Blizzard apologises for communication breakdown

[Eats Compost]

I don't think that the community's reaction to Blizzard's communication about class design/balance is unfair. The reality of the situation is that Blizzard needs to be on top of this particular design aspect in real time - it's not enough to constantly have fixes in the pipeline, and the idea that they'll "eventually" get there is meaningless when major patches and gear scaling tend to create more problems before the existing ones are fixed. When these design decisions affect literally every part of the game that involves combat, it becomes a top priority.

Historically, this isn't something that they've handled well. Despite their clearly-expressed desire to do a bit better this time around, they're not even remotely close to achieving a gold standard. Things like Frost DKs went live in an atrocious state, specs like shadow have been left hanging for far too long, and I'd go as far as saying that no-one really has any reason to be confident about Blizzard's class design process in the near future. Fair's fair - they brought it upon themselves.

[nodq]

they communicated a lot before legion and at the start of legion. now, it becomes less and less. like parallel to the user base and activity in game kind of.

[Vant]

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

Sure, forums are filled with a lot of salt whenever there is information about any upcoming changes/nerfs to a class, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to state that there is plenty of constructive feedback Blizzard chooses to ignore.

[Deleted]

Blizzard communicates just fine. People are just a bunch of thin skinned, trigger babies who demand a personal sit down because their parents never paid any attention to them.

even the devs admitted the didnt listen to feedback of certai nclasses during the q and a, and about the arms warrior hidden artifact people were searching for it and blizzard failed to COMMUNICATE with us and tell us that it was hidden behind a timegate wasting everyones time who was searching for it, and they had also released info on how to obtain other classes artifacts aswell at that time but not arms warrior, if anyones a trigger baby it sounds like you, the typical whiner on mmo-c offering nothing constructive

[Deleted]

they completely dropped the ball on legion class design. throughout the alpha and beta processes we saw threads with 70+ pages of feedback about a single spec which was overwhelmingly ignored. nevermind the fact that many specs were working great before (subtlety rogue -- which they completely butchered for absolutely no reason at all) and should have been changed only minimally in legion, even worse is the fact that trying to build 36 specs (complete with rotations, talents, pvp talents, artifacts, etc) completely from scratch is an overwhelmingly expensive and time consuming undertaking if you value doing it right (clearly they didn't as evidenced by the results)

legion is an expansion that is filled to the brim with gorgeous content, some of the best they have ever made. and yet the fundamental lense through which the player experiences the world is their class, and when you see an elegant and finely tuned class that you have enjoyed for 12 years get utterly trashed for no reason at all, the best content in history can't polish that turd.

Comment of the month! I have left WoW 3 weeks ago. What you said was one of the cause

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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.

When you play a Mage, that OP motherfucker class, you must kiss Blizzards ass. When Blizz gonna nerf Mages to death you'll join the whiny squad.

[Deleted]

Communication isn't the problem, the current state of class design and Blizzard's inability to correct it is the problem. If there was a sign that they were learning from their mistakes then no one would care if they stay silent. Of course people are going to want answers when crap like Waylay makes it onto the PTR.

Just what i was thinking aswell. The changes to jewelry sums pretty much what blizzard does every time they do a mistake. They double down on it. Communication does not matter except as a PR stunt if you are pretty much fucking over classes and game systems anyways.

[Deleted]

class fantasy = removing even more abilitys from your characters and making them less unique while we give you talents, for example rend and overpower which was baseline for years before legion, this class fantasy thing is stupid as a warrior i used to have stances and disarm now im just nothing without them, they took iconic abilitys away from classes and used PR to package it up as content, great legion class design blizz why not just go the whole 9 yards and be like runescape and have 3 buttons for attack lol

[Deleted]

I'm not talking about damage meters i'm talking about fundamental gameplay. you seem like someone who is very focused on raiding, which is great and i used to do that too, but if you look outside raiding you see that many classes were stripped of 50+% of their nondamage and utility abilities. my subtlety rogue in the past 2 expansions lost gouge, garrote, shiv, poisons (many of them), preparation, premeditation, hemorrhage (used the bleed for denying restealths and bandages), tricks of the trade (used to increase my teammate's burst), slice and dice (god the rotation feels so painfully slow without the extra energy from snd), shadow walk (used for sapping other stealthies), and more.

