Celestalon: "streaming interferes with the feedback process"

[l33t]

He said; "Streamers spewing bullshit is bad".

Bullshit is subjective. Telling things that Blizzard overlords don't like =/= spreading bullshit.

Meanwhile, I stand on the "you've just reaped what you sow" position. Sneaky fucking Blizzard, trying to make other people do their job for free.

[Eggroll]

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I agree with celestalon. Have you seen Cdew's video about afflocks? its horrible. There are ok streamers,like Preacher who makes videos that are informative and streamers like Finalbosstv who takes it more seriously and provides feedback at the devs for every little detail and then you have Cdew who is just plain negative with "false pretexts". Most of the streamers are like Preacher,though,just making videos about what changed and whats new.

I don't think it's Cdew who is at fault here because many of these peeps who posted in his "Legion changes" thread probably don't even know who he is or what he does. I know who he is, but I've never even watched his stream.

It all comes down to the devs making these grave changes to the classes. That is what riles people up, not this one lonely streamer that's hardly known by anyone. Also, again assigning blame to the playerbase, well..

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I'm not really sure about that. The whole #stoptheprune shit is ridiculous. Some people have really good points and give really good feedback, and others are just following the pack.

For example, I like Cdew, but some of his reasons to bring back abilities (as well as Sodapoppin) are really bad. Reasons like "bring it back because it was cool and I like it" is not a good reason. If you believe an ability should be brought back, then include an analysis including why it should be brought back, how it would benefit the game, and how it would benefit the class. I don't mean to drop names, but some reasons I've seen from these streamers are just really bad like "bring it back because it's cool". That just doesn't work and it's not a valuable reason as to why that ability is even useful in game.

I think that's really how the devs look at it, it all comes down to "usefulness" to them. But I feel that they disregard a huge part of the world and game with this point of view. To many players WoW is not just a min-max spreadsheet interface, it's a living breathing world with aesthetic and emotional values which are represented by graphics, words and sounds. Those make up the world.

Games are, at least for some of us, a form of entertainment. And entertainment often involves emotions, because we want to ENJOY ourselves when spending time on the entertainment of our choice.

It's too bad the devs don't seem to waste a thought on this.

[kamuimac]

The ironic thing here is that there're very view streamers who actually play Alpha with any consistency with maybe the exception of Towelliee .

and Towelliee is epitomy of worst beta tester ever - he openly admits during stream that he has no fucking clue on how most of classes work ye is supposed to bring constructive criticism on classes ? he is nothing but a joke who can impress maybe 13 year old since his stream consist mainly of him making stupid lame jokes and him showing that for most classes/specs he represents knowledge of lv of lfr player -_- giving alpha acces to people like him is nothing but marketing dont even try to pretend its not.
i watched his stream few times since he was one of very first who streamed alpha and jeez it was painful to watch very little good information and veyr much his ego and self promotion :/

[Taeldorian]

and Towelliee is epitomy of worst beta tester ever - he openly admits during stream that he has no fucking clue on how most of classes work ye is supposed to bring constructive criticism on classes ? he is nothing but a joke who can impress maybe 13 year old since his stream consist mainly of him making stupid lame jokes and him showing that for most classes/specs he represents knowledge of lv of lfr player -_- giving alpha acces to people like him is nothing but marketing dont even try to pretend its not.
i watched his stream few times since he was one of very first who streamed alpha and jeez it was painful to watch very little good information and veyr much his ego and self promotion :/

At least he can provide information about bugs, and the classes he does know about. You don't need to just be knowledgeable about classes to get in, bug testers/raid testers are valuable as well. And another thing is that he admits that he doesn't know how some classes work, which is a good thing compared to the streamers that we're discussing here that clearly don't know what they're talking about, but continue to ramble on and request abilities be brought back even though some of those abilities are worthless and don't benefit the game. So, he's fine in my opinion.

[Deleted]

Oh the irony of Blizzard using 'hyperbole' and 'false pretext' as excuse to intimidate and censor critical streamers after their free xpack hype and advertisement program on the back of streamers backfired.

[manypillars]

So Blizzard was using streamers to help fuel their hype train and now they're not happy that these same streamers have an opinion that's not what marketing wanted expressed? Muh deepest sympathies.

[Mafic]

Here is the "offending" post made by CDEW on the official forums:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20743025110

Legion is coming and our abilities as we know them are going. If you are against the prune, write an ability that you miss and the reason why. Ability pruning will kill the game that we know and love, it's time for us to show Blizzard why we're against it.

