Square obviously not listening to feedback

[Sjol]

Not all working environments are like this, I am too a developer...and if you question the flow of those above (usually Code I's and Code II's); Or you go against the customers wishes, you end up being reported (thankfully usually the higher ups take heat from this in my company).
And yes, I have seen this...There is no common ground on development, you work with your leader and they pass down to you what the higher ups want. You then execute it...that is all there is to it. So I think your opinion is a bit biased to your own working environment, or position, as not all environments are like this, I can assure you; and the end result on whatever your making (the product) definitely does play into how much say goes into it.

If you do freelancing development, perhaps you have more say...because they have to take your input, as you have to comment on what you changed (if you are a programmer of course). Although I do not have personal experience with freelancing work and only have worked directly for companies, so this is only a guess(?)

Certainly, not all working environments are like where I'm currently at, though as mentioned I've worked at a lot of places. The control isn't so much on the code developers, but in the product management and designers. Though in my experience most decisions in most organizations are made in coordination with engineering leads to figure out what is possible and feasible and how long it'll take to do things. I've popped a lot of designer and product bubbles with negative technical feasibility analyses or very long estimates.

I'm mostly trying to communicate the indecision that happens at the product level that leads to flip-flopping and unclear communication. I find that there's this impression that SE, internally, is mentally a monolith or that every decision is coming from Yoshi P. I would be amazed if he's even involved in half the decisions in any meaningful way. That's not typically the director's job. The director is there to set direction, but not necessarily get into every little decision.

[OgruMogru]

Certainly, not all working environments are like where I'm currently at, though as mentioned I've worked at a lot of places. The control isn't so much on the code developers, but in the product management and designers. Though in my experience most decisions in most organizations are made in coordination with engineering leads to figure out what is possible and feasible and how long it'll take to do things. I've popped a lot of designer and product bubbles with negative technical feasibility analyses or very long estimates.

I'm mostly trying to communicate the indecision that happens at the product level that leads to flip-flopping and unclear communication. I find that there's this impression that SE, internally, is mentally a monolith or that every decision is coming from Yoshi P. I would be amazed if he's even involved in half the decisions in any meaningful way. That's not typically the director's job. The director is there to set direction, but not necessarily get into every little decision.

I'm fairly certain there are still only a very small number of people working on the job design/balancing. I hope someone can correct me if I'm wrong [I can count on it, honestly ] But this is also a factor in how feedback is handled because if the team really is that small still then even if they were diligently taking note of each and every request there's no way in hell they can hope to adjust to feedback because the teams already spread thin enough and has been for years.

[Valence]

I don't think people expect all of their suggestions and feedback to be acted upon, that's just not realistic. I think what people want is for the dev team to actually communicate their intentions clearly.

Like the healer situation. The dev team has been flip-flopping on the issue for years, never fully committing to anything. If they just stated outright "No, we will never be expanding the damage kit" or "No, we will never be increasing the healing requirements very much at all", then people can accept it and make their decision to stay on or leave the role. The dev team flip-flopping and never committing to one side or another just ends up making people restless and makes the team seem like they're not taking any feedback at all.

It's the same with the Kaiten thing. All the dev team has to do is commit, either say "We heard your feedback, but we have no plans on ever bringing Kaiten back" or "We heard your feedback and we're bringing Kaiten back". The fact that they asked for feedback and then never addressed the topic again makes them look very deaf to the playerbase, and that's not a very good look.

The dev team does not need to do everything we ask for, but they do need to communicate their intentions clearly.

It also additionally makes them look like they don't know what they're doing, or that they have no idea where they want to go with things forward. Whether it's true or not, it sends a very bad message.

[Kazamaiya]

I don't think people expect all of their suggestions and feedback to be acted upon, that's just not realistic. I think what people want is for the dev team to actually communicate their intentions clearly.

This 100%
A lot of the anger directed towards the development team could have been mitigated if they actively communicated their intentions with the playerbase.
Because then we would know what to expect, what we can expect and better accept it.
Lack of communication spirals into an ever-worsening situation of people assuming the worst and just getting irritated, until it becomes anger and frustration until it has damaged their enjoyment of the game to a point it cannot be mended due to anger having become apathy.

I don't agree with the direction the game seems to be taking. I don't agree with the job design for certain jobs i used to love and think some of it is bad.
I don't expect the developers to implement every or most silly gameplay ideas that runs through my head, even if some of them i believe would improve X, Y or Z.
But I would much prefer if the development team were honest and transparent and would say that they saw X feedback but decided to not go in that direction or implement it for Y reason once in a while over anxiously awaiting job changes, hoping for the changes i want once every 2-3 years only to be disappointed and feeling like providing feedback at all is pointless.

