Does the forums need a rework?

[Kiurai]

Shocked the devs have never tried AMAs on reddit before just getting a translator to help, maybe someday

[Sauteed]

Some of the forum sections are just bleh. I've seen people go to housing thread and make a suggestion to get shouted down by the same 2-3 people then it devolves time after time into some kind of mud slinging competition and derails off into how much dirt someone can toss on someone from other threads. Basically stuff that needs to be nipped in the ass cheeks severely and swiftly deleted out of the thread to keep the conversations on track. As a slightly newer poster to the forums I lurked for awhile before signing up to use them. I also had problems just getting my forum account going, as every time I tried to log in it said I had insufficient permissions to basically log in. One day out of the blue I tried again and was able to finally log in. Might be why the forums seem devoid of new posters is they are having trouble getting signed up to use them in the first place.

Someone actually seemed to imply that I wanted a pvp suggestion I made to sound like turning the whole game into a gank fest which is what I expressly did not want, and explained how to go about keeping entirely separate instances of an area that pvp is possible in as opposed to just making the whole game a no holds barred pvp gankfest like they seem to think I suggested. So people bring their own incapability of reading to many threads as well. I can't blame moderators for feeling their time is wasted on NA forum. The toxicity and general lack of etiquette of any reasonable kind is very in yo face here in almost all areas of the forum for all to see. And if one account is actioned against, it's a quick contest to fill the void with the next abrasive person it seems. Who can be the next class clown, who can be the next mr. unpopular opinion guy, etc. Can you honestly blame them for giving up on the wasteland? I can't. Do they have an obligation to police their own forum a bit better? Sure. But it's their company, they gonna run this the way they want to regardless of what we feel they are obligated to do. What is our recourse? Call mom and dad and complain about it? Get on reddit or "the twitter" and call for boycotts of s.e. because someone's feelings got hurt? Go ahead. Send a letter to the BBB? Or just do like me and chuckle and try not to let what some one that probably hasn't brushed their teeth in 5 or more days bother you and just enjoy the game.

[EaMett]

I would like to see 1) more moderating. We have a local troll that, quite honestly, should've been dealt with quite a while ago. 2) more onboarding/acknowledgement from the devs of forum feedback.

The second point would appease a lot of people in the forums, healers especially. And would also bring more people to the forums.
Sadly the devs acknowledge reddit more than they do their own official forums. It's immensely frustrating.

[RTX3080]

I second more moderation. People don't seem to be reading forum guidelines these days.

[Hyperia]

I’d love to see the community managers participate more in the forums. When I was in WOW, seldom did a day pass that a Blue post was not made somewhere.

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.

It really feels like we have been abandoned here.

[GenericMagus]

I'm still questioning on the people banned from forums if it led to this case. Hate to use a meme but #BringSelliBack2020, important people on this platform that need to use but can't, thus also limiting the spectrum of conversation of which can take place, resulting in a lot of the same stuff repeated.

I'm also not saying what the forums need to be reworked to, but does it need a rework? FFXIV are infamous and it has a really bad reputation in the community especially with lack of engagement/ terrible moderation as well, would a calamity-esque nuke to the forums be an ample solution at this point?

[Limonia]

The forums seem really old. Not how they look, but the way they work. I don't really have a good comparison, but many years ago I was active in some forums and they usually were faster, had more options, and so on. This site just seems so ancient.

I like about forums like these how it has multiple discussion topics that don't become outdated after 1-2 days (like it's on reddit where you usually don't see FFXIV topics from a few days ago or so), so that you can discuss one topic over a long time span. It's more than just a chat where you just talk about some very recent stuff. It stays for longer. So I don't think they are obsolete. They just nneed a slight improvement.

[Shalan]

Shocked the devs have never tried AMAs on reddit before just getting a translator to help, maybe someday

I'm not shocked in the slightest, honestly. While an AMA can be a good way to gain some interest in a project or topic it's also an amazing to shoot yourself in the foot. And you can't just have a translator, you're going to need someone who can bridge the gap between the host's culture and both the general English speaking culture and Reddit culture to avoid any gaffes.

It's easier and safer PR wise to keep with the Letter from the Producer format instead of a general AMA. It's a more controlled environment.

[Shougun]

If you want those other areas to be more populated then just remove the General Discussion forum (/turn GD into off topic, anything that isn't feedback for the game but relates to the game itself, or heck any FF game lol- and make a sticky note that it will be generally overlooked in the curation of feedback). Add a few more descriptions to some of the other forums so the entire or near entire breadth of the game has a place for each section.

Sometimes I could have posted in those other areas but they're so quiet, and sometimes more bogarted, that I just feel General Discussion is the best place for the most open / quantitative discussion. Sometimes the conservative and focused nature of the sub-forums can produce better results, especially if you were looking into lore perhaps, but that approach can also be chains to the future and more creative discussions as I've seen on a few occasions (as the conservative and focused nature produces better grasp of the now, but a limited scope in return for the future- stereotypically speaking not everyone is the same of course lol).

Something I think would be interesting is with things the team thinks were successful and influenced by the forums just creating a small showcase of how feedback is taken into consideration and those successful examples. You could show the 'bad' ones but then you might be encouraging people to find those forum posters lol. "Timmy suggested we do that, the team thinks it bad, I knew it, everyone knows it, the game would be better without him, he is a huge dodo".

