The amount of complaining on is starting to get quite silly.

[Tesshin20]

Why would anyone give developers any benefit of the doubt with their track record?

To add to that the only times in the past they have every reacted to feedback was when it came with a crushing wave of criticism mostly all of it in some form of " WTF were you thinking?".

There is roughly a month before launch and monks dont have a spec that does higher then tank damage reliably, Classes are seeing 30%+ dps differences BETWEEN THE SAME SPEC based on what covenants and conduits they are using, pvp consists of one shot one kill , and they are talking about adding a massive grind to a zone that is painfully unfinished and it is clear there isn't nearly enough time to develop it left.

Blizzard flat out lied to its consumers saying that if the worst case scenario came they could easily gut the new systems and yet people weirdly here are hell bent on sticking up for them.

I enjoy the product I won't lie but these constant massive overhauls each expansion into more and more broken systems are an increasing annoyance. I admit at this point I wish that activision would be bought up wow could try its hands under the direction of a new development team.

I know what types of statement you are refering to and you are mostly incorrect in your statements.

There is no reason to assume monks arent being looked at. The 30% difference is based on Preachs anecdotal testing he even admits is faulty so I wouldn't read anything into that really. They are basically 2 people slapping a target dummy. It doesnt constitute into proper testing at all.

And no they didn't lie because they didn't say that. I know what you are refering to. Ion said that if they want to make all abilities available to everyone, they could. But in no way shape or form did he make this verbal contract with the community that if the 1% complains enough they would do any changes. They can choose to do this by their own will or not.

[Nerovar]

* I agree. I didn't claim otherwise either. I think I even said just that. Its a simple observation on my part that people repeat the complains by youtubers word for word using the same vocabulary implies that they have just copied that specific opinion, rather than coming to the conclusion themselves. Again, this might not be the case all the time. But it does happen frequently.

Many people use the exact same arguments with the exact same vocabulary because they agree with these YouTubers/Streamers and want to signal boost their messages to bring it to Blizzard's attention. That's usually all there is to it.

* When was balance at better state? Beign part of this forum for 10 years and official wow forums for 15 I read complains about balance all the time and never have people been happy with it. I am fully aware of the issues with Monks, and they are at the bottom, and I hope it gets adressed. Though, it doesn't make monks useless. They do damage and bring some utility. You basis for evaluating BFA comes from the premise that things must be balanced. I simply don't hold that opinion any more. Of course, extremes have to be dealt with, which was done with shadowpriest, protection warriors and etc. The developers time is best served by making interesting and fun classes, balancing contradicts that (most of the time) as balancing usually tends to make it more similar to other classes. For example, every class now has a personal cd, a 3 min raid cd, an interrupt, a snare and a movement increase is a result of balancing, though class identity suffers, which in my subjective opinion is far more important.

*Well the premise again is that borrowed power create problems and I do see that perspective if you think that everything must be balanced. If your main concern is balance then Twilight Devastation is a problem. If not, you don't mind it. I also mentioned that artifact weapons and set bonuses in vanilla are not the same. But they are similar in concept that they are both borrowed power. My point equating them is prove that we are not unfamiliar with having power for just a raid tier or an expansion and my issue is that somehow this is a huge problem now. I simply don't see it as I don't think they introduce problems for the majority of the playerbase. I do accept that corruption is huge issue if you are a competetive arena player.

You say that you don't care about the game being balanced anymore but why would you bring up game balance in your original post then? Seems a bit contradictory on your part. And by the way: no one thinks the game can be perfectly balanced and no one demands perfect game balance when they ask Blizzard for specific balancing changes. It's usually about eliminating extreme outliers and making the overall gaps in performance e.g. between specs smaller.

The reason why borrowed power is a "huge problem" now and wasn't back when it existed in the form of set boni, legendaries etc. is that the extent to which these borrowed powers impact your gameplay has shifted to a ridiculously large degree where you had classes that effectively do 80% of their damage by means of essences/azerite/corruption without any real tie in to the actual character class. Not only is this antithetical to what RPG character progression should be about, it's also a balancing nightmare and it's simply unfun to a lot of players because they don't feel like they "own" the outcomes of their gameplay.

