Has player feedback ever made the game worse?

[Akka]

Cataclysm heroics were a response to high-end players in Wrath saying that the dungeons were too easy.

I think you confuse "high end" with "everyone with a pulse" here.

[Soeroah]

Yep!

Back in MoP people complained about dailies, so in WoD we had no dailies, just one "fill the bar" of our choice each day. Very little variety, much of the world was unused and there was little to do outside your Garrison.

People complained about that and we got world quests, which were fine. But now it sounds like we're losing those in favour of dailies, again, which are just inferior to world quests so

The pendulum swings.

[Relapses]

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.

Do you actually think that game development by democracy (a la Runescape) would be a good idea? And if you do, have you read literally any fucking topic on this forum?

[Keyblader]

I think back in cataclysm when it first launched and the heroic dungeons were actually pretty challenging, there was a lot of community complaints that it was too hard. They nerfed em all and they all became dumb easy. Idk if that sounds elitist, it isn't meant to, but they were actually a nice challenge, and people couldn't blow through them, and get their free gear in a pug, so they complained and had them nerfed substantially.

[Krakan]

Do you actually think that game development by democracy (a la Runescape) would be a good idea? And if you do, have you read literally any fucking topic on this forum?

I mean... did you read anything in my post?

For runescape it worked well... the only issue I recall them running into was when they went against it and added something outside of the vote system the players rebelled against.

[Razion]

Worgen and Pandaren implementation come to mind.

People gave feedback that Worgen didn't look enough like wolves, and the entire race ended up getting a complete overhaul with tons of missing hairstyles and a chihuahua face that to this day goes on in infamy. And perhaps as a result, after Cata players gave the feedback that they wanted a thicker race, something more curvy to counterbalance prettier races like Draenei and Blood Elves - with Horde specifically saying they wanted something more bestial to offset prettier Blood Elves to return to more classic Horde roots, with the Alliance wanting something more animal-like as well because all the races they had been getting all looked too similar to humans - and Worgen notably had chihuahua face, which again hadn't been received well and so what ended up happening was a mixture of the two and so Pandaren were made to have decisively cute faces while being a race that was kind of beast-like in terms of being panda or bear inspired. Nowadays I think Worgen are doing a bit better, and maybe Pandaren will too, but I think it's fair to say that early feedback in terms of what players wanted race-wise has always turned out a very mixed bag of results in terms of getting monkey paw wishes.

[DemonDays]

Azerite. With the second content patch basically done as the players wanted it.
No one beside those complaining about everything is still complaining about it.

LOL. Did Azerite talents suddenly become gameplay changing and interesting beyond "RANDOM PROC FOR X MASTERY" in 8.2 did they?

Oh wait. No they didn't. Also - the same Azerite traits that were broken in 8.0 remained broken until 8.3. Literally bare minimum balance to add any sort of variety.

Did Azerite traits swap on swapping specs? No? Oh okay.

Did the respec cost get reduced? No? Oh okay.



Azerite is such a failed concept and system that Blizzard attempted to give you your BEST Azerite traits on all the raid gear in Nyalotha. So you no longer had to try and get them. If that isn't giving up, then what is? They literally had a blog post stating this. They failed though because apparently they don't even know what the best one are in their own game.

[Echeyakee]

I think the issue is that AB tends to be knee-jerky in their responses. As others have mentioned, cata 5 mans were considered too hard by many players (even though they were not hard, just unforgiving), so they overnerfed them in to oblivion. Same thing happened in mop>wod>legion period. People complained about too much daily grind - we get wod raidloging. People complain about that, we get endless grind in legion.

It also works with positive feedback. People liked the artifacts in legion, blizzard goes hard on borrowed powers and endless progression system on BFA. It always extreems with AB.

[Moggie]

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?

Yes! Warlocks, during Alpha and Beta for wotlk. Lock in a top guild submitted feedback how warlocks were too strong, etc... So warlocks got major nerfbat right before it went Live. It was a huge nerf and was just plain idiotic.

Even though others kept saying it, that there was a bug with pallies or some shit which was inadvertently buffing certain classes (maybe druids?). The devs ignored the bug reports and destroyed the class. It took a bunch or hotfixes to bring locks back to competitive levels. Fun times.

[Relapses]

I mean... did you read anything in my post?

For runescape it worked well... the only issue I recall them running into was when they went against it and added something outside of the vote system the players rebelled against.

Why bother mentioning Runescape in the first place? WoW and Runescape have pretty much nothing in common, cater to entirely different demographics and this idea that Runescape handles player feedback better than any other game because they poll their fucking community is actually brain dead when you consider how different most games are from Runescape.

[Tuor]

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.

Perhaps there is some sort of missunderstanding about people leaving at the beggining of cata. I obviously don't speak for everyone, but for me, and yes, i was one of the 100k people that quited at the beggining of cata, for i quited because i needed a break from the game, i actually didn't even tried any of the HC dungeons before the nerf.

But yes, even after the nerf the content got nerfed, doing common stuff we did in wrath, like pugging, became impossible. When i returned i was a month beyond other's, to meke it worst my guild went from a casual raiding guild to almost non raiding, pugging was only possible for Tol Barad, which means i have donne very few bosses in cata.

And all of this, because they actually heard the vocal minority that keeped whinning about content being too easy in wrath. They should have gotten something alongside the ICC 5mans dificulty for cata, and they should have allowed people to pug at least the first bosses of Raids, but they didn't, and even after the nerfs, both 5mans and Raids were still much more changelling then wrath ones, guess what, i actually enjoyed it that way.

[Pakheth]

People complained about too many dailies in MoP and we got Apexis dailies in WoD which suuuucked.

