Why Blizzard Shouldn't Listen to the Fans (or, Vocal Minority)

[fixx]

Players don't speak the language. It doesn't mean they can't understand what they want, they just communicate it differently.

Wrong.

The problem is average users are giving solutions (simply increase damage of ability x by z%) instead of telling why. You can see it in almost every "helpful suggestions" on this and every other forum. All have their ideas on what the devs should change but they never explain why. Or in case of generic UI design test users might say "move that button there" which may or may not be the right solution.

Instead designers are looking for the underlying reasons what went wrong. In case of "increase ability x" the truth might be somebody is exclusively doing PvP and never participates in PvE and they aren't seeing the big picture. If devs simply increase ability x it could severely destabilize PvE, unless they also see the person giving that feedback is only doing PvP and then they can start thinking if the class needs a buff in PvP or not.

Or the correct answer with a button might not be moving it two inches to the left, but instead higher up in the menu structure or even into the main UI players are seeing all the time into the micromenu.

That is why listening is bad, while looking at what people are actually doing when they're having problems is the right way to solve design issues. That is why every single blue post on the subject is asking for "dont tell us what to change, instead tell us what is wrong and we'll figure out a change for it".

[PrairieChicken]

They should stop listening to raiders.

[fixx]

"vocal minority" is artificial concept created by blizzard to create a wall between reasonable feedback and their "effort/earnings" ratio

If you someday some year get into any kind of management position you'll learn something pretty important about feedback. 90/10 ratio.

Out of all feedback you'll get 90% will be unhappy people and only about 10% of happy people. In the eyes of somebody who's never experienced this it will seem like everything you're doing is shit because the voices of the small unhappy minority is much stronger than the voices of happy majority. In the same way these forums read like the whole game is shit to unexperienced people like you who don't understand vast majority of all feedback is always going to be negative no matter what. This is based on several years of volunteering on event organizing. For each positive comment there's 5-10 negative ones, but when you do a random sampling poll of opinions it's other way around with 1 unhappy for each 5-10 happy people.

Any comments about effort and earnings is pure tinfoilhat paranoia and inane conspiracy theories.

[Deleted]

Seems Jaylock had a comeback with this thread.

I agree. Blizzard should incorporate feedback way more into their design decisions. Currently they always add the devil to player feedback.

As like "Give us more content to play" as feedback and blizzard adding 60 mandatory daily quests as a brick wall for valor gear.
Or as like "Those are way too many dailies and they are mandatory!" as feedback and blizzard removing them completely and replacing them by an even worse grind.

Blizzard is cynical when it gets to listening to feedback. They always turn player ideas into double edged swords.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

Blizzard is cynical when it gets to listening to feedback. They always turn player ideas into double edged swords.

Tainted goods, because players dared to ask for more...

[therealbowser]

I rarely blame Blizzard for game mechanical choices -- at least not the nitpicky stuff. I might blame them for removing the extremely fun corpse explosion ability because it 'felt useless' or removing sheep corpses from a polymorph trick because 'it was unintended' (if it's fun, fix it immediately), and likewise I did get upset when they simplified the talent system to the point of boredom, though I accepted it and worked with it.

Usually, though, what I blame Blizzard for are their story choices, or more realistically their lack of story choices. Warlords of Draenor in general has been extremely uninspired and I cannot imagine where they decided the ending cinematic for this expansion was a fitting end. Cataclysm was just as bad, if not worse since it changed the entire 1-60 leveling experience forever. Casualties such as Redridge Mountains are trapped into being a massive pop culture reference forever, instead of having any real story.

I fear for what lies on the horizon to be honest, because Blizzard has shown no real sign of improving their storytelling at all. What happened to the people that made Warcraft III? When did they stop developing fantastic likeable characters that were excellently built up with realistic personalities? What happened to the villains with actual motives (I'd give them one for Gul'dan here, except he's just a Legion lackey now instead of seeking out personal power) instead of 'going insane' or bowing down to greater powers like the old gods or Archimonde/Kil'jaeden/Sargeras? I've said it before and I'll say it again, I miss WotLK.

I mean, I could keep going here, but I doubt anyone will read this entire response anyways. Suffice it to say that I can tolerate most of Blizzards game mechanical choices, so long as I can find entertainment in the game (this isn't really the case in WoD, by the way, way too much mindless mob grinding), but I cannot tolerate their story choices at all.

[Doctor Amadeus]

No Blizzard shouldn't listen to fans as a last ditch effort before doing everything else, and when they decided on a course they should stick with it, and give honest reasons for their position.

[Deleted]

Any comments about effort and earnings is pure tinfoilhat paranoia and inane conspiracy theories.

were you born yesterday? How is basic economics "tinfoilhat paranoia"? They want to maximize profit, not make best game ever...but you will never get this, too many paid debaters on this site, 2760 posts in one year? How much are they paying you, seriously?

