Stop flipping tables about Dev Q&A

[sam86]

It's more like: On average, DKs have done 1M dps on this boss fight, but Paladins only did 900k dps. Most Paladin players would take that and say: Paladins need a buff. But is that really the case? Could it be that 20% of Paladins did 1.5M dps on the fight and 80% of Paladins did 750k dps, averaging it to 900k. While 100% of DKs did actually 1M dps. Even this is vastly oversimplified and you could go thousands of nuances deeper, but this should illustrate what I mean by subjective.

That doesn't change that according to that exact example paladins do need buff, because the 80% who play do 750k, so unless u kick them out of game, u need to balance them around the 100% player base

[Toppy]

There's also a disconnect between players and players. Maybe one even bigger than between the devs and players. You put 1,000,000 wow players in a room and ask for them to build what would be an acceptable expansion you'd likely end up with 2,000,000 replies all of which are incompatible to each other.

Yes, different people like different things.

However, some certain things you can point at and say "A big majority of people hate this".

The RNG, especially with legends. Has been universally disliked.
Likewise, PvP is dying hard. Like, unquestionably so. And Ion marched in to say PvP is just fine and the new systems that people hate are great.

[rda]

TL;DR
I understand what Ion is saying, doesn't mean I agree. Working in games only means I understand the process, not that I know exactly what they are doing. There's a knowledge barrier that makes Blizzard respond very vaguely because they don't want to go too deep and maybe they panic and don't know how to communicate well enough. If we, as players, inform ourselves, we can help having better discussion with devs because they don't seem to be willing to explain in details to the community, so everything feels shady. Also it would help giving more critic feedback instead of whiny feedback.

I am sorry, but a general message like this is basically "guys, please whine less, he might have reasons for saying what he is saying".

This just isn't helpful. It is too general. People talk about specifics and are interested in the specifics. If all you have is "guys, please appreciate that some things take time" and other genericities, well, OK, good, you said your piece, it is not a very interesting piece and it is mostly irrelevant, so back we go to the real conversations about the specifics and this little message of yours is barely visible in the rear view mirror.

Do you have anything to say regarding any of the specifics? If so, go ahead and say it. If you don't - and it looks like you don't - well, that's just not interesting.

[sam86]

Does anyone else remember that the big issue going into Legion was that the devs just plain never communicated. Well now they do, but only to tell players how wrong they are.

I remember even far worse example, of how bad Ashran was in WoD beta and a very well constructed post that almost every beta player agreed upon (rare i know, but did happen) on official forums and even had a blue note from blizz that they saw that post and 'consider it', the end result ? Absolutely NOTHING, blizz didn't bother to change anything at all in Ashran, making it the mess it became on live servers

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Yes, different people like different things.

However, some certain things you can point at and say "A big majority of people hate this".

The RNG, especially with legends. Has been universally disliked.

Now that u mention it, i'm curious, is anyone here who likes the RNG legends game ? That aspect is universally hated as far i know, i don't know anyone who even likes it

[Astalnar]

This thread has no meaning unless you actually give us at least a single example of game development and the correlation of Ion's answers in Q&A. If not, you're just making the authority argument which most of us won't buy.

You can say that again.

[Swalload]

Judging by that response, I am beginning to doubt you have anything to do with project-based development, let alone game dev. When a designer fucks up, manager switches him with a designer who has roughly the same experience, and sets the first one on some other projects. No one gets fired for bad decisions, but when the customer is not happy, you gotta do something to change that.

I like when people use word entitled, and have no idea what it means. As a customer, I AM entitled to to tell the service provider what I am unhappy with. With your restaurant example: I am getting a burnt toast, I am going to tell the restaurant rep about it. To complete the analogy with Legion, I am ordering a meal, and it is delicious (yes, I like Legion, people are allowed to criticize parts of what they like), but it came with a burnt toast. Only a stupid and downright unethical restaurant rep will tell me "Just don't eat the toast", or "Yup, the toast is supposed to be burned". Nope, they will ask chef to do something about it. I just told them I got a burnt toast, I don't have to understand why it got burned. Next time I come to order that same meal (because I liked it, but not the toast), I expect them to fix that. But for the 2nd/3rd and even 4th visit, they don't fix the toast. I am losing my patience, and I don't want to come next time already.

