What is going on with Square Enix and the 14 team?

[Milus]

Or better, they could just stop bullshiting us and refit porperly all the headgears/hairstyles.
All the money they got with fantasia from hrothgars bought to change their face/hair and all the bunny girls who went back to miqote must be enough to pay the intern who will do that.

[Skiros]

Some of us have seen what was happening, and talking about it for years. It seems "Endwalker" was aptly named.

I'm not sure what is going on, but it does feel like they have become complacent with the game's success. Apparently, siphoning funds to other projects, moving devs over, etc. Yoshida being "surprised" at negative feedback, gives me the feeling that much of our feedback here simply isn't getting to the devs unless it's a very big issue, but not only that, a lot of players themselves were satisfied enough with the game that they wouldn't speak out.

I hope a lot of this is a wake up call for SE. The playerbase does look to have their limits.

Yoshi P has spent so much time lately asking for players to give "calm" feedback and states that he personally shields his devs from feedback and absorb the blunt of the criticism.

As if that's somehow a noble act?

If the developers of the game are not reading player feedback how are they going to know what to improve on? Yoshi P isn't capable of reading every single feedback and transmitting it to the developers.

The fact that he is "surprised" at negative feedback is honestly extremely shocking. I hope they get out of their stupor soon because this game is very much going the same way as WoW.

They cannot keep using negative feedback that are mean-spirited to justify ignoring all negative feedback in general.

Also, the streamers and content creators in FF14 are doing the game a grave, grave disservice. A lot of them kowtow to Square Enix and when interviewing Yoshi P literally ask the most useless questions at the level of inanity like "what is your favorite pancake color". Barely anyone asks Yoshi P hard hitting questions. I must at least applaud Zepla for asking Yoshi P about people being dissatisfied about healer job design (or something else, I can't remember, but it was a popular complaint that she asked). But so many others waste their interviews and look like they are just second-hand ads for SE.

I'm not surprised if Yoshi P is surprised at negative feedback because the people he interact with from the community - the streamers and content creators - never even voice such complaints to him. I hope they realize that a lot of these streamers and content creators' views do not align with the community at large.

[Skiros]

What really stood out to me just how completely tone-deaf the dev team, and even Yoshida, have become is the latter's response to Healer complaints. Granted, it's not exactly a new trend for them to ignore the myriad of criticism, but for Yoshida to dismissively say, "Go try Ultimate" just screams, "I don't actually know why you're upset. So I'll just assume..."

It's been amusing in a way to see how completely dumbfounded they seem by the vitriolic response towards Samurai and Ninja changes. You can tell they never anticipated this much disdain.

On the one hand I am ashamed, but on the other I have such schadenfreude. I hope they feel that disdain in their bones and feel bad about themselves, then strive to be better, internalize the criticisms and improve the game.

[Theodric]

The main thing that rubs me the wrong way is that somehow they're completely oblivious to polite, intricately worded feedback and requests but somehow always manage to be led astray into pursuing whatever the Twitter community is outraged over at the time.

One has to question why they're made aware of a vocal minority demanding male characters to be granted the ability to use the infamous 'Karen' hairstyle or latest dress despite hardly anyone actually using either...but the consistent requests for male characters to get more muscle definition, facial hair and tattoo options - namely stuff that the majority of men actually approve of as an option - repeatedly catches the development team off guard.

Even obscure requests such as the 'concerns' over the soon to be changed term 'Beast Tribe' seem to make it to the development team, yet in a recent Live Letter Yoshi-P declared that he couldn't understand why Emet-Selch was so popular.

I rather suspect that part of the issue is the development team deliberately distancing themselves from feedback that isn't carefully curated and the other half of the problem is that they're relying on community 'representatives', community managers and 'localisers' who largely ignore anything that isn't Twitter or Reddit where FFXIV related discussion is concerned.

As it happens, neither Twitter or Reddit are good places for getting feedback related to the actual game given that the bulk of discussion there is about canon characters, self inserts and largely inconsequential matters in general.

[Kisshu]

The main thing that rubs me the wrong way is that somehow they're completely oblivious to polite, intricately worded feedback and requests but somehow always manage to be led astray into pursuing whatever the Twitter community is outraged over at the time.

