Stop flipping tables about Dev Q&A

[Icechaosss]

If you are actually a game dev, I can see why the game industry sucks so much as of late. Btw, I appreciate your generous effort to illustrate the unwashed masses, but such a condescending and arrogant tone won't get you far. And your whole argument stinks of "it will cost you a raid tier", "you think you do, but you don't" and other pearls uttered by the game industry superstars. Go cuddle with them, have a beer with the blizzdrones buzzing around and last but not least, get off your high horse


Also this.

Tells someone to get off their high horse while simultaneously getting on a higher horse. MMO-C boiz.

OP, I agree with several things said, and I disagree with several things said. But I disagree strongly on the topic of people not voicing their opinions. A lot of the feedback received has been decent criticism, and I sometimes feel like Blizz isn't listening for a variety of reasons. I think this random legendary thing was a mistake in terms of its implementation. I want legendaries. I think the idea of getting legendaries is super cool. Problem is, it's never been properly implemented.

Classic and TBC were RNG for certain classes, WOTLK and Cata were class specific and people bitched about being left out, MoP and WoD was a grind so people complained about the grind and the general strength of the cape and meta gem, and finally we're at the point where we are now. I'd like Blizz to fix it, because I think the system is inherently flawed. But I legit have no idea how they would go about doing that.

If you can target specific legendaries, people are gonna go for their BiS, and in the end the player base is gonna shrink because people who play the game casually are gonna hunt those, do LFR or Normal, and then unsub. This system keeps people playing, as someone said earlier, begrudgingly. I'm sure someone can think of a better way, but complaining about people complaining, is like shouting at a barking dog. It's gonna get no where, and there's just more noise.

[MoanaLisa]

My fear is that they're moving more and more into preying on people who either play at a high level, or are susceptible to the types of gambling that they're introducing more and more into their game, instead of creating a truly enjoyable experience.

Engagement measured through MAU has become an industry standard across just about everything online. If the rest of the planet cares not one fuck about your subscriber base and more about measurements that allow people to compare one platform versus another that's what smart businesses will report.

People who play at a high level are in for a grand total of $15 a month in the U.S. I'm not sure I understand how that soaks anyone especially given the fact that Blizzard makes it extremely easy to come and go, there are no particular penalties for doing so and even the game director today in an interview recommended that under certain conditions people should take a break. If they want to prey on people why the hell would they make it so simple to stop and restart your subscription. You want to play three or four months a year? They're fine with that. Doesn't sound much to me like they're preying on anyone.

The last is something that never really gets talked about when the topic turns to Blizzard's nefarious attempts to milk their players. I've had it up to here with weak-minded people that lament about how much they hate the game and yet are still there for every single patch and paying every month (or if not paying they invested too much gold in tokens and have signed up to play for essentially free for a year or so). If people are getting milked it's because they are placidly allowing themselves to be chained up in the barn for no good reason.

[Saphyron]

People will always have a reason to whine because you can't satisfy everyone. Some whines are justified and should be treated as a valid feedback, though (cf. Tomb of Soakgeras).

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻


Even if it was the case, the class at the bottom will cry because they are 0.000005% below the 1st (as explained here).


(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

I think you are refering to this one:

http://www.darklegacycomics.com/558

[Swalload]

Why is any of that relevant to Blizzard ignoring feedback? Why should players have to be master developers with in-depth knowledge of programming and design in order to recognize that it's crap when you constantly tell the devs you don't like something, then they not only dismiss it, but add MORE of it to the game?

I get that the devs have a vision. They have the metrics. They have the design degrees. And that not everything that players want is necessarily good for the game. But in this case I think that the players who are saying the game has too much RNG and not enough deterministic systems are correct. And just because Ion says he thinks everything is fine doesn't mean that it is. We have to remember that his point of view is one of a business perspective and not of a player.

If he really thinks that adding even MORE rng to the game is so damn good, and if he's holding all the cards and has all the info, then maybe it should be incumbent upon him to explaining why in a manner proportionate to that? Because players are spending a hell of a lot of time explaining why it isn't so good, only for Blizzard reps to to brush it off. And I don't think that's right.

I completely understand what you mean, with people complaining about RNG and then crucible comes out.
But people think it goes like this:
1. Players try the game.
2. They see the amount of RNG and tell blizzard about it.
3. Blizzard starts working on crucible.
4. Blizzard release the patch with crucible in it.