[Relapses]

Perhaps there is some sort of missunderstanding about people leaving at the beggining of cata. I obviously don't speak for everyone, but for me, and yes, i was one of the 100k people that quited at the beggining of cata, for i quited because i needed a break from the game, i actually didn't even tried any of the HC dungeons before the nerf.

But yes, even after the nerf the content got nerfed, doing common stuff we did in wrath, like pugging, became impossible. When i returned i was a month beyond other's, to meke it worst my guild went from a casual raiding guild to almost non raiding, pugging was only possible for Tol Barad, which means i have donne very few bosses in cata.

And all of this, because they actually heard the vocal minority that keeped whinning about content being too easy in wrath. They should have gotten something alongside the ICC 5mans dificulty for cata, and they should have allowed people to pug at least the first bosses of Raids, but they didn't, and even after the nerfs, both 5mans and Raids were still much more changelling then wrath ones, guess what, i actually enjoyed it that way.

Your reason for quitting is the same reason 99% of people quit the game. People don't quit because Warlocks are too OP or the dungeons suck or transmog was added or anything of that pointless bullshit people on the forums will make near-certain arguments about. But since that doesn't fit the happy narrative that "Blizzard doesn't listen to real fans," and "the devs do whatever the fuck they want," you'll rarely see anybody mentioning this around here.

[dcc626]

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

the best question is who would listen to the incessant whining of the playerbase at large and decide to do what they ask for?

- - - Updated - - -

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.

they make changes. the people who then complain arent the people who asked for the changes in the beginning. its not a binary question. yes or no. no matter what they do someone wont be happy.

[Relapses]

the best question is who would listen to the incessant whining of the playerbase at large and decide to do what they ask for?

Well, you see, some incessant whining is more important than other incessant whining and Blizzard simply has a long track record of listening to the wrong incessant whining!

[Belloc]

Yep the beginning of cata was amazing, if you had friends/guild.. after the nerfs (including raids), everyone quit lol.

I will agree that Cata heroic dungeons were pretty much fine -- CC and controlling where your damage goes is not too much to ask for -- but 10-man Heroic raids absolutely needed nerfs. Some of those raid encounters were straight up broken for 10-man.

Heroic Valiona and Theralion had damage numbers and spawn rates tuned for 25-man raids, making it impossible pre-fix. Heroic Magmaw was similarly tuned for 25-man utility/composition. Heroic Maloriak was mainly only killable because it didn't have an enrage timer, since the adds had 25-man heroic health levels (which was later fixed, of course). Heroic Halfus had his interruptable cast reduced in frequency because 10-man groups didn't always have enough interrupts. Heroic Conclave of Wind was just fucking hilariously stupid on 10-man -- totally designed for 25-man utility/composition. Heroic Al'Akir was not an enjoyable fight on 10-man. Heroic Twilight Ascendant Council was easily the most frustrating and stupid fight I've ever had, and that was with its final tuning. I'd have rather smashed my face against Heroic 25-man LK before the raid-wide buff and first kill than spend another second against the Twilight Ascendant Council.

Cataclysm's first tier of content suuuuucked for heroic 10-man at release and was easily more difficult than 25-man heroic. The doable fights were actually a lot of fun, but the broken ones were terrible until they got fixed... and Conclave/Al'Akir/Twilight Ascendants were never enjoyable in the slightest on 10-man just because of how those fights were designed. Now, Firelands and Dragon Soul? They nailed those on 10-man heroic... it just took them a tier to learn how to actually tune 10-mans to be equal to 25-man.

[Deferionus]

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.

I loved BC heroics and Cataclysm heroics were on point when they were released. In general, Cataclysm was absolutely amazing when it first launched. It wasn't until later in the expansion the wheels came off.

[Saltysquidoon]

Heroic Conclave of Wind was just fucking hilariously stupid on 10-man -- totally designed for 25-man utility/composition. Heroic Al'Akir was not an enjoyable fight on 10-man.

I unironically raidlead server first ToT 10man with the 'B' team while the 'A' team was trying to down EM. Listening to the RL pretend to be happy for us was one of the greatest moments in wow for me.

That said ToT wasn't close to an issue at all on 10 man. As you correctly pointed out BoT was the real broken raid, it was pretty funny seeing the forum meltdowns of the guilds that went 10 man to 'trim the fat' getting fucking hammered in the dick because halfus opened on an 'impossible' drake week.

I loved BC heroics and Cataclysm heroics were on point when they were released. In general, Cataclysm was absolutely amazing when it first launched. It wasn't until later in the expansion the wheels came off.

Literally every single complaint I've ever heard about cata beyond 'muh vanilla wurld' was directly tied to dragon soul. I will always stand by the position that cata wasn't a bad expo, DS was a terrible patch.

[RoKPaNda]

I mean most of the things that are complained about in this community are things that Blizzard did because they listened to community feedback. The start of BFA is a good example of that. At the start of Legion people complained about the AP grind and the good stuff being locked behind it, so BFA's Azerite gear had the strong traits up front and the system was boring. People complained about legendaries so they took them out. Between those two things there was fuck all to do in BFA aside from raidlog. People whined for years about TF so we got corruption.

The harder cata dungeons that made the casuals quit was a result of Blizzard listening to feedback about WLK dungeons being too easy. The train wreck that was WOD alienating those casuals and appealing to nostalgia was a result of Blizzard listening to the community tell them to go back to their roots. Listening to this community has historically not been a great thing. They need to stop trying to please everyone and just stick to their vision of what the game is supposed to be.

[Pandragon]

Pretty much every RPG aspect being removed was because of players complaining about having to carry ammo, or reagents. Attunements as well with having to get it for every new raid member to join the raid. Resistance gear cause people didnt want to have to carry multiple sets of gear.