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

[Supersnow845]

Here is 4.0 pulled from most sources


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...rcpYc85kU/edit

Here is 5.0 and 5.25, sources are pulled from reddit, twitter and the OF’s


https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/s/cnLENI3I9z

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...dt2nLg41A/edit

Sure they aren’t official but they are the largest surveys we publicly have access to since square never share anything official and both the 5.x surveys show the same thing, healers crashed hard and tanks wrote mildly unpopular (though tanks are harder to measure due to GNB)

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/s/JyMj9ou2s9

Evidence from here shows that healers didn’t really recover with SGE as it didn’t particularly revitalise the healer space in terms of distribution and healers experienced their lowest usage in savage for years in abyssos

We have no evidence healers have recovered or are more well received these days considering even yoshi p is dodging healer questions at this point

[Bonoki]

Another distinction I've noticed between the forums and Reddit is that Reddit tends to attract influencers, a point that hasn't been emphasized much. Reddit serves as the primary platform for influencers within the FFXIV community, a contrast to the less influencer-driven forums. Prominent figures such as Mr. Happy, Xeno, and Zepla seldom participate in forum discussions, which also lack content like Fashion Reports and other guides to bring traffic. On Reddit, however, content creators frequently react to conversations and occasionally share voices of their own. If you seek to have your voice heard, Reddit offers greater visibility, particularly for controversial opinions. However, this does not equate to better discussion simply better visibility. This is significant because influencers often have the opportunity to meet Yoshi-P in person, potentially elevating your feedback beyond the confines of the forums. We're all familiar with the meme about developers ignoring the NA forums and the perception of lackluster moderation here. This perception has likely contributed to users gravitating towards Reddit, which is often seen as more community-driven, even though the forums are intended for feedback.

[CNitsah]

One poll I saw on Reddit had hundreds of 'very happy' and 'pretty happy' responses vs less than 50 'really unhappy' (paraphrasing the responses here but that was the general vibe of them).

It basically does seem like the vast majority of people are happy with the update. And most people who are really happy aren't going to come to the forum and just shout about how happy they are.

The real question is : are they mostly happy there because that the general concensus of the FFXIV player base or are they happy there because everyone that disagreed with them was downvoted to oblivion to the point they don't bother with reddit anymore? My guess is that it's probably a little bit of both, you can't deny that, on the larger scale people are mostly happy the game, except for some niche, like raiders or people that have thousands of hours of gametime, but the stats on reddit are still high because of that echo chamber process.

But honestly, those past month, I feel like the forum have been in a better shape, the obvious trolls are either taking a break or been banned, so overall, I feel like the forum is a far better place than a year ago.

[edit]
After checking it, it seems there was a ban wave of trolls at the end of last summer, and that we now have some kind of moderation, and that's why the forum is far less of zoo than it was a year ago - I'll give SE credit for that, that was needed. It still not perfect, but it's going in the right direction. That's something reddit hasn't acknoledged yet.

[Remish]

I was discussing this in a Discord chat earlier, and someone drew a comparison between Reddit being more liberal and the forums being more conservative.

[Derio]

Dont downvotes get cast to the abyss in Reddit. So if someone says something is bad and another person agrees and downvotes that photo because they dont like that, the only thing remains is positive comments.

I have seen in a few of my facebook groups people being indifferent about the changes. Some say is good and several people go into the most tiny details.

The real question is SE looking at this feedback or can we assume everything is set in stone.

[Arkdra]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...rcpYc85kU/edit

Not as damning as advertised. Sample sizes are super small. Your best case here is scholar, but even that data doesn't show significant healer dissatisfaction since of the people that swapped out of scholar, 64% of them swapped to another healer. But ultimately, not enough responders.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/s/cnLENI3I9z

Rubbish, need the actual english survey this graph is based off of to see what the sample sizes are, could not find that information skimming the comments. Trying to find that post led me to this https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=991492593 and this is still not remotely a good enough sample size for accurate data. But it does at least show massive dissatisfaction for scholars and asts. Not white mages though, white mages are loving it. Also loving it, literally all of the tanks.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...dt2nLg41A/edit This one still has sample sizes that are too small but it's getting closer! Here we see that scholars are super unhappy. Asts and warriors are net positive but not super great, and everyone else is clearly positive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/s/JyMj9ou2s9

I legitimately have no idea what you are trying to prove with this. First, this is a super bias'd source since it self-selects from the group of people who upload to fflogs, but I'll set that aside and roll with it. In the 6.05 data healers accounted for 25.0013% of all raiders and in the 6.1 data that number dropped to... 25.0003%. So I have no idea how you pulled "healers experienced their lowest usage in savage for years in abyssos" from this data. It does seem to corroborate not particularly revitalizing the healer space in terms of distribution though.

So in conclusion, based on this data you provided (which is largely highly suspect but you work with what you've got), you absolutely cannot claim that there is widespread tank dissatisfaction at all. None of these things you posted show that. Also shout outs to warriors for being the most dissatisfied of the tanks while having literally everything handed to them constantly, the giant babies.

Healers you can definitely show that astrologians and scholars are big mad so I will concede on them, but white mages seem extremely satisfied, and it looks like sage is relatively popular based on fflogs but that's the only data we've got.

[Merrigan]

Because MMORPG forums, even though they're spaces that I otherwise enjoy, tend to be pessimistic. Reddit, on the other hand, is all about 'good vibes'. It's not just a question of "reddit doxa" and the like, it's also a general tendency of this forum to criticise absolutely everything and anything.

[Supersnow845]

I’ll concede the tanks aren’t as bad as I remembered them being but I think it’s pretty damming with healers, I’ll also note that they have proceeded to not change any of the healers since then

My comment on abyssos wasn’t related to that data, just the overall phenomena of the healer shortage caused by abysoss’s problems, that data was only showing SGE didn’t really do much to revitalise the healer space

I don’t have anything else as square never tells us anything but it’s at least something, I have nothing else to work on, the alternative is just blindly believing square and I don’t think that’s particularly accurate

[Alleo]

It's always the same somehow. If the forum is too positive, people like to say that it's an echo chamber. If it gets negative here and other sites are more positive, then the forum is suddenly super cool and the others have an echo chamber.

Of course, the forum and the criticism in it are completely justified. But that doesn't mean that the opinions posted there are the only correct ones or even that they correspond to the majority. Just as the opinions on Reddit and other channels don't carry more weight.

They are simply different ways of exchanging opinions. Here you have to have an active subscription to be able to post at all. That can slow down the amount of people who write. Whereas for Reddit, you only need one account that is always active and that you can use for many different topics. In my opinion, it's easier to quickly give your opinion or rate a comment.

And yes, you can also give a thumbs down on Reddit, but imo that doesn't mean that the result is distorted. Maybe there are just more people there who think its fine. After all, there still have to be people who rate a post positively.

[VerdeLuck]

Reddit seems to be convinced that the only difference is in the lighting and refuses to see any proof about changes beyond that. Even cases where people ahve done a direct 1:1 apples to apples comparison in the character creators they will find a reason to excuse it and shut down discussion.
The stereotype is true, r/ffxiv just want to take everything devs say at face value with no more though. No criticism, no challenging devs on whether they are telling the truth or whether things really are improved in certain cases.

One of the top posts on there right now is just a straight up lie, someone claiming every complaint is just lighting differences and anyone with proof otherwise is mass downvoted to hide their arguments and proof. It's truly the strangest thing and I've noticed it in multiple games.
It's incredible how that's supposed to somehow be the center for game discussion when they act like this.