"Borrowed power" in Classic (or any of the older expansions) in the form of Legendaries or set boni modified the way your character played or simply boosted your character's performance without diminishing or taking away from your original RPG decision making (meaning what class you play, what talents you picked, what spells you use etc.). It's a very unintrusive design that's usually nonetheless interesting and it works without causing any big problems.

*I see that. However its easier to developers to justify the removing of borrowed power that belongs thematicly to an expansion, rather than the justification of removing class abilities. There are no way to justify that other than button bloat, which is a valid concern if taken to the extremes for sure.

That's not entirely true. People were extremely upset after Legion when they lost their borrowed power. The same thing will probably be true once people get to play Shadowlands (though to a lesser degree since BfA borrowed power was much less well-received). So you don't really fix the issue of upsetting people with the removal of player powers (borrowed or not).
Apart from that, there's countless of other solutions Blizzard could come up with as a response to this problem. Horizontal progression (like in Elder Scrolls Online) which allows you to earn new talent options without necessarily increasing the total number of spells people have on their bars would be only one example.

[Hibiki]

Ppl got valid points, if feedback is read after 4 months something is VERY wrong.

[Rendark]

People are complaining a lot because i guess there's a lot to complain about.

[Dracullus]

snip

Amen brother. I don't have autism, but I like to analize data and have rather good memory. People often:
- parrot streamers/youtubers,
- pretend they decided to quit overnight over some often minor change (days/weeks/months later you see same name pop in different discussion),
- don't understand they are not center of the universe and compromises must be made to target bigger crowd (many times I saw comments that it's MISTAKE that Blizzard design WoW for many types of players, imagine that)
- use cliche "arguments" (devs=lazy, Ion=Satan/lawyer, class design=shit, expacs from 5+ years ago=goodoldtimes, Activision is responsible for everything, MAUs are only thing that matter for devs, recently this whole shit about "borrowed" powers like every WoW expac wasn't hard reset and redesign already)
- attack every critique about them and assume that we "fanboys" want to shut "constructive criticism" (in their eyes).

But sadly your thread is pointless. We know this already, they won't listen anyway. WoW will go on, they will follow and bark at every patch. All you can do is to laugh at them and try to find people that really want to discuss all ups and downs of game without fanboy/hate circlejerk.

[ClassicPeon]

I dont agree with everything the OP said but this forum would be a much better/more interesting place with better mods who would weed out people complaining/white knighting without having a single original thought on the subject they are talking about, at the same time as having no intention of arguing their point of view.

A point system for people who present opinions as facts then scuttle off as soon as they are called out because they cba to argue their case would be a decent start.
And perhaps some mods who didnt just hide behind the "trolling" word as a way of punnishhing people who go against their own personal agenda.

[SirBeef]

Doesn't this solely depend on the criticism?
Take Island Expedition or Warfronts, how in one supposed to prove that those aren't exactly fun game modes, or the very opposite, that they actually are fun?

You can't measure enjoyment, nor read it out of a graph.

Exaggeration is a subjective term.

No, but too often subjective things are criticized by those that don't like them as if it is objective fact. Also, as you are well aware, mist often thise criticisms just say this feature sucks. Rarely is the reason the poster dislikes something subjective is offered, and even more rarely is there a suggestion on how to fix or change the feature for the better.

I mean if it wasn't so common place Blizzard wouldn't have made posts numerous times on the official forums about what good feedback vs bad feedback looks like.

Good feedback is rare.

[Tesshin83]

I think you have A LOT of good arguments here but in my opinion you get it a bit "wrong" on some specific subjects:

1) The class balance video


I think I know what video you are referring to. In this video the youtuber was as example complaining about Blizzard's lack of response to the community. On the monk forum a lot of people had use large potions of their time to give Blizzard very valuable feedback on bugs etc. However it took Blizzard 4 months to simply respond to the monk thread. I do believe this is a very valid point of complaint when Blizzard themselves have advocated that they would listen and interact more with the community. People are basically helping Blizzard improving the game for free and all they want in return is just a little bit of respons and gratitude. I think that is fair.

