Can we provide better discussions?

[Deleted]

This guy is a lead dev, and heads a team. If things go wrong, it is very very much his fault.

How do you actually know this? Just because it says "lead" in his title?
Do you actually know how the design methodology works at Blizzard? Have they ever publicly talked about that?

My guess would be the answer is: No.
Yet, we're attributing a bunch of "failures" to people we think might possibly have something to do with it, just because they happen to have right type of title and a public twitter profile.

If you could, please link me articles about their internal design teams and methodologies? Do they run scrum teams? How does their project management work? What models do they follow? How does conceptualized idea get produced?

[Deleted]

So if 3M people leave for 3M different reasons, some of which have little to do with the game, Blizzard has 3M issues to solve?
You heard it here first, folks: 7M people prefer no-flying and would immediately leave if flying was enabled. And LFR. And Garrisons. And Ashran...

No, it only means that those people dont look at things as black and white.

I like flying, but dont have problem with no-flying.
Doing LFR, it isnt great, but its ok, fast and painless for rewards it gives.
Garrisons are fine - provides nice steady income of gold, actually using professions this exp.
Dont pvp - dont do ashran.

[rda]

Did it actually occured to you that some people actually like WoD? Even 7.1 million of us.

I don't think it's 7.1 million. We'll see next quarter. Prior to the last investors call it was "10 million of us love WoD".

[Deleted]

Which is exactly why Blizzard should stop listening for player feedback

Actually, they listen carefully, there are employers there whose only job is to listen to player feedback.

Its only they dont act acordingly to player feedback. (Thats good thing imo, fans arent very objective crowd)

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I don't think it's 7.1 million. We'll see next quarter. Prior to the last investors call it was "10 million of us love WoD".

Be it 1 million or 7.1 million doesnt matter. There will always be suporters who dont whine about every little thing.

[fixx]

Imbecile or not, he is just as valuable to Blizzard as you are.

I've written hundreds of bug reports and other comments in the three expansion betas I've been in so far which is actual feedback unlike "blzz suxx!!11"

For the devs useful feedback is worth infinitely more than just $15 because it gets multiplied by the number of customers who benefit from the changes.

[Toppy]

How do you actually know this? Just because it says "lead" in his title?
Do you actually know how the design methodology works at Blizzard? Have they ever publicly talked about that?

My guess would be the answer is: No.
Yet, we're attributing a bunch of "failures" to people we think might possibly have something to do with it, just because they happen to have right type of title and a public twitter profile.

If you could, please link me articles about their internal design teams and methodologies? Do they run scrum teams? How does their project management work? What models do they follow? How does conceptualized idea get produced?

Are you seriously one of those dev apologists who always downplay how much of an impact lead devs have in the creation of content? Either way he is a public figure who has always defended horrible decisions. Who has said that arena statistics aren't a reflection of anything (when presented with raw data showing massive imbalances in pvp). Who always whines when people do not agree with him. Who still insists, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary, that Ashran was a good idea and kept defending the updates that were being made to it every week in early WoD (it was a funny time, every new update made things worse, when people were so sure that ashran couldn't possible get any worse).

I am in no way saying he is the be all, end all, for PvP. But to imply that he doesn't have a large impact on its development is asinine. Do not forget that he IS NOT one of the community managers. He is a dev, and one of the leading ones.When things go wrong in his department, then yes, he is at least partly to blame. It is the fault of leadership when things go wrong.

[Axxy]

People argue and discuss largely because they're mad. Anyone who took part in the beta and its feedback realize that many issues that plague the game were reported over and over. Blizz for ages now has been saying they want feedback while simultaneously ignoring any and all feedback they get. Hell, they are quoted for saying that they don't take feedback on things people dislike as seriouslly as feedback on things they do like. This is especially true for the pvp community where we have Holinka who flat out ignores raw data and feedback and cries when he doesn't get his way. He's pretty much a big whining child who can't deal with the fact that he has not done a single good thing in all of WoD.

So people come here and discuss, and they argue, in the vain hope that maybe blizz will listen again. And of course we have those occasional people who come in and say everything is alright, and they become objects of scorn, because truth be told, everything isn't all right. Its said that the hate for the game now is normal and it always happens, but it does remain that WoD is losing subs 3 times faster than MoP did; which is a very clear indication that things are wrong. So much was removed from WoD, complaints that have been widespread and around since even MoP were flat out ignored. And now? Well now we're seeing even more expansions in the cash shop and an earnings report that says despite losing a third of their customer base, blizz is still making a large profit, which can only be attributed to the cash shop doing well, so everyone knows its going to be expanded again in the near future.

