We need a community rep that interacts with the community

[Hestzhyen]

I think there's a lot of anxiety around communication because of the language barrier, honestly. We don't know what gets passed on since it's super rare for a rep to pop in and say they are looking at a particular thread to gather feedback from. And there have been some cases where if a question IS passed on, the essence of it gets lost along the way somewhere. Best example off the top of my head is unlocking gear appearance across all jobs- somehow the answer always assumes people are asking about artifact gear despite how unanimous people are in excluding it from cross-role unlocks. Or all the fluff requests being picked for Q&As despite people asking good questions about future plans for gameplay, insight on design choices, and more lore for underserved clans.

It feels like feedback goes into a mystery box that has a high chance of misinterpreting or outright losing the request as it goes from us to... wherever it's supposed to go. I don't think a dedicated rep would solve that, they'd just be the fall guy for the crummy feedback system.

[Canadane]

I hear a lot of non-jp feedback is ignored and reps are just as annoyed as players, but they can’t express this due to the rather strict guidelines on representing SE as a company.

[Shougun]

I hear a lot of non-jp feedback is ignored and reps are just as annoyed as players, but they can’t express this due to the rather strict guidelines on representing SE as a company.

I worry about that sometimes, although I feel like I've seen on a number of occasions people's, and my own, feedback listened to as well. It's just possible that feedback happened to be their plan already or was similarly messaged from the Japanese side first though.

I feel it would be sad to ignore around half your user base due to language, although I understand making your company work cross a language is a special feat that tries everyone's patience on top of the stress that just having to deal with more people is. On the other hand . . . it's like half their audience, or more, either speaks English as a first or second language - I feel like if they did actively ignore something of that scale, just seems like a bad (or at least sad) choice lol. Although I'm not saying I think they ignore us (or not), just feel it would be sad if that was the case.

Would love to see more interaction from the Reps, but I'm certain such a task would cause more stress.

[JunseiKei]

I hear a lot of non-jp feedback is ignored and reps are just as annoyed as players, but they can’t express this due to the rather strict guidelines on representing SE as a company.

Where'd you hear that?

EDIT:

Aren't those questions intentionally hand-picked by them? Every Q&A thread I've seen had interesting questions that were ignored for the more superficial ones.

Not ones where players are given a mic and it seems interviews are not looked at beforehand, but given a guideline of what not to ask. Forum questions are hand-picked and I think part of which gets picked are based on the amounts of likes it generates. Otherwise, we've seen them use a bag to draw random questions written on cards from players.

~snip~

Trying to consolidate threads is not the same as silencing. Silencing would be outright removing or locking threads, not moving them to appropriate sections. I also doubt there is anything that they reps could say that wouldn't be met with... aggression... with at least some players, especially with discontentment still rather fresh. You can't curtail frustration when the player wants to hear their perspective is correct and they'll do something about it - they simply can't make that guarantee. At best, all they could say is, 'We'll talk with the dev team.' Then players get mad when they hear nothing more.

[Kallera]

Where'd you hear that?

EDIT:



Not ones where players are given a mic and it seems interviews are not looked at beforehand, but given a guideline of what not to ask. Forum questions are hand-picked and I think part of which gets picked are based on the amounts of likes it generates. Otherwise, we've seen them use a bag to draw random questions written on cards from players.



Trying to consolidate threads is not the same as silencing. Silencing would be outright removing or locking threads, not moving them to appropriate sections. I also doubt there is anything that they reps could say that wouldn't be met with... aggression... with at least some players, especially with discontentment still rather fresh. You can't curtail frustration when the player wants to hear their perspective is correct and they'll do something about it - they simply can't make that guarantee. At best, all they could say is, 'We'll talk with the dev team.' Then players get mad when they hear nothing more.

They have been removing threads. Counted at least 2 myself related to BLU, without even a word.

[Kurando]

They have been removing threads. Counted at least 2 myself related to BLU, without even a word.

And how many of these BLU threads get heated past being a respectable discussion or threads that end up going off topic. It's not just a BLU thing that threads occasionally disappear but there is usually a reason for it, and whatever is lost in that thread could of just been placed in a current thread to begin with. Players regularly duplicate things not reading the forum rules regardless of whether something is gaining a lot of attention or not.

[Kallera]

And how many of these BLU threads get heated past being a respectable discussion or threads that end up going off topic. It's not just a BLU thing that threads occasionally disappear but there is usually a reason for it, and whatever is lost in that thread could of just been placed in a current thread to begin with. Players regularly duplicate things not reading the forum rules regardless of whether something is gaining a lot of attention or not.

