Who should blizzard take feedback from?

[Crimson Spears]

Now that shadowland is in full swing and the utter failure of its systems apparent I am left wondering if blizzard listens to feedback and if so to whos?

Looking back at these forums, the official forums and the alpha/beta forums. I am left wondering if perhaps blizzard should listen to feedback but also restrict it to an extremely small group of people. While I am sure that sounds counter productive to many here consider the following. Players who are heavily invested in the game and accomplished tend to have more grounded views when it comes to new features.

It was very hard to find higher end players not giving dire warning of how badly covenants being sources of power would end up. Compare that to the official forums and well you had a crowd screaming about "meaningful choice" this crowd immediately opened a guide and went their BiS covenant and leads us to the world we are in now with most classes having 90% of their specs all in the same covenant.

You saw a similar though small discussion regarding torghast offering soul ash.

At the end of the day with how out of touch wow developers seem to be would it be better if they didn't turn to top pvpers and top raiders to see if they should develop further systems ahead of time rather then plowing forward only to fall down a flight of stairs?

[Gasparde]

Obviously the very same people they've been getting it from in the recent past as it's been working out splendidly for them.
Everyone loves their game, everyone loves their story, everyone loves their everything. The 1%ers are happy, the casuals are happy, RPers are happy, everyone's happy.
If you disagree you're obviously not a true Blizzard fan and the devs have every right to block you on their twitter and make sad posts about how mean people are always mean to them for no reason.

The game is perfect the way it is, no reason to change anything - if there were something wrong with the game, these very competent devs would certainly do something about it instead of letting their game suffer from it for another 18 months before they fix it with the next expansion.... or toss it out the window completely and act as if it never happened. Game is great, 10/10, would recommend.

[Spikeychris]

Ah the good old "lets get laid into the current expansion and say it's an utter failure" thread. I wonder if you went back to Legion time how many similar threads there would be like this one and now it's shifted to how amazing legion is.

Blizzard should make whatever game they want and bending over backwards to accomodate the feedback of a playerbase which has vastly different goals depending on how much and what you play is probably a path to madness and a train wreck of a game. What affects mythics raiders might not necessarily affect heroic raiders, or normal raiders or PvPers or people who just do world content etc.

[Kokolums]

They won't even remove the mission table despite everyone hating that. I don't know what to tell you.

[Goladir]

Imo Blizzard should listen to the most active players who have started playing at different times. Not just streamers.

[Orby]

Everyone and no one at the same time. Never give people too much of what they need but enough or what they want. I do thinking a ccepting too much community feedback can be just as harmful as accepting none of it... there's a good moderation that can be found in meeting halfway and making sure the customers are hapy enough to keep playing but also be aware to give players enough room t o make sure they don't burn out by giving them too much either.

Once again its about balance

From a personal perspective Vanilla - WotLK was a great time for me because once I did most of what I needed to there was enough spare time to make my own time. Now days I feel there is way too much busy work, with the addition of achievements and the amount of collectables in game its very over bearing. there's a good key to make players find their own enjoyment without forcing people on what YOU think they should enjoy.

[Lochton]

Now that shadowland is in full swing and the utter failure of its systems apparent I am left wondering if blizzard listens to feedback and if so to whos?

Looking back at these forums, the official forums and the alpha/beta forums. I am left wondering if perhaps blizzard should listen to feedback but also restrict it to an extremely small group of people. While I am sure that sounds counter productive to many here consider the following. Players who are heavily invested in the game and accomplished tend to have more grounded views when it comes to new features.

It was very hard to find higher end players not giving dire warning of how badly covenants being sources of power would end up. Compare that to the official forums and well you had a crowd screaming about "meaningful choice" this crowd immediately opened a guide and went their BiS covenant and leads us to the world we are in now with most classes having 90% of their specs all in the same covenant.

You saw a similar though small discussion regarding torghast offering soul ash.

At the end of the day with how out of touch wow developers seem to be would it be better if they didn't turn to top pvpers and top raiders to see if they should develop further systems ahead of time rather then plowing forward only to fall down a flight of stairs?

