Is Preach And The Community Becoming Overly Cynical About The Game?

[kamuimac]

Naturally I don't know if they formally use waterfall as their development methodology in the WoW team, because they never talk about it publicly. But it looks very much like waterfall to an outsider.

It used to be popular method back in the days (remember the roots of the game are from that era) and it does have some clear advantages as well; Simple and easy to manage due to the rigidity of the model. It's well understood. Phases are processed and completed one at a time - it's sequential, so you can focus your resources.

But yeah, compared to something more modern, agile based - rigid and unresponsive to anyone outside the model.

Moving over to something more agile is not entirely easy undertaking, even if that's the next natural question, as you point out.

Here's video of CCP talking about the transition to Agile/Scrum in EVE Online development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=SN&...&v=GqsReCZD4hc

thats just theoretical talking - you have no way of knowing this unless you are working direcly in blizzard . and i highly doubt any current employee can talk about this stuff - hell i assume most of people who could because they left blizz are under NDA for at least couple of years pass leaving company .

just because your feedback is ignored it doesnt mean its not discussed.

but their goal and your goals may be completly 180 degrees different.

and seeing the amount of $$$$$ they are making they are 100% correct in what they are doing.

- - - Updated - - -

It's not every spec, but its 90% them. Almost every spec had a much better version of it at some point in the past.

And it's not about being OP or UP, numbers have little to nothing to do with it. It's about the flow and fun of the spec.

fun is subjective. for example i loved BM in cata - then i hated BM in MoP. did i whine about it on forums 24/7 ? no .

game needs to constantly evolve to stay alive - if you dont like it go play classic servers forever.

[SirCowdog]

both of them have nothing but negative impact on game and we all would be better if they went to stream other games and forgot about wow.

If you eliminate all criticism, all you create is an echo chamber which will be even more detrimental to the game.

You may not like or agree with what people are saying when they're being critical or negative, but silencing them entirely leads to a worse outcome.

[ramborg]

It's no preach alone there are quite a few ppl who keep doing this genre clickbait videos over and over. The current trend is you blame blizz and make a cynical video you get more views so preach / bellular / signs of kelani / Asmongold ( the head cheer leader for this group ) all do the same. Asmongold litreally mooched blaming and whining about everything and then still was in game in wow. Now his chat is a toxic dump , i used to like the old asmongold who made good informative videos but now he is got 20K+ viewers and a gf and he whines and complains about wow non stop. I like watching TOwellie and Finalbosstv they are the only ppl and ofc T & E are trying to give both sides and be normal. Preach abused potions and streamed it and then got banned and his chat feels its correct lol what to say. I am not supporting BFA its been crap but its no way to go click bait all the way. Bellular has 2 channels and he is non stop complaining and gives suggestion what blizzard did wrong and tries to circle around it in every video. Nothing new everything runs only for a time sooner or later ppl come to understand and they ignore and unsubscribe them.

[Onikaroshi]

fun is subjective. for example i loved BM in cata - then i hated BM in MoP. did i whine about it on forums 24/7 ? no .

game needs to constantly evolve to stay alive - if you dont like it go play classic servers forever.

Classic was a horrible version of the game, but that's besides the point.

If you never discuss displeasure in something and just live with it, what's the point? So no, I'm not going to shut up about things I don't like.

[Whitedragon]

It's not every spec, but its 90% them. Almost every spec had a much better version of it at some point in the past.

And it's not about being OP or UP, numbers have little to nothing to do with it. It's about the flow and fun of the spec.

But that all comes down to personal opinion, you may love some facet about a spec while someone else hates that with every fiber of their being. I would Also argue about 90% of the classes being poorer, most of the healer and tanks are about the same (from my experience), and as for DPS they actually made some of them more fun, likewise some specs lousing their artifact ability wasn't even a notable event, considering how trash some of the spells where.

[Onikaroshi]

But that all comes down to personal opinion, you may love some facet about a spec while someone else hates that with every fiber of their being. I would Also argue about 90% of the classes being poorer, most of the healer and tanks are about the same (from my experience), and as for DPS they actually made some of them more fun, likewise some specs lousing their artifact ability wasn't even a notable event, considering how trash some of the spells where.