I am playing Legion because overall I like it, but some issues (like Legendaries) HAVE to be fixed. You can't tell me "Yup, that's how it's supposed to work", or "Just don't play if you don't like it".

I agree on most of what you said. The difference is that legendaries are not entirely a fuck up. From a producer's point of view, it keeps people in the game, and as stated by other people in this thread, some players begrudgingly stay just to finally get the legendaries they want. For the producer, that's not a problem, money is money. A vocal part of the community has expressed their concern with legendaries, and I agree with them on the point that legendaries are an issue, not the system, but the items themselves are designed like shit.

In comparison with the toast, it's like you get a burnt toast and tell them to fix it without tasting it. While other people who really want their toast right now or are too shy to ask for a new toast just eat it like that. So the restaurant doesn't get as many complaint as you think and toasts still sell even if they're burnt, so they have to think "is it worth it to change all the toasters because only a few people complain while it's still making us massive profit?" And the return on investment question comes back, so may when you return to that restaurant not enough people have complained to make it worth changing the toasters. Or maybe instead of changing the toasters right now they decided to make a new menu entirely and in the mean time everything stays the same until the new menu is ready cuz it's not worth changing everything twice (the new xpack analogy).

The problem in legendaries could come from many different sources, I 100% agree it should have been done differently, but I've said this too many times already: we can go about this in a more educated way. In the end it's a game and our lives are not really affected by this, so there's no need to shit on their pillow and piss in their cereal, it won't solve anything faster.

[Toppy]

I remember even far worse example, of how bad Ashran was in WoD beta and a very well constructed post that almost every beta player agreed upon (rare i know, but did happen) on official forums and even had a blue note from blizz that they saw that post and 'consider it', the end result ? Absolutely NOTHING, blizz didn't bother to change anything at all in Ashran, making it the mess it became on live servers

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Now that u mention it, i'm curious, is anyone here who likes the RNG legends game ? That aspect is universally hated as far i know, i don't know anyone who even likes it

The legendary issue was an odd one.

At first people were like "Oh neat, so fun little effects on items. Cool"

Then we started seeing them and it became "Oh damn, these effects are major. And some of them are garbage. But hopefully the drop rate isnt so bad so we can get them"

Then release happened and the drop rate was utter garbage (and also bugged, so you had some people with half a dozen, while others went months with none). Through this period people were thinking "Ok this is really bad, but theres not all that many, and blizzard couldn't be dumb enough to not eventually give us a reason to target specific legends" (which they had hinted at adding).

Thankfully blizzard did buff some of the shit ones around here, but then again we still have some utter, complete, unquestionably garbage ones like:


Then we just kept getting more legends, while also still having no way to target them (no, the tokens are not this, the drop rate is to random for this to be viable). At this point it just turned into full blown outrage that they could be so damn stupid in their handling of legendaries.

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I agree on most of what you said. The difference is that legendaries are not entirely a fuck up. From a producer's point of view, it keeps people in the game, and as stated by other people in this thread, some players begrudgingly stay just to finally get the legendaries they want. For the producer, that's not a problem, money is money. A vocal part of the community has expressed their concern with legendaries, and I agree with them on the point that legendaries are an issue, not the system, but the items themselves are designed like shit.

In comparison with the toast, it's like you get a burnt toast and tell them to fix it without tasting it. While other people who really want their toast right now or are too shy to ask for a new toast just eat it like that. So the restaurant doesn't get as many complaint as you think and toasts still sell even if they're burnt, so they have to think "is it worth it to change all the toasters because only a few people complain while it's still making us massive profit?" And the return on investment question comes back, so may when you return to that restaurant not enough people have complained to make it worth changing the toasters. Or maybe instead of changing the toasters right now they decided to make a new menu entirely and in the mean time everything stays the same until the new menu is ready cuz it's not worth changing everything twice (the new xpack analogy).

The problem in legendaries could come from many different sources, I 100% agree it should have been done differently, but I've said this too many times already: we can go about this in a more educated way. In the end it's a game and our lives are not really affected by this, so there's no need to shit on their pillow and piss in their cereal, it won't solve anything faster.

It also gets people to quit, I've known many people quit in frustration over legends. Not to mention its been nothing but a nightmare from a word of mouth and pr standpoint.

