Blizzard apologises for communication breakdown

[Gadzooks]

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/t...36?page=10#184


You know the communication is bad when Ghostcrawler is discussing WoW more at the moment than the current WoW dev team combined. Do you think that we should expect improved developer communication in the future? If so, in what ways? Or is this just more PR spin?

Ion's been apologizing for poor communication for years now.

Do I expect it to change?

I'm not holding my breath.

[Pull My Finger]

let me know when your class is broken in game and they ignore your feedback, this isnt just about talking to blues we can do that on fucking twitter, its the fact that we give feedback and they dnt even take it onboard and im talking numerous classes with pages upon pages of constructive feedback not someone like you who prolly posts x classis OP and my class isnt OP wah wah, your post is the type of communication blizzard doesnt want to hear

No class is broken. Even if it was: you're not supposed to be able to get on Twitter or the WoW forums or whatever, and cry like a baby to make someone instantly jump up and make changes to make you happy again. I've never seen any "constructive feedback" from any of you guys. All you do is whine, and dramatize. And just because you think you have an opinion, it doesn't mean that it's valuable. Just because you think you have an idea, it doesn't mean it should be implemented. In your head, "listening to feedback" means "Blizzard does whatever I plant into my silly head". You don't have the foggiest idea about how game design, or grand scale projects in general, work.

Stop whining. That's literally all you do. "Constructive feedback" my ass.

[Deleted]

I don't understand al the white knights. There are indeed a lot of shity idiot whine post. But sometimes you need to look at what happend before.

An example from warlock pov (only class i play):
We (destruction) had a smooth , fun to play spec, with some mobility (speaking only about pve). They posted before legion that destro only needed some tweeks.
When alpha came online , we had lost the smoothness to RNG with a RNG mastery , mobility (because standing in stuff in pve is OK "we are tanky durb" ) and visualty ripped to basicly nothing and to make it even more enjoyable it was given to other classes.
There was TONS of good feedback, even some essay's from alpha to 7.1 And they weren't about 'i want to be OP'

Nothing happend , the best think we got, was that we lost some tankyness...

And now ion posted that embers was indeed a beter mecanic than the rng on rng spec...

I strongly have a feeling that the ego of the diablo dev's are a little to strong for wow and that keep throwing good feedback away is what led to this.

*my apologies for my grammar but English is not my native language :/

[KaPe]

this post is 100 percent true, sad to say but it is

Well no, this expansion they appearently realized their mistakes three months into expansion. Of course, the way they went around fixing it is currently visible on PTR and the fact that we're getting the apology in the first place - all resulting from months of beta feedback, completely ignored. So there's a small chance they'll fix it, but the way it's happening is simply stupid, resulting in massive class changes in relatively small patch. All because they keep ignoring feedback and some people praise them for that. "Yeah, those whiners know nothing, keep up the good work Blizzard. Also, nerf X."

[Lumineus]

No class is broken.

coughwarlockscough

[ComputerNerd]

The root of the problem here is the bloody players.

Players are whiny, ungrateful little shits who dont deserve communication in the first place. Id rather blizzard focus on making the game than try to give frequent updates to the playerbase which will just be taken out of context and overanalysed to the extreme.

Very much this.
Whines about feedback being ignored themselves conveniently ignore that which does get attention, and that which does get changed as a result.
I have seen that particularly when it comes to warlocks, despite occasional blue posts with acknowledgement of issues.

The less time blizzard have to spend dealing with petty accusations, the more time they can spend on real actually useful feedback.
Which is by far a small minority of what they are receiving.

[Siglius]

@Lumineus I'd hardly say they are outright broken, the class functions and provides decent results. Some people obviously find the current playstyle unsatisfactory, but thats completely subjective and I'm not gonna try to argue that.

[Gratlim]

The root of the problem here is the bloody players.

Players are whiny, ungrateful little shits who dont deserve communication in the first place. Id rather blizzard focus on making the game than try to give frequent updates to the playerbase which will just be taken out of context and overanalysed to the extreme.

