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For me, I have been using Miqobot since about the end of Stormblood, and at this point I think I’ve got everything I can out of it – gold saucer rewards, classes leveled up, etc. I would absolutely pay more for addons or extra features. But even if Miqobot stopped working or shut down all of a sudden, I would say I definitely got my money’s worth out of it.
Update to my post, Miqo became live again this morning, first thing i did Crafted 100 mythril rings to get the white scripts i need to fix my melds. I cant rely on anything as much as i can rely on Miqo. If it were possible Id date Miqo, Miqo has never hurt my feelings. Miqo Loves video games and FF14 is her favorite. She never asks for money for drugs, just 10 dollars a month. If there were such a thing as a woman half as loyal as Miqo i could die happy. For now ill just have see her in my dreams….
I’m a dev elsewhere in the community for a place that shall remain nameless (don’t want it getting traced back to me!) so I can sympathize with the experience of having a usual unnamed crowd of people come in and demand answers that have been given a thousand times before with every patch… people just don’t think or want to look for the answers themselves, unless it’s shoved up their nose at the earliest opportunity (and that can risk annoying the regulars)… So all I can say is: try not to let the people get to you. Tons of people love this bot and the dev team, you guys have been nothing but professional in dealing with everybody on the forums that I can see, even when you would’ve had every right to bitch someone out for not reading a stickied thread or even a previous post that had the exact answer to the question they come in to ask.
You guys are awesome, and I sincerely hope you stick around for a long time <3 I couldn’t imagine doing 1/10th the stuff in this game without the bot, simply because I do not have the time or energy to dedicate to a lot of it like I used to. This bot makes the game actually fun to play, and less of a headache to deal with. Good things take time to get right, and pushing stuff out before they’re ready (and still filled with bugs) is a bad thing, so I really do admire the team for making sure things are working before pushing out an update. Too many times in the community with certain other programs I see things get shoved out the door too quickly, only to have them updated another 5-10 times before the day is over because they didn’t do their due diligence. THAT, is extremely annoying and unprofessional…and I’m very happy that the miqobot team doesn’t do that!
Thank you <3
I don’t really participate in this forum a lot, mostly because I don’t usually have much to contribute, and also because I’m generally satisfied and know from previous explanations how dev works.
I just want to say Thank you for giving me something both cheap and easy to use. I rely on another person to keep me living, so the cheap price has kept me able to use this since Heavensward.
Your math posts have also helped me learn how to craft properly along with watching Miqo craft, so even without her able to make end game stuff at the moment, I’ve become capable.
So again, Thank you for doing what you do.
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This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by
Drudicta.
As someone who has used programs like this for decades, I feel that maybe you should make more ‘niche’ modules for the casual observer.
Perhaps a 5 dollar package for just gold saucer content.
A retainer checker.
Someone which plants seeds and waters the garden at regular intervals.
Barring that open a patreon to new development projects.
Just a thought.
I honestly think a patreon/other way of donating wouldn’t be a terrible idea, as long as donors don’t get additional benefits like early releases/donor only features (since for some the additional cost would be a minus). I would be down to throw in some additional money every now and then, I’ve gotten an insane amount of value out of this bot.
As for future features, I think that since this is a subscription service, it wouldn’t bee too bad of an idea to create user polls every now and then to see what features users want most, since that could change with time. Maybe let the community managers (that’s a thing now right?) handle them at their discretion and then devs would choose from that priority list according to what they see as most reasonable/easily attainable.
Maybe also create a stickied post at the start of the discussion forums titled “READ BEFORE POSTING” or “FAQ” etc., since even though it won’t eliminate spam posts, it could at least reduce them.
I haven’t read through all the answers to this thread yet, but I just wanted to quickly post a short piece of information for the community, since this doesn’t appear to be very clear and people were already assuming the correct state:
As some already assumed correctly, most of these toxic messages the dev team received were indeed “private messages”. To be more precise, it’s E-Mails to the tech support of Miqobot.
And to add further to this, I’d like to mention, that these E-Mails are the absolutely vast majority of messages Miqobot receives on a daily basis. The messages on the forums only encompass roughly 20-30% of the messages Miqobot receives at all.Aside from that: I’d also like to thank you all for these kind words and the support you’re voicing for the Dev Team. Even if the voice on the forums only encompasses a fraction of opinions, it is still relevant and I’m sure that the Devs really appreciate them.
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From here on I’ll add answers based on what I’ve read in this thread.