[Nurasu]

And then he gets that question. That one stupid motherfucker who says he can't PvP on his alt cuz all his prestige is on his main.
So I understand your main came with lvl 50 prestige right off the bat? And this is what enables you to queue for BGs?
No you stupid fucking cunt, nothing prevents you from doing PvP on your alt with no prestige, why would you even say that?

I thought the prestige one was pretty good, actually. Unless you have a lot of time to invest in honor grinding, chances are you're not prestige capped (there's probably less people prestige capped than people who raid mythic). That means you don't have all the prestige rewards. If you want them, you have to keep grinding on your main and any time spent doing pvp on an alt is 'wasted' in terms of prestige. That was all the question was getting at. I also get that people who do cap prestige want something to work towards still on other characters, so idk how I would fix it. But i have experienced the issue myself.

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I agree on most of what you said. The difference is that legendaries are not entirely a fuck up. From a producer's point of view, it keeps people in the game, and as stated by other people in this thread, some players begrudgingly stay just to finally get the legendaries they want.

I think getting people to invest in alts is the best way to keep people playing, and the current legendary system is a major deterrent.

[Mehrunes]

I don't have to do that, and you have the option to learn or stay wrong. You can spend your entire life refusing the teaching of every single person you meet, or you can learn from it and grow as a person. I'm not even trying to push an opinion or a belief on people, I'm simply saying there's a big part that is missing and it's possible to inform yourself about it by reading well made articles and stuff on the internet.

Sure you don't have to do that. But if you don't offer anything that's remotely tangible, which you did not, your wall of text is utterly worthless and your remarks about how a person who merely wanted an example is wrong even more so. You offered no teaching, so the rest is pretentious bullshit. Your later link of the general concept doesn't actually help solve that, because it's, you know, general. Is @Fabinas supposed to divine which part of that process you were talking about out of fish guts? Without substantiating your post it amounts to nothing else to great wisdom of "there are reasons behind why some things done by Blizzard don't really work all that well". No shit Einstein.

You didn't even read the post and it made perfect sense. It's exactly why the player base and the devs have a disconnet-- it's because players aren't flippin' listening to what they're saying and are instead trying to spin everything to their own narrative, just like what you did.

What spin was there? Because that the OP offered no examples whatsoever is a fact. So it may have made perfect sense, but it did so in only the most general and shallow way that's, other than the OP putting themselves on a pedestal of wisdom, a bunch of obvious stuff and empty platitudes. Without examples of what they are actually complaining about it's nothing more than a sycophantic rant aimed to silence people criticizing Blizzard for not being enlightened enough.

People will say the balance is shit unless every single spec is within 0.0000001% difference in dps.

But yeah, as I said, I'm not a Ion fanboy and I don't think everything they do is perfect, balance being the first thing on the list I think they suck at.

So you're allowed to criticize balance, but when it comes to the other people, it's preemptive straw-man time? OK then.

He's right, people are enjoying Legion far more than you think. Forums are a microscopic part of the overall community, and thinking the game is hated based on the posts you see only shows how little you understand about this entire thing.

Except they didn't even say that. They said most of the playerbase are satisfied with not only Legion as it is, but also as it will be. Those aren't the same sentences. That aside, here's the piece of news that seems to have not yet arrived at your high ground of wisdom, just like the people who complain about WoW on forums don't reflect the state of the playerbase, neither does whatever data you or Magnagarde based your claims on.

[Magnagarde]

Or they could simply just be addicted to the game.




WoW is like getting a steak at a restaurant. Some people get their steaks made the way they want. Some people get an under cooked or over cooked steak. Those people send it back in hopes that the next steak is done the way they want. They still pay for that meal. It's not stupid to complain. It's valuable feedback that should be taken seriously by Blizzard (Even though they clearly don't, just visit the PTR and beta forums sometime).

If they're addicted, then they should look at it as a problem to solve.

If they're "addicted" because they're like a large part of it, but dislike only small bits n pieces, then that is nothing to be considered a problem and is simply them spending their freetime to the best of their knowledge in terms of getting as much fun as possible. In this case they need to scale the pros and cons of them spending their time in the game.

