Opinion: The Development Team should revert to Q&A for Livestreams

[HyperiusUltima]

I would like to see them answer more questions but only for questions they are ready to answer and have the answers too.

I think the major ones that are out there once Content gets dealt with will be about Jobs because some jobs are just a slog to play and aren't really rewarding except at high-end, which is really bad from beginning to end. Healers in particular suffer the most, while Tanks like Warrior dominate every dungeon with self-healing if we're talking about current state of things. Others are basically the Physical Ranged being thrown in the trash except for the 1% Buff, Casters being a mess(staring at how PCT broke Casters for one tier), and Melee...seemingly being okay for the most part aside from a couple things.

[Valence]

Melee rotations are still as boring as all of them though. The role may work better in the current pve, doesn't make it less bland.

[brinn12]

It feels like every time Yoshi-P says something with negative repercussions, SE increases the strictness of the Live Letter (or any interaction he has with the community). It's been a slow and calculated process, and reverting it would take more than changing XIV's development team. I doubt it'll happen anytime soon (next 3 years). Their financial reports need to drastically change before that, especially in the MMO department. But we're not really far from that either, as I don't think the next expansion is going to have good sales like Dawntrail or Endwalker.

[Mikey_R]

To the OP, what are you actually expecting to get? They aren't going to tell you anything they aren't ready to reveal after all. Even looking at things like the media tour, we all know things are subject to change, yet people get up in arms about changes all the same. There are also topics that cannot be answered in a concise way, for example, what the dev team mean by 'job identity'.

Instead, what they should do is respond to the feedback from content, as they did in the last LL, to show they are reading feedback and making changes based on it, which leads into the following:

They keep regularly complaining about the lack of politeness on the forums and social media as if it explained everything. In fact they have done so multiple time by now, and while I certainly won't fault the comment (toxicity breeds nothing), this insistence on formality when you've been running a multi dollar company/studio sounds extremely weird to me. Are they trying to dismiss the feedback and comments just because some are written by toxic users? Are they just going to systematically deflect over the form rather than the content?

It's your job to sift through this. If you can't handle it, hire someone that can. Hire moderators as well. But this fixation on people being rude above everything else is just weird.

It is absolutely to give feedback properly with the right framing. Starting a topic with the title 'The Dev Team are incompetent', with the post starting with how they have messed up massively and how this isn't what they wanted, before even giving the feedback comes across very aggressive. People, for better or for worse, tend to ignore others who try to just 'bully' others to get their point across.

Contrast that with a topic where the topic title clearly states what the topic is about and the post goes straight into why they think the dev team took a wrong turn. By being more polite and more thought out in your feedback, as well as explaining why you gave the feedback, not only does it come across far less hostile, it also gives the impression you do actually care.

Even if both forms of feedback say the same thing, you are more likely to act on the more polite feedback than the more aggressive one. That is just human nature.

[Mawlzy]

It is absolutely to give feedback properly with the right framing. Starting a topic with the title 'The Dev Team are incompetent', with the post starting with how they have messed up massively and how this isn't what they wanted, before even giving the feedback comes across very aggressive. People, for better or for worse, tend to ignore others who try to just 'bully' others to get their point across.

Contrast that with a topic where the topic title clearly states what the topic is about and the post goes straight into why they think the dev team took a wrong turn. By being more polite and more thought out in your feedback, as well as explaining why you gave the feedback, not only does it come across far less hostile, it also gives the impression you do actually care.

Even if both forms of feedback say the same thing, you are more likely to act on the more polite feedback than the more aggressive one. That is just human nature.

I certainly agree that giving parsable, polite feedback is preferable, but SE seems disinclined to encourage it.

Sifting through forums is not particularly efficient, because human nature also means that when people are pissed they will tend to provide feedback emotively.

This is precisely why gaming and other subscription-based companies issue regular, well-designed surveys (both to current and exiting players) to pinpoint what it is players like and dislike. That is how companies align content with player desires.

Companies other than SE, that is.

