Is there a community management team?

[CidHeiral]

A GM/Community Manager cannot be seen to be responding directly to player feedback/suggestions with any kind of opinion. It is not their job to comment on such things.

If they agree with the poster, then it can be interpreted as a promise that it will be coming and when it doesn't, the pitchforks will be hoisted and shouts of "liar, liar" will be too much.

If they disagree with the poster, then it can be interpreted as ignoring a paying customer, or be taken personally by the poster and who knows what kind of outcome that could lead to, because people be crazy sometimes.

It's lose / lose for direct interaction.

Pretty much. Not to mention once they start replying to threads every thread without a reply will devolve into "OMG NO CM REPLY SE DOESNT CARE GG DEAD GAME YOSHIP KICKED MY DOG" etc.

There's really no benefit to devs/CMs responding to threads here and in the worst case they would become targets of harassment by the various unhinged forum trolls. If I were them I would do the same thing and just silently collect feedback.

[NanaWiloh]

Pretty much. Not to mention once they start replying to threads every thread without a reply will devolve into "OMG NO CM REPLY SE DOESNT CARE GG DEAD GAME YOSHIP KICKED MY DOG" etc.

There's really no benefit to devs/CMs responding to threads here and in the worst case they would become targets of harassment by the various unhinged forum trolls. If I were them I would do the same thing and just silently collect feedback.

If they did acknowledge feed back. I would want them to add a big bold disclaimer making it clear!! That acknowledegement is NOT A PROMISE!! That said feed back will be used or addressed directly by the devs.

[DrWho2010]

disclaimers don't work

[NanaWiloh]

disclaimers don't work

Cause people ignore them ignorance you can then nail to their forehead.

[Shougun]

I asked a question 9 ish years ago that was along these lines, Yoshida said:

We have dedicated people who are monitoring the forum on a daily basis like all the time, and if there’s something urgent they even come to me directly and ask for comments or how we should answer. We also have these representatives make a report, and we review it on a weekly basis to decide how we’re going to actually handle the feedback – are we actually going to make a change to the game? Or how are we going to move forward with each single feedback? So we go through that on every language base, so we do spend a lot of time monitoring the forums.

Take that what you will. It would be nice if there was more interaction, but I can't say it would be for the benefit of the employees lol.

[Arzalis]

I don't actually know what the community management team does for this game, tbh.

There have been multiple occasions where issues that are really commonly spoken about here clearly just never reach the devs. It used to happen at fanfest a lot when the EN player base actually got to interact with YoshiP directly during the Q&A. They'd mention something that he had seemingly never heard before despite being pretty prevalent among the EN forums/community. Even that was removed now too.

They've basically removed any real avenue to give feedback at this point, despite insisting they want it.

All that said, I really don't get why people have the feeling the devs are really communicative or anything for this game. They just aren't. Still remembering we legit had a gamebreaking exploit/bug in PvP for 6+ months with absolutely zero communication. During that whole time not a single dev or community rep chimed in about it. No one knew whether it actually was intended or not until they finally patched it after the JP community started complaining.

The fact it was swiftly fixed only after JP commented on it speaks volumes about how non-JP feedback reaches the devs. It simply doesn't.

[Jeeqbit]

I don't actually know what the community management team does for this game, tbh.

Social media, streams, PR campaigns, blog posts, lodestone posts, mostly stuff we don't care about.

There have been multiple occasions where issues that are really commonly spoken about here clearly just never reach the devs. It used to happen at fanfest a lot when the EN player base actually got the interact with YoshiP directly during the Q&A. They'd mention something that he had seemingly never heard before despite being pretty prevalent among the EN forums/community. Even that was removed now too.

Right, but the Fanfest itself was a way for them to hear feedback. Even outside of the Q&A, they go around and meet people and in doing that there is an opportunity for all sorts of things to be mentioned to them in person, including ones who speak English like Koji.

That was missing due to the previous fan fest being online due to Covid and I think that had an effect. At least on this occasion I feel that they will have had chance to meet people in person and hear any feedback in person.

They've basically removed any real avenue to give feedback at this point, despite insisting they want it.

Journalists and content creators often ask questions in interviews that the community care about. Not always, but sometimes they do and some of them actually ask useful questions and even make suggestions or present ideas within those questions.