It is also very true that Blizzard did very little class tuning for the entirety of BFA and that certain specs were basically left in the dust for the whole expansion while others specs where demi-gods for the whole time. This is a fact and not subjective.


2) "Keeping" systems


I think to some degrees that you have misunderstood the point of people saying that Blizzard should keep systems. It's not about transferring for example Garrisons or Azerite gear to the next expansion. It's about looking at the good aspects of the Garrisons and Azerite gear and taking advantage of these. If a system didn't work out completely it's not necessarily reason to completely scrap the system entirely. Sometimes it seems like Blizzard are starting from scratch in situation where they don't necessarily have to. Innovation is fantastic but you don't have to reinvent the wheel every 2 years. I know this is exaggerated but I think it illustrates where you might have missed the point. It's not about transferring exact copies of the systems. It's about look at what elements worked out great and then reusing them for the next expansion in some form. Blizzard are actually doing this very well in Shadowlands where they for example are going to reuse the element of legendaries somewhat similar to Legion legendaries, but without the same acquisition method as this was the main point of complaint in Legion. So they are in this case actually transferring the good elements while leaving the bad element behind which is really what people have been asking for.


3) Borrowed powers


I also think you miss the point here a little bit. I do think that most people can see the need for borrowed power as you describe it. Otherwise the inflation of abilities etc. would get out of hand. However, what people do complain about is that the base class is sometimes forgotten in the process of making these borrowed power systems. The basic class design should always be the number one priority and the borrowed power should then come on top of that. But in many cases through the last 2 expansions Blizzard have been too busy with working on the borrowed power systems that they have ignored fundamental issues the with baseline classes and this is what people are complaining about. And I actually think that Blizzard agrees on this point that the fundamental class design should always be solid and the borrowed systems should be some extra spices on the classes.


4) History
Again, I think a lot of your arguments are on point. But we also cannot ignore the fact that Blizzard have made some bad decisions throughout the last 3 expansions which they themselves have admitted to afterwards. So when we the players see signs of history repeating itself, it is completely fair and rational to give constuctive feedback. There are multiple cases now of Blizzard saying: "Trust us. It will work on launch" and then it turned out not to work. So when Blizzard currently are saying "Trust us. We will balance it" and the player then are looking back a the corruption system, it's only natural that we get a bit worried.

But I agree that there are "doomsayers" out there who simply wants to insult Blizzard for the sake of it. And overall WoW is a fantastic game. We have to remember that a lot of the people who complain about specific features in WoW only do it because they really love the game. Otherwise they wouldn't care.

If everbody who disliked the aspects of the game made their posts like this, my post would be invalid.

Even though I disagree a bit you at least explain the issue.

[SirBeef]

I never get this dismissive attitude... wow has some real issues and this expansion at least from a systems perspective seems to be terribly rushed. What your doing isn't helping anyone..

It would be like saying people said wow was going to be the runescape killer yet who powers Venezuela's economy? Never mind wow's sub numbers are a fart in the wind to the true mmo king.

Rather then trying to suppress people bringing up legitimate issues with the game by bringing up unrelated information why not try to see why having the same specs do 30-40% dmg might be something we should really be clamping down on with about a month to go before launch?

I have no problem with people bringing up real issues if they are well though out, back by facts or statistics, and not just a whinefest which usually is the case.

Case in point, early covenant discussions were nothing but sky is falling comments from people that were not even testing it. Once some tuning happened, more people were in beta, and more infor came out, it's no longer the dire situation people claimed it to be a few months ago.

Don't jump the gun, wait for information to be presented, and make a clear, concise, and emotional free argument, and we can debate.

[Tesshin83]

Yeah just consume the product. Never question dev decisions no matter how awful they are, because that's exactly how you improve on a game - by never giving negative feedback.

/s

I think feedback is great. I am more refering to people exaggurating and also talking about people who adopt blindly some youtubers opinion right or wrong instead of making their opinions.

