"Cynically negative" community cause of communication breakdown

[Verdugo]

That's their perogative. That's what it means to be a private company. They get to run their business however they believe is in their best interests; we get to decide whether to patronize them or not.

And we decided to patronize them for that, so where is the problem.

[rda]

Then fire the company. Blizz makes decisions they believe are best for them. Take it or leave it. Or stay and offer feedback. Word it respecfully, and they may even listen.

I am doing both - offering my feedback (Blizzard CMs are useless, they contribute very little, and spend most of their time whining about the community / posting nonsense) and firing the company from time to time and not buying into their other games. Eventually I will fire them forever.

[Talon8669]

Except Legion isn't even close to being on par with MoP.


Great content ruined by disgusting RNG, Legendaries and really, really, really, really, really SHIT Class Design.



On Topic:

They specifically said they wanted to improve communication for BfA and yet here we are again. With complete radio silence on all things Alpha, especially Class Design.

They are being very open with the game. They have allowed early alpha participation and have even encouraged those testing both alpha and beta to stream and post videos. They have done developer Q&A sessions and we've gotten a lot out of the alpha and beta data mines. They aren't going to post a person or team with the soul purpose of answering every single question asked. Blizz has done a pretty good job so far showing us the direction they are going and even then people complain about alpha build that is largely not finished and huge chunks of content not implemented. Stop watching youtube videos and taking what those cancerous fucks say as gospel.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

If I had hot-selling product and plenty of customers, I would not put up with rude ones either. I'd put them on ignore because I wouldn't need their business and my day would be more pleasant without them.

Flipped out customer ranting at Blizz right now is like mediocre DPS going off on Raid Leader - hey buddy, you don't like it there's plenty more where you came from.

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I am doing both - offering my feedback (Blizzard CMs are useless, they contribute very little, and spend most of their time whining about the community / posting nonsense) and firing the company from time to time and not buying into their other games. Eventually I will fire them forever.

I absolutely respect your right to make that choice. More so than I respect those who keep paying for the game but want someone to listen to them be rude in forums.

[seraknis]

I am doing both - offering my feedback (Blizzard CMs are useless, they contribute very little, and spend most of their time whining about the community / posting nonsense) and firing the company from time to time and not buying into their other games. Eventually I will fire them forever.

They aren't there to contribute, they aren't there to discuss with us.

They are there to moderate.
They are there to collect feedback.
They are there to explain decisions.

The smalltalk they do it's just there to let us know they are reading.


You don't like it? Well afaik we are all able to stop founding Blizzard by don't playing their games.

[Deleted]

If I had hot-selling product and plenty of customers, I would not put up with rude ones either. I'd put them on ignore because I wouldn't need their business and my day would be more pleasant without them.

Flipped out customer ranting at Blizz right now is like mediocre DPS going off on Raid Leader - hey buddy, you don't like it there's plenty more where you came from,

You're right, a company has the right to ignore rude customers as long as they are aware that they still are paying customers, and losing them won't benefit your company. Luckily this doesn't concern us, the players (you could argue that a shrinking community affects the players in many ways, but that's another story). The problem being highlighted for years, and many time in this thread, is that Blizzard doesn't engage with constructive part of the community either.
And with "constructive", I don't mean extremely positive people who are happy with anything, but rather players who are able to provide criticism about issues with the game in a proper way.

[rda]

They aren't there to contribute, they aren't there to discuss with us.

They are there to moderate.
They are there to collect feedback.
They are there to explain decisions.

The smalltalk they do it's just there to let us know they are reading.


You don't like it? Well afaik we are all able to stop founding Blizzard by don't playing their games.

They moderate by closing necro threads and duplicate threads. A bot could do this. They are also deleting perfectly legit threads. This harms discussions, not helps them.

They either don't collect much feedback or what they collect goes into the trash can, because Blizzard largely ignores player feedback, including when they are asking for it.

They rarely explain anything. When they do explain something, the explanations more often than not are very shallow and frequently plain don't make sense. This has been discussed many times.

Yes, they are useless.

Thanks for the suggestion to stop playing, I am going to do this sooner or later. The important thing is that CMs are part of the problem rather than part of the solution and this whining from Ornyx that started the thread is a perfect example of that.

