Community Interaction Post-Mortem

[nightfalls]

Since we're past the point where anyone else would ask... Demonology started out as an experiment into a god-of-war style AoE melee class while in demon form and a ranged nuker in human form. It turned out that sucked because once you were in melee and ran out of Demon Juice, the monsters you were AoE'ing obliterated you without AoE Cleave abilities.

After that didn't pan out, I tried out Demonology as a true tank spec. That turned out to be a lot of fun, but other designers (correctly!) protested against the total removal of the demonology DPS style. So I tabled the tank spec, as it was clear that couldn't be fleshed out until Demonology-as-DPS was solved.

The next iteration was Demonology-as-a-summoner, where every Demonology ability was done by proxy via a summoned demon. This was very *cool*, but felt sluggish and I kept asking, "why are my pets more awesome than I am?" as I spammed Shadow Bolt fillers between summoning Imps and such. This lead to the next iteration of Demonology Warlock - master of indirect magic.

Rather than summon creatures, Demonology started using objects. I repurposed Hand of Gul'dan as a frequent nuke rather than location-based buff. Carrion Swarm reintroduced the bats. Finally, Ion Hazzikostas (Watcher) had the brilliant idea to make *all* of your basic nukes get upgraded while in Demon Form. I loved this idea and it felt like it clicked.

It had a lot of overlap with Druid Eclipse, so I did my best to give it one differentiating point - that your trinket choice differentiated how you played the spec. Reactively, with proc trinkets, or in a planned way with on-click trinkets.

Once that was done, I looked back on everything I did and asked what I wanted to keep. The tanky-lock was the only thing I missed, so I put that on a glyph and shipped it. Turned out my understanding of how much dodge and parry had fallen behind the times since WotLK - so the 75% damage reduction from Dark Apotheosis broke the game.

Thankfully, Jimmythenumbers and Big Bear were able to talk me down off my high-horse and it got sufficiently nerfed before it went live.

Did that help?

More than just helped, it was awesome to hear of the different phases the class went through. Even if I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't a tank spec at the end, I understand that not everybody here can get what they want (imagine how big of a mess the class would be if we did...)

It's pretty awesome all the iterations and stuff people think of. I really hope a lot of elements of this find its way into the class in the future, one way or another.

[Deleted]

Hey guys,

As you know, I've moved on, but I still wanted to thank you all for the incredible feedback over the past year.

In light of the way things turned out, I'd like to ask you guys for some help. Specifically, I would like some critical feedback on the way we communicated through MoP beta until now.

I'm moving onto a new community and I'd really like to hear what I could have done better from my harshest critics. (Yes, even you, Helheim) It's fine to make mistakes, but better to learn from them.

Don't hold back, I have a thick... carapace, as you'll see pretty soon.

-Xelnath

The most appreciated aspect of being able to interact with you, is that you gave reasoning as to why things were the way they were.

Many-a-design decisions before you began communicating were baffling at best, as is evident in your absence too re:5.2 notes.

It is not always best to communicate all of the happenings in the dev. department, but the idea that communicating with the audience is counterproductive is absurd. Sure you'll hear a lot of noise from those with bias, but you have to take what we say with a grain of salt (which you did do).

There is no better way to do your job than to hear from the end-user.

Blizzard have a history of heavy handed approaches to things, lack of communication, coupled with such methods aren't appreciated by many (me ).

As many have said in your leaving post, before it became derailed, was that the dialogue you created with the community you represented was unparalleled in the history of WoW. That speaks volumes.

[Sylar Hao]

Xelnath, may you tell us how was the process to revamp Destruction? I'd like to hear/read that.

About your iteration with us... I totally agree with what Phoexenis wrote.

[Jessicka]

Hey guys,

As you know, I've moved on, but I still wanted to thank you all for the incredible feedback over the past year.

In light of the way things turned out, I'd like to ask you guys for some help. Specifically, I would like some critical feedback on the way we communicated through MoP beta until now.

I'm moving onto a new community and I'd really like to hear what I could have done better from my harshest critics. (Yes, even you, Helheim) It's fine to make mistakes, but better to learn from them.

Don't hold back, I have a thick... carapace, as you'll see pretty soon.

