Thread: Is there a community management team?

Something we've become accustomed to is hearing about changes made with player feedback in mind, but we as a community have no real idea how that feedback is being collected and from what sources. Our only understanding of FFXIV's feedback collection process comes from the in-game support desks which directs players here, to the general discussion on the official forums as the main hub for submitting feedback, but there is absolutely no acknowledgement of any feedback at all from any sort of community management staff. We get the occasional introduction post of someone introducing themselves, but then we never hear from them again.

So I'd like to pose a question for any community team members: Are you actually here? And what I mean by "here" is, are you ever reading the threads on this forum? Is this information that is ever being collected? How frequently does information get collected and delivered? What does that process look like? Are we not allowed to know if any specific feedback is being communicated over to Japan? And if not, why not? What can we do to better communicate feedback about the game?

From my perspective, I find the years of radio silence disheartening. I wish FFXIV had a healthy and transparent line of communication between player and developer. Of course, not every instance of feedback needs to be responded to, and not all feedback necessarily should be listened to, but I don't understand why we're left in the dark in 2023 where so many games are doing the exact opposite and establishing open and healthy communication lines between player and developer.

I'm not talking about GMs having casual conversations and engaging in discussion, but rather, acknowledging prominent feedback, keeping the community informed, and being open about the process. Right now, we're like NASA broadcasting radio waves into space and hoping for a sign of life out in the universe, but really those radio waves have reached nothing but dead space. For all we know, the official forums is just a spam folder to the community team--where all the useless junk mail that no one cares about gets dumped. There's a negative amount of engagement, transparency, or communication from the team currently, so there's no reason to believe otherwise.

Even something as simple as GM thread markers could be a massive improvement to the current system, where threads that GMs have pulled feedback from are quietly marked for all to see--a silent recognition that they felt the feedback in that thread was important enough to include in any sort of report or data collection. Or even just a "so and so has read" telling you if a GM read your thread. I just want to know if the lights are on or if no one's home.

Yes, there is a global community manager (you see him next to Yoshi-P in live letters). Then there are regional Square Enix offices that contain community teams, including for JP, NA, EU. They often advertise jobs.

There are a lot of aspects to the community teams:

1. Marketing (head of marketing, forming partnerships like with KFC or streamers, and any team members they need to achieve this, it's more complex than this because I've seen all sorts of jobs related to it, for example there is a currently a PR job going).
2. Community team that collect feedback, handle social media, streams (such as Duty Commenced on twitch, youtube and so on), manage fan fests.
3. GMs that handle the support desk and moderation, their various levels of lead and just regular GM. At least in covid I used to see these normally worked from home. There's currently a Senior Investigations Analyst position going in the US for things that fall out the scope of normal investigations.

Again I've seen all sorts of jobs that surround this over the years where the teams may not all be the same but work together a lot, such as web-related or marketing or GMs or researching user trends or handling the brand and the various levels of seniority in these positions.

There is an article about the subject at https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/blog/003178.html

Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Are we not allowed to know if any specific feedback is being communicated over to Japan? And if not, why not?

If they tried to participate in a discussion here they would probably end up making themselves a victim of endless bait and trolling and opinions based on anecdotal experiences that, in the grand scheme of things, don't paint a complete picture.

It would also be difficult to see them doing all their other responsibilities if they talk in all the forums all day.

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

Players can consider the point of view of not only themselves, but other aspects of the player base. For example, there are new players, returning players (who haven't played since 1.0, ARR, Stormblood, Shadowbringers or a few patches ago), casual players, hardcore players, raiders, non-raiders, people who only play for the msq, people who want to play solo with duty support and people who want to play with others, roleplayers, people into glam or venues.

It is this selfish "it's all about me and the issues that affect me" that make feedback useless sometimes. If there isn't a consideration in the argument for how the suggeston would affect others, then it may ultimately be impractical depending on what it is.

A CM could come into the general forum and say what is your favorite color. 5 minutes into the thread, it will devolve into an arguemet about healer dps, a raid mechanic, why doesn’t x job or race have something, etc.

