Why I think devs don't communicate much

[Seefer]

What is there to be greatful for? SoO lasted over a year. HFC is going to last 14 months. And this is after promises of shorter content droughts.

Remember the WOTLK and MoP drought? Shit happens, at least you are getting a decent game, stop being a blat ass over a content drought just because people burn through everything so damn quick and then go "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH BLIZZARD SUCKS NO CONTENT", I swear the community is full of children.

[Varitok]

Are you similarly pissed when games announced at E3 are different when they're released? The purpose of BlizzCon isn't to give us a list of features which are 100% going to be added. It's to give us an idea of the direction they're taking the game and the things they want to add. Often times, what's seen at BlizzCon is so early in the development process that it can be added or removed at whim depending on a number of factors outside the control of the developers themselves.

Yeah but if I go to an E3 announcement and they say "check out this new racing game" and when it comes out its survival horror, Im going to be pretty mad. The fact that I pointed out is that nearly none of the major features touted came to fruition, I understand that some things can't come but they clearly never planned on releasing the cities or letting your garrison go anywhere. Lies are lies and even at blizzcon they can lie.

[goblingirl]

Having been a game dev (not at Blizzard), I'll tell you straight up:

They don't communicate a lot because the feedback is often overwhelmingly negative. It's dispiriting and demotivating to expose yourself to too much hate for your work.

It's not just that people don't agree with what you're doing. It's that too many of them relentlessly attack you personally with insults and hate speech that would get them fired, divorced, and thrown out of their friends' lives if they said things like that to someone in person. And don't get me started on the death threats. Yes, devs get those too.

Think about how you resolve conflict properly in your own life (and hopefully you DO resolve it properly). You talk, you LISTEN, you are respectful to your spouse/friend/boss/coworker/teacher.

I wasn't a fan of the attempt a few years ago to switch to real names on their forums, but I completely understand why they wanted to do it. People are a lot less likely to be flaming assholes when they're personally identifiable, and much more likely to discuss things like reasonable people would.

[Frolk]

they dont talk much, cause ppl take things out of context and blow it up
Dev says: We wanna do some minor tweaks to pvp damage
How the forum reads it: Were gon a MAJOR overhaul of all pvp related things

then forum gets mad and claiming dev was lying to them when dev tells em that they missunderstood and took stuff out of context

[MrKnubbles]

Honestly, they don't have to communicate a thing. Game companies never used to discuss the future plans for their games. Why do players feel like devs are required to release this information to us now? We're lucky that we get the communication we currently get, which is quite a lot, frankly.

[Relapses]

The fact that I pointed out is that nearly none of the major features touted came to fruition, I understand that some things can't come but they clearly never planned on releasing the cities or letting your garrison go anywhere. Lies are lies and even at blizzcon they can lie.

How do you know that? Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean they planned for it not to happen the whole time. Would you have rather SoO lasted an extra year so all of the features announced for WoD at BlizzCon could have been added into the game as promised?

[Deja Thoris]

There's no point in listing everything then rationalizing why or why it didn't get added. The problem I have is with people looking at fucking bullet points on a Power Point presentation at BlizzCon and interpreting them as wholesale promises of content. I don't think that list quantifies "nearly everything" and the determination of the importance of those features is completely subjective. I still think it's extremely detrimental for us as a community to be so enraged by the developers missing the mark on everything they announce at BlizzCon.

Entire cities and things like "where I place my garrison" are huge. We aren't talking about little stuff. And that not a subjective opinion. While I'm not nearly as pissed as that other dude its easy to see why Blizz lost a lot of credibility.

I think Blizz communicates a lot but its not all good communication and most of it is paraphrased with "Don't quote me on this!"

[Varitok]

How do you know that? Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean they planned for it not to happen the whole time. Would you have rather SoO lasted an extra year so all of the features announced for WoD at BlizzCon could have been added into the game as promised?

I would have prefered to have not been lied too. For them to not announce things they knew wouldn't be delievered. Or most of all, that they not half ass an expansion. I do love Blizzard and want WoW to be great but it doesn't mean I can get mad at being lied too.

[Relapses]

Entire cities and things like "where I place my garrison" are huge. We aren't talking about little stuff. And that not a subjective opinion. While I'm not nearly as pissed as that other dude its easy to see why Blizz lost a lot of credibility.

I think Blizz communicates a lot but its not all good communication and most of it is paraphrased with "Don't quote me on this!"