-Xelnath

Definitely the sense of direction and intention you gave. Without that, a lot of stuff is actually pretty difficult to give feedback on if we don't see it in the the context it's intended to be applied. If we know what you want X ability to achieve, it's much easier to say how and why it does or doesn't work and importantly what could be done to improve it toward reaching those goals.

[Skayth]

Since we're past the point where anyone else would ask... Demonology started out as an experiment into a god-of-war style AoE melee class while in demon form and a ranged nuker in human form. It turned out that sucked because once you were in melee and ran out of Demon Juice, the monsters you were AoE'ing obliterated you without AoE Cleave abilities.

After that didn't pan out, I tried out Demonology as a true tank spec. That turned out to be a lot of fun, but other designers (correctly!) protested against the total removal of the demonology DPS style. So I tabled the tank spec, as it was clear that couldn't be fleshed out until Demonology-as-DPS was solved.

The next iteration was Demonology-as-a-summoner, where every Demonology ability was done by proxy via a summoned demon. This was very *cool*, but felt sluggish and I kept asking, "why are my pets more awesome than I am?" as I spammed Shadow Bolt fillers between summoning Imps and such. This lead to the next iteration of Demonology Warlock - master of indirect magic.

Rather than summon creatures, Demonology started using objects. I repurposed Hand of Gul'dan as a frequent nuke rather than location-based buff. Carrion Swarm reintroduced the bats. Finally, Ion Hazzikostas (Watcher) had the brilliant idea to make *all* of your basic nukes get upgraded while in Demon Form. I loved this idea and it felt like it clicked.

It had a lot of overlap with Druid Eclipse, so I did my best to give it one differentiating point - that your trinket choice differentiated how you played the spec. Reactively, with proc trinkets, or in a planned way with on-click trinkets.

Once that was done, I looked back on everything I did and asked what I wanted to keep. The tanky-lock was the only thing I missed, so I put that on a glyph and shipped it. Turned out my understanding of how much dodge and parry had fallen behind the times since WotLK - so the 75% damage reduction from Dark Apotheosis broke the game.

Thankfully, Jimmythenumbers and Big Bear were able to talk me down off my high-horse and it got sufficiently nerfed before it went live.

Did that help?

This explains everything to me. Thank you for the very in depth explanation of the evolution of the class to as it is now. The reason why I had asked was the way the class came out and evolved in beta to now where it is. I like how it is played very much, (even though I have to play affliction for top dps) and love the fury of the spec. I do like it better than the Cata spec and wotlk spec, even though is mimics boomkin it is something else entirely. I think you did a magnificent job on the class, and I thank you. I really do wish you were the face of the Warlock class and still a member of blizzard.

The only problem i do have is, my tiny heart set on tanking was ripped to shreds. (or at least till blizzcon where they come out with 4th specs or demon hunter) sorry I am very much a hopeful here >.>

But I thank you very much for your work, and wish you had not left, but, as it is, your new employer has gotten a great class designer and a great community face. If you ever start writing on forums for your next game to get insight from populace, I will be over to that game in a heartbeat, because I like designers that listen and take to consideration what their gamers wish for.

Number scale on how you did for the warlock community, 10-10.

[Deleted]

I think the biggest problem you had was exactly what one of your strongest appeals was, you spoke frankly with the community - you came across more like the friendly guy at the pub, rather than the snake oil salesman with politician level dodging around answers that devs often seem to appear. It seems pretty understandable how that could rub some of the dev team the wrong way when you're willing to point out when something is a complete mess, instead of dressing it up.

I suppose the logical conclusion that that would be either to

a) Deliver the same messages to the community, but dressing it up in a way that won't upset the dev team at home - telling the community that something is fubar while being as political as possible.
b) Maintain the friendly and frank mannerism, but have the content itself far less damning to anyone on the team.

I don't think there's that much criticism you can get in regards to your community interactions FROM the community, your interactions with us were always pretty damn good, even if some complaint seemed to fall on deaf ears, the problems seemed to stem from blizzards end.

One of, if not the thing you did best though, was making it seem like you were taking the class to a better place. I'd by lying if I said what you've done to affliction is something I completely like, I've been playing the class since classic and this is probably the most uncomfortable with the class I've been in years, affliction had always been the "homely" spec that I could revert to if I wasn't enjoying demo and feel completely comfortable in what I was doing - I feel I've had that ripped out from under my feet.