[seraknis]

They moderate by closing necro threads and duplicate threads. A bot could do this. They are also deleting perfectly legit threads. This harms discussions, not helps them.

Have yet to see a deleted post that was worth anything.

They either don't collect much feedback or what they collect goes into the trash can, because Blizzard largely ignores player feedback, including when they are asking for it.

It's not like they can change stuff at a moments notice, and a lot of stuff get's actually changed after feedback (look at legiondaries, artifacts, argus trinkets).
And a few times changes that were highly requested from vocal people turned out to be utter shit and had to be reverted.

They rarely explain anything. When they do explain something, the explanations more often than not are very shallow and frequently plain don't make sense. This has been discussed many times.

They shouldn't be explaining a lot, most changes are self-explanatory, and what doesn't makes sense to you may not be se

Yes, they are useless.

Your opinion, you are totally able to make this statement, and yet you are the prime example of the kind of feedback that they usually critic. You are making general statements, you are not bringing up detailed examples, you just say that they are useless and whine all the time, and should contribute more.
How should they contribute? What should they moderate? What they shouldn't moderate? Should they leave angry threads open? (note that we are talking about a video-game forum, not about the govermente, people shouldn't be on the verge of madness throwing death-threats around)

Thanks for the suggestion to stop playing, I am going to do this sooner or later. The important thing is that CMs are part of the problem rather than part of the solution and this whining from Ornyx that started the thread is a perfect example of that.

The main problem with this whole discussion, this whole thread, it's that it starts from a wrong interpretation of a statement that should be obvious.
"I don't see any reason why it would be in our best interest to actively engage with a part of the community that is cynically negative." means "we are going to ignore any feedback that doesn't give us anything to work upon", which should be pretty obvious.

[rda]

Have yet to see a deleted post that was worth anything.

You weren't seeing much then.

It's not like they can change stuff at a moments notice, and a lot of stuff get's actually changed after feedback (look at legiondaries, artifacts, argus trinkets).

What? Legiondaries had only a couple of minor changes and it took a year to get them. Tons of bad things had no changes worth speaking of. Class design is one huge example, PVP is another huge example. Blizzard *aren't* listening to feedback by and large. This is unequivocal. Consequently, the CMs supposed mission of collecting feedback is useless, they either aren't collecting much and / or what they are collecting is going into the trash can. Nobody cares which is it and nobody should, both options are bad and mean that CMs "collecting feedback" are useless, nothing comes out of it.

The main problem with this whole discussion, this whole thread, it's that it starts from a wrong interpretation of a statement that should be obvious. "I don't see any reason why it would be in our best interest to actively engage with a part of the community that is cynically negative." means "we are going to ignore any feedback that doesn't give us anything to work upon", which should be pretty obvious.

The main problem with this statement is that this is about the extent of what CMs are good for - blaming the community / whining / posting nonsense from time to time and doing next to nothing useful.

*This* is what the problem is.

[seraknis]

Still you are being vague.

They are getting rid of Legendaries in BfA, you are expecting them to act instantly while it's obviously impossibile, they can't just throw away a complete system as soon as it is shipped, they tried to make it work, failed in a few major ascpects and are going to get rid of it.

You expect them to be fast to answer and fast to implement feedback from forums, but that isn't possible and isn't healthy, they need time to see if stuff is going to fix itself (like gearing related issues), and they need time to develope new systems correctly.

It's not a 2d platform, it's a massive game, and they are there just to collect and report, if you don't see they implementing stuff it doesn't mean it has been reported, and it doesn't mean it will be implemented, because what's being asked may collide with what GDs think is the correct direction of the game.

Crying desperatly on every single issue (mainly on stupid ones) it's just gonna slow everything up, and it's the reason they take time to answer on why they are locking this kind of shit.

[rda]

They are getting rid of Legendaries in BfA, you are expecting them to act instantly while it's obviously impossibile, they can't just throw away a complete system as soon as it is shipped, they tried to make it work, failed in a few major ascpects and are going to get rid of it.

Look, you are being wrong in so many places that I am going to pick a small part of your post (from the top, but really I have no preference) and constrain the discussion to just that part.

The above is wrong on two counts:

1. They didn't have to act instantly, they had tons of feedback on legendaries being terrible before the expansion even landed. They had lots of concerns all over the forums, they chose to ignore them. They had tons more negative feedback on legendaries in the first months.