I agree with you here and I'm sure Blizzard realizes this since they've been on record repeatedly apologizing for the grandiose plans for WoD which were by and large squandered due to development time constraints. I think a lot of it is that they want to do a lot of really cool shit in WoW and then when they assemble a team to actually implement it, realize the technical limitations of the game and the scope of their vision are at odds with one another. If Blizzard had unlimited resources and manpower, I'm sure they'd get a lot closer to providing everything mentioned at BlizzCon. But since they don't, I don't see how productive it is for us as a community to be collectively enraged when something as minor as Thal'dranath's removal (seriously, there's a 40+ page thread in Legion discussions bitching about it) is scrapped in favor of the devs moving another direction.

[WintersLegion]

they dont talk much, cause ppl take things out of context and blow it up
Dev says: We wanna do some minor tweaks to pvp damage
How the forum reads it: Were gon a MAJOR overhaul of all pvp related things

then forum gets mad and claiming dev was lying to them when dev tells em that they missunderstood and took stuff out of context

Yeah like that art spot they posted a while ago that was visible items like librams, quivers and such for the classes and even said in the art spot this is something we want to do but if it happens it won't be for quite a while and we still get topics of people asking where those items are or why they were cut.

[clevin]

Honestly, they don't have to communicate a thing. Game companies never used to discuss the future plans for their games. Why do players feel like devs are required to release this information to us now? We're lucky that we get the communication we currently get, which is quite a lot, frankly.

Then they shouldn't do a Blizzonc announcement with lists of features unless they are VERY sure that they will ship those features. That's really what hurt them in WoD - they cut quite a few of the bigger things that they talked about. You can't, on the one hand, get people hyped for a bunch of features, let them preorder the product and then cut those features and on the other hand whine about negative feedback.

I really think they should a) not ignore the well thought out, constructive feedback that does happen since its disheartening to write things like that up and then see it get no feedback, b) stop engaging with the cutesy posts even on the CM level, c) do more of the structured Q&A things, d) ignore the whiny, overblown, childish stuff. It will happen regardless but be pro and ignore it.

However, I get that the community can be wearing. Gamers, despite what some might want to think, are massively childish, entitled and socially under developed. Look at the reaction when No Man's Sky moved from June to August. TWO MONTHS... and it was outrage city. Death threats, hyperbole about lying, etc. Frankly, far too many gamers are asocial assholes.

[ComputerNerd]

Why post about this here? Again with the "ungrateful" and "rotten" arguments. People are sick of being lied too and yes it is lies, All those promises at Blizzcon right before WoD launch, nearly right after it ended they started backpedaling on everything, especially the city hubs for each faction. I like the transparency of Legion, telling us why Thal'dranath was cancelled but you can't act as if Blizzard is nothing pure good to everyone, Its fanboyism and nothing less.

A fanboy is not defined by a single disagreement.
Rather than that being just one argument and not representing all their views.
I have been critical on many areas, but that is ignored by anyone who jumps onto the "fanboy" accusation any time I don't agree with some negative viewpoint.

[luckydan79]

That's likely true and I wouldn't talk so much either. Most of their efforts now go to PR and dev interviews are essentially free for them. But I think they reveal too much of the game, thereby inciting customers to ask for ever more. And they always seem to be apologizing which makes them look weak. And maybe they are. After all it took them over a year to decide what to ultimately do with flying with a great deal of that being public hand-wringing and trial balloons. I've said before they should just make the game they want to make, not worry so much or pander to their forum inhabitants and let the game sink or swim on its own. It might kill it; it also might make it much better than it is now.

Bit late now, they should of done that around Catalysm time. They listen to the forum and twitter tards who play the game no more than 5 minutes and spend more time on the forum than the game rather than actual feedback from players who put in 100s of hours into the game and give valid reason why certain things are unworkable and feels detracted. *cough* Sunsong ranch and Garrison for each character detracts you from the world when every character has the same NPCS *cough*. They used to establish the difference between feedback and trivial complaints and now they screwed up they can't differentiate from the two.

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Having been a game dev (not at Blizzard), I'll tell you straight up:

They don't communicate a lot because the feedback is often overwhelmingly negative. It's dispiriting and demotivating to expose yourself to too much hate for your work.

It's not just that people don't agree with what you're doing. It's that too many of them relentlessly attack you personally with insults and hate speech that would get them fired, divorced, and thrown out of their friends' lives if they said things like that to someone in person. And don't get me started on the death threats. Yes, devs get those too.

Think about how you resolve conflict properly in your own life (and hopefully you DO resolve it properly). You talk, you LISTEN, you are respectful to your spouse/friend/boss/coworker/teacher.

I wasn't a fan of the attempt a few years ago to switch to real names on their forums, but I completely understand why they wanted to do it. People are a lot less likely to be flaming assholes when they're personally identifiable, and much more likely to discuss things like reasonable people would.

I know it's depressing but you just got to throw the personal insults in the bin no questions asked because the feedback would be more personal preference to benefit themselves playing the game rather than the community as a whole because you can't differentiate between the two maybe communicating with people or CM is probably not the right job for you.