Healers are probably one of the few exceptions, as you used to spam one or two spells on them. Tanks got hit pretty hard in the fun department, they're all just budget dps now that hold aggro... And can't do shit for dps (except warrior, but whoops, being nerfed). Most dps are boring 4-5 button specs now, that would be bareable though if things like snapshotting still existed, but now there is very little complexity in rotation

[SirCowdog]

There are a couple of flaws with the points you're putting forward, but I think it'll be interesting to discuss them.

thats just theoretical talking - you have no way of knowing this unless you are working direcly in blizzard . and i highly doubt any current employee can talk about this stuff - hell i assume most of people who could because they left blizz are under NDA for at least couple of years pass leaving company .

He actually didn't say that's literally what's happening. He said that's what it looks like from an outside view. And I'm guessing he can guess at things like this because he's got experience in the industry. Just felt that should be clarified so we don't argue about it unnecessarily.

just because your feedback is ignored it doesnt mean its not discussed.

This is a matter of perception I think Blizzard could handle better.

If feedback isn't being ignored, and it is actually being discussed, then I think it would be beneficial for Blizzard to communicate and explain part of that discussion BEFORE it reaches a point where it's gone live. Because when they release something to the live version of the game that flies in the face of what people are saying is wrong, it gets perceived as a "Fuck you, we're Blizzard and we know better than you". This is EXACTLY how Ion comes across in his State of the Game streams.

We've got that kind of discussion going on right now with the new Essence system that Preach talks about in the link provided by the OP. And even though I don't follow Preach, I did watch the linked video. He brings up some pretty good points that I think it would be INCREDIBLY beneficial for Blizzard to talk about before pushing it through to live.

And I realize this creates a situation where it seems like Blizzard has to check with the players before doing anything, but that's actually not the point I'm trying to make. Blizzard can absolutely tell the players that their feedback doesn't fit where Blizzard wants to take the game! But they could do so within a time frame, and with an explanation of the reasoning so that players can understand why their feedback didn't fit.

but their goal and your goals may be completly 180 degrees different.

and seeing the amount of $$$$$ they are making they are 100% correct in what they are doing.

I think it's a mistake to equate or associate what Blizzard wants as always being "correct". Granted, every business generally exists to make profits, but I don't believe that profits and player interests in the gaming industry are mutually exclusive, as you seemed to suggest by saying goals might be 180 degrees from each other. This is illustrated by other development teams such as CD Projekt Red.


Again, this is an issue of perception, but from what I've seen over the last few years, WoW has been increasingly moving away from what Players tend to want(higher quality gameplay, better RPG systems, player agency, etc) in order to focus more and more on monetization. This is undoubtedly due to the pressure from shareholders, but I think it's also due to the rigidity in the development process that we discussed just a few posts ago.

Clearly there's something(or an amalgamation of somethings) going on within Acti-Blizz which is effecting the quality and direction of their games. But I think it is a terrible tragedy and mistake that there are players out there who are willing to subsume their own wants and desires for the game simply because What Blizzard Wants = Good.

Blizzard is not your friend. Blizzard doesn't have your best interests at heart. Judging by their actions at a corporate level, they don't even care about their own employees, or even the country where they operate.

That's VERY troubling.

[Malikath]

i havent seen him being positive-

and? that doesn't refute their point at all, it's just moving the goalpost to the assumption of positivity rather then honesty.
WoD was shit, legion was shitty but better, now BFA is an embarrassment that makes WoD look good, sorry that people stating their honest displeasure with a shitty product is an affront to you, get over it.

[Whitedragon]

thats because people whine for sake of whining - just because class doesnt feel 100 proc to their liking only like 90-95% there answer is "class is absolute shit"

thts why devs ignore any feedback people have because its utterly usless.

I have had the same impression, I recall times where all classes had their lows, and while I haven't played every class/spec combo in BfA yet, I have played most of them. I honestly think some FotM classes went from top of the heap to the bottom (Or more likely only down one or 2 spots it's the end of the world because of it.), and we just seeing the fallout of people not being the top dog anymore. I also do find it funny, that a lot of the complaints are "BfA class design is S***" with no actual feedback on what classes suck, what levels of play, and so on. About as far as I have herd is some of the overly CD reliant classes get bummed by the GCD (which is funny, I find my warrior more fun to play now but whatever), and that shammys are under powered (Note: they don't say that they are lacking, just that they are under powered).

I also find it funny that we are lamenting things like WoD, when WoD was notorious at the time for a few reasons. first they really doubled down on scraping things from classes that expansion, and second some specs had ludicrous brake points leading to crazy scenarios where a few would just way over preform, while others would be bogged down with crazy rotational requirements to even preform mediocre DPS...