There is a reason why the EN NA forums has the channel number 666. The devs knew what would happen when they created them.

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If they tried to participate in a discussion here they would probably end up making themselves a victim of endless bait and trolling and opinions based on anecdotal experiences that, in the grand scheme of things, don't paint a complete picture.

It would also be difficult to see them doing all their other responsibilities if they talk in all the forums all day.

While I'm sympathetic to this view -- it's a problem of their own making, frankly. I don't think they can have their cake and eat it too, here, really.

The moderation on these forums is flatly, comically abysmal. I understand why they may be reticent to interact more because of how lawless these forums are, and how insanely off the rails things go; but it's their own fault.

Last month during the height of the Fall Guys discourse someone posted multiple direct links to the the plugin repositories and various downloads to other cheat tools that wound up staying up for like... 16? or so hours despite multiple reports.

Regardless, it is legitimately frustrating to be told by the development team to communicate feedback through "official means" (ie, via posting here) but get no interaction or confirmation that anyone is listening -- it often feels like we're shouting into the void.

I do think there is legitimate criticism here over the role of our Community Team, and how it feels like there's a substantive disconnect between them. No doubt there are many things behind the scenes that we don't see and therefore aren't able to appreciate, as well as the things they do engage with that are neat (Twitter, Twitch), but I think being a little more directly engaged here would be very appreciated!

Originally Posted by Aexnidaral

While I'm sympathetic to this view -- it's a problem of their own making, frankly. I don't think they can have their cake and eat it too, here, really.

Not entirely. Because even things that aren't bad enough to moderate are still likely to be something that drive them down a rabbit hole discussion that spans 100 pages... arguing with points that are ultimately selfish and don't consider other types of players. They would end up having to try to explain basic fundamental concepts such as "not being selfish" to many people, essentially a lot of the things I've done in my posts, when they have more productive things to do and more useful ways to approach their role.

The moderation on these forums is flatly, comically abysmal.

It is possible for there to be the opposite problem. Most moderators of any forum over-moderate things that are just not that bad, to the point people feel suppressed or like it's not worth posting at all.

My personal perspective is that most things should not be moderated at all. Just really extreme things, such as discussing subjects that are not welcome anywhere on the internet, topics not related to the forum category, topics that are not FFXIV-related, discussing individuals (such as streamers), etc.

Heated discussions can actually be good and very productive in some cases, so moderating anything that gets slightly heated can be a bad thing or misinterpreted as being heated by a moderator.

For all these reasons it's a good thing that they take this approach. I think they do it in response to reports like they do in the game, so ultimately it's probably because nobody bothers to report much.

wound up staying up for like... 16? or so hours despite multiple reports.

It is true that they are really slow with it. Although I can certainly understand the forums being the lowest priority for them when it is only used by a tiny fraction of players.

I think being a little more directly engaged here would be very appreciated!

I think the main ways they could do it different is to create their own topics with questions of their own, and a summary topic of pressing issues in each forum that the replies can steer.

But they could just as easily ask such questions elsewhere (such as in the game where nobody knows who they are), and keep such a list of issues they want to bring up private, which is all what I assume happens instead.

Communicating back and forth with players is almost uniformly a mistake on big projects for two reasons.

One: people on the internet do not behave like reasonable people, and using punitive methods to force it to be a reasonable space is a full-time job and will create even more problems and more work - ban evasion, review bombing, social media attacks, etc. The moderation here is lacking, sure, but lacking moderation does not explain why it's a dumpster fire in the first place. That's all on the people - and in practice you'll find that they're not going to magically behave vastly differently, they're just going to be periodically kicked out of the pool, and they're going to lash out over it.

Two: most purpose-driven feedback is less useful than sentiment mining from players talking to each other. The long story short of why can be summed up by this Neil Gaiman quote from his storytelling masterclass: "Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong." Unfortunately, most player feedback tries to focus on desired changes, which might as well be filed directly to a shredder for how useful they are. Players complaining to each other tends to be a lot more purely useful - CM/dev presence is actively harmful to that.

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.