WoW Desperately Needs Some Kind of a Roundtable Between Devs and Players

[cuafpr]

less of a roundtable but it would be interesting if blizz sent out a request for interviews to players at random, and hosted them on a video call vs always going to known streamers.

[arkanon]

less of a roundtable but it would be interesting if blizz sent out a request for interviews to players at random, and hosted them on a video call vs always going to known streamers.

I cant think of anything worse than a bunch of random wow players having a video call with the devs. Let them make the damn game, if someone doesnt like it, they can play something else. This idea that the game should or could be tailored to suit individuals is ridiculous.

[Thelyron]

We need less of it tbh. Just look at this forum, or even worse, the official forum... yeah no thanks.

90% of the shit the people come up with here on the forum is better than what gets put into the game. Games should be how players want them to be, devs exist to serve.

[Frozenbro]

But actually get in a myriad of different types of player type community leaders and host a long roundtable type discussion between them and key developers.

Could work but i guess you mean someone outside of here, cause this forum is an echo chamber of ex players that are literally widows of X expansion cause the game changed something they liked xd and yes devs actually take the feedback on their official forums, when it comes from people that actually play the game

[Mojo03]

I agree with you. Blizzard should take back ownership of the development of the game, the community is too involved in every aspect of it.

Just look at a company like Nintendo and their IPs. There is no public beta testing, almost no demo (or so late in the dev cycle it's just promo), no communication between devs and players, and they can produce really great games loved by tons of players. They make games with a clear vision, and some decisions may cause friction with weird choices, but they keep producing best sellers. Most studios work like that, really.

With WoW and Blizzard IPs overall, there is no longer any distance between the players and the devs. I think, while it's cool, devs shouldn't make so many interviews with youtubers, explain lore during Q&As, etc. I understand it's their way to create a large community like with Blizzcon and community events, but I don't think it's either productive or healthy. Devs, now, are making the game in a way that it can be tweaked depending on player feedback but at the same time doesn't really want to change much of what they intended. It's a weird in-between that just doesn't work. Devs spend more time justifying their choices and it's just impossible to make everybody happy.

Nintendo makes privately funded curated single player and simple multiplayer experiences.

WOW is ostensibly funded by the community through subscriptions and services and is a massive live service community game. It’s not a great comparison.

They also barely do interviews or really do much to work with or communicate with the community on development, even though the game is being made for the community.

While I’m not sure a round table is the right idea necessarily. Its more that there should be more interaction between devs and community.

I’d also argue that listening to feedback from the community isn’t what’s making the game worse, in fact I think the disconnect between the devs and community is a big reason why the game is suffering.

Though I think it’s actually upper management and the predatory practices they’re ostensibly forcing into the game that are the primary things wrong with the trajectory they’re on.

[unlockedz]

i pretty much avoid streamers, they usually go with whatever popular sentiment is available online and just promote echochamber mentality for viewers/popularity even if they actually don't feel that way.
SL from my pov is fine, in legion/bfa i had 1/1 and a half hours of daily grind which i do not have here, that's a step forward. i just do my vault, try to push some m+ if i feel like it and raidlog for the rest of time. currently i'm in "management mode" 1dungeon+1raid weekly and that's just dandy for me.
i'm totally disconnected from the people calling this "chorelands", in what world do you live in? everything is optional...you play a bit for 1-2 legendary though content that you can either push alone or go harder/slower in a group. it's literally 30-1hr of "chores" a week for 5 weeks and you have the minimum requirement for 2 legendaries, raid in whatever difficulty you want is open.
you add whatever dungeon you can do after that plus raid time and that's it.
only grip i have with is class balance, which has been an issue since forever.

i really want to understand the pov of people with the mentality "make wow great again". i started playing on draenor, which was kinda fun...then the 2nd job called legion spawned which even with all the positives had the worst legendary system i can think of. bfa was something in between...not too bad during 3rd raid especially.
so compared to legion/bfa SL is very low on the time required to play at whatever level you want if you do the minimum required weekly...highest dungeon+raid. that's a win imo.

