Feedback System and the Drawbacks

[AlunKha]

After reading some translations from the Brazil Game Show interviews regarding the 2min Meta and how it came about as a result of player feedback, I wanted to address something that's been a bit of an issue for many years now.
The methods that the dev team promote as a means of giving feedback are outdated, intimidating, and quite confusing. Frankly... Forums suck.
This is an awful place to provide feedback, positive or negative. It's confusing as hell to navigate. I'm not even remotely sure this post is even in the right directory, there doesn't seem to be any type of area for generalised feedback. In fact, most of the English space is dedicated to bug reports.
There's nothing more off putting about providing critical feedback than having it in an open forum that any old user can reply to, making a little devil's advocate thought exercise out of something you thought you were just providing feedback for the devs on. It's so annoying to try and type out something detailed and thoughtful, only to have some random person jump in with strawmans and bad faith arguments, and then to top that all off someone will comment to tell the OP their post is in the wrong spot.
These combined with the fact that generally, happy people don't provide positive feedback unless prompted to, makes for a horrible soupy mess of negativity and poorly thought out decisions. The people most happy with XIV aren't gonna be here typing out little essays on their favourite things. They're probably playing the game.
Now we're at the point where someone like me, a very infrequent forum poster, feels forced into this janky system of one-sided feedback because the things that made them happy in game received negative feedback on the forums, and SE had no other feedback to go on to make decisions.
Please SE, we need some kind of way to provide feedback, positive and negative, that isn't just forum posts and vague rants on social media.

[strawberrycake]

You Beat me to the punch, it feels like something is being lost in translation when it comes to feedback. I also am tired of the fact that I cannot talk about the things Yoshida himself says due to most of his interviews not being announced or shown to the general playerbase. Why aren't your interviews posted on the Lode stone, launcher or announced by the official Twitter Yoshida? Why are you making it a puzzle to simply get your word to the playerbase? It is counter intiuitive. If this was any other Game Developer, they would be seen as incapable of doing what needs to be done or purposely obscuring information from the players. it's high time we get better systems in place for communication and having your interviews translated for the international audience you market to. We WANT to work with you, but you're making that harder then what it needs to be.

[Azlith]

They should really implement some sort of in-game survey or questionnaire if they want to get real feedback from players that are actively playing the game and not just from people who want to troll the forums.

[OdinelStarrei]

Yeah, I'm down with putting in two cents into this.

I'm thankful for another interview, and appreciate the directness of the interviewer for going for such a topic.

But, I think echoes of this have been apparent the entire time. Do you lads remember when Yoshida was infuriated over the state of RMT on non-JP datacenters? The ping issues that went unsolved for years? We are speaking into a void, by either accident or intention. CBUIII almost feels like some kind of monolith, instead of a team of developers. We only have Yoshida or maybe Foxclonn speaking on their behalf.

And speaking of Yoshida, he's obviously competent. I do not think that Yoshida is naïve, stupid, or willingly malicious. It doesn't make any sense. So I have to assume he's just ignorant of some cultural/scope challenges, and more importantly, gives the community FAR too much credit.

This isn't 2.0 or 3.0. We're not saving a dying game. We're entrenched in an objectively thriving one, which brings a whole new set of challenges. And a big challenge outside of actual development, is being able to realize the community has outgrown it's crib. The statement "the community needs to come to a consensus" is HIGHLY concerning, because we will never come to a consensus at this point. There are too many disparate voices, there are too many wildly different experiences, and too many people screaming at each other for there to ever be a universal "Yes, please do this" on MOST issues. Some issues, like the friend list, or the complete eradication of the Primal, Crystal, and Dynamis raid scenes due to Aether consolidation are easy gotchas, anyone who is paying attention sees the flaws in what has been going on. Other stuff is far too esoteric, specific, or complicated to have a simple "Yes, please do this, or No, please don't do this." When I said that people would rip each other's throats out over this game, I wasn't joking. There is a lot of malice under the skin of this community now, and an ounce of spite burns hotter than a pound of goodwill any day, any time.

But stuff like the 2 minute meta, while a popular soundbyte, is kinda difficult to actually explain the issues without sitting down and having a really in-depth conversation, particularly to newer players or laymen. As much as people say "2 minute meta bad because it's boring" it's actually more like "2 minute meta bad because the other 1 minute and 45 seconds have no meaningful gameplay interaction". When people say "healers/tanks are bad because they are boring" it's actually more like "healers/tanks are bad because they do not have an inherently satisfying sense of personal progression when you omit the encounters themselves and focus on just the kits." And that's just MY opinion! One voice in a metaphorical sea of others, some of which I share a tide/common ground with, others, we might be in abject, almost violent, opposition.