- - - Updated - - -

This is a great post, and I agree with it entirely.

‘Borrowed power’ has happened every expansion. Just before it was always baked into new spells and talents which would then get changed in the next expansion and classes would be completely reworked.

This was massively unsettling and caused huge complaints that your character would play completely differently form one expansion to the next. Yes there are occasional ‘reworks’, but this is not the norm anymore.

Now your base character is somewhat similar and each expansion you get different toys to use in conjunction with them. I agree with you, this is a great compromise and solution. Ingenious I would say. People don’t know what they are complaining about.


Next people complain about ‘raid or die’, because raids will give ever so slightly better gear than M+. This is a laughable exaggeration of the old state of WoW, where dungeons would become worthless as soon as the first tier of raid came out, and would remain so until the end of the expansion. There was no ‘normal mode’ for casuals only heroic and mythic modes. So there was literally no way to advance your character without serious raiding time. We are so far removed from that it isn’t funny.

It’s great that M+ exists. It is the best feature WoW added for a long time. But raids take more effort, more people and more coordination. Just as there was always tension between 10 man and 25 man raids, now there is tension between 5 man dungeons and raiding. End result is, the more players involved means the more investment players need to make into the game. And more investment should = slightly better rewards.

People are getting mad about a few ilevels, when they aren’t even doing any content where such ilevels will be required.


People moan about class balance, but class balance has never even better. You are 100% always better off with skilled players, rather than bad players but of the right class. That was not always the case. Things used to be really bad, and certain specs were not allowed in serious content. That doesn’t happen now unless you have a stupid guild master/leader.


You are right, the community is so toxic now. It’s like an old marriage which has turned bitter. No one sees the good in anything. People jump to the worse case scenario. The developers don’t get the benefit of the doubt. The playerbase on these sites is turning into a whingy self-entitled blob of negativity, and as you correctly identify, the ‘influencers’ on YouTube and the rest stoke the flames of controversy for their own ends, and so many people’s opinions are influenced in negative ways. Usually at the same time as complaining that others are not thinking for themselves!


Now WoW is not perfect, and there are legitimate criticisms, but overall it is a great game, with a great world, great systems and classes, a great lore, an ever improving story experience. This game is better now than at any time in its history, and I have played since classic.

I don’t want to return to classic where everything was slow, class specs were not balanced, and the game was very shallow.
Or TBC where end game was just serious raiding and almost no storyline. Illidan, Kael’thas, it could have been cool.
Or WoTLK which was mostly just Naxxramas for the first year, a rehash from classic, cleared on the first week of the expansion. A great raid Ulduar whose life was cut short for the Argent Tournament, and super easy dungeons with very few ways to progress outside of raiding.
Or Cataclysm and MoP where end fame was just raiding and if you weren’t in a raiding guild you hardly saw any new content. Except for LFR, and we all know how fun that was. At least with SoO we finally got a flexi mode and addons which allowed and encouraged people to step up into raiding without needing a guild.
WoD which could have been good if not for the Garrison.

And then, Legion and BfA, the best the game has ever been. Great raids. Great class identity. Purposeful dungeons throughout the expansion cycle with M+. Cross realm group finder for making raids without needing to be locked in a raiding guild. A great storyline with all our favourite characters (minus Sylvanas!), and lots of cool expansion systems to use with our characters. Amazing huge zones and beautiful music. Greater player customisation and my Tauren now has a totem.

Hopefully Shadowlands will be more of the same because this game is amazing and never been better. The devs deserve a medal for making such an old game fresh, contemporary and amazing to play.

Peace.

I agree with most things here. Thanks for posting.

[Kralljin]

No, but too often subjective things are criticized by those that don't like them as if it is objective fact.

That doesn't dismiss the criticism, it's the way the criticism is presented you have an issue with.

When i say "Many people dislike Island expeditions" (which is in theory a proveable statement) and fail to provide any source, then that doesn't mean Island Expeditions are good or the rest of the criticism towards Island expeditions is somehow "false".

