Normalize criticism

[Minarisweet]

As far as I know forums are here for feedback and expressing dissapointment and anger at the game is good enough feedback since it does indeed point out there's something wrong with X feature of the game... yet a big portion of the forums is people against people having an opinion and most responses are just unsub from the game, which I think is doing nothing for anyone. SE is good at listening to players and I think we should encourage our voices being heard instead of silenced.

[Jeeqbit]

It's important for SE to be able to see whether the crowd is saying yae or nae to something. That's not to say something should actually be done if everyone is saying yae, because it may be a silly idea, not realistic or not make sense like we think it does. There may be downsides to doing it, or it may not be enough of a priority for the wider audience.

[ItMe]

This is a great suggestion.
Civil discourse is beautiful.

Though... I can't help but notice you only have 3 posts to your name yet you've been here almost half a year. There's nothing wrong with that, but considering the topic it begs the question: will you be joining in and engaging with the community voices and responding to opinions? Or are you just calling on the rest of us to do more of that?

[Minarisweet]

This is a great suggestion.
Civil discourse is beautiful.

Though... I can't help but notice you only have 3 posts to your name yet you've been here almost half a year. There's nothing wrong with that, but considering the topic it begs the question: will you be joining in and engaging with the community voices and responding to opinions? Or are you just calling on the rest of us to do more of that?

I do look at the forums often and like some stuff but I try to not post anything unless I have strong emotions about it. Its also kind of discouraging that most of the posts I see of topics I'm more interested at like complaints about combat content and how to make it better get a good amount of people trying to defend it by questioning the poster's morale and these same people usually have the most upvotes. Its why I'm also making this post, calling out the people I tend to see who don't like others having complaints about the game since for them the game is flawless and if there's any issue with it its a you issue according to them.

[Wind-Krysvein]

There seems to be a sort of vicious cycle here with posts criticising the game. It goes something like this:

Person #1: posts complaint (by making topic)
Person #2: posts agreement/rebuttal
Person #3: posts agreement/rebuttal
Person #4: posts a short, snarky rebuttal. Gets more Likes than the others and is usually crowned the "de facto response" to the topic's criticism: often results in people Likepiling on top of it instead of writing out their own thoughts.

Tell me you haven't seen this pattern repeated at least a few times in the recent past. Honestly, I'm beginning to wonder if people are making posts like it on purpose to get invisible "internet points", although that's pure conjecture on my part.

For troll posts it's fine, but for something that was clearly written with genuine thought, it may have the effect of stiffling conversation that should probably be happening. Regardless if it's for or against.

[Irisdina_Wiloh]

Snip.

I think you're spot on with this, it's beyond annoying. If you visit the sub forums for DPS for example, I seeing likes being used in there as I expect was intended, to signal what is a good post and one that most people agree with, whilst other posts maybe get a like or two. This is how it should be, not everyone vying for likes because their ego demands it.

I've been around for awhile now, I don't post often. The amount of people I have seen go from being prominent forum posters to ghosts is quite sad and part of the reason they've gone is plainly because of how this forum functions. Good debates get ruined by people who want to post snarky comments and add nothing of value to a thread.

The other thing is peoples inability to argue their views without all hell breaking loose and it getting real nasty, real fast. There's lots of straw manning, lies and disingenuous comments being flung around constantly. The moderation of this forum is really lacking and it could do with a clean up and more active moderation honestly.

[Roeshel]

SE is good at listening to players and I think we should encourage our voices being heard instead of silenced.

I actually don't know about that.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-healer-issues

It is a pretty big thread but nothing has been changed for one year.

I don't personally agree with everything but removing the uniqueness of the fairies was rather dumb. I always wondered why I have two when they both do the same.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

My issue with most of the criticism that gets posted to general discussion is "I don't like this thing, make it a thing I like" or "please make this game... A different game"

Those are not helpful.

[StriderShinryu]

My issue with most of the criticism that gets posted to general discussion is "I don't like this thing, make it a thing I like" or "please make this game... A different game"

Those are not helpful.

^^^ So much this ^^^

FF14 has been trending towards exactly where it is now for years. You don't have to like it, and it's certainly not without it's (many) flaws, but it's pretty clear what sort of game we're looking at and are going to be looking at for the forseeable future.

Take it as a "just unsub then" if you want but it's really just a reality check. There's a bunch of common complaints that are just not going to be "fixed." Either get used to it or find a game that fits what you're actually looking for.

Anyway, another thing to keep in mind for criticism is to actually provide some sort of realistic solution, don't just complain for the sake of complaining. And no, just because some modder did it so the devs can do it isn't a realistic solution.

[Alleo]

My issue with most of the criticism that gets posted to general discussion is "I don't like this thing, make it a thing I like" or "please make this game... A different game"

Those are not helpful.

I mean how would should they voice it in your opinion so that it makes it acceptable? If I say that I dont like x and then give a example from another game arent I bascially giving them the answer on how I would like it?
For example I write that I dont like Lord of Verminion and would love something like Pokemon instead. Isnt that feedback they can work with?

What more should people do? We are not devs, we should not need to post a huge wall of text explaining exactly how we would do it. (And some of us do that and they are still called whiners by others.)

In the end if someone likes content its quite normal if they post that they just like it. There is somehow no need to explain it more in detail on what they like or why they like it. For most negative posts though its already common to write at least a few reasons to why they dont like it. IMO that should be enough as feedback.

(And a I dont like it is at least way better feedback for the devs than the people just silently leaving the game)

An important part of civil discourse is for both sides to remain objective. People often get very defensive if their ideas are not accepted by others, which is simply not helpful.

Moreover, as some others said, suggestions on tweaks or adjustments are great, but ..and how to say this.. some suggestions come from an amateur(?) prospective that quickly gets hate.

I guess remaining objective on something that you care about quite a bit is probably not that easy but I agree, that it should be at least civil. I also agree that there are those that simply cant accept that others might not like their ideas but honestly a lot of time the tone of the answering posts also dont help.

I remember reading about a topic where the OP was annoyed at the RP NPC feature and I guess she made the "mistsake" of saying that this feature might even make her unsub. Otherwise though it was simply her opinion and she even wanted to hear why some like it. I was honestly a bit shocked how harsh some of those answers were...as if she had kicked someones puppy instead of just complaining about one feature of the game.

Some people might not accept that not everyone agrees with them and some might want to change things that are basically the basic systems of the game but for me a lot of people simply post their view on different features they dont like (small features too) and then get told that they should unsub or that the NA forum is just full of whiners and horrible...

It probably does not help that the general forum is infested with trolls even if they sometimes have some interesting topics that might be worth discussing.

Unfortunately for the devs ideas and negative feedback will be more common, as nature of people- people don't really comment frequently on what's going well, so that's a bit sad. Definitely don't forget to comment on things you liked lol.

And yet when positive threads exist they barely stay active for long. I guess its partly the nature of a forum itself but sometimes even such a discussion is shut down and not always by the negative crowd either. The amount of posts in the support male viera thread that wanted the thread to die is probably quite huge. Instead of just letting people post in there even if it was running in circles some just needed to post how the arguments annoyed them...instead of just ignoring the topic.

We also had a small thread about the hype for the island sancturary and a few of the posts there were saying that people should not be hyped because afterwards they will just complain.

But I do agree with you, we also need the positive threads because even if some of us like to complain (I do) we mostly do it because we really like the game and want it to be better than its right now. I just wished that those that only go into threads to complain about complainers would use their energy to create interesting positive threads.