I wont because my point is not that you have to raid or farm ex-primals or craft/gather or do whatever if you dont like it. You dont even have to do that to have a right to voice your opinion that you'd like to see more of the content you enjoy. But I always take it with a grain of salt when I see people claiming "there is nothing to do" when infact they would have plenty of stuff to do or achieve, they just dont want to.
...or maybe I'm just jealous of them because I'm at the other end of the scale - did pretty much everything there is. And while I'd like to see more content aswell, I also realise that the devs will never be able to release so much content that it actually keeps everyone busy for the whole duration of a patch-cycle.

They could do better, for sure! And they defintely need more funding!
But at the same time I often feel like people overlook a lot of content they could do aswell.

But the overwhelming majority of stuff in the cash shop are things that were originally available in game

At least I'm under the impression that thats not the stuff that people are complaining about - a few weeks back we got the werewolf-set from last year in the cash shop and I dont recall any heated discussion about that on the forums. At best a "You can now buy this"-info-thread.
On the other hand, mogstation-exclusive items always lead to threads in which people are venting about the cash shop and how those items should be available ingame.
And to an extend I agree with ideas like "We need more stuff to spend achievment points on" or "submarines should be useful and bring back cooler items!" and so on.
But people dont seem to understand that the devs dont develop something like that whale and then pick the option "mogstation" out of a pool containing stuff like subs or achievment points, but rather "either this goes on the mogstation or its not gonna happen at all".

And they're also quick to overlook everything thats being added ingame - one new outfit on the mogstation? Suddenly it doesnt matter anymore that we got two new glamour-sets with the last patch, everything is now PayToWin and cash-only!
I'm not a fan of the mogstation - but I'm also pretty annoyed by people just complaining about it without proper reflection about the whole matter and treating it like the end of the world that you cant get Minfilias hair ingame...

[alimdia]

Just saw a comment on Reddit that I thought would fit this discussion, but it's full of expletives so I'm just gonna link it instead of pasting https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...zs3/?context=1

It's about how despite all the revenue from increased box sales in sb, increased subs and increased mog station income none of it is being invested in infrastructure, and we keep getting the same excuses.

[Stormfur]

I do feel like they pay more attention to the JP fan-base -- but I can understand it because that's where they're from and that's their culture. It's familiar and it's easily understood. I've even went so far as to have things professionally translated to post there because they matter to me -- as does the game as a whole and the people I've met within it.

I feel like the community team seems to do a pretty good job of relaying things to the devs, but I wish they had the ability to communicate more with us in regards to upcoming changes. They're getting better about that (for example, they posted in the PVP forum about why certain healing changes were made mid-season and it was totally understandable, if not sudden).

We haven't gotten anything like that with Eureka. And that worries me.