Should Blizzard consult the WoW community sooner?

[ComputerNerd]

We saw what happens every time blizzard release very early plans which are then changed.
Whines about broken promises.
Feedback is one thing, not what the community thinks it is much of the time.

[Deleted]

No, They should say
"this is it, this is OUR vision, This is OUR game, Dont like it, FECK OFF"

[Deleted]

Blizzard has made many mistakes in Legion and has wasted thousands of hours of development resources on mistakes that I feel could have been avoided had they been more open earlier and decided to share their plans with the community at a much earlier time. Things like the legendary items, class design, etc.

Do you think that Blizzard should consult the WoW community more frequently and sooner to avoid making rookie errors like this? I think this would save them a lot of time not developing things that ultimately the playerbase is not interested in. It'd avoid situations like "Hey guys we made this new hunter spell!" "We hate it get rid of it!"

Because by the time Alpha has come around, they have already committed their resources and it's too late to really change much. The sooner they reach out, the more flexible they can be with their development.

EVE-Online has (had? havent played for years) a player elected council that represents the playerbase interests in meetings with devs.
I'm not really sure if it helped CCP to collect feedback, but the idea was sort of neat.

https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/

Of course the council was quickly dubbed as "Council of Stellar Mismanagement" by players who were not on it - but it was funny following how elected representatives got trolled in the forums by the "passionate" playerbase.

I personally think Blizzard should stop listening to the community. Their designs take huge 180-swings every time they do. I'd prefer somewhat more sane iterations.

[Deleted]

Not really man. I mean they have to have a product to show to give feedback. I mean unless you want to sift though the code. The devs just giving ideas won't work either. People though the garrison was amazing at Blizzcon. People though the garrison was great for a month or two. The garrison will likely go down as one of the bottom 1 or 2 features the game ever pushed out?

The issue wasn't the garrisons by themselves. The issue was and still is that blizzard doesn't release enough content compared to the time required for the players to clear said content.

[dextersmith]

They talk about feedback and well thought out contributions a lot but say players are long winded and armchair devs. They have their sims and don't welcome feedback; it's lip service.

[l33t]

No, but they should stop doing 180 turns in their development, really.

"Hey some people disliked overabundance of dailies"
"Kay lets remove dailies at all"
"Hey ranged are kiting melees in pvp 24/7"
"Kay lets just remove all the kiting powers from ranged"
"Hey some people dislike epics gated by reputation"
"Kay lets remove any meaningful rewards from reputation grinds"

etc, etc. Variety is the flow of life, only Sith think in absolutes and all that. More is more, less is less. Less is not more, never was, never would be. Anyone who thinks that less is more is a good development principle, should be fired from game development and hired to clean toilets instead.

[Verdugo]

No, They should say
"this is it, this is OUR vision, This is OUR game, Dont like it, FECK OFF"

They did that with WoD, look how that mentality turned out.

[Lochton]

They did that with WoD, look how that mentality turned out.

Actually, WoD catered A LOT to the playerbase, which is in my opinion what brought it down.

[icausewipes]

The young girls wanted Demon Hunter and blizz listened.

[ls-]

They did that with WoD, look how that mentality turned out.

WoD was everything community was asking for

[owbu]

The community doesnt have an opinion, but thinks tons of things at the same time. It takes time to gather that feedback. Not only because there is a ton of it, but also because most of the time players have to play with a system for a while, before they actually know wether they like something or not.
It also is easier to determine a system sucks, than to actually fix it, which explains the constant "x sucks, therefore delete it from the game" solution you can read on here.
I think blizzards way of dealing with problems this expansion has been pretty good. There was a lot of new stuff to digest. But after a couple of month, it became clear that lots of people hated losing dps races because of legendary RNG - so they nerfed the "tons of dps all the time" ones and are currently building a system to target farm them better.
They saw tons of complains about Kara and the Suramar Dungeons being non queable. So they are giving us heroic versions now.
And they saw alot of complaints about artefact power being a pain in the ass for rerolling and alts. So they gave us a catchup mechanism.

And I think those have been the main complaints besides class stuff (which they have to do by themselfes, because asking players how powerful they want to be is like asking prisoners how long their sentence should be).

Could they have figured out some of these on their own/listened to the people, who complained about this, a bit earlier? Maybe. But backseat/hindsight developing is alot easier than actually fixing the game without totally fucking everything up.

[Verdugo]

WoD was everything community was asking for

Everything community was asking for, if it went through shit filter.

Actually, WoD catered A LOT to the playerbase, which is in my opinion what brought it down.

Again, Blizzard was saying to many community requested features that "X will be their answer" to that. Dont blame community for WoD, it has Blizzard marks all over it and they were proud of it.

[Deleted]

Everyone wants something different, and nobody knows what they really want. They think that they do, but they don't.
If anything Blizzard could do some polls every once in a while to make some statistics that might affect the development. However those who would vote might end up being unsub, and those subbed complains about getting content they don't care about.

