Ghostcrawler: "player feedback is nearly always too long"

[Spiral Mage]

The problem with feedback "being too long" is often players get lost in their own point. (I've done that myself). Now, don't be foolish. You're a dev, you spend 8-10 hours a day at your job. Nearly EVERY MINUTE of that job, you ARE actively doing SOMETHING. Writing code, checking spreadsheets, attending meetings, discussing issues with another dev, having lunch.

Now think about that. You're actively doing something NEARLY EVERY MINUTE.

When do you expect the devs to magically find time to read 6 paragraphs worth of feedback written by a single player, who probably had a good point to make in the start but has 'rambled on' so much, he's gotten lost in his own feedback and forgotten what his point actually was.

Now, not only do you have to READ that ENTIRE THING, you now have to re-read it several times to try and understand what the player's underlaying issue was, or what critical feedback he was really trying to give.

To do that for a single player, JUST ONE: would take nearly 15-20 minutes.

Now imagine that x1000s of posts PER DAY on the forums. And 10,000+ Tweets PER HOUR, PER DAY (and that's lowballing, I'm sure they get ALOT MORE.)

And you're going to sit there and suggest that they're "just using that as a cop-out"?

I'd love to see you do their job + the job you think they should be doing and see what you think of it then.

"We are busy. You don’t want to make us digest a wall of text just to distill out the really critical information. You want to write like Hemingway: use just enough words to get your point across, and no more."

The CMs are the ones who's jobs it is to read paragraphs upon paragraphs and posts upon posts of information every day, take footnotes, and try to discern the real core issues, then relay that in meetings to the devs in as short and concise as manner as possible, so the devs can 'cut right to the chase' and hopefully, quickly understand the real issues players are having, so they can get on with trying to find a solution.

The shorter and more concise the CMs are, the more problems they can bring to the table in the time they have for the meeting and the more problems the devs hear, the more problems they can look at solving.

Ghostcrawler, Celestalon and Watcher have ALL SAID in the past that they like receiving feedback via Twitter more because you literally CAN'T go on and on and on .. you HAVE to stop and think: "What is my real issue here? What do I REALLY want them to 'get'?" Even if you send multiple tweets, 3-4 are still nothing compared to what you would have typed had you posted on the forums and had the room to just go on about it in fine detail.

Celestalon said once, he can stop and set the computer to recompile a new build or add new code and that takes 10-20 minutes and in that time, he can read a few dozen tweets and respond to several of them before returning to work. In that same time period, it's unlikely he'd even get through one forum post if it was very lengthy.

That's the entire point of the issue. They are very busy, all day, every day. They want to hear what you're unhappy with but they don't have time for the long version. They need the short and sweet version, as best you can offer.

[Brightamethyst]

I'm with GC on this one. A long post isn't inherently bad as long as you actually have something to say. Often though you see posts that are long and windy and take forever just to make a simple point. That doesn't help anyone. Keeping it concise makes it easier for the person at the other end to figure out what your actually talking about.

This isn't an issue specific to any one game, or even the game industry. It's about customer feedback in general.

[melodramocracy]

Not even close. They have always said they wanted concise feedback. Simple and to the point. They have never said they wanted long drawn out feedback.

And they tend to get it what they're asking for, and discard it anyhow. I'm not sure I see any value in his statement.

[Xtrm]

Who cares what Ghostcrawler says anymore? He isn't relevant to World of Warcraft and hasn't been for some time. He has no idea what goes on at Blizzard anymore than we do currently.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Who cares what Ghostcrawler says anymore? He isn't relevant to World of Warcraft and hasn't been for some time. He has no idea what goes on at Blizzard anymore than we do currently.

In this case he's talking about game developers as a whole...not just WoW Devs.

[MoanaLisa]

That is why I gave said comment. It is quite common for the community lately to claim to be ignored because they don't get a blue tag.

That's been going on for years. Even though anyone who is thinking correctly understands that a blue jumping into a thread is the simplest and easiest way to completely derail it. Personally I think a lot of people--not all--don't give a fiddly-fuck about the feedback they are providing. They just want a personal blue response.

[Philosopino]

Then have one guy who is able to distill this stuff to the rest of the crew. Make that his one job.

[SirCowdog]

Then have one guy who is able to distill this stuff to the rest of the crew. Make that his one job.

As was mentioned earlier, that's one of the jobs that the CMs should probably be doing. They don't need to be super expert high level programmers to accomplish this, either. Just understand the game enough, and understand design enough to flag things that LOOK like they might be legitimate. Their job would not be to accurately identify every single problem, but instead to be a filter to tune out most of the irrelevant noise that inevitably comes along with any feedback. Strain out most of the garbage before it gets passed on to the actual developers, who can then make a real assessment.

Maybe they even already do this? Unfortunately we don't know the inner workings of Blizzard. Communication about corrected problems with Blizzard is pretty spotty. The community agrees that X is a problem and tells Blizz. Months later Blizzard comes back with "We changed Y, G, and k", leaving players wondering if Blizzard even reads the problems in the first place.

It's not always like that, but often enough to make you scratch your head.