While in fact it goes like this:
1. Blizzard starts working on crucible
2. The game comes out, they are still working on crucible among many other things.
3. Players try the game. Crucible is deep in development.
4. Players complain about RNG. Work on crucible is mostly done.
5. All the feedback about RNG makes Blizzard see that Crucible wasn't such a good idea but now their only 2 option is to release the patch without this feature and nothing to replace it, or just keep it for better or worse.
6. The patch comes out with Crucible, bunch of people flip tables.
7. Blizzard sees the pros and cons and realize that if they released the patch without crucible there wouldn't be much content and different (or the same) people would be flipping tables about lack of content instead of RNG. They'd rather have content and complains instead of no content and complains anyways.

Now as I said, I don't work for Blizzard and don't know the exact time it takes them, but based on my experience it's not a "couple weeks" kinda task. That stuff was in the pipeline a long time ago, no one announces stuff before they work on it (TBH, they don't announce anything before it's basically done).
But basically what I'm saying is, feedback is a long term thing, and if as you said there was a lot of hate about RNG and legendaries, we can expect the next xpack to have way less of it, because it takes that much time.

Another quick example, people complained about the garrison, but the shipyard was released after, same issue, it was already almost done when people cried about garrison, they have no choice. But look at Legion, way less garrison stuff, they did listen to feedback but it just takes a lot of time to get that kind of change in the pipeline.

- - - Updated - - -

and even the game director today in an interview recommended that under certain conditions people should take a break.

I had completely forgotten he said that until I read your post lol. Probably the most honest and true to himself thing he said.

[Soon-TM]

Tells someone to get off their high horse while simultaneously getting on a higher horse. MMO-C boiz.

OP, I agree with several things said, and I disagree with several things said. But I disagree strongly on people voicing their opinions. A lot of the feedback received has been decent criticism, and I sometimes feel like Blizz isn't listening for a variety of reasons. I think this random legendary thing was a mistake in terms of its implementation. I want legendaries. I think the idea of getting legendaries are super cool. Problem is, it's never been properly implemented.

Classic and TBC were RNG for certain classes, WOTLK and Cata were class specific and people bitched about being left out, MoP and WoD was a grind so people complained about the grind and the general strength of the cape and meta gem, and finally we're at the point where we are now. I'd like Blizz to fix it, because I think the system is inherently flawed. But I legit have no idea how they would go about doing that.

If you can target specific legendaries, people are gonna go for their BiS, and in the end the player base is gonna shrink because people who play the game casually are gonna hunt those, do LFR or Normal, and then unsub. This system keeps people playing, as someone said earlier, begrudgingly. I'm sure someone can think of a better way, but complaining about people complaining, is like shouting at a barking dog. It's gonna get no where, and there's just more noise.

This is a very bad move in the middle-term. Players first play begrudginly, for a myriad of reasons (attachment to his char, online friendships, curiosity towards new patches/xpacs, sunk cost fallacy, w/e), then take longer and longer breaks, until they quit for good; and by then it is too late. The WoD debacle has shown that Legion, despite all the extra work put by devs, is faring "marginally better" than WoD, per Blizzard's own admission. And they have done everything in their hand to keep people logged in. What does that tell you?

[SupBrah]

Yeah... No. Stop trying to be a bootlicker.

After that Q&A it's pretty obvious that Ion and Activision-Blizzard have no idea wtf they're doing. They're just trying to use obessive, OBSESSIVE RNG as a crutch to extend content.

[Swalload]

That's what you do.

I specifically said the legendary was shit from the very first second. Everyone in their right mind could've foreseen that in a world where throughput and utility legendaries exist, everyone who didn't get a throughput legendary would be disappointed - doesn't need a game developing degree to see that one coming (and people did foresee that - but they were ignored until about 6 months into the expansion where we got the first fix for utlity legs being abysmaly bad). They've designed a shit system and I'm complaining about that. And since it's not a priority for them to fix it, I'm complaining about this major feature of the whole goddamn expansion not being a high enough priority to fix.

We're basically just playing with words here and maybe I'm not explaining clearly.
The legendary system is just how we get them, by playing, they drop, like any other item.
The stats on the legendary are not the system, it's something different, designed by different people.
The problem we have right now is this: blizzard wants this system to keep players playing, to have this fun of hunting items like we did since 2004, but now with more specific items that feel special among the normal drops. So far there's nothing wrong, and that's the system.
Where the issue gets serious is when someone gets a shit legendary and they know they won't get another one for a while so they feel stuck with "something that could have been good but is not" while someone next to them got the right now.