Game development is not easy. Playtesting, asset-creation, bug-fixing, coding, deadlines in the dozens if not hundreds for a larger corporation, server maintenance and implementing patches for MMO(or general Online games) games, probably some form of management regarding translation-work, web design/updates, etc. etc.
It is not easy. It likely never will be easy.

For an MMO game the most important thing (At least in my opinion) is to have longevity in content, class design and side activities during expansions.
Each player is different in what they want and what they care about in games, but for games like FFXIV, they pay to play, which should make it paramount to listen and address feedback in some way shape or form.
Many players could not care less about the story and care about the gameplay being rewarding or satisfying to pull off through things like raids, mastering and optimizations of classes, etc.. There is also an equal amount of players who couldn't care about the gameplay as long as the story, visuals, music, characters, etc. are great.

Internal conflict within what to do regarding design and gameplay direction are inevitable, but ideally it shouldn't take years to address or apply what appears to be simple feedback people have been asking for for a long time, especially if that feedback doesn't require adding/making new assets or completely overhauling major parts of X, Y or Z.
Should X be prioritized over Y? That is always up to debate. We can only have conversations about this. I'm a gameplay first kind of person, so obviously my biases and opinions are that providing a satisfying and fun gameplay experience with a lot of room for skill expression and mastery is more important than simplification and accessebility- if the people who don't care about the gameplay get to be happy doing their fancy-looking basic abilities or using whatever button they thinks looks coolest is fun for them, then they are happy, and the focus can be put into making the other side happy and content as well.

Imo poor communication is a one-way ticket to eventually lose players in the hundreds if not thousands.

People can be very resilient and patient towards something they have a fondness for or love, they can suspend their disbelief numerous times, but that resilience and patience is not infinite, especially when they feel like they are never aknowledged or feel ignored for multiple years at a time.

[Aravell]

I'm mostly trying to communicate the indecision that happens at the product level that leads to flip-flopping and unclear communication. I find that there's this impression that SE, internally, is mentally a monolith or that every decision is coming from Yoshi P. I would be amazed if he's even involved in half the decisions in any meaningful way. That's not typically the director's job. The director is there to set direction, but not necessarily get into every little decision.

While you have experience on the inside of development teams so you can understand the inner workings, you have to also understand that the customers can only see whats on the surface.

What we as customers see is a dev team that asked for feedback, did nothing about it, then never mentioned the topic again. While there might be heated debate inside the team itself, what we see outside is them totally ignoring the issue in its entirety. This would, of course, make it look like they're ignoring feedback.

And another thing. You say they're debating on things inside the team and that's probably why they're not committing. But if you look from the perspective of the customer, when people see the team flip-flopping and not committing, most will start thinking that they lack a vision on how to proceed, and the logical conclusion for most people is to blame the director.

Now, I'm not saying they should show us all the inside workings in the company. I'm just stating that what they're doing now looks really bad and they really should commit to one thing or another to show that they have an actual vision for the game, even if some on the dev team don't agree.

[Sjol]

While you have experience on the inside of development teams so you can understand the inner workings, you have to also understand that the customers can only see whats on the surface.

What we as customers see is a dev team that asked for feedback, did nothing about it, then never mentioned the topic again. While there might be heated debate inside the team itself, what we see outside is them totally ignoring the issue in its entirety. This would, of course, make it look like they're ignoring feedback.

And another thing. You say they're debating on things inside the team and that's probably why they're not committing. But if you look from the perspective of the customer, when people see the team flip-flopping and not committing, most will start thinking that they lack a vision on how to proceed, and the logical conclusion for most people is to blame the director.

Now, I'm not saying they should show us all the inside workings in the company. I'm just stating that what they're doing now looks really bad and they really should commit to one thing or another to show that they have an actual vision for the game, even if some on the dev team don't agree.

First, I'm not going to argue that we couldn't use better communication coming out of SE and CBU3. I would love better communication and I have my own vision of what that would look like which might not align with everyone else (and that's a problem that's typically unaddressed by the community).

