Thoughts Regarding Communication to and From the Devs

[strawberrycake]

An interview back in ShB, I'll have to look it up, but it was posted and translated by Akhmorning, the battle devs expressed how they were afraid of feed back, and no not people being mean or horrid or crass, like, people genuinely being critical of their work. This lead to me talking about a few different things with a friend who also started in ARR.

We talked about how back ARR coming off the cusp of 1.0 how XIV felt fresh and new and how they seemed to want to create the best MMO they could, and given it was 2013, they were certainly doing what they could. Now Design Philosophy changes, and XIVs certainly has over the course of the last 10 years. And with a recent video that people having been talking about a lot, it shows how HW had arguably worse Design choices for the game.

Now what does all of this have to do with Communication to and From the Devs? I feel how poorly the game did during HW affected them, Prior to Patch 3.3 Revenge of the Horde, XIV had saw a massive fall off, content was seen as too hard, the game felt stagnant, Diadem introduced in 3.1 was failing and seen very poorly by the community. I feel this left a lasting imprint on the still fresh and fragile egos of the dev team, people will be harsh and honest, it is just a fact of life.

I feel these failures in HW has lead to the Design Philosophy shift in XIV to being an RPG you can play Solo or With Friends, as said during the 10 year road map showing. Yet the game is still marketed as an MMO to many New comers and Vet players alike.

This leads to something I feel also needs to be addressed when we talk about feed back and communication. To any SE community manager or Dev who may read this. Communication goes both ways, you can ask, but we as the players must also know what you all want to do, and not solely from the mouth of Yoshida. If you are afraid of Mistakes, making choices for the game that may fail, or having ideas that you all may like to implement but feel it may disrupt the game, you should do it. I know feed back can be scary, I know a lot of it may be harsh, but I know that most of it only comes from Loving players who only want the best for the game, just as you all do.

Undercut: I ask any engaging with this thread to remember the devs are people to, and XIV being such a volatile game along with it's history is something we have to remember, and keep in mind, their fears may also be aspects of what affects this game, and we not even know it because they remain as silent as the silent majority who plays XIV.

[Connor]

I do mostly agree, but I think the thing about being afraid of ‘criticism’ is more of a cultural thing than the devs themselves.

That is to say, when it comes to the community, things like criticisms can somehow end up jumping straight from 0 to extreme (i.e sending death threats, abusive messages and posts , etc). From what I’ve heard it can actually be really bad in the JP community too. I think, rather than being afraid of ‘genuine feedback’, it’s that kind of feedback that they’re actually worried about; the destructive kind that just hurts people instead of trying to address an issue.

I mentioned in another thread too but it’s also worth considering the (supposed) language barrier. A lot of the time, it’s not so much that they don’t want to directly address NA/EU communities, it’s that they have difficulty finding translators who are familiar enough with the game to understand how to properly translate specific game terms, abbreviations etc. Now, I have no idea whether any of it is actually true lol, but I do know they’ve cited the language barriers in the past as being one of the reasons why they rarely engage with the NA/EU community

[strawberrycake]

I do mostly agree, but I think the thing about being afraid of ‘criticism’ is more of a cultural thing than the devs themselves.

That is to say, when it comes to the community, things like criticisms can somehow end up jumping straight from 0 to extreme (i.e sending death threats, abusive messages and posts , etc). From what I’ve heard it can actually be really bad in the JP community too. I think, rather than being afraid of ‘genuine feedback’, it’s that kind of feedback that they’re actually worried about; the destructive kind that just hurts people instead of trying to address an issue.

I mentioned in another thread too but it’s also worth considering the (supposed) language barrier. A lot of the time, it’s not so much that they don’t want to directly address NA/EU communities, it’s that they have difficulty finding translators who are familiar enough with the game to understand how to properly translate specific game terms, abbreviations etc. Now, I have no idea whether any of it is actually true lol, but I do know they’ve cited the language barriers in the past as being one of the reasons why they rarely engage with the NA/EU community

Oh there's been several or more dev streams where the entire of the JP viewer base were telling Yoshida to off himself for the changes he implemented, from what Japanese I can read they get very passionate about how they feel about game. and I understand that finding translators is hard, but I also keep in mind that for as long as the games been around they could have just hired someone who would be more or less fully capable of doing the job after all these years, look at Koji Fox and his work on FF11.

And language barriers are a thing, a lot of how the rest of us word things may come off as downright disrepsctful in their language or theres no equivalent word so the sentense gets mangled. But i;d rather them try then remain silent, can't change anything if we all stay complacent with the status quo.

[Jeeqbit]

battle devs expressed how they were afraid of feed back, and no not people being mean or horrid or crass, like, people genuinely being critical of their work.

I wouldn't blame them after some of the awful things I have read on this forum in the past. It would not be healthy for one's mental health to read some of things that have been said on a regular basis.