One has to question why they're made aware of a vocal minority demanding male characters to be granted the ability to use the infamous 'Karen' hairstyle or latest dress despite hardly anyone actually using either...but the consistent requests for male characters to get more muscle definition, facial hair and tattoo options - namely stuff that the majority of men actually approve of as an option - repeatedly catches the development team off guard.

Even obscure requests such as the 'concerns' over the soon to be changed term 'Beast Tribe' seem to make it to the development team, yet in a recent Live Letter Yoshi-P declared that he couldn't understand why Emet-Selch was so popular.

I rather suspect that part of the issue is the development team deliberately distancing themselves from feedback that isn't carefully curated and the other half of the problem is that they're relying on community 'representatives', community managers and 'localisers' who largely ignore anything that isn't Twitter or Reddit where FFXIV related discussion is concerned.

As it happens, neither Twitter or Reddit are good places for getting feedback related to the actual game given that the bulk of discussion there is about canon characters, self inserts and largely inconsequential matters in general.

Honestly think it's more that they are selective in what feedback they take. I recall in a previous Q&A that Yoshi-P was asked about the MCH ping problems, and his reply was something along the line of not knowing of any ping problems. This is after both forum posters, streamers and content creators have complained about it.

[Larirawiel]

Even obscure requests such as the 'concerns' over the soon to be changed term 'Beast Tribe' seem to make it to the development team, yet in a recent Live Letter Yoshi-P declared that he couldn't understand why Emet-Selch was so popular.

It is often so, that the companies do not understand their own products. "You think, you do but you don't" is a very good example for it. And it is not only a game company issue. The same thing happened with flickr. Flickr was never planned to be a picture sharing plattform. But the people loved this functionality more than everything else what flickr offered. On the other hand, Google+ failed although Google spent so much ressources on it.

This is a thing, that can happen to FF14 all the time. Suddenly the devs and the game designers do not understand their audience and the game could die. And the 'Karen'-hairstyles and not understanding why the players like Emet-Selch is maybe a sign for it. Or they understand it but the management people over Yoshi-P's team do not understand it and they reduce financial/personal ressources because of it.

And why it happens, maybe Steve Jobs has a good explanation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4


Cheers

[Deceptus]

The main thing that rubs me the wrong way is that somehow they're completely oblivious to polite, intricately worded feedback and requests but somehow always manage to be led astray into pursuing whatever the Twitter community is outraged over at the time.

Because it's an easy, well documented PR tactic to find an extreme minority and use it to justify ignoring feedback.

[SturmChurro]

...

Just means the feedback getting to the developers is completely curated. From what I've seen, like Theodric was saying, what actually gets to Yoshida himself is curated. So it's several layers before select feedback even makes it to them, at least from the western playerbase.

I think they can and will continue to ignore much of the "negative feedback", and even much of the playerbase themselves refer to any feedback as "mean-spirited" or as players just trying to "ruin the game". All we have to do is look at the situation surrounding hrothgar hair. Hrothgar players here are still wondering when they will really be acknowledged.

I can't say I am surprised to read that about the FFXIV content creators or streamers. They need to keep their viewerbase. It's very much in their best interest to remain positive when it comes to FFXIV.

[IdowhatIwant]

Live Letter Yoshi-P declared that he couldn't understand why Emet-Selch was so popular.

That's kind of crazy he can't understand that. As Emet-Selch is the only villian at the time that we had any sort of development of. It's not a matter of the character itself, I think the game was honestly so starved of any interesting villain that we were all just happy to finally get one.

But yeah I am not sure where they are getting some of this feedback. When did beast tribe become controversial enough for it to be changed? They made this sound like it was a complaint for some time. Where did the whole adventure plates idea come from? These are things I don't see here or in game so I guess reddit and twitter.

[AmpelioB]

don't think there was any problem with ultimate but last LL yoship said the few staff they get from SE are interns (for the lack of word) that still need to learn the engine and yoship is still overseeing XVI so it's easy to see some things over looked, i'm not giving them as excuses but things that are said as facts.

Any lead director who says this about a MMORPG needs to be let go. The sad truth about online gaming like this is that you want people to be as hooked as possible, the more exposure to your game the more likely they're to buy stuff off your cash shop.

you are absolutely taking that phrase with wrong context.