That's the thing, good reason or no, we don't get any explanation at ALL! It is the lack of communication that is the problem here.

[Kallera]

If your only goal is to silence people, then yes, deleting threads without any word sounds like a wonderful idea.


But that is not a goal a community should want to endorse. Take a look at the popular threads and Dev Tracker and ask yourself if those are really accurate representation of what people are talking about right now. Some of those 3 threads haven't even been posted this year, and the dev tracker looks even more out of place.

[kikix12]

If your only goal is to silence people, then yes, deleting threads without any word sounds like a wonderful idea.

Deleting threads is not done to silence people but to remove violations and flaming! That's what my entire post was about, so how did you get the idea of it saying that it's to silence valid concerns!

Deleting anything won't silence people. But it will make people reflect on what they wrote and 'just in case' post their complaints in a toned down manner, possibly in a different thread that ALREADY exists instead of making a new one.

But that is not a goal a community should want to endorse.

First and foremost the community should endorse actually paying attention when reading in each other. That'd remove majority of arguments right off the bat.

And without those stupid arguments based on someones inability or unwillingness to read correctly, communications from the developers and community managers would have much lower risk of backfiring, making them far more likely.

As for your talk about dev tracker and what not...just read my previous post. I won't waste time repeating myself.

People are going to vent however they need to, and deleting a thread is not the right way to go about it.

Like above, there is nothing wrong with complaints. But there's a difference between a 'constructive criticism' and 'senseless bashing'. Deleting a post is a localized countermeasure against localized drivel like that, deleting a thread is a nuke when the tread as a whole is the problem.

Just look at the forum. There are numerous criticizing threads. They're not removed because they manage to not cross the border. If a thread was deleted then it clearly means they were somehow different from the ones that were not removed, in a negative way.

It could be encouraged by the mods to keep all related criticism and concerns into a megathread - but that would require the mods actually communicate in the first place. And no, just having forum rules pinned somewhere is not adequate.

That's the problem. You think that you have the right to decide what's adequate and what's not because you think you somehow are some sort of oracle on what people should do with their property.

Forum rules being publicly available IS adequate. IT IS VERY MUCH ENOUGH! If you went to, say, Saudi Arabia and drunk alcohol in public, you have only yourself to blame if you end up being executed. It's YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to learn what is allowed on another persons property! Stop making excuses for lazy, inconsiderate, egoistical, self-centered people!

And in spite of what you and another poster said, advocating for reporting people just for stating their opinion on content in a manner that honestly is not offensive in nature is not the right way to go about handling things.

I didn't advocate any reporting. All I said was that moderators would need to be far less lenient and far more active in enforcing the existing rules if the community managers would actually interact with people on forums. And even then, stop taking things out of thin air. No one said anything about reporting people for opinions, sans you and possibly people that side with you.

And yes, I've grown rather irked here so I won't post beyond this on this thread. Suit yourselves.

[KaivaC]

That's the problem. You think that you have the right to decide what's adequate and what's not because you think you somehow are some sort of oracle on what people should do with their property.

Forum rules being publicly available IS adequate. IT IS VERY MUCH ENOUGH! If you went to, say, Saudi Arabia and drunk alcohol in public, you have only yourself to blame if you end up being executed. It's YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to learn what is allowed on another persons property! Stop making excuses for lazy, inconsiderate, egoistical, self-centered people!

So...I give my opinion on what I personally think could potentially work better and somehow you interpret that as being some kind of oracle? What? No, seriously, what? Oracle? Egotistical? What even are you on about? Gotta love this trend of bringing real-world country rules into a discussion about online forum policy. Chill with that noise. I give what is called an opinion - just like most everyone on the forums. Just because you disagree with it doesn't make someone "inconsiderate" or "self-centered". Smh.

I didn't advocate any reporting. All I said was that moderators would need to be far less lenient and far more active in enforcing the existing rules if the community managers would actually interact with people on forums. And even then, stop taking things out of thin air. No one said anything about reporting people for opinions, sans you and possibly people that side with you.

And yes, I've grown rather irked here so I won't post beyond this on this thread. Suit yourselves.

Reporting reporting for pointing out issues that have occurred in this expansion is rather petty. Seems like you want the mods to follow the rules to a T, and thus, that means that anybody who says something negative about anything regarding Square would be ban worthy. Seems kind of silly to enforce a policy on a global discussion forum where even small criticism is not allowed.