<No comment>
5 Likes
I wish it was so easy. To just tell someone to move their asses and that they actually did so. The game has indeed a lot of haters and lovers - like any other game.
It is worth to mention that the only solution to YOUR problem is to try to ignore the haters, because they will always exist.
3 Likes
It should not concern you @anon2904747. I know you love this game like me, and its a lot of joy, but external factors like haters and trolls is something that is out of our control. As some people are loving and caring, there will also be people that lives for hating and destroying.
1 Like
I actually don’t see much hate for the game overall. Hate for some segments, yes. People are allowed to provide feedback. Having varied feedback is a good thing too. If you disagree with someone, comment. It avoids an echo chamber. It also provides better conversation.
When people say dev, they don’t mean a developer as in programmer. They mean someone working on the game in any capacity (programmer, designer, artist, manager, translator, etc).
Why do you think that? I highly doubt anyone at any game dev company, good or bad, would lose their jobs for this. That would be absurd.
I am a dev manager. We know how to work remotely now. Some hiccups at the beginning, sure. This late into the pandemic especially when gaming companies are now profitting so well, no.
Active forum users can flag comments that aren’t civil, thankfully.
9 Likes
I dont personally define a dev as anyone working on the game, was just letting you know how I see the community use the word since it wasn’t clear if you meant it the same way.
I am not in the US. I have been working from home for over a year because lockdown or not, it isn’t safe to open the office, so I haven’t. I judge every employer in my city honestly who has forced people back into the office when people could still be working remotely (obviously not every job can do this, I am only talking about the ones that can). I don’t know Australia’s situation well enough to comment on theirs, just stating that yep, I understand remote work from home and the awkwardness that can bring
At this point, I expect issues from remote work to be solved or have workarounds. If they haven’t, that brings the question: why not?
Ultimately I don’t think the pandemic is responsible for some of the recent complaints though.
3 Likes
I guess I just don’t see a lot of that. I do see blame for the decisions made, but it isn’t generally targetted at anyone specific. Why was Labyrinth released without troop pictures? Why are the translations poor? Why are support tickets taking more than a month? Etc etc.
The frustrated posts are general into the void. We can’t expect everyone to know who or what type of job is responsible for whichever decision. So, the community goes, “hey devs, whats up with ?”
8 Likes
We see threads like this surface every so often. I made one back in the day - thought everyone was being was being overdramatic about minor details. And sometimes people can go overboard, absolutely. I don’t condone any sort of hate speech, personal attacks, jabs, etc.
I think the vast majority of naysayers, though, are people who DO love this game, or at least used to and are trying to hold on. That’s why they offer their criticisms; if they truly hated the game so much, they wouldn’t bother with the forums. Again, some people truly do just want to hurl insults and such, but I don’t believe that’s the vast majority of people here.
What drives people to such negativity is debatable and varies from person to person, but I believe some primary factors are the lack of meaningful updates in the past year and a half as well as the multitude of frequent errors and miscommunications, and the feeling of being entirely ignored. Little things add up over time when they are never addressed in a meaningful way.
While dev-bashing, or publisher/dev-bashing, if you want to be technical, does happen here, I believe most people are sick of being ignored and given half-baked, often glitchy content. It seems like lately, the only things not glitched at release are the monetization efforts (a bit of an exaggeration of course, but a feeling nonetheless). That raises warranted criticism (hopefully constructive) from the community.
15 Likes
I remember your post, and seeing you overtime become negative too. Oh no you’ve been converted. Maybe @anon2904747 is next?! 
In all seriousness, these forums are the most negative I have ever seen a game forum. I don’t recall FF14’s forums from its first release being so negative, but maybe I blocked that out.
I consider myself a middle ground between harsh criticism and overcompensation… Hopefully I never come across as needlessly negative or never positive! There are still a lot of great things about this game 
3 Likes
Sorry I didn’t mean it in a bad way. You have always been super nice and helpful and have good feedback. You just realize that yep things are broken lol. I think it sounded funnier in my half asleep brain.
