Is there a community management team?

[Fawkes]

What can we do to better communicate feedback about the game?

Convince the entire english speaking community to stop making so many threads and just click the like button on a post that describes an issue well the way the japanese community does.

[VerdeLuck]

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.
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.

We are not the influencers and I do not expect every single post and poster to be taken seriously. What I expect is that someone from SE reads the forums every other day and gets a vibe of the direction of where things are trending. The fact that there is a 280+ page thread on viera and hroth headgear and hair with hundreds of posters complaining about it, and there's not any kind of response or action on it is dumb. Having a huge long megathread that encompasses thousands of posts of people upset about the issue should communicate pretty clearly where the community stands on it, and it's the eaisest to show where the cracks are other than the ping and connectivity issues that have plagued the NA part of this game for a decade.

It's feedback that for 4 years now, and 2 years pretty intensely, the players have been communicating that they want to be able to use the AF gear, raid rewards, tome rewards, shop rewards, etc on every character regardless of race. It has been such a huge amount of feedback on the EN side from Reddit, Twitter replies to SE posts, on the Forums here.
It is literally impossible to ignore that there is a large sentiment about this from players who play these races and not just the bias of a few players. Is anything done about it? not reallly! That's the issue is you can play by all the rules the posters say here, you can be clear, honest, and concise with your feedback, you can make megathreads to communicate what you want and have hundreds of others voice the same thing, but there's no one home. No one is communicating this up the chain if you aren't a streamer or content creator, or I guess if Yoshida experiences it himself like is the case with the RMT ads.

[kyyninen_kirahvi]

Convince the entire english speaking community to stop making so many threads and just click the like button on a post that describes an issue well the way the japanese community does.

The hrothgar/viera megathread has been unheard dispite it's length. Sure, there were more conversation on the matter after the April hrothgar hair disaster, but after that the issues raised in the megathread are still unaddressed. The fact that Yoshi-P said "Is this not what you wanted?" tells a lot about how badly the communication from the forums is.

By the way, wouldn't multiple threads about a matter raise alarms about something that matters to the community? I understand the perspective of "just act like the Japanese forum" despite having completely different and varied culture. If that really was the case they'd tell so this wouldn't be an issue. I'd like to remind again that the English forums aren't just for NA. They should know this.

[Sindele]

"Not acted on" and "unheard" are two different concepts. Be careful about mixing them up.

[DrWho2010]

i'm sure the Viera/Hrothgar head piece issue pains them greatly. but silence on the matter doesn't mean it isn't being worked on in some capacity.

What is a better response? Nothing? or a mention every two months saying "we're still working on it, please look forward to it"?

[VerdeLuck]

i'm sure the Viera/Hrothgar head piece issue pains them greatly. but silence on the matter doesn't mean it isn't being worked on in some capacity.

What is a better response? Nothing? or a mention every two months saying "we're still working on it, please look forward to it"?

What people expect is when a thread gets to a certain size, there is a response from a CM saying "thanks for the feedback I will pass this to the devs". That's not a huge ask and it makes people not feel like they're shouting into the void. It promises nothing but it still shows that they aren't just ignoring the forums.

[kyyninen_kirahvi]

"Not acted on" and "unheard" are two different concepts. Be careful about mixing them up.

i'm sure the Viera/Hrothgar head piece issue pains them greatly. but silence on the matter doesn't mean it isn't being worked on in some capacity.

What is a better response? Nothing? or a mention every two months saying "we're still working on it, please look forward to it"?

This issue is more about optics to player feedback. The issues might as well be unheard when the community has no idea if they are noted and brought to the attention of the developers. So the point is just moot.

At the monent the silence on the matter is what they are doing nothing on the hroth/viera head piece issue. If it's worked on, tell. If you have no plans to do so, tell. This issue is discussed in length in the megathread.

[DrWho2010]

too much transparency is a double edge sword. damned if you do, damned if you don't. most likely the balance tips towards keeping things quiet until it's ready to be launched/implemented. I don't see the situation changing anytime soon.

[Sindele]

"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.

[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.