Constructive feedback is great and it can be done in a way that is polite and respectful of what they have done, of the work they have put in and of the challenges and difficulties involved in addressing their concerns. Many English speakers do not word it respectfully or polite, especially in the past. You know, like a reasonable human being.

And with a recent video that people having been talking about a lot, it shows how HW had arguably worse Design choices for the game.

Frankly, the ARR and Heavensward design was a "shot in the dark". They had no idea what they were doing back then. They were just throwing out things to see what worked.

For example, Monk was given Featherfoot, an ability that allowed them a significant chance of evading attacks entirely. This made sense from a lore perspective, but had no value in practice because Monk is not a tank and there's no need to dodge... a raid-wide AoE?

The entire job design was similar to that; it was all made from a lore perspective. Paladin had physical blocks, while Dark Knight had magic defense. This made sense from a lore perspective but when you put it into raids, some of it stuck and some of it just fell apart.

But with a smaller player count, there were less voices, less content creators (literally just MTQ, MrHappy, Xeno and barely anyone else) and it was just easier to hear about the problems and they all got addressed, with useless abilities being removed, cross-class becoming role actions so we didn't have to level multiple jobs and parry becoming Tenacity. Now there are hundreds of content creators, voices coming from everywhere with constrasting opinions, so looks like it would be hard to decide who to listen to now.

Prior to Patch 3.3 Revenge of the Horde, XIV had saw a massive fall off, content was seen as too hard, the game felt stagnant

I didn't see any issues on Balmung. But that's exactly the problem. We were restricted to worlds. If you weren't on a popular world like Balmung, then of course the game felt stagnant. That was why they worked hard to implement cross-world PF in the final tier of Heavensward.

Diadem introduced in 3.1 was failing and seen very poorly by the community. I feel this left a lasting imprint on the still fresh and fragile egos of the dev team, people will be harsh and honest, it is just a fact of life.

Like everything else, it was a shot in the dark. They discovered that making it hard to queue for and have no goal (such as a relic weapon) then nobody is going to do it, which led us to Eureka. I doubt they could have been confident anything would succeed back then. It was all a shot in the dark to see what works and what doesn't.

I feel these failures in HW has lead to the Design Philosophy shift in XIV to being an RPG you can play Solo or With Friends

No, it changed because they did a company survey of Final Fantasy players and they consistently saw that most people avoid the MMORPGs because they want to play them alone like all the rest. So their goal is obviously to allow them to play it alone, but while doing that they may end up having a conversation with someone or joining a Free Company and getting sucked into the social environment. That should be the plan because it's smart.

Yet the game is still marketed as an MMO to many New comers and Vet players alike.

I think that it is only players marketing it that way. Square Enix has always marketed it as "Final Fantasy XIV Online" which does not necessarily mean multiplayer.

you can ask, but we as the players must also know what you all want to do

That is the entire point of live letters, but Yoshi-P is also generous with the amount of interviews he does each year. It must be well over a hundred. It's over 60 interviews when he goes to events such the Media Tour and sometimes that many at events like Gamescom.

[strawberrycake]

snip...

This is why I feel we need to know what they think more often. Other MMOs are subject to people being rude, harsh, and outright malicious, but this always makes me question why there isn't more of a pressence of people keeping that from seeping in. I could understand if it was a studio like Digital Extreme back in the day, small time and using their literal last bit of money for the entire company to make Warframe, but even they managed to keep their forums clean.

Theres a middle ground here that isn't impossible to get to, but it won't be over the back of the players only that we make it there, we need the Devs involved more with communication as well. And ofc this is obviously a management thing, other Japanese companies aren't against bridging those gaps. If Other MMOs from a multitude of situational backgrounds can make it work, language barriers included, I feel SE can as well with XIV. I see you here a lot, you're passionate and I like that, but we're gonna need more of the devs side of things, the forums need to be managed more for our and their safety.

And as for the state of HW, a lot of it was great on paper, but their so prone to over reaction when they mess up, vs making small changes over time or even getting into the habit of hotfixing their game more actively, I feel a lot of past issues within expansions and patches could have been better, if they were more keen on patching them in the moment over leaving issues to fester for months as a time.

Also I disagree, a lot of Yoshidas Interviews have more fluff at times or him being vague about aspects of the game sighting he wants to keep a surprise over actually just telling us whats going on, hence why I wanna hear it more from the mouth of the devs themselves and not YOshida doing his marketing ploy. A more raw honest experience I feel would be better for the game. And when i say it's Yoshida being Vague, it's him saying things you'd already know or would have figured out if you were a long time consistent player, him not outright saying no, but what he says more or less means no, or the people interviwing him never asking questions that matter, just the same fluffy questions the players always ask.

I have rarely seen people ask him serious questions about the game or his plans for the games or how the devs feel about the game. it's always fluff.