@cowboybebop:
Yes, I have been given a moderator status for the forums to help the Miqobot Dev Team and take some work off their backs. So far I have restructured and maintained the Grids & Presets index, as well as the Scenarios index, I did a survey on the forum community opinion in regards to some planned and debated features and finally I also have initially made the Patch Notes thread in the development section of the forums, which required a lot of digging through the forums history.However, due to the fact that I’m getting close to my Bachelors degree at my university and I’m under a lot of pressure with exams I currently have limited capabilities of doing the work I have applied for. What I’m currently capable of doing is to maintain the scenarios & grids index threads, which already takes some work off the Miqobot dev team.
Once I have more time again, I still want to help the Dev team with the tasks I applied for. These include creating and updating guides in the development section, writing technical descriptions and converting technical information into a publicly readable format and more or less building a human feed between developers and users for better communication.@sinrion:
I did not simply vanish. I clearly stated the reason for my reduced activity in several threads already, as well as in this post.
Also, the moderation part that I took up on was mainly focused on updating indexes, conveying information between the forum community and the Miqobot Dev team, as well as writing/updating guides, which only the latter two lacked during the last couple of months.
I am not quite sure, what you expect in terms of moderation, but as I stated before most of the toxic messages that I assume you think need moderation are received directly via E-Mail at the tech support, where I do not have any access at all (and I did not apply for in the first place).@maxd:
Thank you for your kind words. I do appreciate them 🙂
This might not solve the issue completely, but I’m currently close to a larger break of my exams, where I have more time to moderate the forums on a more active basis again, until the next big exam phase starts. I hope that I can be more of a help again, when this break finally starts.____________________________
Bottom line: Although I feel some disappointment due to my inactivity recently, there are no hard feelings from my side and I hope I conveyed a bit of enlightenment from my point of view. Also, I’m looking forward to when I can take up my work again and I hope it will help the devs alleviate some stress.
Hi, I have been using Miqo on and off for years, I think. I like that it is not too expensive. Right now I cannot afford the cost but I pay it anyway because this game is my only source of entertainment. I am glad you turned off the trial when people were abusing it. I also would like to say thank you for allowing me to level my classes while I sleep that makes me fall asleep. I don’t use miqo for money making personally as I feel like that is cheating. not looking down on anyone though. I just like making things for people and they are happy with them when they give me mats I feel like I’m not stupid. I have a math disability and i’m autistic and i never run savage or extremes. i just want to enjoy my game without a hassle. I have been playing ffxiv since 1.0 alpha. This has allowed me to keep playing and not get burned out like so many people i have seen stop playing. I am also transgender and don’t leave the house much which means i rely on this game to express myself safely. I have take miqo with me out of country and she still worked too during stormblood. I am so grateful for this bot. I wish people would leave you all alone. i can’t afford those fancier bots. some people replying to this thread really missed the whole point. maybe give them a section of the forum where they can complain and scream at each other and not say anything to you. i’m sorry you have to read that. i worked in customer service for over 20 years and people are so entitled they will never change. you must take a canned response and refund them and ban them if they give you a hard time, friends. its the only way. we will stay loyal to you.
thank you for all of your hard work and sorry if my response is too long. i get that way sometimes.Im going to be honest and play Devils advocate, and the reason for this is I don’t know the size of your team.
I think alot of things are a issue of communication and not clear road mapping. For all we know you could have 2 people in a basement, working till the wee hours of the morning, slaving away. Or you could have 30 people. You just say your Team is working on things. You also have like 10 different work streams that you are working on, Between crafting, gathering, assist, dungeon integration, gold saucer. We get it. The problem is that alot of the work your doing isn’t visible to the end user, and the things that the end user sees are few and far between. I am so glad you added the 75 dungeon, its awesome and greatly appreciated. But summoner still doesn’t use Energy siphon.
Now you could take this as me being a jerk, or you can understand where im coming from in stating I don’t know what your working on or what your priorities are. I have 2 accounts and 2 subscriptions, I love your service, but a little bit more transparency would help so we know objectively what your goals are to do when, rather than having a wish list that gets updates with long term goals occasionally.
Lastly regarding monetization, I again don’t know your team size, country of origin, or any of the other information, But I would highly encourage you to think very very very hard before you increase monetization. Currently your price is fair for the love and effort you put into it, but even just by registrations to the forums we can see you have a large following and people using it. If you think criticism of your timeline between features is bad now, Just wait if you start charging a extra 5$ for Combat assist plugin and its not optimized.
I don’t want you to take this poorly, I love your service, I pay for two instances of it, and I will continue to do so. But communication is a 2 way street, and I don’t feel you have set clear expectations (Actual times on your roadmap, priority of updates Ect..) and thats where a chunk of the negativity comes from.