[haiyken]

Nintendo makes privately funded curated single player and simple multiplayer experiences.

WOW is ostensibly funded by the community through subscriptions and services and is a massive live service community game. It’s not a great comparison.

Well, I have multiple subscriptions to Nintendo services I use with my Switch, there are a lot of DLC for big games like Pokémon and Smash Bros., etc. Of course you can't compare 1:1 Blizzard and Nintendo games, but it's not as different as you think. You seem to think that there is a difference because of where the money comes from, but it's the same really : players buys games, the money goes to the big company, they inject that money to produce games.

I think there is a clear difference in mentality in how the games are made and marketed. Nintendo have a clear vision of the games they want to produce and expect players to buy them as is. Look at Breath of the Wild, breaking the Zelda formula without asking anyone about it, or how they pretty much refuse to make Pokémon games targeted at older players. They pretty much don't care about player feedback and do what they want (often with much success).

I’d also argue that listening to feedback from the community isn’t what’s making the game worse, in fact I think the disconnect between the devs and community is a big reason why the game is suffering.

I see a lot of people talking about this "disconnect" but for what I see, it's really just players not agreeing with the devs statements about the game. The things is, the devs have tons of metrics about their game and know a lot more about how the game is played on a larger scale. If there is a disconnect, it's between the small vocal twitch/youtube/twitter part of the community and the overall milions of players playing the game.

I do agree that some decisions feel very strange, and I personnally don't like some of them, but I don't think hammering on player feedback is key. A roundtable is the worst idea possible, especially in game developement, but pretty much everywhere else as well. It will never be a fair representation of the community. The only way player feedback can work in some way is with surveys like they sometimes do, but not all type of players complete them so it's biased as well.

I personnally think player feedback, especially unsolicited, is a cruch for the devs, making them question what they're doing and slow down in the development of the game. I think it's okay for the devs to take into account what works or not, what's well received or not, but not on impulse, and not by talking with a few (even a few hundreds) players online. Feedback is always biased, that's the problem.

What WoW is currently lacking is a clearer vision, a simpler vision. I don't think players can bring that to the game right now, not with the state the vocal community is in.

[Soon-TM]

I see a lot of people talking about this "disconnect" but for what I see, it's really just players not agreeing with the devs statements about the game.

The problem is that there are no actual dev statements about the game, about what their vision is (especially long term) and what kind of players they are designing the game for. WoW really needs stuff like e.g. the "development manifestos" in Path of Exile, where devs explain the rationale behind the changes they implement and what type of gameplay they want to encourage, as well as things they know aren't working as intended but don't want to touch at a given moment. Something that is sorely missing when it comes to WoW and all those insubstantial motivational talks from Ion where he says a lot of things but very little of it is of any actual significance.

[Nnyco]

90% of the shit the people come up with here on the forum is better than what gets put into the game. Games should be how players want them to be, devs exist to serve.

Haha, good joke... oh wait youre serious. Let me laugh more.

[kaminaris]

Yeah no. What they need is a clear vision of what they want to design without pendulum swings. If they want to make esport instanced based lobby waiting simulator mmo then so be it. But for f sake, let the next expansion, and expansion after that, and every other expansion forever after be catered to the same group of people. So that everyone else will know they are not welcome anymore.

[Kalisandra]

Ghostcrawler was remarkably better at this that any other dev. I think the health of the game and community would be remarkably more healthy if Blizzard had 2-3 devs like that. Yes, he was a bit hated in the day, but I think that's mostly because he was seen as the representative for the entire company by the community because he was the only one who ever really communicated with them.

I used to disagree with him and argue against him on the Blizzard forums a lot. However, unlike many, I never claimed (or believed) that he was a lair, was incompetent, or particularly hated some classes. I respected him quite a bit, but disagreed with him on a lot of points. Time showed that sometimes he was right, sometimes I (and other like-minded players) were, and often neither side was clearly right or wrong.