[ty_taurus]

I certainly agree that giving parsable, polite feedback is preferable, but SE seems disinclined to encourage it.

Sifting through forums is not particularly efficient, because human nature also means that when people are pissed they will tend to provide feedback emotively.

This is precisely why gaming and other subscription-based companies issue regular, well-designed surveys (both to current and exiting players) to pinpoint what it is players like and dislike. That is how companies align content with player desires.

Companies other than SE, that is.

While not always the case, a lot of feedback did begin as polite and constructive. It’s only because of years of neglect that players have grown impatient and frustrated.

[Mawlzy]

While not always the case, a lot of feedback did begin as polite and constructive. It’s only because of years of neglect that players have grown impatient and frustrated.

Agreed, and the other weaknesses of DT just compounded the problem to the current hostile situation. I don't blame players for shouting about it.

It's all very well apologizing and asking for time to "earn our trust"; there were plenty of opportunities to quit destroying it.

[RiotSiren]

As someone who has played many MMOs in my day, I would say lack of direct communication is one of the biggest weaknesses of this dev team, and it kinda bugs me how alot of people seem to think they are good at it. Back in the day, I played City of Heroes and not only did the devs have a constant presence on the forums, but I actually had direct conversations with them several times. I used to help out on their test server (Most MMOs have this, FF14 notably lacks one) and it wasn't uncommon to get a direct response from a developer when giving feedback, not only did I know the devs, a few of them directly knew me, and I was not a famous player or anything. Now SE is a much bigger company then cryptic/Paragon used to be, but even games of comparable size like WoW or GW2 often has developers responding on the forums.

SE's current approach of "Ignore responding to criticism until we have something for it in a live letter" is extremely flawed due to simple human nature. When you're trying to get someones attention, and they aren't responding, what do you do? You try again but louder, and louder, until you come to the conclusion that they do not care and they are ignoring you. Weather or not the devs are ignoring us is irrelevant, as they offer no direct feedback and give no indication that they are listening other then when a issue is so apparent they can't ignore it anymore. When players think they are being ignored, any good will you brought will quickly fade, people will start to think getting through to the devs is a lost cause and leave, and when players lose faith in the developers, they don't come back.

For the record I'm not saying they should change how they are developing the game, or be entirely bound to the will of the masses here, just a little communication can go a long way. If alot people are asking for a thing and it can't be done, explain why, hell even just a "Thank you for the suggestion" from like a GM would go a long way to make players at least feel like their voices are heard. At the moment the devs don't feel like they are a team responding and reacting to your feedback, they feel like they do whatever they want and then just tack on "in response to feedback" somewhere at the end, but because we never SEE them responding or reacting to feedback, it simply feels like a lie.

Seriously I don't understand how developers only communicating like twice every 4 months in highly curated streams that also double as adverts is "good communication"

[HyperiusUltima]

Part of me wants to blame Square Enix, since I'm pretty sure all this is through the company and Yoshida's acting within the lines somewhat. The fact that they're stretching out their team too far is a problem since it's usually better to have a good team stick together rather than have them spread out since they know each very well. What's more, they probably have very good ideas since they were the first people to work on the game. Bringing in new ideas isn't anything new though, but I don't really like how they're advertising all this merch and what-not every livestream.

Heck, it almost makes the FF16 Allegations sound true in this regard when the team is stretched on so many different projects to the point XIV, their cash cow, suffers for it.

If anything they should probably stop the merch lines and start working on improving the game itself since it's ridiculous otherwise to try and sell merch when the game is doing so badly as it is.

[HyperiusUltima]

Melee rotations are still as boring as all of them though. The role may work better in the current pve, doesn't make it less bland.

True on this - it's just a bit hard to see with how DPS always flows proper unless you're severely underpowered. Melee haven't suffered a setback as much as the others, unless we count Monk(who's gone through how many iterations since Shadowbringers?)

So it's a mixed bag in that regard when you do the same rotations ad nauseam to complete content.