Now imagine the exact same system but there's only utility legendary. You get one, you're like "lol coolz yo" and you ask the guy next to you and he says "yo bro check this out" and you both get the same amount of dps out of it, no one has any insane advantage or real BiS. In the end all legendaries would look useful and fun to use in certain situation because of the utilities they bring but your dmg wouldn't change.

The system is okay (other than shitty alt catch up mechanic but if all legendaries are utility, with a bit of drop rate boost it would be a non-issue in no time)
The items themselves are cancer

[Queen of Hamsters]

Engagement measured through MAU has become an industry standard across just about everything online. If the rest of the planet cares not one fuck about your subscriber base and more about measurements that allow people to compare one platform versus another that's what smart businesses will report.
.

Amen.

Players sure can assign more power to this game than really is there on their quest to lament the past and dread the present... The whole "I'm afraid Blizzard's preying upon people with addictive personalities"-angle must be one of the most asinine and boils down to the following reasoning:

"I don't enjoy the game for x reasons, so anything the company does that isn't changing x, means they're evil and ruining the game for a fact!"...

[Swalload]

It just boils down to:

We are right, you are wrong.

That's it. That's the way its always going to be. They're so out of touch with their own game its hilarious.


Apparently the game doesn't need ANY balancing before Antorus releases. Same dumpster specs are the same dumpster specs!

And these dumpster specs are dumpsters for many reasons including tier sets, their whole balancing job will go out the window once people are in T21, so like he said, balancing right now is pointless they would rather balance after a few weeks in the raid.

Like he clearly stated the reason and it makes perfect sense I don't know why you're mad about this.

[Queen of Hamsters]

The last is something that never really gets talked about when the topic turns to Blizzard's nefarious attempts to milk their players. I've had it up to here with weak-minded people that lament about how much they hate the game and yet are still there for every single patch and paying every month (or if not paying they invested too much gold in tokens and have signed up to play for essentially free for a year or so). If people are getting milked it's because they are placidly allowing themselves to be chained up in the barn for no good reason.

Well roared, will be quoted in the future I'm sure! ^^

[yuca247]

"If you aren't having fun doing content, you should take a break. You shouldn't feel the need to go back and do something that you don't enjoy."

People just don't understand this simple line and I'm glad they have the balls to tell it like it is. Most players are incapable of understanding just because they pay $15 a month doesn't mean Blizz is going to design and cater the game to your liking just because you whine and cry.

Blizz is basically saying to all those that don't agree with their vision for their game "go ahead and leave we don't need you or your money." By the way it's not the first time they have said it so it's not like he misspoke that is clearly their mentality at this point.

And why is that? Simple, they know and have the hard numbers on the level of engagement with the content in legion and they know the vast majority of the player base is fine with the game.

Because of that reason they are just going to do more of the same so if you have a problem with legion prepare yourself to have a problem with the next expansion as well.

Another thing Ion mentioned was the "raid or die" comment. That's what WoW used to be and they clearly did not like it so they have steered away from that game design completely and I doubt they will ever go back.

[Saphyron]

We're basically just playing with words here and maybe I'm not explaining clearly.
The legendary system is just how we get them, by playing, they drop, like any other item.
The stats on the legendary are not the system, it's something different, designed by different people.
The problem we have right now is this: blizzard wants this system to keep players playing, to have this fun of hunting items like we did since 2004, but now with more specific items that feel special among the normal drops. So far there's nothing wrong, and that's the system.
Where the issue gets serious is when someone gets a shit legendary and they know they won't get another one for a while so they feel stuck with "something that could have been good but is not" while someone next to them got the right now.

Now imagine the exact same system but there's only utility legendary. You get one, you're like "lol coolz yo" and you ask the guy next to you and he says "yo bro check this out" and you both get the same amount of dps out of it, no one has any insane advantage or real BiS. In the end all legendaries would look useful and fun to use in certain situation because of the utilities they bring but your dmg wouldn't change.

The system is okay (other than shitty alt catch up mechanic but if all legendaries are utility, with a bit of drop rate boost it would be a non-issue in no time)
The items themselves are cancer

Until people start whining that you can get more dps with prydaz because it allows you to stand in more shit every 30sec.
This is mmo-c only whiners and people WHO think they are not whiners but really are is here.

Me included.

[Tinary]

No idea what interview you read, but in mine he said: "Random distribution of legendary items isn't a problem. There is something cool about not having the ability to choose a specific legendary from a list.". And that's a toast that's pretty burnt to me - and many others.