[Lochton]

That's been going on for years. Even though anyone who is thinking correctly understands that a blue jumping into a thread is the simplest and easiest way to completely derail it. Personally I think a lot of people--not all--don't give a fiddly-fuck about the feedback they are providing. They just want a personal blue response.

That is how I see it as well on the forums. And yes, normally a blue tag makes shit hit the fence among other topics. Besiddes, Blizzard would lose too much time to have to show their acknowledgement of each feedback post. Better just look through them and take it up with the various teams.

[dextersmith]

http://askghostcrawler.tumblr.com/po...ovide-feedback

In a recent blog post regarding useful feedback, Ghostcrawler mentions that player feedback is "nearly always too long" and developers don't really want to "distill out the really critical information".

The illiterate hypocrite insisted on well thought out feedback.

[Philosopino]

As was mentioned earlier, that's one of the jobs that the CMs should probably be doing. They don't need to be super expert high level programmers to accomplish this, either. Just understand the game enough, and understand design enough to flag things that LOOK like they might be legitimate. Their job would not be to accurately identify every single problem, but instead to be a filter to tune out most of the irrelevant noise that inevitably comes along with any feedback. Strain out most of the garbage before it gets passed on to the actual developers, who can then make a real assessment.

Maybe they even already do this? Unfortunately we don't know the inner workings of Blizzard. Communication about corrected problems with Blizzard is pretty spotty. The community agrees that X is a problem and tells Blizz. Months later Blizzard comes back with "We changed Y, G, and k", leaving players wondering if Blizzard even reads the problems in the first place.

It's not always like that, but often enough to make you scratch your head.

Yeah I don't get their inner workings either. It seems like they like to cater more to the players noise to appease them rather than recognizing how players think and making something creative out of it. I feel like they have really shied out of being creative because of what others will think. Unlike back in the days in warcraft 1-3 and such.

[dextersmith]

can we finally stop quoting ghostcrawler on everything? soon we'll know what sounds his butthole makes when he's pooping.

this guy is no longer doing wow. stop.

He stopped doing wow but still acts otherwise. He's passive aggressive.

[Deleted]

No one wants to read a wall of text. Le lol

[Glorious Leader]

The short ones. Then after the meeting is done you get back into the longer ones, because that's your job, presumably. And if it's not your job to read community feedback, why are you wasting time on it?

Many problems can not simply and easily be communicated in short posts. They need to be backed up by logs, by parses, by explanation and context. And not all problems are purely technical in nature and easily described in that manner. For instance: The recent example from Blizzard themselves about the popularity of Brewmaster tanks being so low despite their overall high-effectiveness when compared to other tanks.

But I get what GC is saying: Keep it focused. Don't ramble. Don't include extraneous or irrelevant information.

Thats not really his job though.is it. Its.the cms that would presumably read feedback and then distill it down.

Im not convinced lack of succint player feedback has been an issue. The feedback is their its.just not.in agreement with what the devs think is best.

- - - Updated - - -

And they tend to get it what they're asking for, and discard it anyhow. I'm not sure I see any value in his statement.

Precisely.

[Zaehl]

What really bothers me about how Legion has played out thus far is the blatant lies from Blizzard. Promising a spec will not be nerfed into oblivion because of the required artifact power investment. There would be far less outcry if they would refund AP for that sort of thing. Its almost as if beta was a total waste of time. Remember when Blizzard had the release date policy of "when its finished"? Mechanical changes and spec breaking/making nerfs and buffs are an insane thing to introduce this early in an expansion. All that should have been hashed out during testing.

As for the ignoring of feedback... development probably doesn't want to admit they are wrong about a few things. The Sha of Pride is obviously hiding out at Blizzard HQ.

[ehxy]

The legendary rng system sucks.

How's that for feedback is too long?

[Pull My Finger]

He's right. Most feedback is useless feedback. People aren't able to formulate intelligent and concise thoughts. And community managers aren't game designers. Their job also isn't to forward any kind of nonsense to game designers. Both parties have more than enough real work to do.

If you want to be heard, learn to have - and formulate - valuable and intelligent thoughts. That's important for all of your life.

[MoanaLisa]

As was mentioned earlier, that's one of the jobs that the CMs should probably be doing.

I have no real idea how it is now but everything I've ever seen about the CM job at Blizzard places forum stuff well down the list of things they do. Perhaps their moderation staff flags things for them but no group of just a few CM's is going to look at everything posted there given the list of their other responsibilities. What I posted earlier applies here as well. You're a CM trying to collect and summarize forum feedback for the devs and you come across some multi-page post that will take half an hour to read and another hour just to boil down the points to be summarized. Do you look for shorter posts that take less time? Sure. You bet you do. Maybe you get back to that and maybe you don't.

They very likely have a lot of back channels to reliable people for feedback as well.

[iamthedevil]

We need another vote for who wants the GC shit to no longer be news...

[TriHard]

can we finally stop quoting ghostcrawler on everything? soon we'll know what sounds his butthole makes when he's pooping.

this guy is no longer doing wow. stop.

This. I respect the guy as a developer, but people really need to stop.
He works for Riot now which is pretty much ResidentSleeper until they have the balls to create a new game.