Future direction of FFXIV

[Equitable_Remedy]

Do you guys feel like the current dev team is incapable to lead this game 6.1 and beyond because of the good amount of complaints between gameplay, story, and general content releases..

No.

The forum/Reddit/Twitter are not in any way representative of the player base as a whole. The sky is not falling.

/thread

[Minarisweet]

No.

The forum/Reddit/Twitter are not in any way representative of the player base as a whole. The sky is not falling.

/thread

I see you say this a lot but this is pretty much invalidating imo, since people that post in those sites are mostly the more active fanbase of the game.

[Equitable_Remedy]

I see you say this a lot but this is pretty much invalidating imo, since people that post in those sites are mostly the more active fanbase of the game.

I say it a lot because it's both true and constantly misunderstood. It's invalidating to the extent that an argument is premised on a self-selecting minority being representative of the majority. It's a very common, understandable mistake, but it is a mistake.

Consider the following: you don't actually have any evidence that "people that post in those sites are mostly the more active fanbase of the game." You reason from being the most vocal to being the most active, but even then, what is the significance of being the most active? It's not really relevant to the discussion at hand.

If the question is as to the attitudes of the player base as a whole, taking a small, self-selecting minority (the most vocal players, the most active players, etc.) doesn't actually tell you much about what most players think. The self-selecting aspect of posters on forums/Reddit/Twitter is important precisely because you should expect their opinions to differ from most other players.

tl;dr Twitter isn't real life.

[Minarisweet]

I say it a lot because it's both true and constantly misunderstood. It's invalidating to the extent that an argument is premised on a self-selecting minority being representative of the majority. It's a very common, understandable mistake, but it is a mistake.

Consider the following: you don't actually have any evidence that "people that post in those sites are mostly the more active fanbase of the game." You reason from being the most vocal to being the most active, but even then, what is the significance of being the most active? It's not really relevant to the discussion at hand.

If the question is as to the attitudes of the player base as a whole, taking a small, self-selecting minority (the most vocal players, the most active players, etc.) doesn't actually tell you much about what most players think. The self-selecting aspect of posters on forums/Reddit/Twitter is important precisely because you should expect their opinions to differ from most other players.

tl;dr Twitter isn't real life.

Ffxiv isn't real life either.

[Equitable_Remedy]

Ffxiv isn't real life either.

I don't know what this is supposed to mean.

Players are actual people. If you make a statement like, "most players think X," you're making a statement about the actual world that is actually true or false. If you make a statement like, "most players think X, and I know that because the small, self-selecting group of players who post on the forums mostly say X," you're making a statement about the state of the world, but your evidence for that statement is very week.

I don't think that any of these things are controversial statements, but I'm open to the small, self-selecting group of FF14 players who post on the forum to suggest otherwise

[Lauront]

I don't know what this is supposed to mean.

Players are actual people. If you make a statement like, "most players think X," you're making a statement about the actual world that is actually true or false. If you make a statement like, "most players think X, and I know that because the small, self-selecting group of players who post on the forums mostly say X," you're making a statement about the state of the world, but your evidence for that statement is very week.

I don't think that any of these things are controversial statements, but I'm open to the small, self-selecting group of FF14 players who post on the forum to suggest otherwise

I am curious - when people try use Metacritic, Reddit or Twitter as "proof" that the game is fantastic, would you maintain in that instance that we're dealing with a "small, self-selecting group"? I would hope so.

It's not like SE bothers to orchestrate any other means of soliciting feedback. So we've exhausted the main areas where it gets it from - reddit, Twitter, the forum. For all intents and purposes, if SE doesn't undertake any work to obtain more representative & systematic feedback from elsewhere (e.g. via surveys) - and to my awareness, it does not - what is the functional difference between that and the actual truth of what most players believe? It may - and probably - differs, but if you're not asking them and SE isn't, what real notion of it do you have above anecdotal evidence? Sales figures and profits going up? Great, now get to the bottom of why.

I feel like this "The game is great, but it could still be better" is the prevailing "negative" mentality that's going around, not "This game sucks and I'm leaving if they don't fix/improve this".

I'd say for me it's more of an "it has been decent enough to warrant the sub fee but I'm ambivalent as to whether that will continue to be the case."

[Jeeqbit]

if SE doesn't undertake any work to obtain more representative & systematic feedback from elsewhere (e.g. via surveys) - and to my awareness, it does not

Then you are unaware of the fact they have sent me a survey which said it was asking veteran players their opinions as recently as late last year, right before Endwalker released. All companies of Square Enix's size do surveys and market research.

[Equitable_Remedy]

I am curious - when people try use Metacritic, Reddit or Twitter as "proof" that the game is fantastic, would you maintain in that instance that we're dealing with a "small, self-selecting group"? I would hope so.

This is a non sequitur, but sure - the point is that none of these are representative of the player base as a whole. Further, internet fights about the game being good or bad are incredibly silly regardless. If you like the game, play it. If you don't like the game, don't play it.

It's not like SE bothers to orchestrate any other means of soliciting feedback. So we've exhausted the main areas where it gets it from - reddit, Twitter, the forum. For all intents and purposes, if SE doesn't undertake any work to obtain more representative & systematic feedback from elsewhere (e.g. via surveys) - and to my awareness, it does not - what is the functional difference between that and the actual truth of what most players believe? It may - and probably - differs, but if you're not asking them and SE isn't, what real notion of it do you have above anecdotal evidence? Sales figures and profits going up? Great, now get to the bottom of why.

Your lack of access to good evidence does not make your bad evidence good. Put another way, Generalizing from a small, self-selecting group of players isn't more valid because you don't have systematic data. SE has some revealed preference data, such as subs, online store, content completion, etc.; that data isn't available to you, but it doesn't follow that SE never looks at it.

A toy example: if you want to know something about the American population as a whole, surveying 50 seniors in an Iowa retirement home won't tell you much of anything. That doesn't change even if it's the only evidence available to you. The opinions of those people are very, very unlikely to look anything like the median opinions of the whole population.

Here's my real point: instead of saying "players hate X," just say "I hate X." Saying "players hate X" is supposed to make your argument appear stronger by implying or outright stating that it's a majority position among players, but you have no basis for that assertion. Instead, say "I hate X," because you actually have good evidence for that. (However, if you say that you hate X but you constantly spend your time doing X, we actually should question whether you saying that you hate X is stronger evidence of your preferences than the fact that you spend your free time constantly doing X rather than other things that you could do - a discussion topic for another time.)