No offence but next time listen what his talking about not read a picked sentence from a 5+ minute talk about legion RNG. 45.40 starts the question in Q&A.
P.S He said " This system shows how randomness was misapplied and in the start of x-pack meant you are either successful of not, personally I dont think random distribution of legendary items are the problem and (Pay attention to this) if you imagine a system without troughput legendarys and only utility ones theres something cool about not having the ability to choose a legendary from a list cause everyone decided this is the best one.


So again, get your god damn facts straight not read a FANFORUM sentences of the damn Q and A.
P.S I dont even remember when I equipped a DPS lege outside a trivial content. Been swapping so much leges in higher keys that I prolly have more uptime on Prydaz and Sephuz than any other.

[Raziella]

Amen.

Players sure can assign more power to this game than really is there on their quest to lament the past and dread the present... The whole "I'm afraid Blizzard's preying upon people with addictive personalities"-angle must be one of the most asinine and boils down to the following reasoning:

"I don't enjoy the game for x reasons, so anything the company does that isn't changing x, means they're evil and ruining the game for a fact!"...

Or, you know, following very successful trends from a modern form of gaming (mobile)... Trends that, unfortunately, involve increasing amounts of rote tasks and games of chance instead of more traditional, and imo compelling, gameplay.
It's not evil, it's lazy.

Blizz has done a lot of things I haven't liked over all the years I've played since TBC, and I've changed the way I play the game to be much more casual so I can just do what I enjoy, but the Legion RNG has honestly been the first time that I've really been upset by what's happening, and am unlikely to buy the next expac over.

- - - Updated - - -

"If you aren't having fun doing content, you should take a break. You shouldn't feel the need to go back and do something that you don't enjoy."

People just don't understand this simple line and I'm glad they have the balls to tell it like it is. Most players are incapable of understanding just because they pay $15 a month doesn't mean Blizz is going to design and cater the game to your liking just because you whine and cry.

Blizz is basically saying to all those that don't agree with their vision for their game "go ahead and leave we don't need you or your money." By the way it's not the first time they have said it so it's not like he misspoke that is clearly their mentality at this point.

And why is that? Simple, they know and have the hard numbers on the level of engagement with the content in legion and they know the vast majority of the player base is fine with the game.

Because of that reason they are just going to do more of the same so if you have a problem with legion prepare yourself to have a problem with the next expansion as well.

Another thing Ion mentioned was the "raid or die" comment. That's what WoW used to be and they clearly did not like it so they have steered away from that game design completely and I doubt they will ever go back.

Doesn't the problem come when it's not so black and white, though?
If you have fun raiding, but you have this system that causes you to have to grind through endless hours of content that you come to hate for a chance of getting what you need.

At least when you had Valor points, or rep, or whatever, it might not have been fun, per se, but at least you were working towards a reward.
Now you can grind for hours, or weeks/months, and get 3 shit leggos and feel like you've got to reroll your toon.
I'm not saying "no grind" I'm saying a grind that actually has a light at the end of the tunnel.

Maybe I'm just too old school, but I enjoy a game that rewards skill and/or hard work over pulling the slot machine lever.

[Shadowbane]

A lot of people lack even a basic idea about the game development pipeline, and you can usually tell who because they have the oh-so simple solution to every problem that companies actually working within the games industry face.

We can contest decisions and debate ideas, sure - and we can be critical. But if it's all so easy and obvious to fix, it begs the question of why genius keyboard warriors aren't hired as lead designers of games, themselves, if it's so easy. Maybe if they shared this secret knowledge of how to easily do all these things, games everywhere would be better for it.

Also, all these people who say design decisions are being done as a business decision or to please shareholders or something, hang your head in shame for making such an embarrassingly obvious point and trying to pass it off as something that means anything. Blizzard makes games as a business - of course they need to make money. It's a moot point. Making out as if Blizzard is holding back on making the game better as part of some grand business design is laughable, too. I'm pretty sure most game developers know that the best way to make money from a game is to make that game good. Everyone just has different opinions on what 'good' is.

To be honest, I applaud Blizzard's willingness to be open with people as much as they are. There are frequent Q&As, there's often news and involvement and communication that other games developers simply don't provide. With all the toxicity and hostility games developers get these days, though - death threats from impatient children and useless misinformed commentary from know-it-alls and would-be pundits, I can understand why other companies don't, and why Ion is getting blame - because it's him who's having to open his mouth to tell the players what they don't want to hear.

