Is there a community management team?

[Aravell]

"We plan on doing it by X" leads to massive raging if anything happens to push that date back, no matter how low-priority the work is.

"We plan on doing it eventually" leads to massive raging when it doesn't appear quickly enough, usually within 6-12 months, especially if any patch feels particularly light on content (regardless of whether that content was actually light work or not, or what other work is going on).

"We don't plan on doing it" sentences the argument to the woe-is-me-the-devs-hate-us-specifically list of grievances for the indefinite future.

"We would like to do it, but it's low priority" leads to, again, massive raging whenever a patch feels light because clearly the work could have been done then (see previous caveats).

"We might do it, we might not, who can say" is perhaps the most truthful response for low-priority requests. For obvious reasons, it is also not something that typically goes over well.

Therefore: silence.

Avoiding communicating with your playerbase on the off chance that people will rage is really just an excuse. Them not responding at all makes it look like they're not listening at all, if they did respond and tell the playerbase whether or not they're actually planning to fix certain grievances, then players that are on the fence can decide immediately whether or not they want to stay with the game.

Besides, if their reason for not confirming anything is to not make people angry, well, people are already angry now due to the lack of communication, so people are angry either way, why not just talk with the playerbase?

[Sindele]

Avoiding communicating with your playerbase on the off chance that people will rage is really just an excuse. Them not responding at all makes it look like they're not listening at all, if they did respond and tell the playerbase whether or not they're actually planning to fix certain grievances, then players that are on the fence can decide immediately whether or not they want to stay with the game.

Besides, if their reason for not confirming anything is to not make people angry, well, people are already angry now due to the lack of communication, so people are angry either way, why not just talk with the playerbase?

I think the history of online games and company communications is, at this point, a bit too long and has a few too many case examples to call it an 'off chance' and an 'excuse' as though it's trying to chart an uncertain future. It's not a guess at what will happen. It is what people will do on any forum for any large game that isn't very tightly moderated. It is especially certainly something that will happen here, because the game is quite large, and the moderation is quite loose, and you only need to take a few minutes reading just about any random thread around here to figure that out.

You don't have to like it. But it is absolutely the state of things. There's nothing to be gained by talking about it.

[Aravell]

I think the history of online games and company communications is, at this point, a bit too long and has a few too many case examples to call it an 'off chance' and an 'excuse' as though it's trying to chart an uncertain future. It's not a guess at what will happen. It is what people will do on any forum for any large game that isn't very tightly moderated. It is especially certainly something that will happen here, because the game is quite large, and the moderation is quite loose, and you only need to take a few minutes reading just about any random thread around here to figure that out.

You don't have to like it. But it is absolutely the state of things. There's nothing to be gained by talking about it.

So you're saying that just because some parts of the community prefer to behave like petulant children, that it's fine for the community managers to not engage with the community? Still sounds very much like an excuse to me. Let's keep in mind that this is a platform owned by Square Enix, and as such, if people choose to rage irrationally and refuse to stop, they can be banned, that is a thing that can happen, they can moderate their platform. So what's a good reason that they don't engage with the community?

[DPZ2]

So you're saying that just because some parts of the community prefer to behave like petulant children, that it's fine for the community managers to not engage with the community? Still sounds very much like an excuse to me. Let's keep in mind that this is a platform owned by Square Enix, and as such, if people choose to rage irrationally and refuse to stop, they can be banned, that is a thing that can happen, they can moderate their platform. So what's a good reason that they don't engage with the community?

Perhaps it's because the job is advertised as a job mostly involving Fan Fests and Twitch Streams, with some "check the Forums" on the side? Perhaps because they are neither moderators of the forums nor paid to respond in the forums? Perhaps because Square Enix considers other social media just as important, if not more so, than the forums?

I can think of any number of reasons they don't engage specifically in the forums.

That this doesn't sit well with you is evident. If you base your like or dislike of a game based on the interactivity of some PR management team in the forums for that game, you are going to be disappointed. Frequently.

It's "damned if you do", and "damned if you don't". Since blowback is never more than "I'm angry nobody appears to be listening to me" if you don't, which would you choose?

[DrWho2010]

Avoiding communicating with your playerbase on the off chance that people will rage is really just an excuse. Them not responding at all makes it look like they're not listening at all, if they did respond and tell the playerbase whether or not they're actually planning to fix certain grievances, then players that are on the fence can decide immediately whether or not they want to stay with the game.

Besides, if their reason for not confirming anything is to not make people angry, well, people are already angry now due to the lack of communication, so people are angry either way, why not just talk with the playerbase?

Have you seen some of the people that post here? ughghgh, I would hate to subject the community team to those people. *shudders*

If people are on the fence is some post from a community gm really going to make that much of a difference? "Oh, oh my they actually said something to me, I'll stay subbed I guess." Please.

[VerdeLuck]

Avoiding communicating with your playerbase on the off chance that people will rage is really just an excuse. Them not responding at all makes it look like they're not listening at all, if they did respond and tell the playerbase whether or not they're actually planning to fix certain grievances, then players that are on the fence can decide immediately whether or not they want to stay with the game.

Besides, if their reason for not confirming anything is to not make people angry, well, people are already angry now due to the lack of communication, so people are angry either way, why not just talk with the playerbase?

Yeah it should be a lesson to other companies with what happened to blizzard with overwatch 2. They hid the fact they were cutting PvE for a very long time, cut communication, kept facts hidden, etc to avoid pissing off the community. The result was a 10x larger issue with the community when they found out not just the bad news, but that the devs hid the bad news from players for months to a year until it was too late to hide.
Communicating it early is always better to avoid escalating tensions. There's no gain to hiding things from your community or not acknowledging issues.

[CidHeiral]

Them not responding at all makes it look like they're not listening at all

They regularly talk about feedback in live letters and interviews as well as implement changes based on that feedback so they're quite obviously listening. Giving people here a written pat on the head for every thread wouldn't change anything other than opening the messenger up to being flamed constantly.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Just letting you all know. Current WoW team is kicking so much ass in the communications department than FFXIV has even been.

Its very sad and I wish theyd start talking with the community more rather than just barely address feedback in LLs and interviews.

[Arzalis]

If there is something they consider a feature that others consider a flaw, then they should be confident enough in their game to express that.

The whole "they won't say anything because they're afraid they might upset people!" is a bad excuse.

[Fawkes]

They also want to keep it a secret so they can get a big pop at fanfest if/when they announce they're doing it.