When did the dev's stop reading the forums?

[All_Nonsense]

I remember they used to talk about things everyone was discussing on the forums all the time. Then one day they got upset because some of the comments on the forums were critical and it hurt their feelings. Now no one seems to moderate it anymore. I'm sure you've noticed with some of the things people are saying in the Wuk Lamat threads - there's a complete lack of moderation going on which means that officially no one from Square Enix reads the forums in regular intervals anymore. Maybe a GM shows up when their automated system detects a ton of reports or something. It seems when the dev's get feedback they don't like they just tell us to post it on the forums - their "file 13." What happened?

My guess: Square is siphoning almost all of FF14's revenue into NFT's and whatever the hell Babylon's Fall was and making more flopper games like it. They don't have enough money for GM's or CBU3 anymore

[Dorito_Burrito]

I remember Kate (I think?) made a topic about a year ago for a Q&A type thing and the first reply was some guy having a meltdown and cursing her out about comedic story things like Snoegeim from the Myths of the Realm questline. Or something like that.

[Astrus]

You have answered you own question in the first two sentences.
They still actively redirect feedback to the forums, that feedback may or may not be aggregated by the community team and passed on to the devs or completely ignored. We have no way of knowing.
To comment on the topic of moderation: it's still happening, same as ever. The devs have never been the ones to moderate the forums.

[Jeeqbit]

I remember they used to talk about things everyone was discussing on the forums all the time.

Oh they have mentioned things from the forums pretty recently. Just prior to the expansion they suddenly acknowledged all sorts of long-standing discussions that have happened on the forums that they'd not mentioned at all. To be acknowledging the huge hitboxes, battle excitement, job identity and the 2-minute thing at all said a lot since people had been posting about this for a long time.

They also mentioned "the game has grown in revenue and people want more investment and development in the game to reflect it" which seemed like only something you see posted on the forums.

I remember them recently (jokingly I recall) mentioning how things will get attacked a lot on the forums (ie. they accept that's just what happens on the forums ).

I think it's important to consider that even if they listen to feedback on the forums, it doesn't mean they will agree with it. They disagree with making casual content actually harder but are trying to make it more varied and exciting instead. They disagree with making jobs hard to play and that they want them to be comfortable to play. They reluctantly tried to make healers have more to heal in Abyssos and then there were complaints about healers avoiding PF.

They tried to add an extra attack or so to healers in Dawntrail to give them something else to do.

Then one day they got upset because some of the comments on the forums were critical and it hurt their feelings.

All they did was say that the developers are no longer required to read the forums. They still can if they want to - depends on if they have the personality to handle it.

Regardless, most of them wouldn't read English anyway and they have Community teams from the different regions that collect feedback on their behalf.

Now no one seems to moderate it anymore.

It's clearly the GMs that moderate it, not the Community team. They're separate jobs. GMs typically only handle things if they are reported. So the answer is to report it. I have seen a lot of things moderated recently but they are only things that people would click the report button on. I've reported some things before too and they tend to get deleted/removed if I do (since it's always something that is really awful and needs modding).

[Oizen]

Probably when SE as a whole started to nosedive in terms of reputation and released flop after flop and the budget for XIV got tight because of it.

[Jeeqbit]

Probably when SE as a whole started to nosedive in terms of reputation and released flop after flop and the budget for XIV got tight because of it.

If you really think that Shadowbringers and Endwalker flopped then I'm not sure what to say. Even Dawntrail had more pre-orders than any prior expansion.

[Rueby]

If you really think that Shadowbringers and Endwalker flopped then I'm not sure what to say. Even Dawntrail had more pre-orders than any prior expansion.

I think they may have meant the ~other~ games? Forspoken comes to mind

[All_Nonsense]

lol

Due to budget constraints they're making the old gm's develop Babylon's Fall 2

[Jeeqbit]

I think they may have meant the ~other~ games? Forspoken comes to mind

Probably, but I think it is not hard for Yoshi-P to negotiate more funds if they are needed. He's part of the management now and highly respected at this point. It is hard to imagine him saying something and them ignoring it.

In any case, I heard SE is shifting their focus to games that are more likely to suceeed.

From one of the Famitsu interviews before Dawntrail:

"Trust comes first, business comes later."
"We will use the profits we earn from this process to further develop new content for FFXIV...We are thinking of making this cycle even better in the future. The company's approval is required to adjust the budget for game development, but since the company has high expectations for the development of FFXIV, we were able to obtain approval for this policy. It's thanks to all the Warriors of Light who have been playing FFXIV that I'm able to talk like this about an MMORPG that has been in service for over 10 years. In order to repay your kindness, I would like to be conscious of returning these profits."

[Shibi]

...there's a complete lack of moderation going on...

The moderation is there. A lot of posts have been deleted, and people have clearly been given posting holidays.

What you won't find is one side 'cancelled' (potentially against your P.O.V.), the moderators (which I believe are contractors) are trying to walk a line down the middle which is where most people sit.