This forum is pathetic! Severely undermoderated! Vulnerable to brigading! The feedback given either goes into a void and is not addressed, or is addressed, but seems to be misinterpreted, monkey's paw style. (See: homogenization, 2min meta, alliance raid, variant/criterion, exploration content, etc etc) People fight over nothing! They insult each other over nothing! And where are you, the one who is asking for our feedback, the ones who are supposed to be translating our feedback? Watching us fight each other like idiots, or not even giving us the courtesy of even doing that much? Do you even realize the reputation this forum has because of your inactions? Are your hands tied somehow? God, I wish I could've found someone like Koji at Fanfest when I was there.

I am TIRED of these content creators being able to control the narrative and platforms regarding feedback for the game, even if I might agree with a lot of what some of them are saying! I know it isn't deliberate that it's turned out that way, but it's undeniably where we are at right now. Something like ty_taurus's job survey shouldn't be something THEY had to do! That's something the developers should have put in an email or even an ingame survey. I've unsubbed to this game multiple times for different reasons almost each time, and would love to make my exit survey well-written, but I'm given...nothing to work with!

You want feedback? Stop telling me to go out of my way, and already pigeon hole me into a minority of a minority of people who will gladly write essays and breakdowns over in-game criticisms on this awful forum. When I did it your way, it takes straight up years for even a simple comment, and that's when we're lucky. Imagine telling that to the Dark Knight/Bard/Machinist/Summoner/Red Mage/Scholar/Astrologian/Samurai mains! Oh wait, I don't have to, because that's what you did, what you continue to do. And we're more divided and in the dark than ever, and I'm personally looking at some future events like the Media Tour or even actual Fanfest with hesitance and fear rather than excitement. Not because I'm jaded, but because I have no idea what the goals of the product or the passions of the development staff are anymore outside of "Make a FF MMO for everyone." Send a mail to EVERY player in the game, and say "We're looking for feedback regarding GAME SYSTEMS, please help us!" No 10th Anniversary, "What's your favorite minion" garbage! And then post those results, pie chart style, so we know exactly where you and the community as a whole stand! Share your metrics, don't even use actual numbers, even percentages would be better than nothing. All of this conjecture, and theorycrafting is an exercise in futility.

I'm not a game developer. I'm an auditor. I'm not telling you how to develop. But I will ask you to provide better avenues for feedback if you truly want it. Because what you have right now for EN specifically is complete trash if you're trying to get anything good from us. And I think most people can at least agree with me on that part, if nothing else.

[Azlith]

...

Very well said. I've actually had discussion with my friends about how it seems so pointless for anyone outside of Japan, who isn't a content creator, to give feedback. CBU3 doesn't listen to us pretty much at all. I loved how when anyone brings up how bad high ping is in this game their response is just, "packet loss". They simply don't care about the opinions or problems of people who live outside of Japan which is particularly sad since the vast majority of the people who play this game don't live in Japan. That said they are a Japanese company and I can't say how much a company like Blizzard or Riot cares about the opinions or problems that the Japanese people have with their games, though I will say that these other companies are much better at incorporating feedback from more than just their home country than CBU3 is. At least it feels that way anyway.

[Nayukhuut]

After reading some translations from the Brazil Game Show interviews regarding the 2min Meta and how it came about as a result of player feedback, I wanted to address something that's been a bit of an issue for many years now.
The methods that the dev team promote as a means of giving feedback are outdated, intimidating, and quite confusing. Frankly... Forums suck.
This is an awful place to provide feedback, positive or negative. It's confusing as hell to navigate. I'm not even remotely sure this post is even in the right directory, there doesn't seem to be any type of area for generalised feedback. In fact, most of the English space is dedicated to bug reports.
There's nothing more off putting about providing critical feedback than having it in an open forum that any old user can reply to, making a little devil's advocate thought exercise out of something you thought you were just providing feedback for the devs on. It's so annoying to try and type out something detailed and thoughtful, only to have some random person jump in with strawmans and bad faith arguments, and then to top that all off someone will comment to tell the OP their post is in the wrong spot.
These combined with the fact that generally, happy people don't provide positive feedback unless prompted to, makes for a horrible soupy mess of negativity and poorly thought out decisions. The people most happy with XIV aren't gonna be here typing out little essays on their favourite things. They're probably playing the game.
Now we're at the point where someone like me, a very infrequent forum poster, feels forced into this janky system of one-sided feedback because the things that made them happy in game received negative feedback on the forums, and SE had no other feedback to go on to make decisions.
Please SE, we need some kind of way to provide feedback, positive and negative, that isn't just forum posts and vague rants on social media.

I do not like a lot of what WoW does, but one thing I do like is that there is a dedicated section of their support page specifically for feedback. You don't have to open a ticket, you can literally just write an anonymous blurb to them on something you like, dislike, or might want added.