Signed,
A MIqobot Fanboy and a big fanIm going to be honest and play Devils advocate –post truncated–
I have a few things to say about this, just giving my two cents so take no offense please.
First, I think it is important to understand the experience of software development. I am not a professional software developer, but I am currently working on a MS in Software Engineering, so I at least have some familiarity with the experience. Managing the development of an ongoing software project is a surprisingly difficult and involved task. Coming up with say, a road-map of planned features for example, is exceptionally easy. Its easy to look at a game like FFXIV and see a vast array of tasks which can be automated or performed at a higher level through the use of software. Actually designing and implementing solutions for these tasks however is not a simple process nor is it a straightforward one.
Take crafting for example, as a developer writing a crafting solver, you are tasked with writing out logic and mathematical evaluations that can allow a computer to determine how to optimally perform a craft. Say you have 20 common skills (hypothetically speaking), each with their own CP costs, modifiers, % chances of success, and functions like increasing quality or progress. Then you have the player’s actual skillset based on their level which gives you access to a varying number of those skills, their total CP, and current crafting-relevant stats which affect the performance of the skills. Then you have item recipes with varying durability, progress, and quality caps. Imagine writing out the math and logic which dictates, with all of those variables, what the most optimal set of skills would be, in which order, to accomplish a given craft. You would also need to account for when a % chance skill succeeds or fails, and recalculate or branch your planned rotation as needed. Now imagine that you figure all of this out, and set it into motion, but your crafting suddenly stops half-way through for no apparent reason. Where to begin in starting the process of figuring out why that could be happening? Its a lot of work to say the least.
My point in saying all of this is to illustrate the magnitude of challenge presented by the implementation of what would seem like obvious features to include in such software in the eyes of the average end-user. Successful software projects are often developed by teams of people because it takes different minds to solve different issues and with just one or two people working on a project certain things can really leave you stumped and scratching your head when they don’t go as planned, and without external input the time it takes to solve a problem is often indefinite. If Miqo were to change gears and start laying out a specific timeline for what features were coming up, the only thing they are doing to themselves is creating deadlines that may not turn out to be realistic in the end, and users will just be dissatisfied when the development efforts fall short of their expectations.
With regard to the cost, I think $10/month is a fair price to be asking, but there would need to be a very large number of users to justify the developer making a full-time job out of it, and even then, why depart from a sustainable career to work full-time on a project that will only last as long as the game it serves? I think Miqo has pigeonholed itself into a spot that works for it and its users and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
I will say that I think one opportunity that Miqo could benefit from capitalizing on is their community. A lot of us would add or enhance functionality ourselves for the benefit of the community. There is another product which places the burden of development almost entirely upon its users – which is a terrible model in itself – but the users have created some truly amazing things! Adding plugin development or something to that effect could be beneficial for all. However I do recognize that that would require things to be rewritten from the ground up, in a more compatible language, and that may not be a justifiable undertaking.
As I said before, just my two cents. 🙂
I take no offense what so ever.
I wrote a big long response to this but then my internet ate it. I agree your points are valid. Ive been programming/software engineer for 15 years. My point is more they keep doing so many things I dont know if they have the team to sustain so many work streams, and with so many users finding the part they use for Miqo to be so important, I think thats where the issues are found. But what do I know 😛
Hi, I’ve already posted my book months ago (you should read it ^^ if you haven’t) so I’ll spare you from another one.
Simply put, the things this bot can do, the cost of using it, and the community of super helpful awesome people… There really isn’t anything people should whine about and be hateful to the Dev team for if they had a soul/brain/heart. But there are those that are never happy no matter what you try to do, like my older sister. I really hope the Dev Team has read all the heartfelt replies to this thread and takes the constructive criticism to heart as well, but has ignored the pissy-ass people that will never be happy. Like I said in my past post, the pissy people should go play Chicken with a train while being in a Porta-pot… a Heavily Used one.. you know, one that matches them.. one that’s full of sh…. LOVE! <3 :D:D
Tons of Love to the Dev team and the awesome people in this Community!
-MaurithI am very happy with your business model and aside from anxiously waiting for updates (not having complained once) I have never for one second thought you guys were doing anything else other than your best. Thank you for this software, you don’t know how much it means and I can continue to play this game because of it.
If ever you’re in doubt of your support from the quieter majority who don’t feel the need to email you all the time, just do a quick poll, it will show overwhelming support of your team – I for one think $10 is nothing compared to the countless hours you give me back that I would be using otherwise painfully grinding the game; if you didn’t develop anything else I would still think it was money well spent., just for what we have and the capabilities to create our own scenarios etc., using the tools’ capabilities. Illegitimi non carborundum!
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