And despite all that, you managed to make it feel like it was for a good cause because you were taking the class in a better direction, which is pretty damn commendable, as long as you can keep that feeling you can go far.

[Deleted]

I agree with what others said before.

If I had one advice : a lot of players think they know the game better than the devs (it might be true sometimes) and will rant about it. You can't really afford to let them know they are right, even if you obviously can't know everything about such a enormous game. There was this time where you came back after some discussion on the usability of Dark Bargain while stunned : http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post18413867.

Okay. That's pretty convincing. I checked with the rest of my team, and half of them didn't realize Thunderstorm and Dispersion were castable while stunned.

IMO it was giving a pretty bad impression, but thankfully the players posting on this thread were trying to be constructive in hope of buffs

[Count Zero]

I think it's important to note that in a bureaucracy it can be painfully-slow to get even the most basic, simple things done. It took months to get the portal in Two Moons to correctly spell Orgrimmar (Instead of Ogrimmar).

It may suck and it may seem unreasonable and even unfathomable, but that's just the way it is, and people need to understand this. If it takes months for such a simple no-brainer (as in, you couldn't find one person in the company who could reasonably argue it should have been left misspelled), then people really need to consider that class design changes are a much, much bigger deal and a lot more goes into those decisions -- and that even once a decision has been made, time and resource constraints may be prohibitive.

I think once folks can understand that (or maybe more that they can accept it), maybe people won't get so worked up over changes they feel (correctly or not) need to happen

[Medieve]

I think it's important to note that in a bureaucracy it can be painfully-slow to get even the most basic, simple things done. It took months to get the portal in Two Moons to correctly spell Orgrimmar (Instead of Ogrimmar).

It may suck and it may seem unreasonable and even unfathomable, but that's just the way it is, and people need to understand this. If it takes months for such a simple no-brainer (as in, you couldn't find one person in the company who could reasonably argue it should have been left misspelled), then people really need to consider that class design changes are a much, much bigger deal and a lot more goes into those decisions -- and that even once a decision has been made, time and resource constraints may be prohibitive.

I think once folks can understand that (or maybe more that they can accept it), maybe people won't get so worked up over changes they feel (correctly or not) need to happen

That seems more of a scope of importance argument than the result of bureaucracy.

[Count Zero]

That seems more of a scope of importance argument than the result of bureaucracy.

Maybe it was a matter of both, yeah -- having to work through the bureaucracy but also being a matter of such low importance that it took so long to be addressed. I think my point still stands, tho ... if it wasn't something I imagine could have been fixed in two seconds by any programmer with the green-light, I could see it being wholly a matter of scope of importance. I have a hard time fathoming that literally just adding in an R is of such low importance that it had to wait months. Even being of minimal importance, it would take no appreciable amount of time away from any other project.

[zomgDPS]

Hey Xelnath.

Firstly, thanks for the discussions during beta. More communication with community = big thumbs up! Gj!


Now that its post-mortem. Can you give any insights into mages? I realize you weren't on them specifically, but I doubt many things can happen to locks without at least some discussion about mages.

Any insights you got would help Especially now since the mage community is getting ready for a pretty deep dive into their own identity.

[Deleted]

My understanding of his post was more a : "lets exchange on the way we communicated over months to improve if needed in my new job" rather than "lets say all the thing i couldn't write because of the nda restrictions"

btw which could easily drift to a more or less trash talk on a past job = bad publicity for him

just my 2 cents for what its worth

[zomgDPS]

My understanding of his post was more a : "lets exchange on the way we communicated over months to improve if needed in my new job" rather than "lets say all the thing i couldn't write because of the nda restrictions"

btw which could easily drift to a more or less trash talk on a past job = bad publicity for him

just my 2 cents for what its worth

I don't think anyone wants to know (or even cares?) about the office politics at blizz.

I think, at least for me, it would just be good to know what the devs were thinking.

Many times players are left guessing as to what is actually going on. Changes seem random and sometimes even thoughtless. Mages can definitely feel it (especially recently).


For me personally, I guess I'm just curious as to how deep the devs actually go with class design. What were the 'ideas' thrown around for say, arcane mages perhaps. What worked? what didnt? and why?

Kinda like a real post-mortem.