While i agree with you 100%, history and previous experience shows that without being hard pressed from whiners, Blizzard go lazy mode and deliver as little as possible in term of content or balance to save money and dev time while milking the herd of cows as much as possible.

[Deleted]

Yup. I'm getting pretty tired of the constant whining. Players do not know what is best for a game, in most cases.

No they often don't, but incorrect or whiny feedback is not bad feedback, it's a game designers job to filter all the frustration, negativity, suggesions, etc, down to the cause of the problem.

as an easy example players might say "there is nothing to do in game" which is incorrect, the game designer needs to interpret it as "why do people feel there is nothing to do?" to reach a conclusion like "the reward structure isn't working".

[Pull My Finger]

While i agree with you 100%, history and previous experience shows that without being hard pressed from whiners, Blizzard go lazy mode and deliver as little as possible in term of content or balance to save money and dev time while milking the herd of cows as much as possible.

Phew, I would be careful with that. I really, really wouldn't want to attribute the undeniable improvements WoW has gone through recently to the idiot whiners. In fact, I believe that their "contribution" is a negative one. The bullshit whining is what distorts the developers' vision. The aimless and contradictory meandering state the game was kind of stuck in since mid-Cata was a direct result of too much noise, too much listening to bullshit whining, which is aimless, contradictory, thoughtless and short-sighted in nature.

After all, I almost never find myself agreeing with the idiots and their whine, and while I personally think the game is in a very good place now compared to previous expansions, I don't see much of the whiners' "input" in there that made it so.

[alabaster jones]

An example from warlock pov (only class i play):

Yeah the warlock saga was/is bizarre to watch, you had a handful of these really dedicated, passionate warlock ppl compiling incredibly detailed, well thought out megaposts made of useful information summarised from the thousands of posts in the warlock feedback megathreads, formatted in the way Blizzard has indicated is the most useful (data rich/fact based), just being ignored for weeks, then months.

Also I absolutely don't understand people in here saying 'kids these days' either, I clearly remember over the years people begging and pleading with Blizzard for better communication, for all kinds of reasons (the one clearest in my mind was the 'we're moving our focus to twitter' era). The difference between then and now is that where megaposts used to be a compilation of grievances and complaints, the megaposts these days are actually really useful, and heavy on data and detail.

[Gorsameth]

Wake up from your silly dream for one minute. You basically want Blizzard to make a post reminding you that the sky is indeed blue.

The PTR is a snapchat of the many-in-progress builds full of experiments, changes, ideas - and Blizzard simply shouldnt waste resources to 'communicate all of the above' to their testers every time they wish to tweak change or fiddle with something.

If you are not adult enough to understand this, and you desperately want a update blog or tweet with every change, you shouldnt be on the ptr.

The Fire Mage thing is a great example of GOOD changes they are making to the class - with the majority of the playerbase too stupid to understand why, because they cant see past 'omg my dps is lower on ptr' for one minute to look at the bigger picture.

I dont need Blizzard to waste time telling me 'its ptr we are doing mechanics framework first followed by numerical tuning later'. because its fucking common sense.

If a sizable proportion of the playerbase is braindead monkeys, which clearly they are if you look at the mage forums recently, I dont want to see Blizzard attempting to waste time throwing peanuts at them and reminding them the sky is actually blue in attempts to communicate.

And on the opposite side there is a very real chance based on past actions that Blizzard CAN release the current state into the live world and then when people complain you get "But no one provided feedback that it was bad".

If you wait until a patch goes live to offer feedback on the changes then your to late.

[Deleted]

Very much this.
Whines about feedback being ignored themselves conveniently ignore that which does get attention, and that which does get changed as a result.
I have seen that particularly when it comes to warlocks, despite occasional blue posts with acknowledgement of issues.

The less time blizzard have to spend dealing with petty accusations, the more time they can spend on real actually useful feedback.
Which is by far a small minority of what they are receiving.

but it's so easy for blizz to fix. all people really want is to occasionally hear "we have read your feedback and forwarded it to the devs", actual explanations aren't needed most of the time, people just want to know they aren't wasting their time on the PTR/betas.

