Does the forums need a rework?

[Shougun]

There's frequent mention of Reddit in the liveletters, the feedback there, posts, etc.. We seldom hear about the official forums. Some forums have been making amazing feedback threads that cover a lot of ground when it comes to what people would like to see within some features. Some, decently easy fixes. Sadly, over the years, when those features do get changes they aren't only out of line with what had been posted/desired, but the complete opposite at times. Which really imprints the feeling of not being heard.

It's a bit of a running joke that you come to the forums to vent, not to be heard by the devs. Especially if you hang out in the healer forums and have been getting SE's cold shoulder for the past 4 years.

I hear your feeling on it but I don't think it has to mean they functionally acknowledge reddit more when making decisions, at least in comparison to the forums. Functionally being more than literally just saying the word, like how most often questions are made by our community and sometimes reddit gets some. As for hearing but not doing thing of course, if they hear you doesn't mean they have to do it lol. During the 2.0 beta era they had announced what they will do to blue mage (well shower thought about it), and I was like please god no. Guess what happened lol. Please god no happened XD. Hated it then and still hate it now (hate being that first world spoiled child hate, more like dislike but dislike doesn't offer me enough satisfaction to say how truly annoyed I am by the design of it haha).

If what they said long ago is true still they spend a lot of time gathering feedback from all the forums and reading them / giving them to the proper departments. This was said in a question I asked actually lol. Way way back when. Just because they don't high-five people doesn't mean they're not doing it, but I can see how the silence feels like they're not even listening. I mean not too long ago they had to hire another CM with translation skills, if they didn't care they'd have just our Titan holding it all up lol but they gave titan a team .

Perhaps something they might consider trying is a bit like what they do with bots and RMT reports ("x actions taken, x banned"). Perhaps posted by one of the CMs, is like "this month we translated X threads/posts/words" whatever metric coveys action but also makes them comfortable to share. Assuming they already organize their information on what they've translated / not, it might not be too annoying to put that info together. May also give Yoshida feedback to mention their community occasionally to bring that vibe. I imagine he says reddit as any other feedback would probably be assumed to be coming from us so there is no reason to have to say it's from us as that would be obvious (us being all the forums).

It is technically possible they don't listen at all and just listen to reddit but I find the evidence lacking in that they've not done what some healers want in the forums, or that a few times in a live stream they said the word "reddit". Such that it doesn't mean they are ignoring their own forums and especially in the context that they have said in the past that they spend a lot of time dealing with their forum feedback.

And counter to that I could list a few suggestions that feel awkwardly on the nose to be coincidence- in terms of things suggested / desired for that have then showed up in game later (that or I'm Nostradamus with too many posts and have guessed quite a few features at this point). Part of the issue in general, beyond some of the silence, is that these things take time, especially since you have to imagine they've a plan already laid out, so it's not like they're thinking "what to add in tomorrow's patch guys? seriously we have to put something out" lol. They already have a bunch of stuff they're going to do, so many ideas and desires will be put on the back burner and put into the queue.

So not knocking your feeling of silence and not being listened to, just saying that doesn't mean that you must actually be ignored or that by mentioning a particular website that they've bias against their own community.

[Jandor]

As it stands now, the NA forums have devolved into “The Complaint Department” and the only official posts you see are broadcasts that go out to everybody.

Bit pedantic, but these are the english language forums not the NA forums. There are forums for all the supported languages.

[StriderShinryu]

More dev communication would be nice. It doesn't need to be full back and forth, but at least some level of communication from the top down.

And, it shouldn't even need to be said, certain users getting a perma-ban so they don't keep showing up under different names.

As others have said, though, a lot of the issues are sort of built around the fact that forums themselves are becoming extinct. I doubt we'll see the forums get any real work when other forum adjacent information delivery systems are just preferred.

[linayar]

There can and should be some rework in terms of how the forum works.

But, I will say this much: I like the forum as a traditional forum with loading being static and every post is seen (unless you block a user). I don't want Reddit style where people can make other people's posts be hidden or where the website itself chooses to hide posts and you have to "dig in" to see every posts.

Also, back to forum, what I do not want to see is what Blizzard has chosen to do with the WoW forum. Please, please, please do not go in that direction (at least, not all the way*).

I like having clear distinctions between threads with new posts and threads without new posts and having to reload the page to refresh.
I like not having to deal with trust system to be able to post image.
I like not being notified constantly with new posts/replies and being able to choose when I want to see new posts.

* A couple of things I do like about the WoW forum:
Being able to quote right from someone's post and seeing a live preview of your post.
In terms of notification, I think it'd be a good thing to receive a notification if someone edits their post to add a quotation from you. With the current forum, unless I'm mistaken, I think that won't register as a new post, so the edit might be missed.

[EaMett]

snip

It's not a matter of what they functionally acknowledge. It's about the resounding lack of communication in regards to forum feedback. And I'm not talking about how a few players would say something and SE would do otherwise. I'm talking about an entire subsection of the forums asking for a slight change of gameplay for over 4 years and then getting slapped with a pretty big modification in the opposite direction. Or the constant addition of new features that are then left to collect dust as unfinished products. Regardless of whether the community has been voicing their desire for improvements. Instead we get more new shiny, unfinished features.

