Keyboard/chatpad pack-in bundle really needed for PS3/PS4 users.

[Malakhim]

I apologize if this has been brought up in previous threads, but I guess the level of threads on the matter would highlight a critical issue.

I don't consider myself to be an elitist by any stretch of the imagination, but there is a serious problem that really needs to be addressed if we are to actually incorporate console users of the game into the in-game community in any meaningful way: Lack of effective means of communication.

Earlier today and indeed on several occasions over the past month, I have been on many dungeon and other group runs(Brayflox Longstop in today's case) where I have run into players that strangely remain silent. These players(usually tanks) wouldn't be a problem if they knew what they were doing, but that isn't the case for the most part. I am fluent in English, Spanish, German, and Japanese, and I usually try to reach out to players in multiple languages before jumping to the conclusion that they might be some kind of bot, at which point I give them an ultimatum that I will drop from the group if they don't respond in a certain amount of time. The issue however is that often times(including today's instance), these are console players that don't have the means to communicate for whatever reason, so I am essentially accidentally ruining someone else' experience... Or at least that's what it could be seen as.

This problem however should be unacceptable. We are talking about playing a game that is dependent on social interaction and above all else, group cohesion and communication. As it stands, it is impossible to foment a healthy cross-platform community being that a large portion of the user-base simply can't(or won't) communicate during group content.

Like many different peripherals used in many consoles, the solution many console makers have used to guarantee that everyone actually has said input device(or at least operate on said assumption) is to pack it in with whatever they're selling. Does that mean they'll use it? No, but then the burden shifts to the user and not the developer. As such, I really think that Square-Enix should consider a physical bundle of the console versions of the game to include some kind of chatpad, maybe even FFXIV-branded, to try to mitigate this issue. As far as I can see with the PS4 version on the horizon becoming the most cost-effective way to play the game the way it was meant to be played, this problem is only going to be exacerbated further.