Negativity taking over forums?

[SirCowdog]

PTR's and betas are for two things:

1. Primarily: Finding bugs and fixing them.
2. Secondarily: Gathering feedback on systems/features for future reference.

Anyone that believes that their individual or collective beta/PTR feedback is going to result in a total revamp or removal of some feature or system is going to be disappointed. Game development is not up for a vote, nor should it be.

I dont know...it seems to me you haven't been paying attention to all the changes over the years.
If you follow the forums and the patch notes constantly you will see a correlation between player feedback and changes made to the game...every single patch.
Even your Q&A reference is off.
Because Ion is constantly lamenting over design choices they have made in said Q&A's.

Are those lamentations genuine or not? I dont know, but he is constantly hitting himself on the interviews.

That's part of the source for the perception that Blizzard doesn't listen, then. Even if Blizzard does take the feedback into account, their inability to implement it in a timely manner, while making changes no one asked for, and then making some pointless "We learned a lot from this mistake" posts.....it's not useful. It only serves to infuriate the section of the playerbase that's paying attention to these problems(perceived or otherwise).

I mean...I don't want to think about a development cycle that's so bad, and so screwed up that they have to cut an entire expansion(WoD) off halfway in order to course correct into the next expansion, and then still can't even get many of the player-identified problems fixed until a x.2 patch or later. We're seeing something similar in BfA, where we're down to 8.2 before many of the problems players have been complaining about since beta are even starting to be addressed.

I know that there's all kind of explanations about how cumbersome 15+ years of code is. You can use any rationalization you want to explain it, but at the end of the day if their response time is THAT bad, then maybe they need new leadership or a new approach to how they go about fixing the game or changing course.

And none of this is helped by the way in which Blizzard employees like Ion and Lore respond to the players when they ask "WTF mate?" A dev Q&A months after the trainwreck might help to explain what happened, but it doesn't have any practical benefit for people playing the game while the problems are still in full effect.

This is clearly a problem, both for the players in terms of perception and understanding, and for the devs in terms of presentation and reaction speed. I can't help but think there has to be a way to clean things up on both ends somehow.

[Verdugo]

PTR's and betas are for two things:

1. Primarily: Finding bugs and fixing them.
2. Secondarily: Gathering feedback on systems/features for future reference.

Anyone that believes that their individual or collective beta/PTR feedback is going to result in a total revamp or removal of some feature or system is going to be disappointed. Game development is not up for a vote, nor should it be.

Forums are fine for collecting all of that. People that don't find anything especially wrong or either never test or don't mind the stuff they try aren't going to say much.

This would have a merit if BLIZZARD CMs DIDNT ADMIT THAT THEY SHOULD HAVE LISTENED MORE!

[Beefkow]

What key levels are you doing?

I don't mind people using the meta when doing 20s, but whenever I see people doing 10-15s and they HAVE to have a certain setup I laugh every time.

18-20 keys.

I mained dps warrior but was forced to go prot due to the meta and the fact that dps warriors bring nothing to the group.

We always have 1 rogue in our group, it just feels wrong to not include a rogue.

[MoanaLisa]

This would have a merit if BLIZZARD CMs DIDNT ADMIT THAT THEY SHOULD HAVE LISTENED MORE!

It's easy enough to say "we should have paid more attention" while understanding that as a practical reality it was not going to change the design in any immediate way. It might down the road but not during beta or PTR which are very thinly attended relatively speaking and which are primarily about finding bugs.

Also, you don't need to yell. We can read.

[SirCowdog]

It's easy enough to say "we should have paid more attention" while understanding that as a practical reality it was not going to change the design in any immediate way. It might down the road but not during beta or PTR which are very thinly attended relatively speaking and which are primarily about finding bugs..

But what happens when the apologies for missed opportunities and poor results becomes a pattern of behavior instead of an exception? This is what I see happening with Blizzard and WoW. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but it seems to me that the "we learned a lot from this" excuse has worn out it's welcome.

