We need a community rep that interacts with the community

[AppleJinx]

I think it's just a bunch of extra work that amounts to nothing. Most of the popular opinions from forums had been said for years now and they are not that great and can't be fixed in a short time.

[Connor]

I haven’t read through the whole thread, but I don’t think is a bad idea. Obviously it’s impossible for a community rep to answer every single query posted on the forums, but I don’t think anyone is expecting that lol.

That said, I do think it’d be worth community reps at least posting to say that they acknowledge issues with topics that keep cropping up. Even if it’s just something like ‘we acknowledge players are having issues with x and will forward the concerns to [whoever]. I think something like that would go a long way to assuage people’s concerns.

[Hazama999]

I do feel a certain lack of connection with the SE devs that work on XIV. I just don't think they're the kind of developer that would want to have more open communication with the playerbase, to be honest.

This topic made me think of Bungie. I've been playing Destiny since launch, and I'm neck-deep in its community. I follow a bunch of devs on Twitter and I get this feeling like they're more... personable? I'm not sure that's the right word for it, but it's the idea that X or Y developer isn't just a developer, but also just a regular guy or girl who sometimes tweets about playing games with their children or having trouble with their car, or the weather, or some such mundane stuff a bunch of people can relate to. You get the sense that they've got lives going on. This makes them feel more reachable such that if you were to tweet at them, it wouldn't be entirely surprising for them to reply to you. Couple this with the fact that that game has a weekly news article in which the devs chime in every now and then with their thoughts on community reaction to W or Z event/update.

I'll be honest, I kinda wish SE was like that, but I understand it's not in them be so. Language barrier aside, it strikes me as the kind of thing that's deeply ingrained in the company's philosophy. People engage with them at fanfest and events such as those, but there's still that feeling of them putting a wall between the playerbase and themselves. Also, to be clear, I'm not saying SE should be like Bungie in this regard, I'm just saying I kinda wish they were, but I understand why they aren't and how it might not be in their best interest.

Just this tired lala's two gil.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

The bungie devs are native English speakers, of course they interact more with the English speaking players.

[Kallera]

Players want to know that their concerns are coming in and not just getting brushed under the rug. Especially in light of some of the BLU threads being moved or removed, despite it being just released.

[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.

[kikix12]

No, it won't. Moving BLU threads in the DPS discussion is not going to make the threads go away until the frustration over this starts to die out.

Yep, banning of the people making those threads in General would stop them from popping up...in general anyway.

The point here is that general discussion is NOT for everything under the sun. The reason why all the other places are abandoned and dead is because everyone posts everything in general, whether or not it have a spot it should go to. Talks about Blue does have their place in DPS section. It's as simple as that. By posting them here, in general discussion, the person KNOWINGLY breaks forum rules.

So...ask yourself. Do you want them to actually be more practically active?! Because I can tell you now...if you'll get your wish and they'll be forced to actually enforce forum rules to contain the results...you'll only learn how fast people can get banned on the forums. And this time...for a good reason.

The other problem is that it almost feels as if the mods are trying to silence the negativity. Which just causes more frustration for players.

Maybe the players should learn more about forums. General discussion in every single forum I have ever come across is for the topics that do not match any other sub-forum.

And to quote from a sticky post:

The purpose of this forum is for players to hold discussions on DPS roles and its tactics with other players.

DPS roles forum is most certainly the place to talk about Blue Mage now that it have released. Before it was fine in here because...well...it was all speculations and "what if's". Hence why stuff was not moved back then as far as I know.

What is reasonable in general discussion is the Limited Job discussion. One could argue it being fit for the "Other Battle Systems"...but it's a different version of a job system. Not exactly a "battle" system. So it's more a "case by case" basis.

You thinking that moving threads to where they should have been in the first place is some sort of "stealth mission" to hide shows how absolutely horrid your understanding of forums structure is. Nothing more, nothing less.


Now, those flawed aspects of your post aside, I agree that Square Enix's side SHOULD have more "contact" with the community, but not on forums and not directly. More specifically, I do believe they should make regular news on what was brought under consideration in respect to "hot" topics among the community, what is currently being worked on (in general, not details) and some random trivia from the development/management of the game.

[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.

[Videra]

I mean yeah. That's kind of how it tends to go. NA/General western audience is ignored, and stuff changes if JP speaks. But JP doesn't usually speak, so.