Of course more CM interactions would be nice but I'm aware that's stressful and not always feels productive lol. So that's just like "yes please come and try the poison, it tastes horrible but drink it anyways thanks" ;3.. Not noting just for the individual but potentially for the company as well. "We're looking into that" == you promised me by the third Tuesday of the 4th month that this would be done!

Certainly might be an internal confirmation bias but people who say the forum moderation is inconsistent or harsh, I sometimes wonder.... since I've probably one of the highest post counts, am not always in agreement with people, and am not posting in fear of punishment. I've reported very few people and of those I've seen something done each time. It's hard for me to agree that rules are not consistent or are hard to understand as at at least to me it seems pretty easy / straight forward. Like I remember someone told me to gdiaf and they /hope/ a door hits me in the rear. Wishing someone physical harm I thought worth a report, even though they were part of a fairly big media group for the game yet moderation still removed that person.

Technically I half wonder if one of our medals relates to reporting because not too long ago I got my fifth medal shortly around what I'm going to guess was my 10th report. . . .(mentally counted them, fairly certain it's 10 or under). All pretty obvious things, telling / hoping people have physical real life harm, someone who looked like they might inflict self harm (seemed like a joke thread in the beginning but it quickly got dark so I reported myself and said I think this thread is going south in a very bad way), one post that just had a "flower you" but they didn't say flower lol. If anyone is wondering now "omg has he reported me!?" if I've responded to you then no, I never respond to someone I've reported (another thing I see sometimes "they said something diabolically horrible and so I'm going to quote it and spread it around even more" lol- don't). Not liking my idea or being a bit rude is not report worthy, launching into a tirade of hyper-aggressive inflammatory pejorative personal character attacks (rather than the discussion itself) well that'd be different (and of course like I said I'm pretty sure I'm at or around 10 now).

Personally believe there should be forgiveness opportunities, assuming you didn't dox* someone in real life or something extreme as people have bad moments and perhaps need to be reminded to be 'in check', but sometimes I've a hard time believing when someone says they got banned for no reason. Like at this point I believe you're not telling me the whole story so it looks like 'no reason' but there totally was one. Often I see people excuse their poor behavior because of someone else, "they looked at me (or SE) aggressively so I punched them in the throat- it's fair, I don't understand these rules!!!". Like the common thing on the internet where you make your opponent the monster so all the harm you do back is 'justified' or not an issue. * (with information not made available by the person posting, like if you link your youtube channel to your account I'm not going to think that really counted lol.. I'm talking more like personal phone numbers, address, real name, things you didn't put out there for the intent of being known for and especially in context of 'having something done' with that info)

"I don't like what you're posting so I'm going to derail your thread". Two wrongs don't make a right. And generally it appears it's one annoying wrong is responded to with a more aggressive and particular 'to that person' wrong. Like I said "they looked at me rudely", and maybe they did, but that doesn't mean you get +1 them and be like "burn them in the grave".

To me it appears the moderation team wants very open discussion without targeting the personal person and in part use each person's perspective as a variable in determination of that "targeting" (which is why you might sometimes see someone confused "I called 5 people a simple name and nothing, but then the 6th time something?! so inconsistent!). Simply if you just didn't call people the pejorative you'd probably have been fine, because you used it 5 other times wasn't a badge of honor as much as it was it seems the conversation wasn't damaged at it's use for whatever reason as no one reported it. It seems discussion/feedback is of one of the higher priorities, even if it can be a bit difficult, like the GMs for the most part allowed us to talk about gay rights and marriage way back when Yoshida was determining what to do with the marriage system. So if you're trying to silence someone you're going to have a harder time if they've not directly broken the rules, which I think while sometimes can be 'annoying' is a good thing. Personally think formats like reddit are terrible places for diverse discussion and only work well of like minded people (good for somethings, bad for other things).

Here, if you don't like a conversation to the point you need to 'shut it down' then the best choice is not to participate.

tl;dr- seems a bit like mentor discussions sometimes where a few bad moments or people paint the entire community, maybe here and there we could tweak some things but I've a hard time thinking it's really 'that bad' and generally think "it's one of the better places to be if you want to discuss diversely and have feedback considered.

Sadly the devs acknowledge reddit more than they do their own official forums. It's immensely frustrating.

Curious what you mean by this. I know Reddit gets to interview the dev sometimes, but in essence so do we (and more of our questions are answered than reddit's). It would be weird to have our own CM create questions and then interview them, would feel like a a PR stunt lol. So in so much that it makes sense our community gets more attention than reddit's I believe. Could always nominate an interviewer or entirely free form question interview with the forums (most upvoted questions get asked), but if it's free form I think you'll get a lot of thicc bum questions and if it's a specific person then how in the world are you going to decide who without making someone annoyed lol.

[EaMett]

Curious what you mean by this. I know Reddit gets to interview the dev sometimes, but in essence so do we (and more of our questions are answered than reddit's). It would be weird to have our own CM create questions and then interview them, would feel like a a PR stunt lol. So in so much that it makes sense our community gets more attention than reddit's I believe. Could always nominate an interviewer or entirely free form question interview with the forums (most upvoted questions get asked), but if it's free form I think you'll get a lot of thicc bum questions and if it's a specific person then how in the world are you going to decide who without making someone annoyed lol.

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.