Has player feedback ever made the game worse?

[Fawkess]

Has there ever been times where the devs have listened to player feedback that then made the game worse or had players asking for a revert?

[Saltysquidoon]

A huge complaint during vanilla was that the story had nothing to do with WCIII, which resulted in the classic blizzard overreaction that is TBC's story (which they're still trying to fix).

So yeah...

[rayvio]

absolutely. every single change has had people loving and hating it

[Justpassing]

--- snip ---

[Schattenlied]

Has there ever been times where the devs have listened to player feedback that then made the game worse or had players asking for a revert?

That would first require them to make some sort of meaningful change based on player feedback, which from what I can recall anyways, has never happened.

[DemonDays]

Has there ever been times where the devs have listened to player feedback that then made the game worse or had players asking for a revert?

Cataclysm heroic dungeons were hard at launch.

Actually required co ordination, CC and interupts on trash pulls.

All the dogshit players complained and they got nerfed into the ground.

[Hailic]

Better question is how many times did Blizzard listen to the feedback and do a very good job fixing the problem.
'

[DemonDays]

That would first require them to make some sort of meaningful change based on player feedback, which from what I can recall anyways, has never happened.

What do you mean? Blizzard knows what you want, they don't need feedback. /s

You think you do, but you don't.

Blizzard knows best.

- - - Updated - - -

Better question is how many times did Blizzard listen to the feedback and do a very good job fixing the problem.
'

In the last 6 years?

Basically never.

Whenever they do "listen to feedback" it's always fake bullshit and the system was always designed to fuck you over until the very last patch when the expansion doesn't matter anymore.

See - Legiondaires, Corruption.

[Firebert]

Better question is how many times did Blizzard listen to the feedback and do a very good job fixing the problem[?]

Beginning of Cataclysm: "Raid numbers are down"
Middle of Cataclysm: "Raid numbers are still coming down, especially as we've had cuts to the raid creation team. Only seven bosses and we still can't get people to raid!"
Community: "Well, open up raids the same way you opened up dungeons in 3.3 with the Dungeon Finder"
*LFR created*

*ends up being universally an excellent fix*

[MoanaLisa]

Cataclysm heroics were a response to high-end players in Wrath saying that the dungeons were too easy. I think a lot of the stuff they do over the long run of a couple of expansions is driven to some extent by player feedback. Whether or not you think it makes the game better or worse is up to you.

Anyone that thinks they've never made a change based on what they hear from players is simply wrong. They do all the time but it tends to be over the longer term. It's not difficult to find developer chats and Q&A's where they talk about stuff they've done based on player feedback.

Personally, they are game designers, we mostly are not, so much of what players request ends up being terrible for the game in my opinion.

[Big Thanks]

Worse for whom?

For me? Many times...all the time

For the "many" aka "majority" aka "we have no idea but we assume is the majority"? Cant remember.

[Soon-TM]

absolutely. every single change has had people loving and hating it

Sure, when DKs at launch were obscenely OP, DK players loved it. Indeed, every single change has had people loving it and hating it

I brought the DK issue because they were made basically invincible in response to player feedback, or at least that's what GC said back then. Players then seemed to think that "hero class" should equal somehow to "god mode class", and Blizzard implemented everything... And then had to spend the first half of WotLK trying to rein them in, which tbh they never really achieved until 3.3

[schwarzkopf]

Has there ever been times where the devs have listened to player feedback that then made the game worse or had players asking for a revert?

Absolutely yes... the big one is the player's demands for homogenisation, leading to poor class identity.

[Adam Jensen]

See: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...5#post52466255

I rest my case.

I mean, it's a character that can, through magic, change their form and therefore gender. Of course someone is going to shriek about it. On the left someone will shriek because it violates the ten thousand million ever changing rules the LGBTQ community (and as someone who's very supportive of gay rights, the LGBTQ crowd does have a lot of rules and very poor communication with the rest of the world on what those rules are) and on the right someone will shriek because apparently WoW is pandering to some identity they take offense to.

Been the history of this game really, someone always finds a reason to shriek, be it some NPC's pronouns, or the renaming of a demon hunter's resource (there was a thread about this on MMO-C a few months ago) to making prot paladins viable raid tanks (holy hell the fit prot warriors threw in the BC/Wrath era when these changes were made) to . . . well . . . everything under the sun really.

[Lazuli]

Cataclysm heroic dungeons were hard at launch.

Actually required co ordination, CC and interupts on trash pulls.

All the dogshit players complained and they got nerfed into the ground.

Yep the beginning of cata was amazing, if you had friends/guild.. after the nerfs (including raids), everyone quit lol. I did manage to do a few heroics even in pugs though, but yea it was horrible, but hey get good or get rekt. I loved Blizzards stance at the time, but it didn't last at all. Fucking crybabies refuse to accept that heroic difficulty was just out of their league, instead of staying normal where they belong they QQ until it was nerfed into.. normal?

1 of my most satisfying achievements to this day is doing all of those heroics achieves pre-nerf for the stone drake. The mount is ugly trash, but that shit was pretty difficult at the time.

[DemonDays]

Yep the beginning of cata was amazing, if you had friends/guild.. after the nerfs (including raids), everyone quit lol. I did manage to do a few heroics even in pugs though, but yea it was horrible, but hey get good or get rekt. I loved Blizzards stance at the time, but it didn't last at all. Fucking crybabies refuse to accept that heroic difficulty was just out of their league, instead of staying normal where they belong they QQ until it was nerfed into.. normal?

1 of my most satisfying achievements to this day is doing all of those heroics achieves pre-nerf for the stone drake. The mount is ugly trash, but that shit was pretty difficult at the time.

Now almost every single aspect of the game outside Heroic/Mythic raiding and very high Mythic+ keys are an absolute joke difficulty wise.

There is not a single piece of content that requires CC and good execution of interrupts like old Heroic dungeons used to.


Almost every single piece of content has "difficulty" tacked onto it with a timer. Race against the clock guys! That makes it difficult! RUSH RUSH RUSH.

[Mysterymask]

That would first require them to make some sort of meaningful change based on player feedback, which from what I can recall anyways, has never happened.

World Quests, Warmode, LFR, LFD, Mythic+, Transmog, Authentiactors, AH changes, etc etc etc....would like a word with you

[Amaterasu65]

Gameplay wise, no. Storywise, definitely.

[Kumorii]

Depends if you like the change or not.
Almost everything in wow has been changed due to complaints or feedback. If you dislike something that's changed there is a big chance it was due to feedback. With that you should be able to answer your own question.

[Krakan]

Player feedback is vital with a unified community like runescape for example .

It is however wholly destructive with wow. The problem? WoW massively overhauls its content every expansion to the point it almost goes as far to cater to a new audience. A player who started in one version of the game is usually given a utterly alien game in about the length of time of an expansion.

Compare vanilla to wrath or wrath with mop

This constant shifting of demographics has left the wow community fractured into dozen of sub groups who all kinda hate one another.

You end up needing to cater to sections of the community rather than all of it as time goes on.