Do devs post on the English forum?

[Zomkei]

I feel like the state of the forums is an effect, rather than cause, of not being visited by people who are responsible for the game and care about building the community.

this is how i feel as well. from the very start the communications on the english side has always been bad. we'd get breadcrumbs if anything.

[LittleArrow]

this is how i feel as well. from the very start the communications on the english side has always been bad. we'd get breadcrumbs if anything.

That's not true. The Letter of the Producer was created purely to bridge the communication gap between the devs and us. The dev team before Yoshi didn't tell us -anything.- Yoshi invented the Live letters, the Letter of the Producer, and added Q/A for us to send in our questions.

We've never just been given breadcrumbs and we aren't being given breadcrumbs now. He gives 5hr+ live video detailing what they're doing. It's posted on the forums and the ENG website every time.

I'm totally down to criticize the dev team to improve them, but this isn't true at all.

Unless I'm getting confused with what you mean by communications and breadcrumbs.

[Zomkei]

That's not true. The Letter of the Producer was created purely to bridge the communication gap between the devs and us. The dev team before Yoshi didn't tell us -anything.- Yoshi invented the Live letters, the Letter of the Producer, and added Q/A for us to send in our questions.

We've never just been given breadcrumbs and we aren't being given breadcrumbs now. He gives 5hr+ live video detailing what they're doing. It's posted on the forums and the ENG website every time.

I'm totally down to criticize the dev team to improve them, but this isn't true at all.

Unless I'm getting confused with what you mean by communications and breadcrumbs.

from your last post that you deleted, it sounds like you are not "down to criticize" them tbh. while i don't think it's as dramatic as a lot of people are making it out to be, im talking strictly the forums (as this thread is about). yes, they communicate through live letters in a way, the complaint was that they rarely answer questions or build a community in the forums. and i agree'd with the poster i quoted. i feel like the forums have fallen into what they are simply because there isnt a team to help build the community. we get trolls who aren't removed, we get confused players asking questions and rely on the community to give unofficial answers. i remember when there was a time the GMs kept moving troubleshooting threads and just dumping them in the general board and we had to help the players ourselves.

so yeah, i think its true. you are free to believe otherwise though.

[Kozh]

He's also asked that people remember these are humans just doing their jobs, so it's better to be polite than belligerent. As the old saying goes, you get more flies with honey. Sadly, people have trouble coming together and actually putting cohesive thoughts together for the devs to see. The west only knows how to bicker and lie.

Except his message was directed to JP community. Get you facts right you clown.

You act like the east isn't as toxic as west lol. Must be nice being that delusional.

[LittleArrow]

from your last post that you deleted, it sounds like you are not "down to criticize" them tbh. while i don't think it's as dramatic as a lot of people are making it out to be, im talking strictly the forums (as this thread is about). yes, they communicate through live letters in a way, the complaint was that they rarely answer questions or build a community in the forums. and i agree'd with the poster i quoted. i feel like the forums have fallen into what they are simply because there isnt a team to help build the community. we get trolls who aren't removed, we get confused players asking questions and rely on the community to give unofficial answers. i remember when there was a time the GMs kept moving troubleshooting threads and just dumping them in the general board and we had to help the players ourselves.

so yeah, i think its true. you are free to believe otherwise though.

I deleted the post because everything I said was already mentioned many times throughout this thread / forum. Like I said in the previous post though - housing should be improved, the gear is distracting, and whatever else I said that's been said ad nauseum - criticism.

And I still don't understand how live letters can be seen as communication "in a way." They literally detail everything in a very transparent manner from a dev perspective. That's what I thought this thread was about - DEVELOPERS posting in the forum, not community managers. It's not the job of the developers to manage this forum. This forum isn't even ran directly by the developers from what I've gathered over the years - please correct me if I'm wrong.

I agree that there should be more community managers and moderators posting, but I think there are two issues being complained about here - again correct me if I'm wrong.

Developers are posting on these forums with live letters, Q/A, and the producer letters. Insights into gameplay are given through all of those previously mentioned methods. Technical issues are handled with tech support on the SE website.

What sort of communication are you looking for specifically?

[Jeeqbit]

The only developers that post in the English forums are from the Localization team in the Localization forum and there are months between that happening, sometimes over a year.

[Zomkei]

snip

yet you see them posting on EU and JP forums, eh?

the reason i say "in a way" for live letters is because there are usually a lot of unanswered questions. they give us information they want to give - which is understandable don't give me wrong, but sometimes there are questions left unanswered for a long time. job balancing issues, housing issues, server issues, pvp issues (especially in the past) and many more issues that have been or are still currently left unanswered for a long time. im not going to go into details of every little thing that could be communicated. even a simple "we're working on it" would ease the minds of a lot of players.

and when i say breadcrumbs, i mean those very few rare times that the devs (or yoshida himself) have actually posted when it was severe enough.

in conclusion, because i am not trying to argue here, i was just agreeing to the poster i had quoted: those live letters which are, what, a month or months apart, that mostly only details things relating to the next patch... and the Q and A which are cherry picked and avoid questions they want to avoid or have been answered many times before, is a form of communication, but there are a lot of unanswered questions that make players lose faith in the dev team. a simple "we're working on it" instead of waiting half a year before finally releasing information about it.

also, i want to note, i do not dislike this game. i love it and it has its faults, and while i do not think the dev team is ignoring or "despising us" like the other poster, i also think they could be better with their forums. simply put.