A time when content creators especially get to interview them is right before the media tour and the Job Actions Trailer. Content creators in particular are more in tune with issues in the game than casual journalists so the questions are usually much more useful.

All that said, I really don't get why people have the feeling the devs are really communicative or anything for this game.

They are, even if the communication is mostly one way (from them to us). We have 2 live letters before each patch, Yoshi-P does interviews the year round and at some events spends the entire day doing 60-100 interviews with various websites (such as at the media tour or when he did that at Gamescom once). There are also regular lodestone updates including direct ones from Yoshi-P if it's absolutely necessary, blog posts and occasionally things translated from developers (especially in those blogs but occasionally interviews as well).

There are sometimes series about how they made the game as well such as
Shadowbringers Creation
Heavensward Dev Diaries - One, two, three

[Somnolence]

It used to happen at fanfest a lot when the EN player base actually got to interact with YoshiP directly during the Q&A. They'd mention something that he had seemingly never heard before despite being pretty prevalent among the EN forums/community.

As a consequence they only listen to streamers and influencers. So no surprise that WAR is the OP tank when bald man mains it.

[VerdeLuck]

Journalists and content creators often ask questions in interviews that the community care about. Not always, but sometimes they do and some of them actually ask useful questions and even make suggestions or present ideas within those questions.

A time when content creators especially get to interview them is right before the media tour and the Job Actions Trailer. Content creators in particular are more in tune with issues in the game than casual journalists so the questions are usually much more useful.

That's entirely the problem is all feedback being filtered through content creators and journalists. They are not getting what the community is saying or feeling, only what filters through people who have an agenda of their own.
Streamers are going to ask a bunch of questions about Bozja/Eureka equivalents and increasing grinds because it serves their interest, no mattter what the community sentiment is, because having super long, grindy content extends their ability to play FFXIV for 8-12 hours a day for views.
Content creators who don't play Viera/Hroth aren't going to ask or push about the topic. Content Creators who don't fish aren't going to ask about fish quality of life, streamers who only raid are just going to ask about getting more ultimate content, etc.

It's an entirely flawed way of doing things because now you're not getting feedback, you're getting the biased slant of feedback that a streamer or journalist wants to ask you about. It's always been a part of the media tour that SE basically picks their chosen known quantities to lob softball questions at Yoshi-p but in the past people thought they actually paid attention to other discussion channels to get the feedback from real players. Yoshi-p says to discuss things on here if you want them to be seen, but they don't even seem to be seen. We have a 280+ page thread complaining about viera and hroth hair and headgear that doesn't seem to be heard since they KEEP releasing new rewards that those races can't use, and from the DT previews, those races can't use the AF gear headgear for most jobs. Ping and connectivity issues in NA have been a problem for a literal decade and they don't even seem to know about it because they don't read feedback from here.

[DPZ2]

That's entirely the problem is all feedback being filtered through content creators and journalists. They are not getting what the community is saying or feeling, only what filters through people who have an agenda of their own."

Written by someone with their own agenda. People write about things in the game because they don't like X, want more of Y, and, at times, want to be contrary as heck.

Writers here complain about X, let's use "the lack of Bozja-like content this expansion". In the previous expansion that complaint was "the lack of Deep Dungeon content this expansion". Others say "I don't care for Bozja/Deep Dungeon content". None acknowledge the fact that the Deep Dungeon contingent complained in ShadowBringers, and SE decided to put that back in and skip another Bozja.

What none appear to acknowledge is that complaints have at least a two-year turnaround, as that's typically when a new expansion hits. The direction of this game's patch content was decided in the year prior to the Endwalker release. You weren't suddenly going to get Bozja because you complained about it in 2022. For those who asked for Deep Dungeons, to complain about that content is to basically declare "if it doesn't match my specific desires, the content is dead to me", which ensures exactly zero Deep Dungeons in the future.

Face it. We are the influencers, whether we do so consciously or not. The forums can't force an immediate change in plans for the current expansion, nor should they.

And sentiment expressed about the game comes to Square Enix in a multitude of forms, not limited to these forums. Some are more forgiving than these forums. That feedback is as valid as what we read here.