Less and less SE interaction with forums community over time

[Kes13a]

back in the day, forums in a lot of games received more attention from developers in all games.

personally, from my experience, the forums do not speak for much more than a small portion of any player base. while some seem to devote their lives to it, the reality is that, even being generous in the estimate, less than 25% of players have likely even visited the forums, far fewer ever post. So there is little benefit for developers to spend time here, since really, listening to a vocal minority on either side of an issue is just asking for trouble.

Add to that the obvious, that anonymous people online tend towards... massive hyperbole and over reaction, especially on forums. over the last 6 months I have gotten 3 different survey requests from SE, so its not like they arent still looking for answers to questions, just seems like they are not using the forums for it. its not a huge shock and I doubt its a sign the world is ending...

[Theodric]

The ideal situation is for feedback to be gathered from multiple sources, including this forum. If they're looking only at Twitter and Reddit for feedback these days then they're going to get a very different impression about what the game supposedly needs compared to what they'll find if they sift through this forum and look at the numerous constructive suggestions to be found.

We've also had community representatives show up, introduce themselves and never post again - which is certainly startling when the sub forums based around other languages do not seem to suffer the same problem.

Given that many suggestions have been made here, gained plenty of traction and then haven't made their way to Yoshi-P based on his answers to interview questions I'm inclined to believe there may be a blockage in the pipeline somewhere.

[ForteNightshade]

Have you seen this forum? Why would anyone bother?

Maybe if they moderated it properly instead of leaving known trolls to necro bump threads for nearly an entire year. It might be better.

[Kes13a]

The ideal situation is for feedback to be gathered from multiple sources, including this forum. If they're looking only at Twitter and Reddit for feedback these days then they're going to get a very different impression about what the game supposedly needs compared to what they'll find if they sift through this forum and look at the numerous constructive suggestions to be found.

We've also had community representatives show up, introduce themselves and never post again - which is certainly startling when the sub forums based around other languages do not seem to suffer the same problem.

Given that many suggestions have been made here, gained plenty of traction and then haven't made their way to Yoshi-P based on his answers to interview questions I'm inclined to believe there may be a blockage in the pipeline somewhere.

while I do not say you are wrong, you are still overlooking the fact that they could very well read the forums and just not post to them. anything posted here is going to be the same, but different game wishlists. regardless of where you go, reddit, twitter, a dark bar in Tokyo or these forums... not everyone goes there. you are only getting a sliver of information pertaining to a very small group of the playerbase. so constructive feedback they can pull from multiple sources, these forums do not have any kind of exclusively beneficial suggestions.

as for community reps showing up and posting and poofing, we have no idea what happened after that. which could be why they dont come around any more. I mean lets face it, there are some disturbed people online, so who knows in all reality, could have been some incident that we never heard about, a change in company policy, who knows. as with most things on a forum, its all just speculation.

as far as I can see, from their virtual fanfest and the general attitude, the devs dont hate us and they do seem to love their game, I think people are reading too much into this. times change, methods of gathering data, opinions and feedback change, communication changes. we have discovered fire, medicine and flight.. I am sure we will weather this change as well.

[Snorky]

After seeing some of the threads here and some of the posters allowed to troll these forums I for one am glad they don't interact here. I am not saying all posters but there are a sub set of people who are actively being disruptive. So no useful information is being discussed.

I recently got a survey so at least they are trying. In western MMOs I don't remember ever getting a survey unless it was to rate tech/customer service person. I don't believe forums are a true representation of how people really enjoy or not this game. With no moderation to be seen here people are talking to air here.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...epresentatives

I forgot to add a like to that post, so take it. More it gets, more likely at least someone will pop in and pass it to the higher-ups. This forum needs some moderation like a man in a desert needs water.

I recently got a survey so at least they are trying.

I'm wondering how people are getting surveys about XIV in particular, because all I ever get in the mail are general SQE surveys about recent products or the like. Those are nice too, sure, but if you're specifically wanting to send feedback about XIV itself, doesn't help much.

[Goji1639]

There's like maybe 30 people who post here regularly, and it's mostly tryhards ranting and raving about how casual players and mindsets are making their Expert roulettes take 5 minutes longer.

Casual players are this game's backbone, so these forums couldn't be a more useless place for SE to get feedback that would actually help the game succeed.

[Loony_BoB]

I've never seen a survey about FFXIV since around 2.x as far as memory serves. I too would love to know what the surveys were about if people are getting them!

It would be nice if, say, something got x amount of likes then they would respond to it, but honestly I feel like it's getting a bit more "we know what we're doing and we're not going to tell you outside of live letters" and that's a bit disappointing. We also used to get roadmaps of what they're working on and estimated times for them! Glorious days. I miss them a lot, it's part of what made me stick with the game from the moment Yoshi P took over. It was one of his primary reasons for getting so much love in the first place - he would post on the forums, he would send out surveys and show the results. It was an awesome insight to the community. Note that the surveys were sent to all players, not just the ones in the forums. We'd get feedback on even minor issues saying their viewpoint on them, and a huuuuuuuuuuuge amount of posts from the Lore team too!

[Snorky]

There's like maybe 30 people who post here regularly, and it's mostly tryhards ranting and raving about how casual players and mindsets are making their Expert roulettes take 5 minutes longer.

Casual players are this game's backbone, so these forums couldn't be a more useless place for SE to get feedback that would actually help the game succeed.

I agree with this. Personally I have been active here since returning, but only because I was laid off from work because my company closed down. I will be starting a new job in September, so my time will be spent more in game then on these forums. So yes I agree most casual players and ones who don't want to read all the ranting will be in game having fun.

As far as the survey I received it was after a interaction when I reported a RMT, it asked what I thought would make the game better. I replied get rid of the discussion forums.

[Theodric]

I can say with confidence that there's more than thirty regular posters to be found. Many of whom are very much identify as part of the 'casual' crowd - myself included.