Again, if their design process or organization and pacing of development is such that it consistently causes problems which last 6 months after the launch of an expansion, then they need to address that problem instead of fobbing it off as the cutomers being unreasonable. The customers have every right to have a poor reaction when this keeps happening!

[Shakana]

Point is: You wait years for a Game of Thrones Season to get A FREAKING DARK EPISODE when it's suppose to be a greatest battle of all times and not even fel vision helped me but it's expected for blizzard to do all this that between the little time prompt release of the expansion and the feedback received in months (when they might be working already on something else) to be all changed and not being able to fix so much stuff at once as people would like? Shame on you and on Game of thrones!!!! that made me wait all this years to have sight problems

--- snip ---

[SirCowdog]

it's expected for blizzard to do all this that between the little time prompt release of the expansion and the feedback received in months (when they might be working already on something else) to be all changed and not being able to fix so much stuff at once as people would like?
--- snip ---

First off. Don't fucking post spoilers.

Second: this is an issue I've been talking about for a little while now. If their development cycle is such that they can't make changes based on feedback in a reasonable amount of time, then they need to seriously look at restructuring or streamlining their development methods. Forcing a bad mechanic or game system for 6+ months because they're too cumbersome of inefficient to course-correct isn't something the players should have to suffer through. Nor is it something we should pay for.

[sam86]

I dont know...it seems to me you haven't been paying attention to all the changes over the years.
If you follow the forums and the patch notes constantly you will see a correlation between player feedback and changes made to the game...every single patch.
Even your Q&A reference is off.
Because Ion is constantly lamenting over design choices they have made in said Q&A's.

Are those lamentations genuine or not? I dont know, but he is constantly hitting himself on the interviews.

u just came from exp where they gave us legendaries in patch 7.3.5 as ppl were asking since exp started and was pita for progression raiding guilds and also in same exp everyone since beta warned them that AP farming would take ages and they finally nerfed it - again - in 7.3 in last patch possible for game when many left the game already, and u call that they 'listening'? what if they weren't listening then? they would changed it in 8.0 after it get removed from game?
Pruning - as well as the 'new' talent system - happened because balance was nightmare to them, in wrath there was many patches that just come to nerf a weird talent build that make someone op in pve (like rogue sub/ass infinity combo points build) or pvp (like healing protadin), their 'solution' was to remove it all together for a far simpler system that is easier to balance because 'surprising' the passive talents actually had insane effect in-game that ppl didn't think how impactful they were, since WoD and ppl HATE pruning, no one who likes rpg want to lvl to lose more power and abilities, yet blizz is sticking to the end since pruning = far easier balance for game
Do u remember when classes were unique ? When warrior had long but OP cds ? When rogues had the most cd class? when reagents were thing? when hunter pets actually had a presence beside an afk dps bot?

- - - Updated - - -

Anyone that believes that their individual or collective beta/PTR feedback is going to result in a total revamp or removal of some feature or system is going to be disappointed.

tell that to blizzard 14 years ago, because they literally did that way back then, the most famous example is warrior class (they even hired the guy who did the beta testing for them later)
it is more accurate to say that activision don't do that, blizzard definitely did before

[Big Thanks]

u just came from exp where they gave us legendaries in patch 7.3.5 as ppl were asking since exp started and was pita for progression raiding guilds and also in same exp everyone since beta warned them that AP farming would take ages and they finally nerfed it - again - in 7.3 in last patch possible for game when many left the game already, and u call that they 'listening'? what if they weren't listening then? they would changed it in 8.0 after it get removed from game?
Pruning - as well as the 'new' talent system - happened because balance was nightmare to them, in wrath there was many patches that just come to nerf a weird talent build that make someone op in pve (like rogue sub/ass infinity combo points build) or pvp (like healing protadin), their 'solution' was to remove it all together for a far simpler system that is easier to balance because 'surprising' the passive talents actually had insane effect in-game that ppl didn't think how impactful they were, since WoD and ppl HATE pruning, no one who likes rpg want to lvl to lose more power and abilities, yet blizz is sticking to the end since pruning = far easier balance for game
Do u remember when classes were unique ? When warrior had long but OP cds ? When rogues had the most cd class? when reagents were thing? when hunter pets actually had a presence beside an afk dps bot?