3 Likes
Haha all good, I appreciate it
2 Likes
Saying “this game sucks. I am quitting. The last update ruined everything.” Is hating the game.
Saying, “Pet gnomes aren’t appearing in arena, but the devs said they are there, then they ninja fixed it without admitting it, whats up?” Is being negative, but not hating the game (and yes this happened).
1 Like
Many improvements to the game have been made due to negative feedback and criticism. You’re welcome.
9 Likes
Meh. Negative feedback is not a sign of hating a game. It is either genuine feedback soured by frustration, aimed at improving a loved game, or sometimes it’s just antagonist trolling. The former is a valid and valuable thing. When people stop complaining it’s because they have stopped caring. The latter is totally worthless and pretty irritating, but is also a part of any online community. Unfortunately.
I agree that constantly slamming the devs about every part of the game experience is not cool. I also agree that blaming developers for business decisions is silly. Although, as someone already stated, people are using “devs” in a generic sense, as in the powers that be. I’m fairly confident that the developers know that, too.
While I agree that complaining about everything is not good, I also think that pretending that there is nothing to complain about is also not good. For me, at least, it’s about balance and perspective.
1 Like
And here we circle back to the original post, which comes from the viewpoint that the balance is far towards personal attacks at individuals (note I’m not using “devs”). There are people who will go to a bank teller/cashier and complain about increased fees for cash deposit handling, when the cashier has no control whatsoever and not even a forum to channel the customer’s frustration.
1 Like
I’d like to point out, though, that the development team has generally seemed grateful towards their publishers, and didn’t enter into that relationship unwillingly. There shouldn’t be a blanket washing of the dev team’s hands if there’s discontent towards the publishers, and at some point, the line, “it’s not our decision” doesn’t hold as much water as it maybe used to – even if I guess options were limited.
3 Likes
I enter into my employment gratefully, and I enter in the relationship willingly. Does not mean I have to agree with my manager all the time, or any time at all for that matter.
But if my team is allocated X hours to tackle tasks A, B and C,there is no left over for D however trivial D is. As happens more often than not since COVID-19 started and focus is lacking while working remotely, it’s hard to defend non-completion of item C, when you apparently had those 10 spare minutes to make change D.
3 Likes
There is a difference between hating the game and hating the way it’s being messed around with, often with no real thought as to how it would affect the player experience!
Whether or not the latter is due to misguided attempts at improving the monetisation is another matter.
4 Likes
I believe most around here are actually picking the third option, hating on how the game is run.
1.) Lack of quality assurance. Rare is the week that doesn’t introduce some new issues, like the Pirate’s Sigil missing in the Soulforge this week. And they usually just get waved away as “works as designed, we didn’t change anything”.
2.) Absence of support. Ticket wait time is now several months, still rising. The temporarily understaffed excuse we’ve been hearing for a year just doesn’t cut it any more, especially since nothing is done to remedy the situation.
3.) Empty promises. Weapon upgrade rework, forge scroll availability, Guild Wars scoring fix? Players expect service games to deliver on promises in less than a few year.
4.) Shady business conduct. Repeatedly trying to short-change paying players whenever some bug causes them to receive less than purchased, the most prominent example being the Pharos-Ra debacle.
Personally, the last item gets my hackles up the most and I’ll happily shoot any messenger sent to obfuscate the severity of the issue.
15 Likes
Since the game is supposedly making money hand over fist, the suits are probably content to stick their fingers in their ears and go “LALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU”. Abysmally slow support hasn’t slowed the gravy train down, so it’s entirely possible that the decision-makers in the equation don’t see it as a concern.
Shoddy/nonexistent QA, empty promises, shady business practices, and terrible customer service are all acceptable when profits continue to climb…or so it would seem. All we can go off of is what we see.
This.
8 Likes