Where are the NA Community Devs? :(

[TAS]

The title says it all.

I've been a FFXIV player from the very 1.0 beginning and one thing that I've noticed more so over the last couple years is that our Community Devs have become less and less vocal on the forums.

Back in the day It felt like they had such a strong presence whenever I logged on the forums. So much so, that most of the community back then could probably name the Devs just by looking at their avatar alone.

I remember Devs like Bayohne, Camate, Okipuit, Zhexos would frequently chime in: from responding to Hot topics discussions, live Q and A translations that Yoshi P would do during Live Letters, small QoL suggestions/feedback, or even just to give tongue and cheek replies to miscellaneous banter.

As the years went on some of these Devs have either been tasked with new roles or have moved on to other opportunities, but they've left such a strong impression, in my memory at least.

I know we still have some NA Community Devs that float around once in a blue moon. It would just be nice to see them chime in more...

[Saraide]

Community reps dont get paid enough to engage with this part of the forum. Mods dont get paid enough to do so either. We're on our own now.

[TAS]

Community reps dont get paid enough to engage with this part of the forum. Mods dont get paid enough to do so either. We're on our own now.

I don't know... Camate, do you agree with this?

[Sove92]

I don't know... Camate, do you agree with this?

Camate left SE 6 years ago, I'm afraid. He was pretty much the only one who posted frequently here.

[Axxion]

Camate left SE 6 years ago, I'm afraid. He was pretty much the only one who posted frequently here.

sadly yeah. miss them

[Deceptus]

Community reps dont get paid enough to engage with this part of the forum. Mods dont get paid enough to do so either. We're on our own now.

FFXIV forums:

[Godzillaxpowerrangers]

Sadly they have gone the way of the dodo. Now it's the wild west up in here.

[Rehayem]

Let's hope this isn't a sign what's to come, what generally happens to mmorpgs in the western market.

[Avoidy]

Let's hope this isn't a sign what's to come, what generally happens to mmorpgs in the western market.

I've been thinking that for a while, but I didn't want to say it. Usually it's a bad sign when communication ceases like this.
On the bright side though, outside of the forums the developers do a pretty good job with communicating via live letters, which are unlike anything I've seen in other mmos. My only complaint there is I wish they'd bring back the English translator. Far too often, between live letter slides, there'll just be idle chatter between Yoshi and anyone else at the table, or he'll elaborate really quickly on slides talking about future content, and the translating work for that is left to really diligent redditors/discord people basically trying their best and doing it for free. Usually it's fine, but it's an issue later on when you're having a conversation about upcoming content with someone and they're like "do you have a source on that?" and all you can do is pull some discord logs of a fan translator who might not have even gotten it right since live translating of JP->ENG can be tricky as hell even for seasoned pros. But even with that gripe aside, at least the LLs are a thing. And at least the devs play the game. It could be worse. But yeah, the state of the forums worries me from a communication standpoint nevertheless. It feels straight up abandoned here.

[Jeeqbit]

SE gotta cut costs somewhere lol

It's not about cutting costs, because they still have jobs, their job just has a different focus than some people here would like. They also usually have jobs available for these things in all regions but don't seem to always find suitable people.

They can gather feedback, but if they actually respond to the people here it's opening a pandora's box that becomes a huge time sink. They used to respond to bug reports as well and they stopped. It's just not worth going down the rabbit hole of trying to reason with people here, who are full of hot takes that, much of the time, are uninformed of all the facts SE would prefer you to take into account. I don't necessarily talk about regulars here either. We get people who come to the forums for the first time and post their 5 minute hot take that doesn't consider any statistics, data or anything and then never visit again.

You know which people aren't uninformed and overly inconsiderate? Content creators - particularly ones like MrHappy. And guess what, the community team works with them, invites them to the media tour and gives them plane tickets to fan fests and offers interview time with Yoshi-P. They can actually engage with someone who informs themselves, keeps an open minded and doesn't just throw out hot takes all the time.

But if you would like a better understanding of how feedback is gathered you can see the blog post on it https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/blog/003178.html

On the bright side though, outside of the forums the developers do a pretty good job with communicating via live letters

This is a point we should remember. We get two live letters per patch that involve us watching Yoshi-P, for around 3 hours, casually tell us almost everything that wouldn't completely spoil the story or all the mechanics of new fights and the reasons for every change, and he has adapted to reacting to stream chat sometimes as well.

He also does more interviews than any game developer I've ever seen. When he goes to events like gamescom or E3 he will spend 2 days doing around 50 interviews and he occasionally takes email ones as well.