2. They absolutely could fix legendaries easily - by (a) disclosing how high the drop chances are, and (b) increasing them. What they couldn't fix as easily was reworking legendaries to be utility-only, which would have been the right way to fix it. But even just disabling legendaries would have been vastly better than leaving them. After disabling them, they could rework them and make them return in 7.2 or 7.3. This isn't rocket science, it's common sense. They did nothing like that, they did only a lip service and they did it very late, much later than they could.

So, here we go. You are doubly wrong in a single paragraph. You continue being wrong in further paragraphs as well.

[Deleted]

It's not like they can change stuff at a moments notice, and a lot of stuff get's actually changed after feedback (look at legiondaries, artifacts, argus trinkets).
And a few times changes that were highly requested from vocal people turned out to be utter shit and had to be reverted.

Legendaries and Artifact Power were heavily criticized, and rightly so, the moment they announced the system. Legion was in early alpha at the time, and the devs ignored everyone while saying "don't worry guys, you will like it". After the disaster, it took them months to find a solution for AP, and in the end it turned out to be a "free massive ap for everyone", destroying the very sense of "char progression after leveling" they used to justify the whole thing. The same thing kinda happend with legendaries too, but more than a year later.
Same thing happened for the "double trait relics" system, which again was GREATLY disliked by the playerbase, and they still forced it on us with Crucible.

They shouldn't be explaining a lot, most changes are self-explanatory, and what doesn't makes sense to you may not be se

They are not. Death Knights are still waiting to know why the devs forced on them an abilty like Wraith Walk that:
- has a horrible animation that doesn't fits dks
- required a glyph to work properly for more than half of the expansion
- replaced a perfected funcionatl ability, Death Advance

I could rwrite about other cases were Blizzard decided to make choices without explaining them, leaving the players obvious to their reasons.

The main problem with this whole discussion, this whole thread, it's that it starts from a wrong interpretation of a statement that should be obvious.
"I don't see any reason why it would be in our best interest to actively engage with a part of the community that is cynically negative." means "we are going to ignore any feedback that doesn't give us anything to work upon", which should be pretty obvious.

And again, I will repeat myself for the millionth time in this thread, the main problem with this whole discussion, this whole thread, starts from the fact that Blizzard has no right to complain when they will NOT engage even with constructive criticism either, like WoD and Legion beta radio silence demonstrated.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

You're right, a company has the right to ignore rude customers as long as they are aware that they still are paying customers, and losing them won't benefit your company. Luckily this doesn't concern us, the players (you could argue that a shrinking community affects the players in many ways, but that's another story). The problem being highlighted for years, and many time in this thread, is that Blizzard doesn't engage with constructive part of the community either.
And with "constructive", I don't mean extremely positive people who are happy with anything, but rather players who are able to provide criticism about issues with the game in a proper way.

You are assuming the actions of CMs have contributed in any way to shrinking community. Imho, the community is best served by NOT rewarding rude behavior. Personally, I put those people on ignore anyway, so the faster I can ignore all of them, and never have to listen to that tripe again, the more I can enjoy the game.

[Deleted]

You are assuming the actions of CMs have contributed in any way to shrinking community. Imho, the community is best served by NOT rewarding rude behavior. Personally, I put those people on ignore anyway, so the faster I can ignore all of them, and never have to listen to that tripe again, the more I can enjoy the game.

No, my comment about a shrinking community was completely out of the context of this topic, it wasn't directed to CMs or Blizzard in particular. It was more a personal consideration about your theory that a company has the right to ignore rude customers, to which I replied that a lost paying customer, be it rude or not, is in the end a loss for a company, especially a video game company where the community can also be hurt by it.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

No, my comment about a shrinking community was completely out of the context of this topic, it wasn't directed to CMs or Blizzard in particular. It was more a personal consideration about your theory that a company has the right to ignore rude customers, to which I replied that a lost paying customer, be it rude or not, is in the end a loss for a company, especially a video game company where the community can also be hurt by it.

I see what you're saying, and it is a balancing act, but you can have addition by subtraction as well. If you cater to rude people, instead of showing them the door, you allow your space to become toxic and scare the good people away. Sometimes you keep more customers by knowing which to lose.

