Genuine Question for Frequent Negative Posters

[Rolder50]

Note that half the topics in this forum are made by the same person with 2-3 alts that they change every month or so. There are genuinely a lot of negative posters because people mostly come to forums when they want to complain, but the alts are a significant contributor to this.

They want it to be better though and the point is to communicate it.

I have yet to see any actual proof of there being this hidden alt army. Just feels like baseless conspiracy nonsense. "Clearly this many people can't disagree with me! They must all the the same person!"

[Shurrikhan]

I have yet to see any actual proof of there being this hidden alt army. Just feels like baseless conspiracy nonsense. "Clearly this many people can't disagree with me! They must all the the same person!"

Aye, there is no hidden alt army -- just a couple posters who like putting up the posts that are occasionally considered incendiary enough to give them forum vacations and/or post too often for the daily limits, at which point they rotate to an alt account.

I've yet to see more than 2 of their accounts active at the same time, and there's no appearance of either inflating their like counts noticeably off their alt accounts alone.

Tbf, though, it's also not the only excuse used to dismiss any disagreement. "You're all DPS mains in disguise, working per some conspiracy" / "You're all actually elitists, with some oligarchical agenda," and "You're all just a vocal minority anyways" all worked fine even pre-Titanmen.

[Jojoya]

Seriously, I don't even know where people get the idea that 7.0 is going to fix or even partially fix the problems with this game, it's not just one or two people, it's like the majority of the playerbase.

If you don't like the game at all, unironically save yourself the money and quit now because at this point this game is irredeemable. There's literally no point in waiting for 7.0 to fix anything. Spoiler: they won't. Only reason to stick to this game is for secondary, non-game purposes.

It depends on what the individual player sees as problems.

A lot of players don't see any problems. Of course they're excited for Dawntrail, it's a new expansion.

Other players only see as the lack of a new exploration zone this expansion as a problem. YoshiP said the developers are working on ideas for a new exploration zone in Dawntrail. That solves the problem for those players (as long as one gets released).

Job design is a mystery at this point since they usually don't announce vague details until the JP FanFest and wait until the media tour to go more in depth. It feels like some players think it can't get worse and so whatever changes are made in Dawntrail will be an improvement.

What are the problems you see with the game that you feel won't be addressed in Dawntrail?

Keep in mind that the NA FanFest is what it has traditionally been - a big teaser. EU adds in some more teasers with a little bit of specific information (one of the two jobs will be announced, we'll probably get concept art for 2-3 dungeons, etc.). JP FanFest is when the big picture comes together.

A lot of companies have policies for devs not to directly interact with players. Nothing good comes of it in communities as toxic as this one. If I was a dev and saw how people act here I’d stay far away. When people are rude and entitled they aren’t owned the devs time.

Yet not everyone is rude and entitled.

I'm in the group of those who think the developers should be spending their time actually working on the game rather than spending their time reading/listening to player feedback and replying directly to them. But the developers aren't the only staff working for the game.

The Community Managers have traditionally been the link between players and developers in most games. Getting the occasional "we've been watching the feedback in this thread and passing it onto the developers. We've made a special note of X problem that was mentioned" even when they can't give us specific answers is helpful.

Silence only adds to player frustration. The more frustration experienced, the more likely one is to become hostile.

I'm not going to accuse the Community Team of not doing their job because I don't have access to their job descriptions. But it would be nice if SE had them engaging with community regarding feedback instead of just using them as a PR/marketing tool on social media and through the stream events, and writing Lodestone topics.

Knowing the feedback has been seen and forwarded would help.

(edit: to add in it would be nice they also posted translations of some of the JP publication interviews on Lodestone. It's rough when we're relying on other members of the player community to get information. It looks bad on the game.)

I don't really agree with the notion that all feedback needs to be constructive to be valuable. Sentiment is still pretty valuable on its own, and it's frequently going to be the role of the professional to contextualize customer sentiment, positive or negative.