Frost Shock ~ Had this since vanilla and it's one of the iconic abilities of a shaman that allows for some ranged utility.

So he cited a specific ability and argued why it should stay using subjective reasoning (iconic to Shamans) and objective reasoning (ranged utility).

And why are people trashing him in this thread by bllndly defending Blizzard?

[High Marshal Sigismund]

This should be the end of the thread here. Blizzard wants people to do things for free for them. Write addons, publicize, market.

Now they are having to suck on that cock and swallow what comes out. The Master Planner April's Fools was *amazing* because it upset so many people, I love it. People want shit for free because they feel entitled? Fine, edit out the code or write it yourself.

Blizzards wants streamers to be their bitch? Fuck off. Unless Blizzard is paying them, Celestalon can die in a fire for all I care (see the hyperbole there?). They got what they asked for. It just wasn't what they wanted -- it was simply what they asked for.

I've never seen someone so angry because they didn't get an alpha key.

[ElDoorO]

I've never seen someone so angry because they didn't get an alpha key.

Nah, not angry. Just calling him out on his stupidity. I also got an Overwatch Alpha invite, so there's that. I'm also not a streamer. I have no idea how I got it either. I'm no one special, relative to what they know on that account.

But nice try and trying to provoke a response, you'll need to try harder and respond with something more useful.

It's one of the unfortunate things about The Internet, you can't really convey tone. Again, he can fuck off if he has any issues with how streamers (ab)use Blizzard in return for *free* marketing.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Yeah Towellie has been around as a streamer far longer than that and would whore himself out for many games to generate hype via key giveaways and the like. Now that his fanbase is well established he no longer has to do that much. But he was at the forefront of doing shady shit during some Blizzard Key giveaways in the past year or two. I'm not sure anymore WHICH game it was for but was a pretty lengthy thread on Blizz official forums about people being unhappy with Blizzard pandering to streamers by arbitrarily picking which streamers were to get keys to give away thus boosting that streamers revenue.

Hell even go in the thread where Blizz promoted Towellie as a Community Spotlight and look at the many people bashing him over the years for how he has handled himself over many things. And that is just one streamer out of many with questionable pasts.

Yeah no. You're spreading pure bullshit here. People hating on Towel is not the same as what they're saying being true, case in point: You.

[Collected]

I wonder if they may adjust how they approach the next WoW test.. perhaps even suggesting you can't stream or put content on YouTube.. at least until a certain point where most core items are fixed in place. The benefit they get from allowing coverage at an early stage may not out weigh the stress this is putting on the development process. I mean let's be honest.. does WoW *need* to have their tests streamed to get people to play the end product? I don't think so. Close to the end it does them a favour for sure.. but as early as alpha? I wouldn't be surprised if we see the next expansion on Twitch and YouTube a lot later than we did this time.

[Lulbalance]

Yeah no. You're spreading pure bullshit here. People hating on Towel is not the same as what they're saying being true, case in point: You.

If you don't see that Towelliee is a self promoting blizzard prostitute, i dunno man.. don't forget to renew your Hammer Sq. subscription?

I don't hate the guy for it, but he or anyone else denying what it is = delusional.

OT, regarding the comments: the general wow population i feel is older. People who have played the game for over 10 years now telling you that what you're doing is damaging.. and you (Celes) blame that feedback on people being sheep to streamer propaganda? Weird knee jerk reaction, why not assume your base is knowledgeable after this length of time?

Maybe some people just don't like slashing abilities and over-simplifying the game? Some don't of course..and it is what it is.

[Deleted]

I wonder if they may adjust how they approach the next WoW test.. perhaps even suggesting you can't stream or put content on YouTube.. at least until a certain point where most core items are fixed in place. The benefit they get from allowing coverage at an early stage may not out weigh the stress this is putting on the development process. I mean let's be honest.. does WoW *need* to have their tests streamed to get people to play the end product? I don't think so. Close to the end it does them a favour for sure.. but as early as alpha? I wouldn't be surprised if we see the next expansion on Twitch and YouTube a lot later than we did this time.

It would be like WoD when we are so late into beta blizz will claim they can't change anything and we get garrisons...

I really don't see why players see pressuring blizzard to knock this shit off as a bad thing...

[Caolela]

One thing's for sure - once they get the money out of you for Legion, they will have done their jobs for the bean-counters, stock holders, and Morhaime & Kotick. $$

They know they have a very large stream of suckers and addicts lined up for their next dose of stupid.