I think part of the problem is that the Live Letters aren't really doing it. It's kind of crazy to have so many multi-hour direct-from-the-director communications and still feel like I don't know anything about what's coming or why they're doing what they're doing. Yoshi P. isn't outlining the details of where they're going in any kind of deep detail, and I very much doubt we even will. Mostly because while I think he is setting the broad strategy, it's entirely possible he's not even really involved in the job design. And it may be that the job designer is camera shy -- they wouldn't be the first.

In my experience it's pretty rare to get really good communication out of a game company. It kind of requires a team of leads willing to go in front of a camera (e.g., Warframe) or someone who is both director and a core designer (e.g., Marvel Snap). I'm also wondering if there's a major language barrier for the EN community and if the communication is better on the JP side. It's just possible they don't have enough EN-JP cross-language community leads who can speak for the SE team in the EN channels.

Now all these are potential reasons for why communication with the EN community might be bad. That doesn't make it feel less awful as a member of the EN community. But I would pose a question back to the various people who want better communication:

"What would better communication look like to you? Be very specific "

[MagiusNecros]

Bravely Default livestreams years ago were the best because not only did they explain the game to you but they also had live multiple choice surveys in realtime asking players(anyone could participate) what kind of improvements would they like to see in the game before release based on feedback from playing the demo.

It's that kind of communication players would be more engaged in during liveletters and really should of been present from the beginning.

Majority of liveletter streams are pretty boring to sit through and largely are very vague in explaining what their plans going forward with the game are. They talk a whole lot but don't have much to say.

[Supersnow845]

Bravely Default livestreams years ago were the best because not only did they explain the game to you but they also had live multiple choice surveys in realtime asking players(anyone could participate) what kind of improvements would they like to see in the game before release based on feedback from playing the demo.

It's that kind of communication players would be more engaged in during liveletters and really should of been present from the beginning.

Majority of liveletter streams are pretty boring to sit through and largely are very vague in explaining what their plans going forward with the game are. They talk a whole lot but don't have much to say.

It’s why I was genuinely surprised by the last live letter

How clearly they explained pictomancer to the point I could envision its entire flow, design and feel just from their explanation felt so foreign to me after 10 years of vague “say in 100,000 words what could be described in 100” live letters we always get

It was even stranger considering all I got out of VPR was a weird belief they were imitating SB SAM and near nothing else

Why can’t every live letter be like how they explained pictomancer

[Lyth]

That's not surprising, given that Pictomancer was designed as a Black Mage alternative. Yoshi-p probably had a lot more involvement in its design, to the point where he can comfortably play and describe what is happening with tooltips turned off. I learnt a lot more about Viper from the posted transcript, where it seems like its focused on juggling buffs/debuffs and executing your burst before they all fall off. Ideally they should have brought a melee job designer down to demonstrate and explain.

The problem comes down to being able to find people who are simultaneously proficient at the technical aspect of their job while also being comfortable in front of an audience. Outside of Koji and Foxclon, there isn't really anyone else who has the charisma proficiencies to do it without Yoshi-p mediating. You could probably imagine how a Q+A session with a tank or healer designer would go down.

I personally wish that they broke these down into more frequent, focused, and shorter sessions, but I think the keynote style approach is meant to pair up more anticipated developments with less interesting ones. A lot of these suggestions were made previously around Stormblood, but I think they're just more comfortable with the current format.

[justausername]

That's not surprising, given that Pictomancer was designed as a Black Mage alternative. Yoshi-p probably had a lot more involvement in its design, to the point where he can comfortably play and describe what is happening with tooltips turned off. I learnt a lot more about Viper from the posted transcript, where it seems like its focused on juggling buffs/debuffs and executing your burst before they all fall off. Ideally they should have brought a melee job designer down to demonstrate and explain.

The problem comes down to being able to find people who are simultaneously proficient at the technical aspect of their job while also being comfortable in front of an audience. Outside of Koji and Foxclon, there isn't really anyone else who has the charisma proficiencies to do it without Yoshi-p mediating. You could probably imagine how a Q+A session with a tank or healer designer would go down.

I personally wish that they broke these down into more frequent, focused, and shorter sessions, but I think the keynote style approach is meant to pair up more anticipated developments with less interesting ones. A lot of these suggestions were made previously around Stormblood, but I think they're just more comfortable with the current format.

its might just be me, but I felt like I perfectly understood what viper was about from the LL, but I am still totally confused about Picto. Like I get the concept, but I have no idea what a rotation might be, but for Viper I could literally see and imagine playing it and how it works (obvious its not 100%, but a pretty good idea). So opposite of what you're saying here. I think it really just depends on the person, what you already play, and how you process information.