[SirCowdog]

I completely understand what you mean, with people complaining about RNG and then crucible comes out.
But people think it goes like this:
1. Players try the game.
2. They see the amount of RNG and tell blizzard about it.
3. Blizzard starts working on crucible.
4. Blizzard release the patch with crucible in it.

While in fact it goes like this:
1. Blizzard starts working on crucible
2. The game comes out, they are still working on crucible among many other things.
3. Players try the game. Crucible is deep in development.
4. Players complain about RNG. Work on crucible is mostly done.
5. All the feedback about RNG makes Blizzard see that Crucible wasn't such a good idea but now their only 2 option is to release the patch without this feature and nothing to replace it, or just keep it for better or worse.
6. The patch comes out with Crucible, bunch of people flip tables.
7. Blizzard sees the pros and cons and realize that if they released the patch without crucible there wouldn't be much content and different (or the same) people would be flipping tables about lack of content instead of RNG. They'd rather have content and complains instead of no content and complains anyways.

Now as I said, I don't work for Blizzard and don't know the exact time it takes them, but based on my experience it's not a "couple weeks" kinda task. That stuff was in the pipeline a long time ago, no one announces stuff before they work on it (TBH, they don't announce anything before it's basically done).
But basically what I'm saying is, feedback is a long term thing, and if as you said there was a lot of hate about RNG and legendaries, we can expect the next xpack to have way less of it, because it takes that much time.

Another quick example, people complained about the garrison, but the shipyard was released after, same issue, it was already almost done when people cried about garrison, they have no choice. But look at Legion, way less garrison stuff, they did listen to feedback but it just takes a lot of time to get that kind of change in the pipeline.

Except that this isn't what happened. This isn't a case of Blizzard recognizing that the player feedback on over-use of RNG is correct, but didn't have the time to change the system before NLC went live. This is a case of Blizzard completely ignoring the feedback of players and dropping the system in regardless, and then telling them that everything is fine.

[Doomchicken]

It just boils down to:

We are right, you are wrong.

That's it. That's the way its always going to be. They're so out of touch with their own game its hilarious.


Apparently the game doesn't need ANY balancing before Antorus releases. Same dumpster specs are the same dumpster specs!

Class Balance

There aren't plans to do much balancing before Antorus opens.
Balancing around Tomb won't do much to help balance in Antrous, as there will be new set bonuses and trinkets.
The team will do balance passes after Antorus unlocks.


Balancing now when they're inevitably going to do another balance parse in a month is retarded. Especially if they overbalance and have to nerf them because then we'll see even more useless whinge threads.

[Queen of Hamsters]

X has honestly been the first time that I've really been upset by what's happening, and am unlikely to buy the next expac over.

A line that's been said since the dawn of this game.

Millions won't be buying, millions will. This game has over 100 million accounts made, yet never held more than 12 million subs. The features we get will be driven by public reception + metrics the developers have access to (sub numbers being one of them, even if they're not announcing) and not what the same few (relative to game pop) people say over and over on a forum.

[clevin]

"If you aren't having fun doing content, you should take a break. You shouldn't feel the need to go back and do something that you don't enjoy."

People just don't understand this simple line and I'm glad they have the balls to tell it like it is.

Oh I understand it. I came back for a month to see Argus and am on a break now. I'll likely be on that break until 8.0 pre-patvch but there's a chance the break will become permanent.

What they and you and others who feel this way don't understand is that some percentage of people who go on break never come back. Any SaaS company that is fine with churn is, in the long run, doomed to lose customers unless they can replace the ones who don't come back and I'm not sure WoW is at the point in its life where it can do that. You can mask the revenue impact of this for a while by upselling loyal customer (server transfers, mounts, etc).but that doesn't last.

In Blizzard's case, though, it may well be that development of an expansion including all of its patches is covered by the box price. After all, $50 * 5m is $250m gross. Some of that goes to retailers but even if they only gross something like $175m that probably covers dev/qa/ etc costs for the entire 2 years. If that's even close to accurate then the subs and other fees are, more or less, gravy.

[yuca247]

And these dumpster specs are dumpsters for many reasons including tier sets, their whole balancing job will go out the window once people are in T21, so like he said, balancing right now is pointless they would rather balance after a few weeks in the raid.

Like he clearly stated the reason and it makes perfect sense I don't know why you're mad about this.

Because he's not listening. He already made up his mind about it and can't see past his nose even when it's discussed and explained directly.

These type of players basically prove the OP's point perfectly.