If you think your getting alot of abuse, it will be nothing compared to the police or even the Security personnel who have to deal with 10 times the amount of hate compared to what your getting. You just have to be cold calculating and judgemental, if it's a personal attack you will get no benefit as they want something beneficial to them instant sin bin (people are naturally greedy and these types don't really play the game) , if it's a company attack look into it as you may go in the wrong direction (e.g "Company name" is doing something stupid), if it's a game complaint feedback (AKA attacking the game itself) well definitely read into it.

I tell you who in Blizzard are doing it very well, Hearthstone Developers and the Original Developers of WOW they didn't go around trying to Please everyone they just do what they do best.

[Deleted]

Its a rotten industry, they work overtime for minimum wages, you are hated by your colleagues if you leave at 17:00 pm rather than 23:00 pm. If you miss a schedule, your friends will lose their jobs. You are hated by the community for a game that has not even been 8 months in development.

[Varitok]

Its a rotten industry, they work overtime for minimum wages, you are hated by your colleagues if you leave at 17:00 pm rather than 23:00 pm. If you miss a schedule, your friends will lose their jobs. You are hated by the community for a game that has not even been 8 months in development.

Maybe at lower tier jobs but not at blizzard. Its not 1997 blizzard anymore.

[Bosen]

Blizzard communicates with the community, frequently.

[Kallisto]

Then they shouldn't do a Blizzonc announcement with lists of features unless they are VERY sure that they will ship those features. That's really what hurt them in WoD - they cut quite a few of the bigger things that they talked about. You can't, on the one hand, get people hyped for a bunch of features, let them preorder the product and then cut those features and on the other hand whine about negative feedback.

Problem is that if that is the case then every game in existence on their first announcement will be "Game X is on its way. Goodbye." which would make things like E3, Blizzcon, Gamescon etc virtually useless. No game ever escapes first reveal unchanged. I honestly can't believe that at Blizzcon 2013 (I think I have lost track of time) when Blizz announced WoD they had no intention of implementing what they showed. Just like all games things don't work out as planned, time constraints or things needed to be changed. That's not being deceitful that's changing based on realistic issues from game design.

[lanesia24]

Okay where do I start, First off I WASN'T upset by Thal'Dranaths being removed far before it was going to come out, Also its the fact of cut content/zones that make people upset, not that we know nothing about it, Its current state doesn't matter at all in that context. I was excited that the Grimrail Depot would have a train that ran through the whole zone as a means of transport and a really cool thing to see in the zone, it would make grimrails dungeon would feel connected to the world better.

So its bascially okay to lie at blizzcon and announce completely fabricated things there? That is a ridiculous moving of the goalposts to try to put the arguement in your favour. Also I really love how you cherry picked two of my points (Ill admit they are weak ones) instead of the other 14. Length of expansion doesn't matter, If you are going to promise 16 features and not deliver on any of them, then don't lie about them in the first place.

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That is exactly what blizzcon is for. What the hell are you even talking about?

Huh? You would seriously have more fun and be less upset if there are train tracks in Gorgrond? Did I just read that? Now I understand why some people get upset about really unimportant things. I mean honestly, they are previewing an expansion that is still a really long ways to go before it is finished and it should be taken as a preliminary look at things to come.

WoD wasn't a great expansion but it wasn't a great expansion because they didn't go through 1by1 with your checklist and implement everything you seem to think would make it some grandiose expansion. It wasn't a good expansion because it didn't have enough max level content at launch and it wasn't supported well with patches. If it had been it would have been a fine expansion. Putting train tracks in Gorgrond or making capital cities Karabor or Bladespire wouldn't have made it a good expansion. Placing your garrison wherever in the world wouldn't have made it a great expansion and most of the other things wouldn't have made it a good expansion. Why get so worked up and angry over things that are in all honesty quite trivial and instead hold the devs accountable for real problem within the game? I mean I wouldn't care about any of those things you listed except maybe Farahlon because it could have been another patch content but the overall things players should be concerned about is having enough content not some check list of promises from a year and a half before the expansion released.

Look at Legion. They delivered on a lot of those issues. I've played the beta and its miles ahead of WoD in having things to do and it sounds like their intention is to support it with multiple patch content. People make some mistakes in life and in development. It happens. If you didn't like Wod then you should have stopped paying for it and either quit the game or come back when it looks more appealing.

[kary]

Anti blizzard fanatics are bonkers. news at 10.

[Veyne]

but they clearly never planned on releasing the cities or letting your garrison go anywhere. Lies are lies and even at blizzcon they can lie.

If it's so clear, can you provide proof beyond the shadow of a doubt?