The valuable feedback is being read and answered throughout Legion. I've never seen this many responses to players that have wielded results in the end.. buffing things up, nerfing things, making catch-up mechanisms and more. Everything was corrected within a week's time, except a few things which players continously bring up even though the majority of them is completely unaffected by it(ie players who aren't progressing ToS mythic are complaining that they haven't obtained their BiS or players who are progressing ToS mythic who are trying to gear 3 mythic-ready characters complaining about not having BiS legendaries across all characters).

[Mehrunes]

Everyone complaining about this shit is just being selfish.
They would only be satisfied if they all had 955 gear and bis legendaries with no effort. You can thank people like that for all the shit that has changed about the game since Classic.

Its truly funny, because those are the same people who said "there's nothing to do in the game" last expansion. Now they are effectively saying there is TOO much to do in the game?

Get lost, casuals. Do EVERYONE a favor and go play something else. For 2 months, then quit that too.

Because everyone complaining about the game is a casual and there are no complaints other than those about the ease of obtaining gear

[Toppy]

I thought the prestige one was pretty good, actually. Unless you have a lot of time to invest in honor grinding, chances are you're not prestige capped (there's probably less people prestige capped than people who raid mythic). That means you don't have all the prestige rewards. If you want them, you have to keep grinding on your main and any time spent doing pvp on an alt is 'wasted' in terms of prestige. That was all the question was getting at. I also get that people who do cap prestige want something to work towards still on other characters, so idk how I would fix it. But i have experienced the issue myself.

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I think getting people to invest in alts is the best way to keep people playing, and the current legendary system is a major deterrent.

In some odd kind of irony, the prestige grind has ended up being the biggest grind the games ever had.

[Swalload]

I am sorry, but a general message like this is basically "guys, please whine less, he might have reasons for saying what he is saying".

This just isn't helpful. It is too general. People talk about specifics and are interested in the specifics. If all you have is "guys, please appreciate that some things take time" and other genericities, well, OK, good, you said your piece, it is not a very interesting piece and it is mostly irrelevant, so back we go to the real conversations about the specifics and this little message of yours is barely visible in the rear view mirror.

Do you have anything to say regarding any of the specifics? If so, go ahead and say it. If you don't - and it looks like you don't - well, that's just not interesting.

Well I don't have specifics for Blizzard, no. Imagine I did, and I told you "there will be a big catch up mechanic after antorus so you can get all the legendaries you are missing and then in the next xpack it's all gone".
People will complain that they don't get their legendaries in time to use them in antorus.
So blizzard comes back saying, okay, we rushed up the task, you can buy all the legendaries you want right now and be ready for antorus.
People will complain that they "wasted" time before, farming legendaries when they would have not done that have they known they would eventually be able to just buy them all, and probably some fucked up people will ask go get a refund on their months spent farming legendaries, like what the fuck.
Sure some people will be happy, like some people are happy right now. They are literally stuck between love and hate and all solutions come with different issues. There's no real fix to this, except one. Which one? The pass to a new xpack. They can put this behind them and move on to something else.

guys, please whine less, he might have reasons for saying what he is saying

You don't think that's true? Yes that's basically the message to catch in this thread but I'm trying to provide more than just one line, make a discussion and maybe explain a bit that, sure, things are not perfect at all, but crying won't fix it and if we understand better how games are made we can see that yeah it sucks and solutions are just bandaid and maybe it will only really get fixed later so crying right now is pointless, so why do it?

Maybe people are crying for nothing at Blizzard the same way I'm making this thread for nothing cuz no one wants to learn and maybe you're replying to me for nothing because I'll keep trying... for nothing, maybe we're all insane. Herpderp.

[Mehrunes]

Do you know why your toast is burnt?
Did you let it in the toaster too longer?
Do you have to take it out manually or is it supposed to pop on its own?
Why did it not pop out on its own?
Is the toaster faulty, why is the problem with it?
Is it just stuck?
Something broken inside?
Can I repair it myself or do I need someone else to repair it?
Can this get fixed for my breakfast before I go to work?

Sure you can come to the conclusion that the toast is burnt, but before you put it in the toaster you had no idea it would burn (like devs sometimes don't know something will turn out bad), and it's not as easy as it seems to point out the problem and then get it fixed, not to mention there's a lot of other tasks to do at the same time and not just fix a toaster.