This goes both ways, people love to criticize the format rather than the discuss the actual issue at hand.

Also, as you are well aware, mist often thise criticisms just say this feature sucks.

I somehow believe that the OP didn't feel the need to create this much of a post because of the random 1-2 line OP's that just say "X sucks".

Rarely is the reason the poster dislikes something subjective is offered

dislike and subjective in the same sentence.
You see the connection here? When you dislike something it's quite often subjective.
Disliking objective things, such as 1+1=2 is a tad bit stupid.

If i were to say that i dislike titanforging because it's too much RNG, isn't that subjective as well?
Is this bad feedback in your eyes?

This is a game, not a science project, the very reason people play this game is subjective, hence criticizing something based on subjective factors is pretty damn normal.

and even more rarely is there a suggestion on how to fix or change the feature for the better.

Blizzard also said on occassion that suggestions for fixes aren't necessary for feedback.

After all, the relation between developer and player is not eye to eye, players don't need offer to fixes or suggestions to justify their feedback or criticisms.
It's good provide them, but optional, because figuring out how to solve an issue is the developer's job, not the players, they need to look at the greater picture.

That aside, there are more than enough people that then proceed to poke holes in your suggestions rather than discuss the actual issue, so people start arguing over the proposed fix rather than the actual problem.

I mean if it wasn't so common place Blizzard wouldn't have made posts numerous times on the official forums about what good feedback vs bad feedback looks like.

They post this because people are ask for it, because some people want to help the developers to improve the game.

Check out the Beta Forums, people wrote entire essays about certain Classes / Specs in their respective threads.
(But hey, gotta check those out and not just stick to MMO-C, right?)

Feedback at the end of the day isn't something everybody needs to provide.
That aside, it's the CM's job (you know, said job where Blizzard laid off a few people two years ago) to sift through forums and find valueable feedback, not every post must be upheld to a gold standard.

[Xalea]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. OPs like these are simply veiled parts of cancel culture, which say 'if you don't agree with me then shut up and go away.' That's not really a solution to anything.

It's called denial. Denying a problem, or at the very least denying that other opinions exist, is a mental illness. That's our society today, and it's reflected here like it's reflected everywhere.

[mhdoe]

At this point I am convinced that the people come here to to act up and complain for attention

[Reivur]

I'm mostly OK with OP's message. However I'm surprised about two aspects. In particular the autism (I'm not saying you're not autistic nor am I being pedantic as to use it as an insult, will come back to this later) and the BFA messaging. If I teach a Parrot how to say Hello because its said so frequently its not as if Greetings are suddenly improper and have no value, and that's really all I need to say about BFA being Garbage. Its been talked about ad-nauseam and if you want to have an individualistic discussion on it I'd be happy to bring it to PMs why I dislike it but I think its very fair to say that there are plenty of immediate reasons people don't like it and want it to end, the biggest being obvious signs of a complete lack of quality control. (When corruptions need 50% nerfs immediately, did they really test it? REALLY? Are essences supposed to be choice based? Really? Who picks Ripple in Space as a primary unironically without crippling their character regardless of role? Anyone? Is that really supposed to be a 'choice'?)

As for the autism thing one thing many people learn over time is pattern recognition. Its actually something a lot of people who are autistic focus on from most forms of observation I've read on the subject. So I'm actually surprised by the optimism you present about Covenants and in particular their 'choice based', borrowed power nature that shapes your character when previous borrowed power systems that weren't tailored to your character (Unlike Legion weapons where they were tailored to specs) have fundamentally failed. I don't think its unreasonable for someone to go "If 1 becomes 2, and 2 becomes 3, and 3 becomes 4, and 5 became 6, then clearly 7 is next" to a system that genuinely has not improved.

The only reason I'm even a little optimistic at the moment is
1) I already have Shadowlands paid for anyway, so why would I want a product I already own to fail?
2) They're implementing all these systems at once instead of layering them further down the line. Supposedly. But even this makes me reluctant, because from my understanding of past Dev streams Essences were created because Azerite failed at their goal of being as exciting as Legion Artifacts, not because Essences were an intended system. Although I still fail to understand why Corruption was added other than a need to layer more shit on top.

