The Devs aren't your personal friends and valid criticism isn't "harrassment"

[Deceptus]

"If you present criticism in a way that actively makes the other person not want to listen, your criticism has failed." - CritCrab

Being stern and honest is good. Yoshida actively welcomes this. Presenting it in a way that is useful is better. There is a difference between "Housing sucks and the devs don't care." and "Housing has some serious issues, and we would like more communication from the devs." One is identifying and proposing a solution or a reasonable action, the other is naught but whining and conjecture..

Except we tried that.

It was ignored and they continue to do whatever they want. When they have decided to go in a direction they go in that direction no matter if it could have been better or worse.

And then they have to spend months and precious resources cleaning up their self made mess.

[DPZ2]

Neither of those words [idots, incompetent] are abusive when used in proper context. Are they particularly harsh? The latter, yes.

This is a distinctly Western take on criticism, and totally ignores the distinct differences from a Japanese cultural perspective.

One does not do "harsh" in Japan. One can be polite or threatening. There are no nuances.

There is no need to be harsh in one's criticism. The main threads one reads on the forums are not generally 'criticism', they are venting which, while it makes the writer feel much better, often offer no particularly constructive methods for resolving the issue.

[Kolsykol]

This is a distinctly Western take on criticism, and totally ignores the distinct differences from a Japanese cultural perspective.

One does not do "harsh" in Japan. One can be polite or threatening. There are no nuances.

There is no need to be harsh in one's criticism. The main threads one reads on the forums are not generally 'criticism', they are venting which, while it makes the writer feel much better, often offer no particularly constructive methods for resolving the issue.

It's not how you talk to people in Sweden either, I don't imagine it's how you talk to people in most of Europe either.
Even the most toxic internet forums in Swedish are incredibly polite by comparison to sites like Reddit and this forum lol.
Our news is totally different too and not as ultra dramatized and full of antagonism and division I don't think that stuff is actually normal in most of the developed world.

It's mostly an internet thing too, people who act badly on this forum would never do it to someones face but suddenly they're on the internet and they feel big.
But there are certain cultural differences too in how loud and obnoxious people are.
And those differences are even greater in Japan.

Japan has a history of death threats on major studios. Just look at the arson that happened several years back. It gets brought up because devs are genuinely afraid for their safety at times, which I can respect.

In China someone tried to break into the office of the Genshin Impact devs with a knife.

[Imoen]

The main threads one reads on the forums are not generally 'criticism', they are venting which, while it makes the writer feel much better, often offer no particularly constructive methods for resolving the issue.

A bit off topic but, it's not exactly the players jobs to come up with solutions to things they don't like. Nor does every feedback need to contain a detailed read out of how they think it should be resolved. (Over half of those won't be used or considered anyway.) People can post their discontent without being a jerk though, beyond that, if it's posted in a way that translates poorly because of cultural differences, that's a translation issue not a feedback issue and maybe shouldn't be delivered verbatim. Being blunt or direct can also some times be misconstrued as "harsh".

[BrokentoothMarch]

This is a distinctly Western take on criticism, and totally ignores the distinct differences from a Japanese cultural perspective.

One does not do "harsh" in Japan. One can be polite or threatening. There are no nuances.

There is no need to be harsh in one's criticism. The main threads one reads on the forums are not generally 'criticism', they are venting which, while it makes the writer feel much better, often offer no particularly constructive methods for resolving the issue.

As someone mentioned, it's not our job to make these decisions or offer a paved path ahead despite how many times we have already. There's a thing called a Design Director. It's their job to figure this out. And much like when I find out my food is raw, I'm going to be a bit upset at the person in charge. I'm not going to offer suggestions on temperature or prep time.

Believe me, if I had any actual sway, housing and the Limited Races would be the forefront of fixes.

But no. We're making reskins of old gear and umbrellas. Didn't Mahjong also eat up a ton of development time? What fun! I love playing Mahjong on those 15-30 minute queues. Please look forward to it.

When are we allowed to be frustrated? I feel like we're a bit past that point and the anger can be at least somewhat understandable, if occasionally extreme.