[Grimnakh]

I see what you're saying, and it is a balancing act, but you can have addition by subtraction as well. If you cater to rude people, instead of showing them the door, you allow your space to become toxic and scare the good people away. Sometimes you keep more customers by knowing which to lose.

This right here. Any business Ive ever worked for or owned the other customers were always happy when we told people throwing a temper tantrum to leave and not to come back (often the can I speak to your manager haircut types).

[Naiattavain]

In a recent Blizzard post, Ornyx insists that it is the "cynically negative" community at fault for the communication breakdown between Blizzard and the community:
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...age=6#post-116
He fails to see "any reason why it would be in our best interest to actively engage with" this part of the community.

My response is simply this: if a community manager does not wish to manage and participate with the community then they should immediately resign and find someone who is willing to try. If that is how they really feel, we will continue stuck in this limbo state indefinitely as long as they're around.

It is not helpful in the slightest when one side has clearly given up attempting to manage the community as a community manager. There is nothing more frustrating than employees who stick around when they have clearly given up and burnt out. Be the change they want us to be.

i agree with this. cynically negative community at fault for the communication breakdown between Blizzard and the community.

[Verdugo]

i agree with this. cynically negative community at fault for the communication breakdown between Blizzard and the community.

Cynically negative community is a result of bad communication from Blizzard.

[seraknis]

Look, you are being wrong in so many places that I am going to pick a small part of your post (from the top, but really I have no preference) and constrain the discussion to just that part.

The above is wrong on two counts:

1. They didn't have to act instantly, they had tons of feedback on legendaries being terrible before the expansion even landed. They had lots of concerns all over the forums, they chose to ignore them. They had tons more negative feedback on legendaries in the first months.

2. They absolutely could fix legendaries easily - by (a) disclosing how high the drop chances are, and (b) increasing them. What they couldn't fix as easily was reworking legendaries to be utility-only, which would have been the right way to fix it. But even just disabling legendaries would have been vastly better than leaving them. After disabling them, they could rework them and make them return in 7.2 or 7.3. This isn't rocket science, it's common sense. They did nothing like that, they did only a lip service and they did it very late, much later than they could.

So, here we go. You are doubly wrong in a single paragraph. You continue being wrong in further paragraphs as well.

wait, weren't you arguing that the CMs were those doing a poor job? All you are saying it's about choices made by GDs, not CMs.

The issues were reported from CMs, and GDs choose the courses of action that they though fit better.
Some were right and some were wrong, I'm not arguing about it.
But, again, this has nothing to do with CMs.

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Cynically negative community is a result of bad communication from Blizzard.

I have yet to find a single game forum free from cynically negative criticism, that doesn't offer any actual element to work upon. Being Dota 2, PoE, OW, WoW, SC2 or whatever else multiplayer game you can name, every single one is afflicted by people unable to argue and reason constructively.

[IceMan1763]

Look, you are being wrong in so many places that I am going to pick a small part of your post (from the top, but really I have no preference) and constrain the discussion to just that part.

The above is wrong on two counts:

1. They didn't have to act instantly, they had tons of feedback on legendaries being terrible before the expansion even landed. They had lots of concerns all over the forums, they chose to ignore them. They had tons more negative feedback on legendaries in the first months.

2. They absolutely could fix legendaries easily - by (a) disclosing how high the drop chances are, and (b) increasing them. What they couldn't fix as easily was reworking legendaries to be utility-only, which would have been the right way to fix it. But even just disabling legendaries would have been vastly better than leaving them. After disabling them, they could rework them and make them return in 7.2 or 7.3. This isn't rocket science, it's common sense. They did nothing like that, they did only a lip service and they did it very late, much later than they could.

So, here we go. You are doubly wrong in a single paragraph. You continue being wrong in further paragraphs as well.

Exactly, the fanbois who excuse the incredible amount of laziness, ego, and stubbornness displayed by this development team are the ones allowing their destructive behavior to continue. The feedback regarding legendaries, in particular, was LOUD, VERY NEGATIVE, and STARTED in ALPHA and has NEVER STOPPED.

When you claim the dev team couldn't know or couldn't be expected to do anything you are dooming this game to the decline it has been experiencing for a long time now.