Your comment is one of the best exemple of being uninformed and crying about what you see without understanding the rest, and what you see is just 10% of the problem.

Except given how the point of comparison is that of relations between players (i.e. customers) and the devs (the business), it wouldn't be @SirCowdog putting it in the toaster, it'd be a diner. And it's irrelevant to the customer that the cook had no idea the toast would burn. Same applies to the reasons why it did. The consumer received an unsatisfactory product and it's on the business to deal with that fact. Because different aspects of the issue are problems for different parties. Your reply to that comment is one of the best example of worthless, incorrect, pretentious and condescending nonsense (possibly in the name of sycophancy).

[rda]

Well I don't have specifics for Blizzard, no.

I meant specifics regarding the in-game issues that are already in the game and that are being discussued. Nobody asks for inside info. What specifically that they did you think players are unreasonable complaining about? You provided two examples and in neither you did the argument justice as I said earlier.

You don't think that's true? Yes that's basically the message to catch in this thread but I'm trying to provide more than just one line, make a discussion and maybe explain a bit that, sure, things are not perfect at all, but crying won't fix it and if we understand better how games are made we can see that yeah it sucks and solutions are just bandaid and maybe it will only really get fixed later so crying right now is pointless, so why do it?

Maybe people are crying for nothing at Blizzard the same way I'm making this thread for nothing cuz no one wants to learn and maybe you're replying to me for nothing because I'll keep trying... for nothing, maybe we're all insane. Herpderp.

It is pointless to be talking about whether someone might have reasons bla bla bla bla bla without the specifics. Nobody cares about the abstract "well, he isn't an idiot so perhaps he thought about the topic". It is boring and pointless to be talking about abstract things like this. Let's discuss legendaries, PVP and other non-abstract things instead. And outside of non-abstract discussions Ion's supposed reasons for be doing X instead of Y indeed seem pretty terrible (ie, they are doubling down on RNG for reasons that are terrible to the players, etc).

My point is that your message is too abstract to be useful.

[ro9ue]

First things first:
<snip>

Basically welcome to the world of making stuff for a living.

Creators make thing.

Consumers want thing.

Creators often have deep knowledge and experience about making thing. Consumers don't know much or anything about how thing is made.

This creates a communication deficit. Often the consumers can only crudely describe their feelings on what you've made like "I don't like this." This is generally useless to the creator. It might be marginally useful to know the general audience says "I like this" or "I don't like this" basically as a guiding light, but it's as vague as navigating in a "Getting warmer/getting colder" Marco-Polo like game.

Slightly better feedback might be "I don't like this because of _____" or "I liked this old feature better because _____".

But even then... if that specific, single consumer feedback is not reflected in the sentiment of the aggregate feedback you might get a consumer who feels mad because they are ignored, even though they don't see the bird's eye view of how most people disagree with them.

Then you look at something as complex as World of Warcraft with a ton of systems, mini-games, player types, and player expectations... yeah good fucking luck.


I think the WoW devs have said something like that in the past multiple times. Don't tell us you don't like it, tell us WHY you don't like it and give us as specific feedback as possible. This elevates the vocabulary of your customers to have a better feedback loop.

Ion has to constantly regurgitate statements like how they view DPS charts. Overall everyone is much closer, and the gap feels much wider because the highest end players (who are often on logging sites) will gravitate towards as spec just for that 1% difference, and they push that gap even wider.

Whether that's because the people generally only follow these interviews loosely, and some people hear it and some people don't, or maybe it's because people are just trolling, or maybe people are just dumb. I don't know, but he's given that perfectly reasonable assessment like a dozen times over the last few years and still there's always the person who asks at the Q&A "Why is my rogue is on the bottom of the charts?"

So it's not to Ion that I flip this table, but to the general populace who apparently seem to be fucking stupid.


(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

[Kallisto]

Get lost, casuals. Do EVERYONE a favor and go play something else. For 2 months, then quit that too.

And suddenly 95% of the wow playerbase vanished leaving behind a handful of "Hardcore" in which a game will not be maintained for.

[Toppy]

Seems there are two types of people.

Those who believes devs should be held to some sort of standard when it comes to feedback.