I miss him as lead dev, especially in LK when he was open and communicative, something that outside of beta-periods stopped after LK. From Cata's launch on Ghostcrawler became less communicative and when he did post something or make a statement it was much more 'corporate' and less personal. I understand the likely reasons why that because the case, but I missed the LK GC.

[erifwodahs]

i'm totally disconnected from the people calling this "chorelands", in what world do you live in? everything is optional...you play a bit for 1-2 legendary though content .

Who is calling it Chorelands? You mean choreghast?
You can call it systemland or boring lands.

Problem is not that there is "chores". Problem is that it's boring as fuck.
I mean they literally managed to make Torghast worse than in alpha. 0 challenge and end-bosses have 1 mechanic which you can't ignore usually and others are insignificant - insult to gamers essentially as at this point you might give us soul as for entering if you lock it behind something a target dummy.
WQ 2.0 is essentially same shit, but with extra steps and 0 challenge. Good thing that it's not mandatory, but it's really bad.
Let's not even talk about the maw. There is nothing to do there and it's worse than WQs are. Because thats what it is - WQs just on shittier terrain and no rewards.

If raids and dungeons weren't good in WoW game would be absolutely fucked.

[Zmagoslav]

If anything WoW needs the exact opposite.

WoW is currently in a very weird state, where it doesn't know what it's supposed to be.
It needs a clear vision and direction, which is what it currently most lacks. It's basically trying to be everything at once, while half-assing everything (yes, that's gonna happen if you stretch yourself out.)

Introducing a round-table like you call it would just further this whole confusing state.

WoW (and by that i mean it's management) needs to decide what WoW is... And that cannot be achieved with "democracy".
That will either succed or it'll fail. Both being prefered outcomes to the current limbo.

[shise]

thats the oposite of what the game needs,keep the players shity opinions as far away from the devs ears as posible,its what got us in to messes in the first place

You are extremely wrong.

Whilst it is true that listening to the player is not really a good idea (because, to what players? wow player base is pretty diverse).
But that is not what got us here.

What got us here is the evolution of the gaming market. Unfortunately, Activision gave it a try and they have discovered that micro and macro transactions are far more profitable than having more players.

To have more players you need quality and content. That takes staff and development, so it is an investment. Shop shit takes maybe 1/10 of the staff and development and sells like hot cookies. Maybe one transactions equals 3 players subscription. It is a sad reality that gamers face today.


Having fools getting happy when they get new shop items does not help (points at the FF player base...) You should get mad at it. Cool stuff should be in the game. I much rather pay a higher sub fee but have a chance at all those things... rather than buying them on the shop, making them completely pointless, useless and a flag for real gamers. (A flag that says: that player is the reason gaming quality is going downhill).

[Razion]

Well, I have multiple subscriptions to Nintendo services I use with my Switch, there are a lot of DLC for big games like Pokémon and Smash Bros., etc. Of course you can't compare 1:1 Blizzard and Nintendo games, but it's not as different as you think. You seem to think that there is a difference because of where the money comes from, but it's the same really : players buys games, the money goes to the big company, they inject that money to produce games.

I think there is a clear difference in mentality in how the games are made and marketed. Nintendo have a clear vision of the games they want to produce and expect players to buy them as is. Look at Breath of the Wild, breaking the Zelda formula without asking anyone about it, or how they pretty much refuse to make Pokémon games targeted at older players. They pretty much don't care about player feedback and do what they want (often with much success).



I see a lot of people talking about this "disconnect" but for what I see, it's really just players not agreeing with the devs statements about the game. The things is, the devs have tons of metrics about their game and know a lot more about how the game is played on a larger scale. If there is a disconnect, it's between the small vocal twitch/youtube/twitter part of the community and the overall milions of players playing the game.

I do agree that some decisions feel very strange, and I personnally don't like some of them, but I don't think hammering on player feedback is key. A roundtable is the worst idea possible, especially in game developement, but pretty much everywhere else as well. It will never be a fair representation of the community. The only way player feedback can work in some way is with surveys like they sometimes do, but not all type of players complete them so it's biased as well.