[Semirhage]

I do feel the need to point out that over the last few pages we've rehashed the eternal "lol look at how HYPERBOLIC and DRAMATIC the English-speaking world is, they're just so MEAN and they're not CIVILIZED like the rest of the world is afwahfwahfwah" contrasting against "oh also those much more civilized cultures hold back their vitriol until they explode and threaten to kill people in real life".

[ForteNightshade]

This is a distinctly Western take on criticism, and totally ignores the distinct differences from a Japanese cultural perspective.

One does not do "harsh" in Japan. One can be polite or threatening. There are no nuances.

This argument does not work when releasing a product to a global audience. While Japanese culture may have a more binary approach to criticism, Western culture, especially American, does not. The latter is exceedingly blunt, which can come across far harsher. Demanding they change their tact is the equivalent of a Western developer demanding Japan change theirs.

There is no need to be harsh in one's criticism.

I disagree. Like Deceptus said above, many of us have tried the "honest" approach and been met with either excuses or silence. In fact, look no further than the Dark Knight mega thread. If you were to go back, you'll notice criticism was a lot softer in the earlier days but after years having Living Dead's issues initially being ignored only to then be told "its part of DRK's identity and thus, can't be changed." The feedback grew increasingly harsher. Lo and behold something was finally done all because the Dark Knight playerbase would not shut up and simply kept badgering.

The same applies to the healer section. Go back 3-4 years ago and criticism is noticeable softer when people believed they were being acknowledged. We didn't see threads questioning if the dev team even has someone playing the role or has even the foggiest idea how to design them until years of unaddressed criticism went by with increasingly poor decisions to go along with them. Perhaps the single most damning example being Stormblood Lilies, where Yoshida was directly told they were bad at the Media Tour. It took them two whole years to admit they messed up despite threads 300 pages long voicing feedback. When being told to "play Ultimate" is a response garnered from the director towards job design not difficulty, it comes as little surprise people meet that dismissive attitude with an attitude of their own.

Harsh criticism isn't necessarily borne from the ether but people growing increasingly frustrated the feedback we're told to provide goes on to be ignored incessantly.

[Kolsykol]

I do feel the need to point out that over the last few pages we've rehashed the eternal "lol look at how HYPERBOLIC and DRAMATIC the English-speaking world is, they're just so MEAN and they're not CIVILIZED like the rest of the world is afwahfwahfwah" contrasting against "oh also those much more civilized cultures hold back their vitriol until they explode and threaten to kill people in real life".

People do the latter in every country, it's not like a certain English speaking country doesn't have a big mass-shootings issue.
But I mean cultural differences in regards to how you speak to people is definitely a thing, imo I think Japan takes it in the extreme opposite but still.
There's a lot of Eastern artists who actively avoid the English side of the internet even tho they're fluent in English or have abandoned it after harassment, I know that this is an issue on Twitter in particular.
There was a Japanese artist who got harassed into removing all of their free art tutorials because people got so insanely angry that they used the word '' beginner '' in some of their tutorials.

The English side of the internet is pretty damn crazy yeah...
Is that even up for debate rofl?
Maybe you don't have another frame of reference but based on my experience with multiple different languages online at least it's true.
And it's probably a pretty big culture shock if English isn't as ingrained into you as it is for most Europeans and you didn't get into the English side of online culture when you were young.

[Semirhage]

People do the latter in every country, it's not like a certain English speaking country doesn't have a big mass-shootings issue.

Oh. You're one of those Europeans. Yeah that's not going to be an on-topic, nor productive discussion.

[Iscah]

Back in the day, when I bought a game I received the experience I was looking for. Even if not, no one was up in arms when I said this game sucks lol.

People put up with waaaaay too much nowadays. Have a spine, one not made out of jello would be good. If you like stuff good for you, but that doesn't mean it goes for everyone else.

Back in the day, when I bought a game it might be good or rubbish, and if it was rubbish I stopped playing it and took it back to EB Games for a refund.

Either way, I was playing the game that the developers had chosen to put out, not one for which fans had the ability to request changes. It's a completely different ecosystem.

I think I'm still in that mindset on the larger details of the game, though. It's the developers' creation and we choose to play it because we like what they're offering. They don't need to cater every single aspect of it to players' requests if it clashes with what they want their game to look like, even though it's certainly appreciated if they do take requests on board.