I'm not denying that some classes may need some love in BfA, but this constant "everything is s***", is just crazy.

[Zarvel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=767StGhEO-E

Preach recently made a video getting in-depth with the new Heartforge system. After watching it, it got me thinking. How can someone be so nitpicky and cynical about literally everything regarding the mechanics of the game? I try very hard to understand the intricacies of my characters, but I just can't match preach or other mythic raiders feelings on how classes play in BFA. I can't look this deeply into them or care this much. I do agree they're worse than legion, but they dont feel as terrible as the forums make them out to be. I love Preaches content, but his attitude recently regarding new content turns me off. It's a real shame. The community in general has gotten so cynical as well. You can't go 5 seconds without people ranting about the smallest thing.

What do you guys think of preach and the community in general recently? Has anyone else noticed a shift in attitude towards WoW? Do you miss Preaches more chilled out critiques and videos? Maybe all of this has to do with him losing ghost? Not having two opinions bouncing off eachother? I'm not sure. Does the negativity turn you off of the game?

Why do people give that elitist bald fool all this attention? His channel blew up yes, but there is no reason to give him this much attention in public forums.
He is 1 player, with his own views and opinions on the game, based on where and how HE plays. Giving him an echo chamber is the last thing anybody should be doing.
His allcraft appearance where he argued with asmongold about loot trading for an hour was the community's cue to cut ties with the moron, because he very clearly lives in a bubble where everything is perfect and organized.
He constantly speaks down onto the "casual" community in all his videos, even if just passively so, and no one blinks an eye to that.

tl:dr - stop making threads about the opinions of a 40yd old bald dude who spends all day playing video games, and has a depraved community that just needs a voice to stroke their ego.

[Whitedragon]

and? that doesn't refute their point at all, it's just moving the goalpost to the assumption of positivity rather then honesty.
WoD was shit, legion was shitty but better, now BFA is an embarrassment that makes WoD look good, sorry that people stating their honest displeasure with a shitty product is an affront to you, get over it.

WoD was a joke of an expansion that ended with only 2/3rds (or less) of the content of all other expansions, that had nothing to do for many players (especially if you didn't raid much), and lets not pretend that their wasn't some classes that sucked to play back then as well.

BfA is an honest attempt (that isn't even over yet), with things to do. Sadly it dose have some less then desirable systems, but they are still being worked on, and the system seems to be getting better.

And no matter how stupid the HvA story gets (which they are now moving somewhat away from) nothing will ever beat time traveling orcs...

[SirCowdog]

Why do people give that elitist bald fool all this attention?

Even a stopped clock displays the correct time twice a day.

I think you should consider what's being said, and not who's saying it. You might still disagree after taking the time to mull over what's being said in the linked video, but at least you took the time to come to that conclusion fairly instead of summarily dismissing it because "elitist bald fool. :/

[Wangming]

Nah. Nobody is overly cynical. The game just sucks. 8.2 will be a heroic last ditch effort to see if it is any good. I mean it won't be good, but maybe it won't be a disaster.

[MoanaLisa]

It's very clearly a huge old fashioned waterfall cycle from ca. 20 years ago. It did work back in the days when they could "release when ready" - but ever since they started relying on crowdsourcing for bug testing things have turned ugly, because all of a sudden, you have - *gasp* - external people giving feedback.

I think they still have elements that need to be traced through waterfall development even now. They've become pretty agile for fixing bugs and I suspect they've been using agile for the last few expansions on the "temporary" systems. Those though likely need to clear QA to insure they aren't touching foundation code in any serious way. At this point their code must be so far beyond spaghetti code as to be slightly ridiculous. They've talked a bit about it briefly at a couple of engineering panels at Blizzcon, mostly in the form of broad hints, but it's pretty clear that one of their biggest concerns is putting anything new on that trickles down into their older builds.

Some hints here among the boilerplate talk with Wow's technical director.
Quote of interest:

With those expansions, the majority of the changes took place at the very top, stacking content onto what was already there to create a new endgame experience for existing players. But changes at the top ripple into the game's legacy content every time, and the more that is added, the more factors the team must consider the next time they want to make changes.

So clearly new expansion systems are still problematical and they'll never likely be able to eliminate waterfall development issues. Backpack is the one thing that comes up most often but careful reading of blue posts will pop up something about their proc system which sounds like it's more code commented out than live.