I personnally think player feedback, especially unsolicited, is a cruch for the devs, making them question what they're doing and slow down in the development of the game. I think it's okay for the devs to take into account what works or not, what's well received or not, but not on impulse, and not by talking with a few (even a few hundreds) players online. Feedback is always biased, that's the problem.

What WoW is currently lacking is a clearer vision, a simpler vision. I don't think players can bring that to the game right now, not with the state the vocal community is in.

You make a lot of good points here. The last point that I'd like to address, where Devs may be lacking a clear direction -- they may want to go one direction, a traditional or expected direction, but may be unable to. Lately there's been a lot of discussion in recent years about playable races and playable classes. These were staples of some of the first expansions, it was the content that was most expected and came to be what people kind of identify along with new continents/worlds that players would generally have in new expansions. But, as more races, classes, places, and content gets added to the game there comes a question of upkeep for a lot of these things. Races need to be updated at some point, as we saw in WoD, and Classes need to be updated periodically like we saw more recently in Legion. The more races and the more classes there are, the more burdensome these updates can become until eventually they may be unable to feasibly add more as they're too busy updating current ones cyclically.

For those making the game and even those who just play frequently, just saying, "okay, just keep adding what people want," is the fast and easy answer that makes people happy in the short-term, but in the long-term people have an expectation of quality. People have criticisms and complaints about wanting certain updates and balancing, and the issue of needing to upkeep things like races or classes may get in the way of the pure stream of content that may otherwise be ideal for the game. If races or classes never saw any updates, ever, the game may start to feel old, it may start to look or feel dated in gameplay. These are the kinds of worries I imagine they wrestle with and that may get in the way of just doing what they and what players may want most. Games like the Nintendo games mentioned don't generally update like WoW does - even the ones with DLC like Smash eventually make sequels or release entirely independent spin-offs from each other, and whatever is in that title is separate and self-contained. Worth noting, recently a lot of mobile titles for WoW were put in place, and the community even now discusses the idea of a 'WoW2' and what that may look like or need in order to be sufficient as a 'sequel' and if WoW even doing this style of release would even be better. Community seems divided on the issue - some want the sequel direction, others don't.

To a certain extent we can also discuss investors and the expectations that features can bring in more players, or that they may somehow drive engagement in the game to keep people subscribed or playing longer, or to address key negative points in the game. Often in the community we hear things like, "who asked for this?" and, "who is this for?" and often times if we look back critically at features of past expansions it becomes more obvious who features were for (Pet Battles have a certain demographic feel that is easily felt, for example - and even now, things like Torghast probably appeals to another type of player, and Artifacts another type of player as well). Of course we could discuss what features hit the mark and became mainstay features of the game, and which other features may have just immediately or slowly disappeared as we progressed from expansion to expansion.

In terms of what WoW is lacking, I think "just going for a clearer, simpler vision," is probably "something they'd love to do, but find their hands tied". We heard the same kind of answers before at BlizzCons, especially as new expansions come on the horizon trying to solve problems and address concerns with new updates. Nintendo has cultivated a brand and community very different from WoW, perhaps in part how they make their games, but I doubt WoW suddenly pulling a 360 and deciding to just do whatever they want may be different in the short term but it's impossible to say if they could keep it going for too long with how connected and critical the WoW community is. How long would it take for the WoW community to change to be one like Nintendo's, if it ever would? Could those making the game even be able to last in such a state for the sake of the playerbase, or is it too against their nature? Is it merely the nature of those making the game to be as involved as they are, and to take feedback as part of their iterative process?