Is there perhaps some logic behind their decisions? Do our expectations not meet some criteria? Maybe, but How would we know when SE never address us. It's even more frustrating from the fact that SE hasn't traditionally been bad at communicating with it's player base.

[Shougun]

It's not a matter of what they functionally acknowledge. It's about the resounding lack of communication in regards to forum feedback. And I'm not talking about how a few players would say something and SE would do otherwise. I'm talking about an entire subsection of the forums asking for a slight change of gameplay for over 4 years and then getting slapped with a pretty big modification in the opposite direction. Or the constant addition of new features that are then left to collect dust as unfinished products. Regardless of whether the community has been voicing their desire for improvements. Instead we get more new shiny, unfinished features.

Is there perhaps some logic behind their decisions? Do our expectations not meet some criteria? Maybe, but How would we know when SE never address us. It's even more frustrating from the fact that SE hasn't traditionally been bad at communicating with it's player base.

I can definitely hear your feeling, mostly I was responding to the part of reddit and it being evidence they're unaware or have a bias against us. That feeling that they're in the shadows, perhaps listening to some other person you've never heard speak before, such like that- sure okay lol. Of course they've multiple forums so the shadows can easily just be someone speaking in another language within the very same community .

Just wanted to say putting a website's name in a few live letters doesn't mean they're no longer listening to their forum or even other websites, I mean I remember reading a decent amount of "oh noe" on reddit as well about the healer combat simplifications.

Not a disagreement on anything other than that I think there is evidence they have listened to us before, here, and that they don't have a particular bias "well if blue gartr says it then we have to do it!" lol. Even exampled my own, as part of like three other blue mage fans at the time years and years ago, that heard they wanted to turn blue mage into a side content and not make it a real job because they didn't think they could (early beta 2.0 era) and three of us going "what.. seriously, no- you can make it a real job". Clearly they wanted to do what they did anyways. Still think it was a mistake and that if it was the style of content they could have done better with magitek mechs like a xenogear sort of content, and if it was just the role play of being blue then they could have done that and still have kept it 'normal' as well on an aside note they can and (I hope should/will) improve the role play of other jobs too.

So yeh no yeh? lol

I feel they have listened (on occasion at least), I've seen too many examples that not one of them was at least feedback listened to and implemented (some could have just been chance/circumstance), but I do agree they're very quiet and don't really interact too much beyond their streams (they do have community streams lol). I've thought about joining those but they tend to be during times that don't work for me, which isn't their fault since my schedule is so random. All of that is to say why I, at least in this thread, I tried to suggest some mild ways they might improve that without going from 0 communication to penpals (seeing as an extreme change might be unlikely and awkward for everyone to 'want' to try). I imagine they were burned pretty hard, or perhaps just burned out, and it seems like they respond less on all the forums in comparison to long ago (at least when I randomly check the Japanese forum it seems to be less there too, it used to be very frequent).

[ItMe]

I just realized how hard it can be to post an image on mobile.
That's something I'd hope could be adjusted.

[HeulGDarian]

No amount of rework will save any kind of forum. The biggest virtue of the internet is freedom of speech, accessibility, anonymity. This means anyone can put a statement, regardless of the quality and viability of said statement, and said statement will find some traction regardless.
You cant do anything about that without destroying the internet in the process. The solution this forum has is to censor words by banning people, do you think this has done anything to alleviate situations where individuals reach the breaking point? No it hasnt.

To put a direct comparison to the salt mines game. Do you think a guy in League who keeps swearing, blames others for his mistakes is any different than a guy in here who goes dont tell me how to play regardless of the pleas of 3 or 7 other people?
Both just dont give an ounce of deep frying shit about their team. All that the strict ToS has done is give them a leeway to scream harassment whenever they want to whoever they want.
In Fact im gonna go ahead and say this community is more prejudged towards mentors and raiders than League of legends is racist to each other.

[GenericMagus]

No amount of rework will save any kind of forum. The biggest virtue of the internet is freedom of speech, accessibility, anonymity. This means anyone can put a statement, regardless of the quality and viability of said statement, and said statement will find some traction regardless.
You cant do anything about that without destroying the internet in the process. The solution this forum has is to censor words by banning people, do you think this has done anything to alleviate situations where individuals reach the breaking point? No it hasnt.

To put a direct comparison to the salt mines game. Do you think a guy in League who keeps swearing, blames others for his mistakes is any different than a guy in here who goes dont tell me how to play regardless of the pleas of 3 or 7 other people?
Both just dont give an ounce of deep frying shit about their team. All that the strict ToS has done is give them a leeway to scream harassment whenever they want to whoever they want.
In Fact im gonna go ahead and say this community is more prejudged towards mentors and raiders than League of legends is racist to each other.

Previously back in the early days of the forums, the mods would just perma ban any person that is deemed to break ToS even if the smallest infracture, or worse, get banned for quoting someone else who did break and while they are banned, the original perpetrator gets off free.

None of those accounts have been repealed and yes while there is still toxic individuals in this platform. The constant cycle of those bans though affected innocent people and thus by taking the people who can bring more different topics, those very same topics get repeated instead without much discourse, thus making the pool really shallow but seem more active.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...fficial-Forums

[GenericMagus]

It's sad to see those forums die and more and more people give up on them and go to General just because it has the most people in it.

Even Dungeons just seems to have went under as well, despite being the main content of this game as well.