Yoshi-P Statement on Player Feedback

[XmissionsX]

Personally I would be surprised if it’s targeted at the non jp community, also a bit shocked.

To me in all the years i played mmorpg I never saw a community that supporting and willing to cover all faults with a huge blanket of love. To the point that I would be worried as se that maybe to get disconnected to the silent masses as critics are mostly countered with almost fan-boy unrealistic replies, or downvoted to shreds on Reddit that I suspect a huge part of the community finds it’s just not worth it.

If it’s indeed in general that would be worrying to me.

Criticism presented in a polite way in a open discussion is good for a game, yes it could be hard for the dev who spend countless hours on that particular aspect of the game that nobody likes, but also a learning opportunity to get a better understanding why it is disliked by the player base.

Now I don’t know what is said on the jp community and it could be totally unacceptable, so I would like to believe it’s targeted at the jp community.

[VerdeLuck]

Personally I would be surprised if it’s targeted at the non jp community

Why would it be targeted at anyone other than the JP community? It was a broadcast in Japanese to the Japanese player base.

[XmissionsX]

Why would it be targeted at anyone other than the JP community? It was a broadcast in Japanese to the Japanese player base.

Well because they always communicate in Japanese, yes agreed u could argue that without a separate translator it’s only targeted at jp community. But also that yoshi-p could have made the distinction to target specifically the Japanese forum as every Japanese info bit always also get’s translated to English by the community.

[Shibi]

Personally I would be surprised if it’s targeted at the non jp community, also a bit shocked.

Mmm, a lot of people are bilingual or polyglots. Non-community JP Staff - the backend people - will be reading these forums, will be reading Reddit, will be reading other English fora about their work and will be feeling bad.

In addition the JP forums are mostly clean and polite, however, I have seen a number of number of Non Japanese speakers people heading into them recently using DeepL and Google (ja sound popping thread comes to mind), or even in English, to put in some nastiness without any of the nuance that should be in the message. That's not on in my eyes. Unless you can do the nuance, really, consider you won't get the point over politely.

Stop adding to the "great resignation" is my advice.

[Lauront]

Mmm, a lot of people are bilingual or polyglots. Non-community JP Staff - the backend people - will be reading these forums, will be reading Reddit, will be reading other English fora about their work and will be feeling bad.

Yes, well part of the issue here is that he is being a bit vague, IMO. Personally, I have my doubts that it's anything to do with the forum, as such. They set the TOS here, it is their (SE's) responsibility to enforce them and by and large I've seen very little here directly insulting the devs. Criticising some of their work, e.g. healers who are not satisfied with the design of the job? Sure, but I can't think of many occasions where it turns into insults and the like.

[Halivel]

Yes, well part of the issue here is that he is being a bit vague, IMO. Personally, I have my doubts that it's anything to do with the forum, as such. They set the TOS here, it is their (SE's) responsibility to enforce them and by and large I've seen very little here directly insulting the devs. Criticising some of their work, e.g. healers who are not satisfied with the design of the job? Sure, but I can't think of many occasions where it turns into insults and the like.

You don't need to insult developers directly to make them upset.
There were plenty of cases when people absolutely didn't check on their tone while venting about whatever they disliked about the game. It's not any better than cursing at staff directly.

[Lauront]

You don't need to insult developers directly to make them upset.
There were plenty of cases when people absolutely didn't check on their tone while venting about whatever they disliked about the game. It's not any better than cursing at staff directly.

And if the individual is sensitive to any criticism whatsoever? This is a rather subjective sort of thing. I'm curious - if a developer can't handle reading feedback even when it's bereft of insults and simply because it wasn't phrased a particular way (which?), should they be reading feedback in the first place? How is this now not a matter of tone policing? It can be easier to disregard someone who is just venting, for some people, than someone who is actually pointing out flaws in their work.

[Shibi]

Sure, but I can't think of many occasions where it turns into insults and the like.

Saw one yesterday criticising healers where the person talking said the devs doing it should be fired. Those calls to sack them, I do see a lot.