[Gorsameth]

Shadow Priests have been pointing out that Surrender to Madness cannot be balanced at a risk vs reward level since the talent got introduced. A spell that kills you for a slight miss play has to deliver OP damage to be worth taking, something that goes against every basis of correct game design.

At what point do we stop being 'whiny bitches' and become right?

[rda]

Shadow Priests have been pointing out that Surrender to Madness cannot be balanced at a risk vs reward level since the talent got introduced. A spell that kills you for a slight miss play has to deliver OP damage to be worth taking, something that goes against every basis of correct game design.

At what point do we stop being 'whiny bitches' and become right?

With forums ready to condemn everyone who says a word, never. It's the truth. I won't use the word "fanboys", because that's not quite it, and people who almost immediately dismiss complaints as whining do have their reasons - a lot of complaints *are* overboard and contradict each other - but in their rightful anger these people err way too much in the other direction. I don't know why, but these people decided to be the mediators and filterers between the rest of the players and the developers. You have to have quite a bit of patience and skill for that, and they don't have it, so they understandably get irritated quickly and just start blocking everything. World is imperfect.

[Deleted]

The root of the problem here is the bloody players.

Players are whiny, ungrateful little shits who dont deserve communication in the first place. Id rather blizzard focus on making the game than try to give frequent updates to the playerbase which will just be taken out of context and overanalysed to the extreme.

I wish this website had an upvote system so people like you could be at the top of the list.

Honestly the community is so trashy nowadays. It's literally full of self-entitled children. I've actually stopped visiting these forums as much lately due the fact it's slowly become infected with these toxic players. 99% of the people bitching about WoW at the moment can't seem to come to terms with the game is 12 years old and they're bored with it, so instead of admitting this to themselves they just sit here and wallow in a cesspit of complaints and criticism.

[rda]

I wish this website had an upvote system so people like you could be at the top of the list.

Honestly the community is so trashy nowadays. It's literally full of self-entitled children. I've actually stopped visiting these forums as much lately due the fact it's slowly become infected with these toxic players. 99% of the people bitching about WoW at the moment can't seem to come to terms with the game is 12 years old and they're bored with it, so instead of admitting this to themselves they just sit here and wallow in a cesspit of complaints and criticism.

There is a website for circlejerks like this, it's called WoW subreddit. Stupid but "cool" opinions like "it's all the players fault" get upvoted there all the time.

[Life-Binder]

community thinks it knows what the game needs, but it doesnt

[rda]

community thinks it knows what the game needs, but it doesnt

Blizzard class designers using a tablet instead of a mouse obviously have a lot more insight:

https://twitter.com/Celestalon/statu...96586338418688

Celestalon: Never had a reason to use a mouse before. Now, Overwatch. Suggestions for good (non-expensive) mice for Overwatch?
A shocked player: Did you not play WoW with a mouse???
Celestalon: Negative. No mouse use for anything prior to now.

[Deleted]

Neither does Blizzard if they have to rework numerous specs mid expansion.

I have 12 classes (10 of them maxed and avg 855 ilvl) and I don't think they have to do that many changes, class are good overall, little fails here and there. They mainly do such many changes to shut up whining players. And from those whines only 10% are justified. Most of them are "lol my boomkin can't do as dmg as a mage WTF" and they can't even think that they are an hybrid class who can fucking heal, tank, cast dps and melee dps, when a mage is a fucking pure caster DPS. OF COURSE a pure DPS should do more dmg than a hybrid class. A hybrid class shouldn't be ahead in dmg, heal or tank, but should be good on all of them. The same way I think a priest should be ahead in healing, due to the fact that they are 2/3 healer, the most "healer" class in game. They are breaking this game because everyone wants them class to be TOP in DPS single target, cleave, AoE, best Tank in auto-healing and mitigation, and of course best Healer in mantaining and lifting a raid out of nowhere. Each spec has, and SHOULD have pros and cons. Even if there are 0 cons, players will invent a new con to whine.