[ClassicPeon]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. OPs like these are simply veiled parts of cancel culture, which say 'if you don't agree with me then shut up and go away.' That's not really a solution to anything.

It's called denial. Denying a problem, or at the very least denying that other opinions exist, is a mental illness. That's our society today, and it's reflected here like it's reflected everywhere.

Being entitled to your opinion and presenting your opinion as a fact isnt the same thing.

Not that you arent entitled to think you are right, but when you present your negativity as a fact, as a proxy of someone else, and you cant argue the case it gets real tiring.

What makes you capable of arguing something is a mental illness btw?

[razorpax]

i dont like the fact that since WoD we havent gained a permanent power gain outside of the few passives and couple spells we get in SL

[WowIsDead64]

...

Overall I agree, that sometime people complain about changes, that are made because previously some other people or may be even the same people asked to solve some problems and Blizzard have come out with some sort of "solution". But sometimes players are right, because Blizzard do things wrong way - not the way, players asked them to do. So called "borrowed power" for example. People actually asked to return such important RP thing, as talent trees. Because it was interesting for them to have more character customization. And before you will say, that talent trees were boring due to +X stat talents. Well, that was because Blizzard had technical limitations back then, that limited amount of interesting game mechanics. Now they have many interesting playstyle-changing talents to fill talent trees. Talent trees are extremely interesting concept, because you can choose between being jack of all trades vs specializing on something. And what "borrowed power" is about? Is it about customizing your character? No. It's about taking your baseline power away, making you extremely weak and forcing you to grind this power back for months in time-gated fashion. Is it really what we were asking for?

And some players, including me, asked for endgame progression. I was asking for it, because I realized, that players had more motivation to complete whole 5ppls instead of all that skip-everthing-speedrunning M+ crap, if they give them viable reward - experience. But again. I didn't want my character become weaker and be forced to grind that power back for months. And of course I didn't want this grind to be infinite. It's Blizzard, who had done it wrong way.

This makes game alt-unfriendly, because alts need to regrind all that power again, again and again, that isn't actually possible, when no viable enough catchups exist, like it was in BFA. I guess, that's because "Players play alts only if they run out of content on main" misconception, Blizzard currently have. They don't understand, that some players just like alts. May be they are completionists and don't treat game as completed before they try all possible classes/specs and get all possible rewards. Yeah, Any% is enough for some players, but some game in complete only when it's 100%, not even 99. May be they are casuals and prefer leveling as their major kind of content. May be they just like character progression and endgame just doesn't give them enough of it. May be they just like diversity and want to try different things. Many reasons. And "borrowed power" is just another obstacle on their way - not thing, that makes game more interesting for them.

Why players become haters and toxic? Because Blizzard ignore their feedback, no matter how constructive it is. First players try to provide it, but then just become sarcastic about this situation or toxic. Because at some point it becomes obvious, that Blizzard care about $$$ only, not about players, as it was back in old times.

[Schmilblick]

Wall of text that I won't read to complain about complainers, sweet.

[ClassicPeon]

Wall of text that I won't read to complain about complainers, sweet.

Perfect example of someone who is actually just trolling. But the mods wont do anything about this because it doesnt directly go against their ideology

[Icelin]

Why players become haters and toxic? Because Blizzard ignore their feedback, no matter how constructive it is. First players try to provide it, but then just become sarcastic about this situation or toxic. Because at some point it becomes obvious, that Blizzard care about $$$ only, not about players, as it was back in old times.

First of all, your signature is cute.

Second of all, I have been talking about Blizzard abandoning the old business model of customer satisfaction for a while now. This should be a given with any business as no customers equates to no business. (Some argue it was never there to begin with. As there has been Meme's like: Don't you guys have phones??)I kept wondering what would be the new motto and business model. I actually stumbled on to it this morning. The official Blizzard motto, "Profit over People." Ya that sounds about right. In more aspects than one.