From the standpoint of a 2500 xp PvPer it feels like this class was designed for cavemen to play. It really is that thoroughly stupid.

And Legion PvP more generally is also thoroughly terrible. The most successful team compositions are those that run 2x melees and just do their PvE rotation 24/7, never untargeting the weakest member of your team. The balance is terrible; the dumbing down of gameplay relative to previous expansions is even worse.

Blizzard prepare WoW for console in coming years, that's way they dumbing down the game. Less abilities for controllers

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There needs to be repercussions for doing bad design decisions. If Celestalon is the head of class design then his head should be rolling out of the door first. If Blizzard think it's fine that they've got to do a .5 patch just to correct the MOUNTAIN of problems with current class design then it's a company spiraling into bigger problems. Fire Celestalon, not because it's necessarily going to get better instantly, but to send a message. Not all communication has to be done in a dialog or even as written one-way.

No Chilton, Metzen, no passion, no WoW. Only grindfest and OP Mages, subscription milking. When they added Instant level 100 boost WoW was doomed. Only money matter. I'm done.

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class fantasy = removing even more abilitys from your characters and making them less unique while we give you talents, for example rend and overpower which was baseline for years before legion, this class fantasy thing is stupid as a warrior i used to have stances and disarm now im just nothing without them, they took iconic abilitys away from classes and used PR to package it up as content, great legion class design blizz why not just go the whole 9 yards and be like runescape and have 3 buttons for attack lol

Consoles my friend, you gonna see WoW on console just like Diablo 3, that why Blizz dumbing down WoW

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You need therapy. Badly.

Blizzards ass must have a good taste, eh!

[Deleted]

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.

Ya I wouldn't say not blaming the game is a "stupid but cool" opinion, it's just obviously based on more clarity of the actual issue. If you're a fan of jumping on the hate bandwagon and not thinking for yourself be my guest, but you're really damaging gaming as a whole with that attitude in the process.

[rda]

Ya I wouldn't say not blaming the game is a "stupid but cool" opinion, it's just obviously based on more clarity of the actual issue. If you're a fan of jumping on the hate bandwagon and not thinking for yourself be my guest, but you're really damaging gaming as a whole with that attitude in the process.

That's exactly what I am talking about - any word at all regarding Blizzard not doing great in a particular area, and we have diatribes about hate trains. As I said, if you are interested in communicating with other people seeing hate trains, there is a web site where you could all put your +1s onto each other's posts.

A hint: if your post is talking not about a particular piece of the game, but rather about other people talking about the game, you are part of the problem. Yes, really.

[grexly75]

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.

Precisely this ^ the playerbase as they are now and always have been the problem.. Because no matter what Blizz do they get shat on from every direction..

[Deleted]

That's exactly what I am talking about - any word at all regarding Blizzard not doing great in a particular area, and we have diatribes about hate trains. As I said, if you are interested in communicating with other people seeing hate trains, there is a web site where you could all put your +1s onto each other's posts.

A hint: if your post is talking not about a particular piece of the game, but rather about other people talking about the game, you are part of the problem. Yes, really.

Kind of like what you're doing at this exact moment

[rda]

Precisely this ^ the playerbase as they are now and always have been the problem.. Because no matter what Blizz do they get shat on from every direction..

Getting "shat on from every direction" is not a problem for professional devs. They don't communicate for other reasons (yes, because they are kind of bad, their dev processes are a mess).

[Deleted]

blizzards apologies are hollow they dnt really mean what they say cos this happened on numerous occasions its like in blizzcon 2019 ion wil lsay we should have listened to warrior and class feedbac kwe are sorry we will listen in the future and it goes round in a circle, all the decent devs have gone, blizzard is just ran by greedy fatcats and the developers of the games are just as corrupt, i mean fucking celestion playing wow on a fucking tablet and not using a mouse and hes responsible for class balance.

[Eggroll]

They kinda announced they would change secondary stats in the post Blizzcon Q&A so these changes are bound to turn up on the PTR eventually or am I missing something? And it' P T R, so It's unlikely the first built is the final one?

Anyone care to explain what all this hysteria is all about?

