Reddit vs. the Forums in the Graphics War of '24

[Aravell]

How would they know the sentiment without reading the feedback?

You can very easily gauge sentiment by just skimming thread titles without actually reading any of the feedback (constructive or otherwise).

Like if you browse through the PvP subforum, you'd very quickly know that people have a problem with Frontlines, but you wouldn't know why. So in this scenario, SE could implement changes to Frontlines that could end up making things worse, because they only know the sentiment but not any specific feedback.

Same with general discussion. The general sentiment seen from browsing thread titles here seems to be that the graphical update has problems, but you can't tell what the problems are exactly unless you go through the feedback that people have provided.

My point is mainly to point out that the things they've done "in response to player feedback" are very general things that don't correspond to any feedback in particular (popular ones or otherwise). I would again point to the criterion rewards, a lot of people were discussing possible rewards, but nobody asked for a glowing tome weapon upgrade, yet here we are.

[LianaThorne]

You can very easily gauge sentiment by just skimming thread titles without actually reading any of the feedback (constructive or otherwise).

Like if you browse through the PvP subforum, you'd very quickly know that people have a problem with Frontlines, but you wouldn't know why. So in this scenario, SE could implement changes to Frontlines that could end up making things worse, because they only know the sentiment but not any specific feedback.

Same with general discussion. The general sentiment seen from browsing thread titles here seems to be that the graphical update has problems, but you can't tell what the problems are exactly unless you go through the feedback that people have provided.

My point is mainly to point out that the things they've done "in response to player feedback" are very general things that don't correspond to any feedback in particular (popular ones or otherwise). I would again point to the criterion rewards, a lot of people were discussing possible rewards, but nobody asked for a glowing tome weapon upgrade, yet here we are.

Is it that no one wanted it or is it that the EN community didn't want it? I'm curious if it was a blanket "No." across all the communities or if this was some ask on the JP side of things.

[TheOperator3712]

Is it that no one wanted it or is it that the EN community didn't want it? I'm curious if it was a blanket "No." across all the communities or if this was some ask on the JP side of things.

My understanding is that the JP side of things has been very happy with Variant and Criterion overall, and that it is only the NA and EU player base who are upset. I'd venture to guess the reason that we are upset is because we were the ones asking for challenging four man content. What people on our side of the pond were really asking for though was WoW's Mythic+(M+) system. Which if anyone doesn't know, M+ allows you to run a dungeon at a higher level, this level scales up and the higher you go the better the rewards get until they cap out at whatever level they cap at now(they keep changing it). What NA and EU players were really asking for, was a 4 man scaling difficulty loot farm. What we got was a four man non-scaling difficulty challenging experience with no loot. So OF COURSE NA and EU are unhappy. They wanted M+ and got 4 man diet Ultimate.

[Moqi]

The problem arises when people decide it requires no organization to it, to fill up the board, and act like everyone in the world agrees with them.

But why do you care so much lol. Are you managing this place? We have mods. They can close and redirect people to other threads if they don't like how we are giving feedback.

This is a lot emotions for things that don't concern you.

[Berkilak]

Isn't it interesting that most people (though, of course, not everyone) posting on the FFXIV Reddit favour the visual updates to characters, while the opposite is true on this forum?

I wonder why the two have such different perspectives. Hopping between both Reddit and here is like visiting alternative realities.

It's pretty simple - reddit is a larger community where people tend to "hang out" and just chat, whether it be about positive or negative things. Whereas people come to the official forums with specific issues. The tone of either does not invalidate the feedback offered by the other.

[Zen_Zaal]

A big part of too is the absence of the old downvote counter and post hiding so you only have widely accepted posts up top with no real room for any discussion. Things people are even slightly divided on or want to discuss openly will never have as much visibility as a meme about grapes for example.

The tread I made on the skin issues with the new update, had only 150 ish upvotes, but 70% of the 130k people who did vote, upvoted the post. Opinions on there are just not as black and white as it seems is all, it's just how reddit is designed.

[Raim]

Turns out the forum "whiners" were completely right and a ton of things in the benchmark were broken and unfinished. This is exactly why you give feedback.

[Sandoria]

Reddit and the forums are run by a different set of rules and expectations. Reddit tends towards creating echo chamber communities as people fear the dreaded downvote. The forums on the other hand has a large population that treats it like a complaint department; Some of the feedback is insightful and incredibly helpful and others are personal opinion or lack foundation altogether.

The Benchmark is going to be polarizing as it made some characters look incredible while others lost important details. Certain assets lost detailing and are extremely disappointing to those of us that use those traits. What that Benchmark did to my own Viera's lips was horrifying. Looks like they are in the process of cleaning things up however, and I like to think we will all have graphics that make us happy here in short order. Feedback works but it works best when it's helpful.

[Joltik]

This is the only official forum to give feedback. They didn't provide a place to give feedback within the benchmark or game, so it makes sense people flood here with their complaints or criticism.

People on twitter are begging people to make a thread here to be heard by devs cause twitter gets you no where. People going to reddit aren't there for visibility to the Devs.

Hell the only reason I'm here rn is for feedback. I don't post in the forums otherwise, cause I'd rather take to reddit or twitter for general discussions.

[VerdeLuck]

It is pretty funny to see the Reddit narrative swap in real time.
Yesterday it was "It's just lighting and catchlights, there's no issues, you're stupid." and now that SE has actually addressed and acknowledged the issues noted by feedback it's "Ok there was some stuff but it's almost all lighting and besides you guys are being dramatic about it by giving feedback like this, think about the devs."

Just absolutely no introspection, no thoughts going through their head about why they were wrong in how they acted to shut down criticism and gaslight people who had tangible things to criticize. Just immediately moving to the next rung on their argument when they're shown wrong.
A perfect example of why Reddit is a terrible social media site for any type of discussion or feedback.