[Deleted]

None of the streamer plays the alpha/beta for reporting the bugs, they play it because they gat paid by blizz.
I dont get it why is blizz dont invite real players that play the alpha/beta to look and report all the bugs :S
They have never criticism at WOW , and in the long run that hurts WOW a lot.
Developers getting better due to honest criticism.
Blizz invite ppl that are keep looking for bugs and glitches not those streamers that play wow for the moneyz and only the moneyz

[Xar226]

Do you feel that Celestalon has a point? That the streamers are at fault and have harmed the feedback process? Or do you feel that Blizzard has "made their bed" by inviting all of these streamers into the Alpha) and now they have to lie in it?

Both.

Blizzard has always had a strange way of picking who gets an invite. Large streamers or YouTube people, 13/13M people, etc. They make sense in their own ways, but they are also flawed too.

What Blizzard needs to do, but hasn't yet, is to actually start monitoring feedback. The number of 13/13M people who have simply never reported a bug or left a feedback post and will happily admit it is disappointing. Likewise, while a streamer may make comments based on "false/hyperbolic pretexts to get more viewers" I doubt they're leaving any kind of official feedback. Anybody who doesn't leave feedback or file bug reports during their alpha or even beta access should be blacklisted from future invites. You could automate that in an hour. Likewise, if they truly believe people are making things up to thrive in the conflict and giving shit feedback, they should be blacklisted from future invites. You still read it, you still give it its due consideration incase "there's good feedback underneath that," but you also evaluate it as evidence for whether or not you want to continue that relationship moving forward. Nobody is entitled to an alpha or beta invite. The process is to help uncover bugs, tuning issues, etc and it should be treated that way.

Not only would this help solve their issues, it would help generate more quality feedback -- both because people know they have to provide it and because those who don't do so are increasingly replaced by people who will.

[Taeldorian]

If you don't see that Towelliee is a self promoting blizzard prostitute, i dunno man.. don't forget to renew your Hammer Sq. subscription?

I don't hate the guy for it, but he or anyone else denying what it is = delusional.

OT, regarding the comments: the general wow population i feel is older. People who have played the game for over 10 years now telling you that what you're doing is damaging.. and you (Celes) blame that feedback on people being sheep to streamer propaganda? Weird knee jerk reaction, why not assume your base is knowledgeable after this length of time?

Maybe some people just don't like slashing abilities and over-simplifying the game? Some don't of course..and it is what it is.

What kind of streamer wouldn't self promote? Literally people self promote every single day, whether it's Verizon or any other company, everyone does it. It's not bad at all.

And honestly, towelliee has shit on blizzard as well as praised them. I don't see how that's bad, it's better than what you're contributing. Better then what I'm contributing as well.

[taliey]

Have you seen how viewers of streamers behave?

And the streamers themselves? That was just a problem waiting to happen.

[Deleted]

Streamers are given alpha access for a particular reason, and are in no way, shape or form being paid by blizzard. Slootbag is in serenity, and as the best guild in the world plays a major role in the testing process from a pve perspective. Other streamers are also influential pvp streamers. These two groups basically consist of players such as fraggy, sco, rogerbrown, kuznam, cdew, mes, venruki, towelliee, preach etc...

While you may think they don't give feedback, they do in fact give a lot of feedback. In toweliee's stream today I recall him reporting a few bugs, and the class specific/raid specific feedback from the raiders is imperative, as well as the pvp feedback from the pvpers. The issue that has arisen in this particular case derives from the audience of streamers taking the streamers's messages to a hyperbolic level. Cdew was in fact giving feedback, and in the process certain things got out of hand and not productive in terms of feedback.

The notion that they are being paid by Blizzard is also idiotic. These streamers are being paid by the viewers, and these viewers like to watch wow so they will and can continue to play wow. How this though even came about is beyond me as all of the above have criticized the game on all fronts.

People who stream wow are usually a lot more invested into the game than the average player, which only strengthens the argument of them being more viable for alpha/beta testing.

[Deleted]

You think they dont getting paid, but they get paid and ofc they are denying it.
BTW ppl that dont get into the alpha/beta dont have a change to get world or server first so in my eyes it is kinda P2W .
Blizz should test the stuff inhouse like FF14, patches and expansions being tested inhouse so nobody so everybody have the same amount of changes to get server or world first.
As long as some ppl get invited into the alpha or beta ,the race isn't fair by a long shot.
As long as they dont invited everybody or nobody and i choose nobody the race ISNT FAIR
And ofc you defend those streamers because you watch them, but you wont wanna see that they getting paid .