[Pann]

If you someday some year get into any kind of management position you'll learn something pretty important about feedback. 90/10 ratio.

90% of unhappy people and only about 10% of happy people leave you feedback. In the eyes of somebody who's never experienced this it will seem like everything you're doing is shit because the voices of the small unhappy minority is much stronger than the voices of happy majority. In the same way these forums read like the whole game is shit to unexperienced people like you who don't understand vast majority of all feedback is always going to be negative no matter what.

Any comments about effort and earnings is pure tinfoilhat paranoia and inane conspiracy theories.

This 90/10 malarkey sounds like something you've just made up. Unless you meant to talk about about income inequality.

It is not true that 90% of unhappy customers leave feedback in fact very few customers leave feedback regardless of whether they are happy or not. Happy customers continue to the use the business whilst unhappy ones more often than not stop using it without saying a word. Feedback from unhappy customers is an opportunity to rectify the customer's issue(s) and retain their business, it also, if you get it right, acts as very cheap advertising, which is why most (large) companies have dedicated customer service staff and even whole departments instead of waving their customer complaints away and pretending they are some noisy minority.

[fixx]

This 90/10 malarkey sounds like something you've just made up.

Fixed the first sentence to: Out of all feedback you'll get 90% will be unhappy people and only about 10% of happy people.

Not made up, based on several years of volunteering on event organizing. For each positive comment there's 5-10 negative ones, but when you do a random sampling poll of opinions it's other way around with 1 unhappy for each 5-10 happy people.

[Blackmist]

There's a lot of people playing WoW and they all want different things. The people who are generally happy remain silent.

The people who are the real problem are those who declare that other players should have things taken away from them.

[fixx]

were you born yesterday? How is basic economics "tinfoilhat paranoia"?

Equating ignoring stupid ideas to not listening to feedback is tinfoilhat paranoia. Not every decision is made from effort or eearnings perspective but because those might be better for the game than the garbage players come up with. What you (and others like you) don't seem to understand about basic economics is that the devs are working for Blizzard, and if Blizzard thinks they're doing bad job can also be fired. The thing is that vocal minority whining just makes it seem like the game would be mostly shit which is it not for the majority of people, otherwise Blizzard would be firing the devs. Were you born yesterday or how's that so strange idea?

2760 posts in one year? How much are they paying you, seriously?

I wish... Blizzard gave up on this shithole forum years ago already when it turned into official hatersite from poor moderation. If you look at my posts probably 80-90% is a desperate attempt to make tinfoilhat twits see the light of day and give up the inane conspiracy crap. Unless you're working with high security clearance in some international corporation or for any government, odds are you'll only see coincidences around you, never true conspiracies.

[melodramocracy]

It's why it's selfish to simply create for yourself. You share that creation with others, so they can enjoy it, too.

It's the same attitude musicians have with their groups, they eventually understand they need to tailor for their fans, not just for creative use. Tears for Fears almost bought the farm because Roland spent so much time in the studio creating what he wanted, while neglecting the fans who wanted their Beatles-lite music. It took the band breakup, nasty tit-for-tats, and the birth of his son until Roland released that "daddy's music" wasn't just his to control. Some swallowed pride, and fence mending, and Roland and Curt are back together again, more mature and wiser.

The greatest gift devs can give is NOT being control freaks. Share their passions yes, but also tailor it so the fans can also enjoy it to the fullest.

Got it, flaunt it. More will enjoy it.

It's not selfish at all to create for yourself. You put your result forth in the world, and gamble on the notion that there will be some like minded individuals out there who find it enjoyable. Creation with a large target audience in mind, especially in music, contributes more to stagnation of the medium than any other single element.

It's why, in other words, you've been hearing 3 minute long, predictably arranged pop music for well over half a century.

[Jewsco]

A big part of the issue. It is also interesting seeing people defend Blizzard's continuing decrease in content with each expansion.

Please enlighten me on how each expansion has less content?
Mop had probably the most content since vanilla.
So how was that less and vanilla only had more since one had 60 levels to level and everything was new.
This expansion is a lot less than previous ones but not every has been less.
Be nice if people even tried to remember things right.

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I agree, if they hadn't listened to the vocal minority we wouldn't have gotten that stupid fucking panda expansion.

Did you even play it?
Or go derp pandas and hate it?
Because if you did you would have realized it was way better than this expansion.
It had soooo much more to do it isn't even close.

[melodramocracy]

Making changes based on comments alone is the biggest mistake any software developer can make because 90% of the feedback is garbage.

Instead watching what the people do, what they dont do, how they are doing things etc is far more important because that will show the designers what things people use, what they avoid, which features are hard to find or doesn't make any sense and so on.

That is the most important thing any UI design class will teach you.

WoW players absolutely will use and tolerate content they no longer actually find enjoyable if the reward at the end is suitable. Watching behavior patterns tells you nothing about what that player actually thought of the experience.