So in short, blizzard should mainly ask people who have very active accounts (keep track on years and hours played) and make pools. Some for new players and other for veterans.
However I don't see that happening, but it is a possible solution to sort feedback.

[Kynario]

WoW community isn't uniform, it consists of multiple sub-communities, quite often these sub-communities don't like each other, have absolutely different goals. Some features may be seen as good by one sub-community, but may be hated by another one

You also tend to forget that vocal players are a minority, players that are a part of silent majority don't care, they never voice their opinions, they never read forums, etc, they either play the game or unsub and play something else.

Should developers listen to a vocal minority that consists of players that belong to different sub-communities that have different interests/goals, and either hate each other or simply don't care if others quit? Correct answer is "sometimes", cuz sometimes there are some valid suggestions, but they're like 0.1% of all the feedback.

This. Well said.

[ls-]

Everything community was asking for, if it went through shit filter.

No?

In MoP people were saying that they didn't want daily quests. So we got none in WoD, Blizz had to reintroduce them w/ Tanaan. People were saying that tier sets didn't belong to LFR, that they hated being forced to run LFR, so LFR became true tourist mode in WoD, Blizz had to add special rewards (mainly VP) to lure raiders in, when HFC was released... People were saying that they wanted player housing, a piece of world that belonged to player and player only, we got Garrisons in WoD, it's well-received, but we all know how it ended Etc, etc, etc...

What players want might not be good for the game, and quite often such things are quite destructive, cuz majority of players wants everything easily, and yesterday, cuz right now is too late

[l33t]

WoD was everything community was asking for

No, it wasn't.

Community wanted player housing. They got shit on a stick with no customisation but with tons of freeware stuff and facebook gaming instead.
Community wanted less dailies. They got shit on a stick and absolutely no dailies at all.
Community wanted flying. They got shit on a stick and were forced to nofly for 2/3 of of expansion.
Community wanted the game to be less single player rpg and more mmorpg. They got shit on a stick and were forced to play a "commander".
etc, etc.
The list can be a mile long, because WoD is anything but what community wanted. WoD is what developers wanted, though.

[Fourze]

Not as much consult as just tell us what they're planning. Especially when it comes to class changes like in 7.1.5. A lot of specs haven't even heard Blizzard say anything while they just do stuff or do nothing at all despite promising stuff (Fury Warriors)

[Verdugo]

No?

In MoP people were saying that they didn't want daily quests.

I think your eyes were covered with Blizzard bullshit if you believe that.

Problem: Massive amounts of daily quests, with valor gear locked behind reputation and no alternate way of gaining rep.

What community wanted: Alternative ways to gain reputation, less daily quests.

What Blizzard did: Didnt add any daily quest, reputation is now farmed only through painfull grind and rewards are useless.

Basicaly, Blizzard removed 2 features because they are so out of touch that they think they can do no wrong.

[ls-]

Community wanted player housing. They got shit on a stick with no customisation but with tons of freeware stuff and facebook gaming instead.

Originally garrisons were well-received, but 2-3 months after WoD release people started complaining.

Community wanted less dailies. They got shit on a stick and absolutely no dailies at all.

Community was saying "fuck dailies", "dailies are cancer", etc. By the end of MoP no one wanted to do any dailies

Community wanted flying. They got shit on a stick and were forced to nofly for 2/3 of of expansion.

This one is tricky, even now vocal people are kinda split into two camps.

Community wanted the game to be less single player rpg and more mmorpg. They got shit on a stick and were forced to play a "commander".
etc, etc.

Although I'm kinda old-school gamer, and like MMOs w/ strong (even forced) socialisation, I understand that majority of modern gamers doesn't really favour such things anymore.

Quite many players want this game to be more like a single player game, cuz many people come to WoW from single player games w/ optional co-op, some older players don't want to rely on others anymore, cuz they don't have as much time as they used to have, others want this game to be more like MOBAs w/ shorter sessions, action, etc. And MOBAs are THE SHIT atm.

[Lochton]

No, it wasn't.

Community wanted player housing. They got shit on a stick with no customisation but with tons of freeware stuff and facebook gaming instead.

You got playerhousing, Blizzard wanted it to have meaning.. Couldn't handle it.

Community wanted less dailies. They got shit on a stick and absolutely no dailies at all.

People don't like dailies, so you didn't get them, you got missions which people liked.. and then didn't like.

Community wanted flying. They got shit on a stick and were forced to nofly for 2/3 of of expansion.

Some of the community didn't want flying, they got what they wanted.

Community wanted the game to be less single player rpg and more mmorpg. They got shit on a stick and were forced to play a "commander".

Community wanted a bigger role as well. And yes, the commander thing was shit. The player should never rise that high in my opinion.

etc, etc.
The list can be a mile long, because WoD is anything but what community wanted. WoD is what developers wanted, though.