Those who believe devs should do whatever they want and any criticism is wrong.

[Swalload]

I meant specifics regarding the in-game issues that are already in the game and that are being discussued. Nobody asks for inside info. What specifically that they did you think players are unreasonable complaining about? You provided two examples and in neither you did the argument justice as I said earlier.



It is pointless to be talking about whether someone might have reasons bla bla bla bla bla without the specifics. Nobody cares about the abstract "well, he isn't an idiot so perhaps he thought about the topic". It is boring and pointless to be talking about abstract things like this. Let's discuss legendaries, PVP and other non-abstract things instead. And outside of non-abstract discussions Ion's supposed reasons for be doing X instead of Y indeed seem pretty terrible (ie, they are doubling down on RNG for reasons that are terrible to the players, etc).

My point is that your message is too abstract to be useful.

My message isn't meant to give specific reasons or answers that Blizzard don't give. That's pretty much a case by case situation depending on the issue. And I don't think people are unreasonably complaining about things, they are complaining in a very whiny way that doesn't show they understand anything at all. Most complaints are people basically asking and begging for stuff but disguising it in polite phrases like "what are the plans for legendaries further into legion" which means "tell me right now what you are doing about this issue even if it means you break your NDA and lose your job, I demand an answer this very moment and the fix needs to be before legion end as if it made any difference".
If people knew more about how games are made they would understand that some things cannot be announced at the wrong moments, yet Blizzard is trying to adress these concerns anyways, which end up in very vague unsatisfying answer from Ion. TBH he's not doing a tremendous job, but can you blame him? Look at all the shit people throw at him and the guy still fucking shows up.
People just expect something entirely different, like a public apology about every single thing in the game and immediate solutions to everything with an ETA of when it will be live. That is simply not how it works.
Also, it's not an argument, I'm not saying people are wrong about what they complain and Blizzard is right. There's no argument, I'm only pointing out the fact that some (not all) people are more whining than helping, they are demanding and not understanding, because they will only understand the answers they are hoping for.

My point is that your message is too abstract to be useful.

My message is actually quite precise. Learn about how games are made and you will have a better understanding of why things aren't how you wish they were. It won't necessarily make you enjoy or like the game more but it will make you give more useful and less whiny feedback, which in the end can only be a good thing. If you refuse to learn and keep giving feedbacks like this: "why isn't it fixed yet!?!??!?" then expect to be ignored by Blizzard.
My message is not an answer, it's a push in the right direction to become a more educated community. It's not an opinion, and not an argument to discuss.

[Toppy]

My message isn't meant to give specific reasons or answers that Blizzard don't give. That's pretty much a case by case situation depending on the issue. And I don't think people are unreasonably complaining about things, they are complaining in a very whiny way that doesn't show they understand anything at all. Most complaints are people basically asking and begging for stuff but disguising it in polite phrases like "what are the plans for legendaries further into legion" which means "tell me right now what you are doing about this issue even if it means you break your NDA and lose your job, I demand an answer this very moment and the fix needs to be before legion end as if it made any difference".
If people knew more about how games are made they would understand that some things cannot be announced at the wrong moments, yet Blizzard is trying to adress these concerns anyways, which end up in very vague unsatisfying answer from Ion. TBH he's not doing a tremendous job, but can you blame him? Look at all the shit people throw at him and the guy still fucking shows up.
People just expect something entirely different, like a public apology about every single thing in the game and immediate solutions to everything with an ETA of when it will be live. That is simply not how it works.
Also, it's not an argument, I'm not saying people are wrong about what they complain and Blizzard is right. There's no argument, I'm only pointing out the fact that some (not all) people are more whining than helping, they are demanding and not understanding, because they will only understand the answers they are hoping for.


My message is actually quite precise. Learn about how games are made and you will have a better understanding of why things aren't how you wish they were. It won't necessarily make you enjoy or like the game more but it will make you give more useful and less whiny feedback, which in the end can only be a good thing. If you refuse to learn and keep giving feedbacks like this: "why isn't it fixed yet!?!??!?" then expect to be ignored by Blizzard.
My message is not an answer, it's a push in the right direction to become a more educated community. It's not an opinion, and not an argument to discuss.

Wow.

You're incredibly pompous.

You sure you aren't a WoW dev?