Bring back Q&A for the next liveletters please

[Valence]

All in the title really. I loved Q&A sections. They were more about answering to players rather than just tease and advertise content...
And I think the community needs those more than ever.

[Kranel_San]

They cannot because they know players will ask questions they don't want to answer

And if they cherry-pick the questions? The community will be enraged.

[Atreus]

I'd love to be optimistic but they won't reveal anything that they weren't willing to share in the first place. I think the grip on information is tight and they're petrified of getting hopes up, miscommunicating, or anything of the sort.

To me, what would go a much longer way is simple validation from the community/dev team when feedback is posted. Something as simple as "we hear you" or "thank you for the feedback". It's annoying as fuck that both the English AND Japanese communities don't feel listened to.

[Red-thunder]

They cannot because they know players will ask questions they don't want to answer

And if they cherry-pick the questions? The community will be enraged.

They already cherry picked questions before lol

I'm pretty sure the "go play Ultimates" response to a question that got like 200 likes or something on the Q&A thread was the straw that broke the camel's back. After that they stopped doing it.

[Supersnow845]

They already cherry picked questions before lol

I'm pretty sure the "go play Ultimates" response to a question that got like 200 likes or something on the Q&A thread was the straw that broke the camel's back. After that they stopped doing it.

It’s hilarious that all their unpopular changes to how they interact with us come from how badly they mess up healers

The loss of Q&A comes from the botched “go play ultimate” comment where they tried to cherry pick a softball healer comment then still messed up the follow through and the loss of pre patch full patch notes comes from them going “just try SB lilys” when everyone pointed out they were trash beforehand and surprise surprise they were trash

[Jeeqbit]

They do still allow any questions from journalists and Yoshi-P often clarifies they can ask absolutely anything, even personal questions about his life. There's no question he won't answer and he's said that at media tours especially.

My guess is because they think journalists will ask well thought-out questions unlike random players. Obviously, there are many that only play the game very casually so don't ask things that people on this forum would care about, but sometimes they are more invested players or YouTubers that understand the game decently, especially during media tours, so it varies.

[Mawlzy]

They do still allow any questions from journalists and Yoshi-P often clarifies they can ask absolutely anything, even personal questions about his life. There's no question he won't answer and he's said that at media tours especially.

My guess is because they think journalists will ask well thought-out questions unlike random players. Obviously, there are many that only play the game very casually so don't ask things that people on this forum would care about, but sometimes they are more invested players or YouTubers that understand the game decently, especially during media tours, so it varies.

My understanding of recent media tours is that players/journos are invited to submit multiple questions and typically one from each is answered. I'm sure it can be justified on the basis of time, but it can also be used to ensure the discussion remains within SQEX's pre-defined and comfortable areas.

[Kaurhz]

Usually I would be for something like this, but.... Honestly, it won't solve anything.

Questions they won't want an answer to will get some redirected non-answer comment... and the questions they do actually answer will be questions that we don't really need an answer to, or serve no purpose to the game.

[Valence]

Usually I would be for something like this, but.... Honestly, it won't solve anything.

Questions they won't want an answer to will get some redirected non-answer comment... and the questions they do actually answer will be questions that we don't really need an answer to, or serve no purpose to the game.

You'd actually be surprised by all the things that got actually answered over time, and how it could give a lot of clues. Like how they decided to shift the job balance away from job difficulty (early SB release Q&A LL37 or something), which ironically have stated later past ShB that they still do.
But I do agree that a lot of points of contention channeled inside questions have most of the time had Yoshida reply with a classic yoshi answer along the lines of "it's difficult, on one hand, we have players that are bored with healers, but on the other hand when we raised healing difficulty of savage it was an outcry so we're still thinking on it", where eventually we never get a follow up on where they ultimately decided their direction would go.
And that's the whole problem, they do absolutely refuse to talk about their direction and vision for what they want, leaving everybody in the dark and frustrated about it. And then we get presented with done deals and people complain.

[Daralii]

You'd actually be surprised by all the things that got actually answered over time, and how it could give a lot of clues. Like how they decided to shift the job balance away from job difficulty (early SB release Q&A LL37 or something), which ironically have stated later past ShB that they still do.
But I do agree that a lot of points of contention channeled inside questions have most of the time had Yoshida reply with a classic yoshi answer along the lines of "it's difficult, on one hand, we have players that are bored with healers, but on the other hand when we raised healing difficulty of savage it was an outcry so we're still thinking on it", where eventually we never get a follow up on where they ultimately decided their direction would go.
And that's the whole problem, they do absolutely refuse to talk about their direction and vision for what they want, leaving everybody in the dark and frustrated about it. And then we get presented with done deals and people complain.

Even when they talk about doing something definitively, there's no guarantee that they'll actually do it. They said ahead of EW's release that rewards from old Crystalline Conflict seasons would go into the trophy crystal store, they maintained radio silence on it until 2025, and the new stance is that they're thinking about maybe doing it at some point.