Isn't that the sort of attitude that's causing problems in the service industries right now? "It's your job so suck it up and deal". Turns out human beings are tired of being told that.

More and more businesses are starting to realize that no, the customer doesn't always have to be right and especially not when they're being hostile to people simply trying to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Many are more likely to start cutting ties to those customers than serving them.

You don't need to use expletives and personal attacks to express sentiment. "I feel frustrated" is a lot more likely to garner a response than "You are garbage and should be fired".

If the lack of response to player feedback is starting to get bad on all sides, then definitely it's time that SE take a closer look at what they have the Community teams doing.

[Jeeqbit]

I have yet to see any actual proof of there being this hidden alt army.

Then you have not looked closely enough. They are typically a new forum user (made this year) and have a character with all crafters/gatherers leveled and 1 job leveled to 90. They are in a Free Company and are the only person in it, slowly ranking it up and often use the same second name as their main, although not always. Their character appearance is often the same or similar to their main, although not always.

If you don't know why someone would do this, let's just say they could make a lot of gil that way and work out the rest from there.

The accounts with the traits I described tend to make half the topics in this forum (and have for a very long time). Just SE banned a whole lot of them the other day as well as some of their new ones they tried to use in their place.

[Shurrikhan]

Then you have not looked closely enough. They are typically a new forum user (made this year) and have a character with all crafters/gatherers leveled and 1 job leveled to 90. They are in a Free Company and are the only person in it, slowly ranking it up and often use the same second name as their main, although not always. Their character appearance is often the same or similar to their main, although not always.

That, in itself, describes a poster, who has used a series of accounts, not an army.

I.e., the difference between bigamy and serial monogamy.

[Iscah]

That, in itself, describes a poster, who has used a series of accounts, not an army.

Why should the term "alt army" not be used to describe a large collection of alt accounts acting as a group and controlled by a single person?

It seems an accurate description to me. It reflects the number of accounts the person is using.

And yes, it is an army, not a series. They appear to have several active at any one time and sometimes stage arguments against themself or post multiple comments in a thread one after the other.

[Exmo]

Note that half the topics in this forum are made by the same person with 2-3 alts that they change every month or so. There are genuinely a lot of negative posters because people mostly come to forums when they want to complain, but the alts are a significant contributor to this.

They want it to be better though and the point is to communicate it.

I don't think they want it to be better tbh. I think they just like spreading negativity and relish the attention it brings.
I don't know why anyone pays them any heed though. They have no creativity, they just rehash the same 5 conversations again and again.

[MicahZerrshia]

I don't think they want it to be better tbh. I think they just like spreading negativity and relish the attention it brings.
I don't know why anyone pays them any heed though. They have no creativity, they just rehash the same 5 conversations again and again.

Says the person who necro'd a thread so they could spread negativity by having yet another thread to complain about negativity on and likely relishing all the attention it gives while saying things with no creativity cause you are also just repeating the same 5 things.
But I will take your advice and just not pay you any heed, since we have a handy dandy block feature here.

[Basteala]

Says the person who necro'd a thread so they could spread negativity by having yet another thread to complain about negativity on and likely relishing all the attention it gives while saying things with no creativity cause you are also just repeating the same 5 things.
But I will take your advice and just not pay you any heed, since we have a handy dandy block feature here.

Honestly the situation is so topical that I thought this was a new thread until I saw you mention this.

[Hallarem]

Says the person who necro'd a thread so they could spread negativity by having yet another thread to complain about negativity on and likely relishing all the attention it gives while saying things with no creativity cause you are also just repeating the same 5 things.
But I will take your advice and just not pay you any heed, since we have a handy dandy block feature here.

I fed this troll Roe, everyone feeds this troll Roe. This is a person who actually said "Stormblood is a white savior narrative".

If SE actually did something about lingering issues year after year, people wouldn't have to "rehash the same 5 conversations again" try telling Viera and Hrotgar players "Oh stop complaining, you're just rehashing the same old argument of not having hats for years on end! > "