Personally I think they should just put primary stats back on rings and necks, I feel with no primary stats on them it becomes harder for the player to figure out wether or not an item is an upgrade. IMO the way Watcher explained it during the Q&A they are overthinking and overcomplicating the whole thing.

Edit: OR they could just have variable primary stats on jewelery, too, like on armor...

[Jewsco]

class fantasy = removing even more abilitys from your characters and making them less unique while we give you talents, for example rend and overpower which was baseline for years before legion, this class fantasy thing is stupid as a warrior i used to have stances and disarm now im just nothing without them, they took iconic abilitys away from classes and used PR to package it up as content, great legion class design blizz why not just go the whole 9 yards and be like runescape and have 3 buttons for attack lol

Isn't ironic an expansion that is suppose to be all about class identity with the class halls and all they promptly removed most spells,moves,glyphs etc... that made classes unique.
You are speaking to a hunter that they made one spec melee, one spec have no pets, and the third the pets does all the damage. Add in for 2 of the 3 specs traps and all utility that made one a hunter is gone and it is a wonder people are upset?
At least warriors got a dps buff hunters were told to wait till 7.1 and then we got nothing.
At least mages are doing well so I guess all is good right?

[Deleted]

It's one thing to not listen or respond to the general shit throwing fest on wow forums. But when people make long and well-written posts with feedback and problems with certain specs and get only positive feedback from the community but goes ignored by devs there is a problem. I don't understand how it's always something that's got to be fucked up.

I enjoyed MoP/WoD(a bit) classwise compared to legion, but the content itself outside of classes are definetly superior in legion atleast when compared to WoD.

And then the fucking legendary system. If there either was a way to target certain ones or just leave them all as utility based we would have no problem.

[Eleccybubb]

Honestly with the amount of screaming that happens on this forum alone are you surprised they barely don't anymore?

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even the devs admitted the didnt listen to feedback of certai nclasses during the q and a, and about the arms warrior hidden artifact people were searching for it and blizzard failed to COMMUNICATE with us and tell us that it was hidden behind a timegate wasting everyones time who was searching for it, and they had also released info on how to obtain other classes artifacts aswell at that time but not arms warrior, if anyones a trigger baby it sounds like you, the typical whiner on mmo-c offering nothing constructive

Kind of like you then. Every single thing you have posted in this thread has either been close to the same thing or whining. All it has been is the same "WAAAH THEY DON'T LISTEN" or shitting on Blizzard. Provide some constructive feedback instead of "my class is broken and blizzard suck and fuck blizzard" and maybe you might be listened to.

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blizzards apologies are hollow they dnt really mean what they say cos this happened on numerous occasions its like in blizzcon 2019 ion wil lsay we should have listened to warrior and class feedbac kwe are sorry we will listen in the future and it goes round in a circle, all the decent devs have gone, blizzard is just ran by greedy fatcats and the developers of the games are just as corrupt, i mean fucking celestion playing wow on a fucking tablet and not using a mouse and hes responsible for class balance.

My point proven. Nothing constructive about this at all.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Its so bizarre to me how people constantly say stuff about class design. Do you guys really resist change this fiercely?
Sure a lot of specs were changed a LOT but they are all more than playable and quite balanced.
The content IS what matters. You don't sit at a dummy doing your rotation all day.
If the spec isn't fun for you, that's not on Blizzard to fix it for you. Its on you to find something you do enjoy.
You had nearly a damn year since beta to recognize this, yet instead you sit here and complain all day like that does any good.

Instead, it leads to this pathetic situation we have now where a fucking game developer is apologizing to people who have no fucking idea what they are talking about contradicting each other every other post.

News flash: If you need him to tell you that the ptr is fucking test content and not going live as is quit this game.
I am so fucking sick of seeing people over react to changes on the PTR its making me want to close my account here.

Meanwhile I've been playing Holy Paladin since Classic and have loved it every day. Oh wow they changed our healing model this expansion pretty drastically? Ya no shit they have done so every single expansion since TBC.
What should I do? HMM
CHOICE A: ADAPT
CHOICE B: COMPLAIN UNTIL IT CHANGES AGAIN

Sad.

[Echocho]

They don't owe us to be kept in the loop. They should just throw away every piece of feedback, shut down the PTR/beta servers and just develop the game they want to develop the way they want to.