If the premise of how Nintendo makes its games is accurate, it would require an ungodly amount of ear-plugging for the right people to get 'back on track' and isolated within their own bubbles so that they could make the kind of game they and they alone want. And then, if their vision doesn't line up with the playerbase's and people end up getting frustrated, it would be extremely disappointing for the community to try and get through to them at that point. So there's pros and cons here to both approaches, and especially as it relates to WoW's current player-base - it's seemingly so critical, and frankly less fun than one like Nintendo's, it may not even be in Blizzard's best interest to go after this level of change. Does it alienate their current audience? Can they even grab the same kind of audience Nintendo has? And of course, does it make them more money, even, to just have a different type of player-base like Nintendo's? It might make the Devs happier, and for sure burnout could be a problem potentially (or people could just be changing careers after 10, 20+ years) but are the players happier if all their feedback gets ignored when the community is so inherently critical, or would the community really ideally ascend to a state of peace and acceptance if more direct control was taken over the direction of the game or do they just get angry until it boils over one day? If anyone had any kind of estimation for other communities that changed radically over time, that became more positive communities over time due to similar changes or creative process, that could paint a very good picture for what WoW or other games with negative communities may want to do.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

You shouldn't take MMO-C for word. People on here are pretty negative about the game.

Have you taken a peek into other WoW communities besides MMO-C? The WoW fandom has been universally negative for the past 7 years.

[Dracullus]

Having fools getting happy when they get new shop items does not help (points at the FF player base...) You should get mad at it. Cool stuff should be in the game. I much rather pay a higher sub fee but have a chance at all those things... rather than buying them on the shop, making them completely pointless, useless and a flag for real gamers. (A flag that says: that player is the reason gaming quality is going downhill).

I'm not a fan of shop mounts, but it's not a thing that gets worse every year, it's completely opposite. Lets compare current state with 6 years ago during WoD:

- 2014-2015: lot of shop mounts in game are used by Draenor factions, instead reputations and content gives you boars and wolves, only way to get shop mount is to pay directly
- now: new mount introduced every 6 months, 3 ways to get it - pay, loyality program (6 months sub) and gold (someone pays for you and get safe gold); mount situation in game is drastically different than ever before (just visit sites like simple armory and compare), we have shit ton of new mounts and most of them has shit ton of recolors; now very often it's store mounts that are considered ugly.

[oplawlz]

The problem is that there are no actual dev statements about the game, about what their vision is (especially long term) and what kind of players they are designing the game for. WoW really needs stuff like e.g. the "development manifestos" in Path of Exile, where devs explain the rationale behind the changes they implement and what type of gameplay they want to encourage, as well as things they know aren't working as intended but don't want to touch at a given moment. Something that is sorely missing when it comes to WoW and all those insubstantial motivational talks from Ion where he says a lot of things but very little of it is of any actual significance.

I mean it's not much of a discussion. How many ways can they list mythic+?

[KrayZ33]

There is no point.

WoW players live in a dream world and think their opinions matter.
Blizzard does not care anymore. And this isn't about them "changing" or whatever.

The game is in maintenance mode. They simply don't invest as much as they did in the early years. Which is to be expected.

The engine is old too, most of the stuff players want is probably nearly impossible to realize.
For example, housing in WoW would probably end up as the most horrible shit you could imagine, especially considering how limited interactions with objects are in this game.

Oh and the general opinion of gamers is pretty shit.
You can tell by how they see WoW class/spec balance as being "broken". While the devs certainly take their time for number adjustments, it's far from broken and it's not just the top 1% complaining about balance.

So I'd really advise against listening to the community most of the time. They don't know what's good for them.

[Hellobolis]

the only thing you are going to realize if you do a honest roundtable is that you aren't the target audience anymore.

- - - Updated - - -

I agree with Ion on 99% of the things he says, the best part was literally "The math behind gear difference is 1% per item level, if you are seeing anything else its because you are bad at the game".

At least someone official came out and said it.

that's probably true as a average across all classes and specs.

but everybody can name examples of cases where you get more than 1% per ilvl, or even more than 1% for reducing ilvl. not sure how that makes people bad at the game.

if you go back a few years you can also find devs saying set bonusses and trinkets should do 10% of your damage because that's what's required for them to feel meaningful, so it's not like they aren't aware of it either.

all in all: it's a statement that's so broad it becomes meaningless. it's like saying the sky is blue and if you see something else get your eyes checked out, while in reality everybody can easily find IRL situations where the sky isn't blue.