Live Letters - Why No More Live Letter Questions?

[Veritas-Ancora]

This is a Japanese game, and many of the development team do not speak English. This is understandable. What I worry about is how the questions/suggestions from the English-speaking forums are rarely brought up compared to previous years (first 5 years since ARR), which is a substantial number of subscribed players.

In the Live Letters, we hear terms like "this has been a much-requested item from the community" but it's rarely something we see on the English forums. Typically the suggestions came from the Japanese forums (understandably so).

My concern is that, even if you don't use any of our questions, anything we post on here isn't necessarily being heard. I know Yoshi P used to ask one of my questions on several LLs when the Live Letter thread was ongoing, and a lot of other excellent English-posed questions posted were answered too, and that felt wonderful.

We felt like we were heard.

But when there's thousands of forum posts that aren't keenly watched like that Live Letter thread, really good suggestions get buried very quickly. There's a lot of really great suggestions that died because they were bumped off the first page from threads that already had hundreds to thousands of posts, and a typical forum structure just doesn't feasibly build that developer-player trust. If it's not on Page 1, people aren't going to go looking for it. No comments, no upvotes, never seen again. Great suggestions that otherwise had 40-50 upvotes now sit on Page 2 to disappear. These great ideas had credence during the Live Letter threads. We'd have upvotes all the way up to page 50.

Especially during COVID, when the virtual fan festival was a place to ask questions, there's a lot of questions built up that will likely never be answered. And that was half the fun of the Fan Festivals: the interaction.

I worry that this, too, will be dropped to Page 2 and forgotten (hopefully enough posts/comments will keep it alive long enough for folks to notice), as this is how the system of forums is built. If there's not enough traction within the first few hours of posting and at an ideal time, it dies. Not because it wasn't a great idea, but because that's how forums work.

But if the moderators are watching this, please forward this to the devs.

[Equitable_Remedy]

What I worry about is how the questions/suggestions from the English-speaking forums are rarely brought up compared to previous years

Have you read these forums?

[Veritas-Ancora]

Have you read these forums?

I have. Been around for over 7 years on them. I see you're new having joined a few months ago, October 2020. Welcome!

This was a great forum thread system that you missed. I hope you get a chance to see it one day.

[Equitable_Remedy]

I have. Been around for over 7 years on them. I see you're new having joined a few months ago, October 2020. Welcome!

This was a great forum thread system that you missed. I hope you get a chance to see it one day.

The personal attack is cute, but neither here nor there. Your assertion is that questions from the forums now should be addressed in live letters, not questions from the forums seven years ago.

I'm sure that, in days of yore, the forum was a vibrant place of erudite debate about the intricacies of good game design. I would suggest, however, that the forums now are very rarely that.

[Enkidoh]

Probably Yoshi (and by extension, SE) finally had enough of players asking the same old tired questions over and over again which Yoshi has repeatedly answered, answers the player community refuses to, or at least doesn't want to, accept, and so keep asking in the vain hope he'll change his mind.

So they probably just decided to skip the Q&A this time around - the pandemic probably didn't help matters either.

[SturmChurro]

Probably Yoshi (and by extension, SE) finally had enough of players asking the same old tired questions over and over again which Yoshi has repeatedly answered, answers the player community refuses to, or at least doesn't want to, accept, and so keep asking in the vain hope he'll change his mind.

So they probably just decided to skip the Q&A this time around - the pandemic probably didn't help matters either.

"Male viera.. WHEN?"
"Viera hats.. WHEN?"
"Instanced housing.. WHEN?"

[Deceptus]

Probably Yoshi (and by extension, SE) finally had enough of players asking the same old tired questions over and over again which Yoshi has repeatedly answered, answers the player community refuses to, or at least doesn't want to, accept, and so keep asking in the vain hope he'll change his mind.

Do you honestly think the questions aren't pre-screened? It's not like they pick a random question.

[Iscah]

Do you honestly think the questions aren't pre-screened? It's not like they pick a random question.

Of course the questions are screened, but people will ask and re-ask the sort of things that are obviously going to get rejected, then complain that their questions are being deliberately ignored.

There's a post at the end of the thread for the Q&A with Banri Oda (from after the interview aired) complaining that it was all lore questions. In an interview with the head lore creator.

[MikkoAkure]

Between troll threads and the same 10 tired suggestions being recycled in new threads over and over, there’s almost nothing to be gained from the English forums except for maybe the odd diamond in the rough that gets drowned out by all the other types of threads I mentioned like you even mentioned.

It’s not really the devs fault when most of the users of the forums congregate on the same things over and over and push them to the front. The devs do seem to be watching at least. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had Yoshi-P’s comment on underage characters and male viera, It’s just that apparently there’s nothing of value here. I would like to know what those “great ideas” were that you mentioned.

[Veritas-Ancora]

Between troll threads and the same 10 tired suggestions being recycled in new threads over and over, there’s almost nothing to be gained from the English forums except for maybe the odd diamond in the rough that gets drowned out by all the other types of threads I mentioned like you even mentioned.

It’s not really the devs fault when most of the users of the forums congregate on the same things over and over and push them to the front. The devs do seem to be watching at least. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had Yoshi-P’s comment on underage characters and male viera, It’s just that apparently there’s nothing of value here. I would like to know what those “great ideas” were that you mentioned.

I agree. The issue ultimately is that a small handful will hijack a thread with a dismissive post, and that post will generate a ton of messages, and that forum would be bumped. Trollish behavior ends up killing great suggestions because a bump is a bump, and an argument can lead to lots of bumps, and lots of pages, and ultimately becomes a high-ranking thread. We recently had a person complain about the community that, it got so bad, the OP deleted their original post and edited it with "I've looked at the last two pages and this has nothing to do with what I addressed any longer."

Ultimately, forum culture can be hit with aggressive or mean-spirited posts and those get bumped. You're right that it's not Square-Enix's fault, but also, there was a really really great solution that they had for years that circumvented this.