EDIT: It was interesting to me that Ion in the last Q&A acknowledged that temporary systems were unpopular and may be reduced. That will be more problems down the line although this expansion brought on board a lot of new technology, particularly AI stuff, that they could spend years on polishing. There's quite a bit of system stuff in this expansion that feels half-baked. And they admit to that.

[Granyala]

The main issue is people who have invested years into the game (9 years here) just want it to get better and under the current structure at Blizzard and Activision it just doesn't seem likely to happen and instead the game continues to focus on metrics that are about "MAUs" or concepts to keep you on the sub hook with RNG, Timegating and other stuff.

The game needs to sort itself out. 8.2 barely sorts it out and instead is doubling down on said metrics/annoyances.

I invested over 10 years into WoW but eventually it was time to move on. Life is change.
I still love the WC universe and I am happy to take a vacation in Azeroth once in a while (read: play for a month when a new expansion is out) but my main game is Ff-XIV now.

[Zarvel]

Even a stopped clock displays the correct time twice a day.

I think you should consider what's being said, and not who's saying it. You might still disagree after taking the time to mull over what's being said in the linked video, but at least you took the time to come to that conclusion fairly instead of summarily dismissing it because "elitist bald fool. :/

This useless response sums up mmo-c.
I did watch his video a few days back (interest piqued after his ban), and as usual it was just him echoing his bubbled opinions.

What this game needs right now, is some fun replayability injected into it, regardless of balance. It is blizzard's wish for ultimate class balance that ruined class gameplay, so much so that now it all depends on expansion features like legion artifacts or the azerite system. But yes, let's complain about the tuning of the first iteration of a bunch of spells on the PTR for content that is literally months away. Are you really that naive to think that if something is brokenly OP on the PTR, it will make it's way into the live game? No.
The whole point of the azerite essences on the PTR is to actually play with them in active content and get a feel for them. Not sit on a dummy for 3-4 mins per essence and come up with opinions entirely based on that. That's beyond stupid for someone whose bubble is ironically that of elitists.
This game is not just made for 500 people who raid mythic. It's made for million(s) who play it to enjoy it as well. Are you telling me you would NOT like to see your character randomly 1 shotting a world quest mob with one of the azerite essence procs? Are you saying that would not be a cool and convenient thing to have?
Are you saying you would not like a semi-permanent boost to one of your secondaries that massively improve the quality and feel of your class+spec's gameplay?


But yeah, go ahead and respond to me again with pointless refutes. Fanbois and bubbles these days, i swear.

[Enosh]

True, even WoD, for its faults had great class design and raiding. The problem was when your raids were done for the week there was nothing else, BFA has the reverse problem, which is much worse - there is a lot to do, but the core gameplay is so weak that you don't want to do all that content.

maybe it's just the classes I tried, but WoD class design was also dogshit
but at least you had the 5 passives you gained during leveling, so it wins out over BfA

[CarlingBlackLabel]

Preach? I clicked on about > support this channel and it leads to his Patreon which says he has 1341 subs and worth $6267/month.

Yes so I am correct in what I am saying. He gets virtually nothing from YouTube as he is blacklisted. I didn't say anything about not getting a good income from other platforms. His Patreon (of which I am one) and Twitch channel are flourishing.

Nice try though

[Dormie]

Honestly the complainers are just white noise to me at this point. Most are so unreasonable that I just file them under "one of those people". They just repeat other people and try to have opinions on content they don't even do. They require on hyperbole in just about everything they say and rarely ever actually articulate themselves past "it's shit". Every one of their arguments comes down to "yea well I'll leave and you won't have anyone to play with!".
/yawn

[Heladys]

Doesn't seem it to me and while it was a bit of a bad move on Blizzard cancelling his trip, they've forgiven him now anyway as they have probably realised he is good for the community and good for the game with his passion, dedication and insight. I feel they've missed a trick by not taking him because of the constructive feedback he is able to give and ideas he can put forward.

Then you didn't pay attention, because after his "i got banned and it's my fault" grovel video, and then his followup video, he did a stream where he alternated between telling everyone over and over how stupid blizzard was for punishing him for something he truly didn't believe he'd get punished for (because that matters), because he has idea, and boy was Blizzard stupid to miss out on his ideas.

He was almost in tears several times.