You think im not mad about the Talent System changes in Cataclysm? Im mad...im pretty mad about it. Still salty today about it.
Its a different game now...what can we do?
We need to understand that the game is not for us....call it....hardcore RPG nerds.
Its for a casual audience now.

Can you be mad about it?
Sure

Blizzards target audience in Vanilla were "us" and its not "us" anymore.
Just...deal with it like i did. Appreciate the casual form of WoW or unsub.
Ask for improvements to the game in its casual form.

Dont ask for it to be a oldschool RPG with ins and out, because thats never gonna happen.

[SirCowdog]

Ultimately while we cannot expect them to bend to our individual wishes, we SHOULD expect them to reply to community feedback and replay fast and not with 6+ months of time lag. They have created an extremely complex and very opaque game and rely completely on the community to guide players through it.

More realistically, if you include a month or two of beta testing, the actual delay is somewhere closer to 10 months, considering BfA launched in August last year, and 8.2(and its associated overhauls of various systems) isn't live yet.

That's a pretty terrible response time, even for the scale of WoW.

[SirBeef]

Almost no point in arguing, especially if they just call you names or just use non substance arguments.

And then you find out they still play the game despite continuously ragging on it and the business practices of Blizzard. Then they have the nerve to say it's irrelevant that they play.

[Shakana]

This is an issue I've been talking about for a little while now. If their development cycle is such that they can't make changes based on feedback in a reasonable amount of time, then they need to seriously look at restructuring or streamlining their development methods. Forcing a bad mechanic or game system for 6+ months because they're too cumbersome of inefficient to course-correct isn't something the players should have to suffer through. Nor is it something we should pay for.

First of all, since i'm noob, how do i hide in forums spoilers? I didn't saw any tool. i tried. Anyway

It's not easy to change, EVEN in 6 months if you're working for another patch content or already for other expansion content, a mechanic or a boss in a raid is easy to nerf, but to change a whole azerite system? That's not realistic. As i said you have all right to be mad, but if you don't understand this, you're just going to get more mad without a reason, point is, THEY NEED time to work on all this, and the reason why i mentioned GoT if you didn't get it, it's because we waited years for a few episodes because of episodes quality and people understood this. The more you rush blizzard and will only result in a snowglobe that nothing goes anywhere, the less will be the quality, as it will be in game of thrones, and people want nice episodes so they wait for them and don't complain. I think the wrong of blizzard is rushing/working through this other contents without solving the present ones, but if this is what they do we can't realistically do much about it.

[SirCowdog]

First of all, since i'm noob, how do i hide in forums spoilers? I didn't saw any tool. i tried. Anyway

Use the [ spoiler] and [ /spoiler] tags before and after the text you want to cover. Don't use the space on the brackets, that's just something I had to do to make the forum let me post the tags without actually covering text. But even if you're new here, you should know better than to post spoilers in the first place, hidden text or not.

It's not easy to change,

No, it's not. But Blizzard is a multi-billion dollar company with the most experienced MMORPG team in the genre. They used to be known for quality and caring about their product. They literally just had a year of record profits. They SHOULD be able to handle it!

And if they currently can't, then I think they owe it both to themselves and their players to clean up their development process to the point where they can. 6-8 months of what amounts to a sub-optimal product is not acceptable, and I think that's reflected in the steep decline of MAU and players over the last 6 months.

I think the wrong of blizzard is rushing/working through this other contents without solving the present ones, but if this is what they do we can't realistically do much about it.

You know what you can realistically do? Stop paying them for shoddy work.

[Vladinator]

This is nothing. You should head over to https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthemTheGame/ for a baseline for comparison.