[Lauront]

Don't know about you but I wouldn't appreciate being called lazy by folk that don't understand the field I work in, or the challenges presented during WIP by people that only see an end produce. Nor would I appreciate being accused of not playing my own game simply because the expectations aren't met. Nor would I appreciate my work being called sloppy by people when said work is still arguably in development. Just to name a few examples.

On one side of the coin should people read feedback because they can't handle criticism, but on the other hand should people be issuing criticism if their only criticism is tossing around nonsense like lazy, sloppy, and baseless accusations? Need to understand that their work is already subjected to criticism from early as design, prior to the launch and quality checks

People have a very loose understanding of what criticism or feedback actually is

I have a fairly good appreciation of what it is, as I have quite a bit of background in dealing with customer feedback within larger firms - the threshold for what feedback is, is not particularly high. It is simply the customer's view/experience of a product or service, whether it is welcome, constructive, articulated well, written in frustration, etc. Whether you or I appreciate such commentary, it is separate to the fact that, particularly on sites the company does not control (e.g. reddit), there are going to be instances of customers who don't phrase their views in the most delicate of ways and the advice to employees who have a low threshold for such things would be to have someone else gather the feedback if they're of a sensitive disposition or go in with the realisation that people often vent when they're frustrated about something. Even if they don't expect this of their back-office staff, if they know they go about reading direct customer feedback on their work, it would be a good idea to provide some advice on how they go about that. On their own forum SE can try police that should they wish, but they have to be mindful of not creating the perception that they want nothing but an echo chamber or that they are too heavy-handed about it. As it is, the in-game TOS are pretty vague and we're reliant on posts from GMs on what they will or won't clamp down on, which is not a great situation, IMO.

What I can't understand is why people here always fall from one extreme to another with no middle ground inbetween.

Yoshida never said that criticism is unwelcome. However, there's a huge distance between a criticism and suggestion written in a polite manner and a tantrum full of poorly hidden aggression, if hidden at all. Even if you aren't particularly happy about given feedback, it's much easier to accept it when those who wrote it treat you like a person with emotions rather than a soulless punching bag.

Yes, and the concern is that some elements on the forum might make use of such comments to browbeat anyone with dissenting views on the game, because it makes the devs sad, or somesuch. So it'd be nice if he were specific as to what instances he has in mind rather than leaving this up to us to divine. At the end of the day, only so many people will comply with such a request simply because he made it, but clear examples would be nice.

I doubt any of these people who are rude at Forum write letters to their boss or customers in such a manner. What makes people think that game developers should be okay with it? They're people, not robots. You don't need to sugarcoat your words to insanity, but common, basic level of decency isn't that hard to grasp.

No, but they might on a forum or elsewhere (albeit anonymously to avoid being identified). It is seen as particularly egregious when businesses hound customers on third party social media sites to try police feedback left for them. I never said anyone needs to be "okay" with it. All I want is for them to be clear on what kind of thing it is that they mean, so that we don't see the usual attempts on this forum at stifling criticism/feedback they don't like for scenarios he didn't really envision his words applying to.

Saw one yesterday criticising healers where the person talking said the devs doing it should be fired. Those calls to sack them, I do see a lot.

Yes, which is a very common occurrence in complaints. To the point that you learn to shrug that kind of thing off pretty quickly. I understand that some of their staff might not be familiar with this kind of thing, but in that case it would be advisable to either have someone who knows their way about this stuff to sit with them when reading it, or to have such a person comb through the feedback and extract what is of use. A very typical way in which larger businesses handle feedback...

Most companies don't have the luxury of lecturing their customers on how to leave them feedback on sites they don't control, or for that matter even on sites they do control (because they have no obligation to buy their product at the end of the day), and can distinguish between language said in the heat of the moment from genuine malice, and thus it is atypical to go beyond simply stipulating to not abuse their staff and give staff the right to discontinue direct communication should they fail to abide by that.

[Vahlnir]

So basically he wants feedback, even negative feedback, to be civil and constructive. I think that is perfectly reasonable. I realize that it can be hard sometimes, especially when there are changes that people feel strongly about (even I'm guilty sometimes depending on the subject), but overall I don't think Yoshi P is making a huge ask here.