Positive discussion is long past. You can't have positive discussion when so much is wrong, so much is ignored, and there is no hope in sight when everything is pointing towards more bad times. Even those who try to be positive usually have to do all these mental gymnastics to make any sort of point, or just ignore information.

^ This. Pretty much sums it up tbh....

It just seems to me that the downward spiral continues from Cata -> MoP -> WoD. Perhaps they can turn it around with the next expansion, but I don't think that the devs no longer know what direction the game is going in anymore.

[Cracked]

The thing that would be interesting to see is how big is the ratio of people who resubbed for WoD and left before Q1 ended in the total sub loss. I have a feeling that if they resubbed for WoD, they didn't stay much past the leveling experience and Highmaul LFR.

[Deleted]

Are you seriously one of those dev apologists who always downplay how much of an impact lead devs have in the creation of content?

No, I'm not "apologist" but I do work in a "billion dollar" Fortune 200 and understand realities of real world engineering, design and management as well as the need for internal design methodologies and production delivery models.

It's not done in vacuum - it's not done by one person. No matter how "public" that one person is. Teams have leaders, those leaders have managers. There might be cross-organizational functional design teams, there's a bunch of producers, designers and architects.

I think you need to factor in the difference of private twitter opinions and public professional communication. Your post indicates you don't quite grasp how large global design teams work in large enterprise environments.

Fact of the matter is - neither of us know, because Blizzard never talks about the internal production of their games.
So being an "apologist" who defends the devs - or being a "hater" who attributes all fails to one person - is both equally stupid. We don't know.

[Toppy]

No, I'm not "apologist" but I do work in a "billion dollar" Fortune 200 and understand realities of real world engineering, design and management as well as the need for internal design methodologies and production delivery models.

It's not done in vacuum - it's not done by one person. No matter how "public" that one person is. Teams have leaders, those leaders have managers. There might be cross-organizational functional design teams, there's a bunch of producers, designers and architects.

I think you need to factor in the difference of private twitter opinions and public professional communication. Your post indicates you don't quite grasp how large global design teams work in large enterprise environments.

My whole point is that this very public figure has been defending all the bad decisions that keep happening and that he is at least somewhat part of the problem, which would explain why so many people aren't happy with things. For someone who works for a fortune 200, you don't have much in the way of reading comprehension.

"This is especially true for the pvp community where we have Holinka who flat out ignores raw data and feedback and cries when he doesn't get his way. He's pretty much a big whining child who can't deal with the fact that he has not done a single good thing in all of WoD."

This is what I said in regards to Holinka and where you started saying how ignorant I am of all this. You said I went on about how only one person goes through feedback, which I never said. I said he ignores feedback, which he very much has based on things he has said and interviews he has done. And this is bad because he is the face of blizz's pvp area. Because he is the one who always talks, and always goes on about what the pvp team, that he heads, is doing. He is a dev who has openly scorned feedback, so people get mad. That was my point. You decided to sling rocks and misconstrue.

[rda]

^^ I support what is being said regarding Holinka. He *is* a public figure who is told to have all the power over WoW PVP, and he *does* ignore pretty much everything he doesn't want to hear, plunging forward with ideas that fail over and over and over in ways people tell him they would fail.

Want an example? Take human racial. "It's balanced, the 100:1 balance at the top in favor of Alliance is there because people like to play with their friends, nothing else, it's not a problem, we don't think it's a problem, etc, etc, etc" - we hear this even today. There's no convincing this guy, not with numbers, not with anything. He doesn't even refute what you say, he plain doesn't listen, he goes "we don't think it's a problem", everything you bring is "a complex issue" and not conclusive and not even suggesting anything, and that's the end of it. In the meantime, you can't even find partners above 2k on Horde.

And I won't even bring Ashran, which up until maybe a month ago was touted as a success with maaaaybe some small flaws, but that's it, just a small tuning and it'll be great.

[Deleted]

He *is* a public figure who is told to have all the power over WoW PVP

In which religious scripture is this power told?

[Pua]

And I won't even bring Ashran, which up until maybe a month ago was touted as a success with maaaaybe some small flaws, but that's it, just a small tuning and it'll be great.

This is my view of Ashran.

That said, it's a little off topic. I suppose I should have known that a relatively simple topic would get derailed within a page or two, and people would start arguing about things that are completely irrelevant to what's being discussed.