But yea. I guess you're right. Maybe he's more interested in getting feedback on the actual mechanism of community interaction itself, i.e. forums posts here.

As I said, I think its great. Games need more. I know the guys over at Riot have this somewhat nailed. Its a workable model.


But all of it is for mute if we can't get the juice.

[noaim]

Dont post (or reply to pm's) if you had a rough day and cant avoid letting that get the better of you.

[lockedout]

I agree with what others said before.

If I had one advice : a lot of players think they know the game better than the devs (it might be true sometimes) and will rant about it. You can't really afford to let them know they are right, even if you obviously can't know everything about such a enormous game. There was this time where you came back after some discussion on the usability of Dark Bargain while stunned : http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post18413867.

IMO it was giving a pretty bad impression, but thankfully the players posting on this thread were trying to be constructive in hope of buffs

I agree. giving to much insight or in this case lack of knowledge of certain mechanics like DR isn't something you should share with the general public.

What Zum said about bad impression, I also got one from this statement you made, but not about you, about the way blizzard design teams work.
SO basically a bad impression of the company.

[Deleted]

I agree with Zum and I would like to emphasize: I was always one of the guys saying "The devs know what they are doing", but after reading some of your posts... Let me ask you this, do all the class designers (assuming you have a designer for every class) play their class? And I am not talking about "log in, hit the target dummy for 30 minutes, log out" once a week but really play the game with it? If not (and for future projects wherever you might land) I really think that this is hugely important, to either play it yourself or have a couple of very reliable people you can talk to that have the necessary experience. This forum was a great starting point, but not all the people in this forum are reasonable and not all are experienced. So maybe in the future you might want to not use a public forum, but some more restricted group.

[Nadagast]

I agree with Zum and I would like to emphasize: I was always one of the guys saying "The devs know what they are doing", but after reading some of your posts... Let me ask you this, do all the class designers (assuming you have a designer for every class) play their class? And I am not talking about "log in, hit the target dummy for 30 minutes, log out" once a week but really play the game with it? If not (and for future projects wherever you might land) I really think that this is hugely important, to either play it yourself or have a couple of very reliable people you can talk to that have the necessary experience. This forum was a great starting point, but not all the people in this forum are reasonable and not all are experienced. So maybe in the future you might want to not use a public forum, but some more restricted group.

I agree with this. But I would also say that you have to take feedback from this restricted group of players seriously. I was asked in MoP beta how I felt about Warlocks, and I answered with many things, but the number 1 thing on my list, consistently, was Blood Fear being too strong. Nothing was changed except a slight cooldown increase, which was nowhere near enough. I greatly appreciated being asked, but it feels worthless when my strongest feedback is ignored. Without any reasoning as to why...

Thinking about it now, I think the most important thing if you want to have a dialogue with a small group is actually making it a dialogue. If you disagree with an expert player's feedback, say why. Tell them why things can't be done or won't be reversed. Make this private communication two way and I think it'll be better for the game.

[Harsesis]

I would just like to say thank you for coming here and at least listening to what we had to say. I think it's safe to assume that we locks are very passionate about our class and only want what's best for it. Sure there are those of us that just want us to be op and never nerfed, but overall as long as we are balanced and fun to play most of us are happy. Just knowing that we were heard an maybe perhaps changed the team's minds about a few things is good enough for me. I don't think the other classes can say that. Best of luck to you in your future endeavors and I hope we've been left in good hands.

[Kirroth]

If I had one advice : a lot of players think they know the game better than the devs (it might be true sometimes) and will rant about it.

To tangent a little bit, I think what happens is that players tend to be highly focused on the particular part of the game that interests them. A single class or even a single spec of a single class, the particular sub-style of PvE or PvP they play to near exclusivity, whatever. This means they can sometimes spot little details that Devs can miss, at the cost of nearly always missing the big picture implications of how these details effect the larger game as a whole.

If there's an ideal outcome of a dialog between Devs and Players, to me it would be the Players being a resource for those fine grain details that Devs can be too zoomed out to pick up on, while the Devs occasionally clarify the intended big picture that Players can fail to grasp because they're too invested in their own little corner of the world.

[Hellfury]

the History of MOP development of Demo was a great read, can u give details of the iteration of aff and destro aswell.