[MAJRIS]

What made me give XIV chance was that I was pretty much fed up of the disrespect and ignore from the side of WoW developers and their GM's.
It was pretty refreshing to see some streams and also live letters of XIV devs showing various QOL features and new stuff, instead of the usual "wowhead datamines mount reskin and then writes article about it" type of information.

Mmaybe it was a PR stunt, because in terms of communication, it's pretty much one sided with the only difference from WoW is the live letters.

Recruited one of my friends that started playing lately, friend was so happy making it to the Stormblood. Met zenos and fought him. While I made him fully aware of the story ramping up and being minful of spoilers, but nobody warned us to not open FFXIV twitter page that day because someone decided to SPOILER THE REST OF THE STORY (even though endwalker is still the latest expansion to play to this day) with giraffe memes. SPACE FIGHT TEST OF YOUR REFLEXES haha!
Great. The climax of the story is completely smeared around as new/hot thread. Friend stopped playing soon after as it was very clear that the rest will be just RP walk to now obvious plot twist finale.
Five minutes of fame "my meme made 150k views" cost you one potential customer.

I don't demand apology or anything like that. I just wish the PR team were a little bit mindful of their actions for the new lifeblood that the sprouts are.
Get out of the comfort zone of social media where you pick who to block and whom to react to get likes and clicks, and come between people, listen to their pleas, stories, made them feel that you CARE.

I miss the old days of WoW where GMs actually played the game. they spawned critters around or helped to fill dungeon queue, or secretly participated in raids and revealed themselves after boss kill to celebrate the victory with the people in raid, or made WoW dad jokes in cities, or gave people low level ore or backpacks. They did not abuse the GM to give anyone significant advantage as all the items were obtainable and mine-able pretty much by anyone on starting character. But these small things and interactions made it to people's memories that there were people that honestly cared.

have good day whoever reads this.

[Atelier-Bagur]

What made me give XIV chance was that I was pretty much fed up of the disrespect and ignore from the side of WoW developers and their GM's.
It was pretty refreshing to see some streams and also live letters of XIV devs showing various QOL features and new stuff, instead of the usual "wowhead datamines mount reskin and then writes article about it" type of information.

Mmaybe it was a PR stunt, because in terms of communication, it's pretty much one sided with the only difference from WoW is the live letters.

Recruited one of my friends that started playing lately, friend was so happy making it to the Stormblood. Met zenos and fought him. While I made him fully aware of the story ramping up and being minful of spoilers, but nobody warned us to not open FFXIV twitter page that day because someone decided to SPOILER THE REST OF THE STORY (even though endwalker is still the latest expansion to play to this day) with giraffe memes. SPACE FIGHT TEST OF YOUR REFLEXES haha!
Great. The climax of the story is completely smeared around as new/hot thread. Friend stopped playing soon after as it was very clear that the rest will be just RP walk to now obvious plot twist finale.
Five minutes of fame "my meme made 150k views" cost you one potential customer.

I don't demand apology or anything like that. I just wish the PR team were a little bit mindful of their actions for the new lifeblood that the sprouts are.
Get out of the comfort zone of social media where you pick who to block and whom to react to get likes and clicks, and come between people, listen to their pleas, stories, made them feel that you CARE.

I miss the old days of WoW where GMs actually played the game. they spawned critters around or helped to fill dungeon queue, or secretly participated in raids and revealed themselves after boss kill to celebrate the victory with the people in raid, or made WoW dad jokes in cities, or gave people low level ore or backpacks. They did not abuse the GM to give anyone significant advantage as all the items were obtainable and mine-able pretty much by anyone on starting character. But these small things and interactions made it to people's memories that there were people that honestly cared.

have good day whoever reads this.

Funny enough current WoW devs are being more communicative and less transparent than the FFXIV team. Especially with the recent stuff.

We just dont know what exactly the feedback theyre receiving from us the players.

[NekoMataMata]

There's an entire language barrier between most of us and the devs. Obviously some people can't be polite or constructive about their criticisms and that's an issue, but at the end of the day that's not something that should entirely stop anyone that aims to be competitive and improve consistently.

This is just my opinion, but everything comes down to marketing, sales, money. Why bother catering to smaller groups when you can attempt to make your game aimed at being for everyone and reap the rewards for doing so through a larger consumer base? That's how everything in life is sadly. It's not about creating something impressive, something with quality and performance. It's about making the numbers go up and making your profit increase through any means necessary.

[Jeeqbit]

nobody warned us to not open FFXIV twitter page

I know others don't avoid things so much, but I personally wouldn't look at youtube, twitter or even non-event chat windows if I wanted to avoid spoilers.

Friend stopped playing soon after as it was very clear that the rest will be just RP walk to now obvious plot twist finale.

Stories are not just about the conclusion, but how the conclusion is reached. For example, everyone knew how Star Wars would end, but they watched the prequels anyway. In fact we know the conclusion of almost every story ever (protagonist wins).

Fighting Zenos isn't even really the whole plot either. So many other things happen that this one thing doesn't spoil in the slightest.