[PharisHanasaki]

from your last post that you deleted, it sounds like you are not "down to criticize" them tbh. while i don't think it's as dramatic as a lot of people are making it out to be, im talking strictly the forums (as this thread is about). yes, they communicate through live letters in a way, the complaint was that they rarely answer questions or build a community in the forums. and i agree'd with the poster i quoted. i feel like the forums have fallen into what they are simply because there isnt a team to help build the community. we get trolls who aren't removed, we get confused players asking questions and rely on the community to give unofficial answers. i remember when there was a time the GMs kept moving troubleshooting threads and just dumping them in the general board and we had to help the players ourselves.

so yeah, i think its true. you are free to believe otherwise though.

I agree with both replies. Yoshi P did try to and did listen to the playerbase during the early stages, that much is true. We had developers and GMs posting here, and moderating. At some point it all changed, and it became somewhat clear that you needed to be japanese, or somewhat fluent in japanese to make yourself heard. If the Japanese voice a concern or complaint, it gets addressed much faster.

I'm not sure if this current change has to do with Yoshi P working on 16, or not, but it's clear Yoshi P is getting a bit out of touch with 14's community.

[PharisHanasaki]

We've never just been given breadcrumbs and we aren't being given breadcrumbs now. He gives 5hr+ live video detailing what they're doing. It's posted on the forums and the ENG website every time.

And yet a lot of these letters were in Japanese only, and we had to rely on reddit translations, or the summary posted on our website.

[LittleArrow]

yet you see them posting on EU and JP forums, eh?

the reason i say "in a way" for live letters is because there are usually a lot of unanswered questions. they give us information they want to give - which is understandable don't give me wrong, but sometimes there are questions left unanswered for a long time. job balancing issues, housing issues, server issues, pvp issues (especially in the past) and many more issues that have been or are still currently left unanswered for a long time. im not going to go into details of every little thing that could be communicated. even a simple "we're working on it" would ease the minds of a lot of players.

and when i say breadcrumbs, i mean those very few rare times that the devs (or yoshida himself) have actually posted when it was severe enough.

in conclusion, because i am not trying to argue here, i was just agreeing to the poster i had quoted: those live letters which are, what, a month or months apart, that mostly only details things relating to the next patch... and the Q and A which are cherry picked and avoid questions they want to avoid or have been answered many times before, is a form of communication, but there are a lot of unanswered questions that make players lose faith in the dev team. a simple "we're working on it" instead of waiting half a year before finally releasing information about it.

also, i want to note, i do not dislike this game. i love it and it has its faults, and while i do not think the dev team is ignoring or "despising us" like the other poster, i also think they could be better with their forums. simply put.

I hope I'm not sounding like I'm arguing either, and I don't think you are - I'm just really tired of the constant negativity (not saying you're apart of that) and I'm SO confused by what this forum community really wants. I genuinely want clarity, and even though I know you don't represent the entire forum community - you're at least willing to 1. respond and 2. be civil - so thank you.

I guess, to me, it just sounds like people don't like the answers that are given rather than there are no answers given at all - please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

(I'm not trying to pick apart your response, it's totally reasonable, but this is the only specific one I have) The unanswered questions seem very answered to me - the housing issues I've read is there aren't enough houses: the original answer to this were apartments (people didn't like them, and I understand why!), so then the answer was - "we can't we don't have enough server space," so people didn't like that (again, I get it and agree with the criticism) - Yoshi added more wards but not enough and the way to purchase them were garbage; he answered this by saying they're really struggling with servers and they're trying to buy new ones.

I'll just stick with the above example; now, I try to look at this through the lens of "we're not given enough posts on the forums," but what would be posted? The exact information Yoshi has already given and it would just incite a lot of anger and frustration. So I don't see housing being an unanswered issue - it's an ongoing issue for sure, and the community is unhappy with the answers (rightfully so), but the answer was given, many many times.

I honestly have not visited the JP / EU forums, so my view on this is totally limited to what I've experienced here. Could you think of an example of where there was a developer issue and it was answered?

I completely agree with you that this game is great and it isn't perfect. It NEEDS criticism. Just from what I've been reading recently it doesn't seem like there's criticism so much as complaining, and to me those are very different. I don't think you're complaining. I don't think issues being brought up and SE being asked to do better (VIERA / HROTH HATS PLZ?!?!?!) is bad - even harshly criticizing them and pointing out that their responses don't align with what they've said (YOSHI CRITICIZED GENDER-LOCKED RACES IN 1.X BUT IS TOTALLY COOL FOR THEM IN 5.0 ONWARD?!?!?!). I just want to understand these threads better. Thank you for doing that.