A good example will be for when they finally allow flying. Using your approach, Blizzard would consider rep grind requirements a huge hit because hey, look how many people participated... When the actual truth of the matter is probably a bit more complex. The same arguably goes for LFR.

[dextersmith]

Why Blizzard Shouldn't Listen to the Fans?

Are you a mindless zombie who has a servile complex and lets people dictate what fun is or are you employed by Blizzard? Would you hand them more money if they say it's for the best? It good that fans have higher opinions of themselves.

[bison91]

I agree on that. since wotlk the game become casual as shit. they tried make it harder in cata but the noobs started whining that its too hard..and then pandas and now dungeons are easy. also they whine about the orc to rock for years. and know what people? i prefer orc there 10 years in the row then 1 year of humans. but that does not mean that i like WoD. WoD sucked in storytelling. it could be best and featured many key characters. but they screwed up coz noobs whined again that wod is only orcs...ffs when we will have whole xpac of humans or nelfs i will whine 10 times more then u do got it? coz of u morons they scrapped orgrims storyline and make him lvl 97 that each of u could kill him like gamon before cata. i hate that you done this. and prepare to be brainwashed when ur alliance xpac comes out.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

It's not selfish at all to create for yourself.

If you're a publicly traded company it SURE IS!!!

[judgementofantonidas]

I know it's been a while since a lot of these things happened, but Cataclysm (and its continued hate it recieves all these years later) is to me, the biggest reason why Blizzard should NEVER take too much stock into what its fans are saying.

I understand the opinion that people who are willing to invest the time into making a feedback post deserve to be listened to. However, here are some reasons below that I completely lose sympathy with that:

MAJOR Things Complained about during WoTLK (THE BEST XPAC EVAR for a lot of people on these forums.)

-Dalaran (too laggy, spend all your time there.)
-Heroic Dungeons (too easy, too fast, no CC, bring back BC style HM's)
-Raid Scaling (Why can't 10 man have same loot as 25, they weren't on same lockout which led to people doing the same raids twice a week.)
-Levelling Takes Too Long (Vanilla quests still existed, BC/Wrath weren't quick strolls through the zones.)
-Reputations (Wrath reps suck/dont offer good enough rewards.)
-PVP (People dying to have rank system back for BG's)

So what does Blizzard give you?

-Stormwind/Org main cities
- DIFFICULT Heroic Dungeons with needing to CC trash, know mechanics, and be geared enough to do it.
- 10/25 Man Same Loot/Same Lockouts (I know there were tuning issues initially)
-Reduced levelling time & flying right off the bat at 80.
-Reputations you could do via dailies or tabard dungeon grinding (which gets you gear anyway) with rewards being mounts & epic raid loot.
-Rated BG's added to PVP

And guess what? So many people CRAPPED ALL OVER THIS
.... What?!
Blizzard then hit a hard abort button on the direction they were going, and seemed like they effectively gave up on Cataclysm end game and moved on to MoP (with the crappy lack of content Dragon Soul patch.)

I could go on with examples from MoP & Cataclysm, but the morale of this post?

The players aren't game designers. They don't work for Blizzard. Are there good ideas in there? Sure!
But the majority of them aren't - as in they either aren't good ideas, or they are good ideas in theory that wind up really hurting the game in another way. (Looking at you LFD, LFR, SkillUps without seeing your Trainer, faster levelling, World Bosses...)

Don't let the fans dictate the direction of the game - because its been proven over and over that they don't REALLY know what they want - they just THINK they have all the answers to everything.

(Why isn't the game like the "glory days" of BC/Wrath still? BECAUSE THE PLAYERS DIDNT WANT IT TO STAY THAT WAY!!)

With a new expansion coming out, and WoD having a ton of criticism (and I agree with a lot of it), I feel like WoD however is just a product of Blizzard listening TOO MUCH to its fans on the forums and such (guess what? raiding and only raiding isnt the end all be all of WoW! who knew?!)...

I sincerely hope Blizzard doesn't completely overhaul the game (yet again) based highly on what the players post about. Because for 3 straight expansions, it isn't working.

I personally never had an issue with the two raid lockouts. We would use the gear from the couple of larger raid bosses that we could accomplish initially to leverage our progress through the small er raid lockout.

[Osmeric]

This.

Player "Wow these bugs in Slithius are kinda annoying to fight. Maybe give them less armor or something?"

Blizzard - "We have wiped out all insect life in the known universe. Except bees. Bees are rad. There will be a new Bee themed zone and legend of Beedaria expansion. Enjoy your stripey armor sets, guys!"

So, you're saying the film next year is a "B" movie?

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"If I had asked what people wanted, they would have said faster horses" -Henry Ford.

Most people don't have a vision, and thus shouldn't be listened to.

Henry Ford was famous for only delivering his cars in black, and producing the Model A for too long, giving his competitors an entry into the market Ford had dominated.