I'm not blaming anybody in particular, I just think it's a real shame.

[rda]

In which religious scripture is this power told?

I mean the power to decide what to develop for PVP and how. He is the PVP lead.

[Deleted]

My whole point is that this very public figure has been defending all the bad decisions that keep happening and that he is at least somewhat part of the problem

He works there. He's a dev at Blizzard. That's kinda normal. I talk about my work on twitter as well.
You polarize things unnecessarily because for some reason you *must* have a person to crucify and attribute all these things you think have failed.

It's a bit tone-deaf is all I'm saying. We simply don't know how their design process works internally, so I'd rather not attribute things to one dev, no matter how public he happens to be.

(I seem to remember Ghostcrawler going through the same kind of process..)

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I mean the power to decide what to develop for PVP and how. He is the PVP lead.

That's what I mean. What makes you think he can all any shots about PvP at all?
Maybe he just manages the team and signs their time reports?

But anyway, this is turning into a "who shouts loudest" match - so have a good week everyone!

[MoanaLisa]

Speaking for myself I think it would be fine if discussions were more constructive. Making it personal about the developers usually drains any other argument of any meaning as people just latch onto that. That's pointless. Criticize the design. Leave personalities out of it. Demanding apologies is also pointless.

Speaking as a moderator for this forum it's always better to talk about the actual topic than one another.

[Sweetpeaz]

I think OP has a great idea. But we can't control anything that Blizzard does. They've had their feedback and how they deal with it is a complete waste. They dismiss, obfuscate, and belittle with sarcasm, but not until the post expansion mea culpa comes out it will be the same.

However, when we deal with other players we should do exactly what he suggests. Don't spend time dismissing how others feel. I'd like to attribute some of it to age, but at some point in life people will arrive at this simple thing : "Feelings are always valid, but they aren't always rational. How a person feels is 100% relevant to them and should be treated as such."

If we approached all topics like that things would be better and there would be less conflict.

[TheTaurenOrc]

Unfortunately there are some people you cannot have constructive discussion with. Literally nothing that Blizzard has done that they can find fault in. Everything is justified and defended.

Pets on the Blizz store: "It's just a pet"
Mounts on the Blizz store: "If you don't like it, don't buy it"
Helms on the Blizz store: "It's only cosmetic"
Boosts on the Blizz store: "Leveling isn't hard. / Leveling is boring"
Expansion price increase: "You're getting a free boost with it, what's the problem?"
Twitter integration: "It didn't take any development time. / Why does it matter if it breaks immersion?"

Etcetera, etcetera, take any scenario you can think of and someone (probably droves of them actually) will clamber to Lady Blizzards defense and justify it and try to make the whole argument trivial. And if all else fails they will turn to "If you dont like it just quit then!".

Good intentions for constructive discussion will always be undermined be these people.

[rda]

That's what I mean. What makes you think he can all any shots about PvP at all?
Maybe he just manages the team and signs their time reports?

But anyway, this is turning into a "who shouts loudest" match - so have a good week everyone!

His title is "Senior PVP Designer". He told us he is managing PVP and acts like that, asking questions and giving answers at that pay grade, etc. Other Blizzard folks told us he is managing PVP. /shrug

[Toppy]

He works there. He's a dev at Blizzard. That's kinda normal. I talk about my work on twitter as well.
You polarize things unnecessarily because for some reason you *must* have a person to crucify and attribute all these things you think have failed.

It's a bit tone-deaf is all I'm saying. We simply don't know how their design process works internally, so I'd rather not attribute things to one dev, no matter how public he happens to be.

(I seem to remember Ghostcrawler going through the same kind of process..)

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That's what I mean. What makes you think he can all any shots about PvP at all?
Maybe he just manages the team and signs their time reports?

But anyway, this is turning into a "who shouts loudest" match - so have a good week everyone!

The difference here is that we seldom knew what ghostcrawler was doing. He was just an ass, and therefore, an easy target.

We know generally what Holinka does, we have other employees saying what he does, and he asks for feedback (then whines about it) and talks about things he has done.

The two aren't that comparable.

And as I said, because of his dismissive attitude, and him being one of the most vocal and public devs, its hard to discuss the game anymore, since via him and his ignoring of pvp feedback, and via all the beta and even raid feedback that got blatantly ignored, all thats left to discuss is negativity. Whats the point in discussing the positives of the game if they are few and all the big negative points are looming over the entire product and will never, ever be addressed (and when they are, they are dismissed as not really problems)