Ever feel like some of our woes in PVE and PVP might be partially self-inflicted?

[Aidorouge]

In light of recent policy changes about criticism and "undue demands" being actionable offenses now, I have to withdraw any and all comments I made previously regarding any issues with the game or Square-Enix.

[Jeeqbit]

I couldn't understand anything that you wrote in your post, but I agree with the title that the woes are self-inflicted by the community:

• "Please balance my job with the other so it's as good as, and has the same abilities as, a similar job" -> "why did you homogenize my job with the other?"
• "Please allow me to have 100% uptime so I can keep the GCD rolling" -> "why did you make the hitbox massive?"
• "Why are some cooldowns difficult to align and burst with" -> "why is there a 2 minute meta?"

Square Enix does listen, I think it is just pretty obvious at this point that they need to decide who to listen to and who not to or figure out a clever middle ground for things like this.

[VoidsentStatus]

Eventually though, it feels like we started spitting at each other, in-game and out of it given some of our conduct (mine included) on the forums or other social media options, and now it just seems like perpetual bitterness and frustration all around and we sort of became our own worst enemy when it comes to content or conversation.

It's so weird to see this game the opposite of my previous. For context, our Lead Community Manager (of my old game) as well as other members of staff were regularly mocked, occasionally sexual harassed and photoshopped nude for jokes, doxxed, irl family contact with threats, twitter posts spammed with hate comments about the game, and yet their forums were more strictly moderated than here. Meanwhile in-game, my previous game's community allowed political hate, cussing on a regular, largely supported anti-lgbtq sentiments, racist comments, voice chat harassment, blatant elitism in kicking people in regular content being drastically more common, exploits running rampant for years including duplication, money glitches, speed hacking publicly known about and used by every top FC, and yet here, everyone in game is sensitive and entitled to a degree I'm not used to seeing and the GM's empower it. I went from strict forums, toxicity unleashed in-game and social media, to toxicity unleashed on the forums and social media, strict in-game.

And a part of me feels like this game's format for when they're okay with toxicity is mad weird and actually worse because moderating in-game doesn't help developers get feedback and spur productive discussions that help the direction of the game. The vast majority of the threads I've seen on the forums could've been locked after 5-10 pages and still gotten the same feedback out of it without it heading on for another 40-80 pages of arguments and insults and political messaging. And while I feel like this game has developers who listen more than my previous game, I feel like feedback is too far varied with a lot of feedback wasted/not actionable due to people not reading lodestones, interviews, etc. before blurting out their mouth the easiest solution/path forward they can think of regardless of the consequences it would have. I actually think having a smaller community is better, and even if this game goes to trash later due to the community being horrible, a trash game that isn't monetized and is full of players still is better than 90% of the games on the market that are either dead or monetized, or have trash balancing that ruin the possibility of fun.

[All_Nonsense]

snip

Ma'am, the question was "Ever feel like some of our woes in PVE and PVP might be partially self-inflicted?"