Prefer to be the people with a larger investment of time to the game, achievement hunters, roleplayers, raiders, PvP'ers, doesn't matter - but realistically, they should take feedback from everyone.

[Dracullus]

Me, of course.

Thought everyone.

[Kokolums]

Most of the playerbase is gone. You'd want feedback from them. But how to get it? They have left?

[Thelyron]

Me exclusively.

[Kralljin]

Feedback ain't worth shit if the people who are supposed to receive cannot process it and make something out of it.

[TheLucky1]

They won't even remove the mission table despite everyone hating that. I don't know what to tell you.

Citation needed.

[Lochton]

Considering everyone could vote on that free mount, 36% voted for the Wandering Ancient and then we got threads how that was all "wrong" - obviously always to somebody else after the fact.

Well. It was revealed that the mount voting could be cheated as it wasn't locked to Battle.net accounts but game licenses.

[Kralljin]

Considering everyone could vote on that free mount, 36% voted for the Wandering Ancient and then we got threads how that was all "wrong" - obviously always to somebody else after the fact.

Well, that's the issue of a simple majority, 64% are not happy with the decision.

[Vasti]

They should ask feedback from Rando's

Complete a quest? Defeat a boss? Seen cinematic X for the first time? Played your class for X hours in endgame content?
Then there is a 1/1000 chance you get asked to rate the experience with 1 to 5 stars and the option to fill out a more detailed analysis (including questions about gameplay, storyline etc)
Maybe offer a small reward if only the whiners take their time for it (like x gold/honor/resource that is relevant to whatever content you just completed)

Then hopefully they will get feedback from not just the whiners, but a more representative group

Then we hope Blizzard uses the feedback not just to optimize for profits and won't cater to the lowest common denominator because then you end up with the Fast and the Furious franchise and Holy Crap, WoW is already the Fast and the Furious franchise of fantasy gaming....

Yes I am part of the whiners, it's the reason I quit WoW already, but keep an eye out to see if one expansion is not terrible (like Legion, I resubbed for Legion and enjoyed that, then BFA fucked it up again)

[Sondrelk]

Well they certainly shouldnt listen to people who refuse to give contructive criticism, and instead yells about how WoW devs are incompetent and the game is shit.

Secondly they need to decide in that case which subset of the playerbase they want to listen to.
Do they want to listen to the side that wants more open world content, questlines and evolving worlds? Or do they want to listen to the side that wants convenience, flying early and generally as little coming in the way of their weekly raidlogging?

If Blizzard decides to start listening to a specific subset of players then they will have to simultaneously decide on which side of players they want to alienate completely.
It follows logically for instance that you cannot cater to the people that want open world content and events while also catering to those that want to devalue it with flying immediately. Nor can you change how flying works without complaints.

All changes in the game will almost inevitably have an opposing and vocal opposition that prefers the version we have, and likely wants even more extreme version of it instead of the halfway measures we get in the name of compromise. For every player that wants uncomplicated gearing there is likely another that wants gearing to be as varied and diverse as humanly possible, balance be damned.

[Crimson Spears]

Prefer to be the people with a larger investment of time to the game, achievement hunters, roleplayers, raiders, PvP'ers, doesn't matter - but realistically, they should take feedback from everyone.

I am not sure I agree with the everyone aspect. From what I have seen a lot of players don't really understand anything about the game beyond the general idea that they are supposed to kill things. Anything hyped up even slightly in a ad form they will jump on hook,line,and sinker without any concept of what it actually is they are being shown.

- - - Updated - - -

Well they certainly shouldnt listen to people who refuse to give contructive criticism, and instead yells about how WoW devs are incompetent and the game is shit.

Secondly they need to decide in that case which subset of the playerbase they want to listen to.
Do they want to listen to the side that wants more open world content, questlines and evolving worlds? Or do they want to listen to the side that wants convenience, flying early and generally as little coming in the way of their weekly raidlogging?

If Blizzard decides to start listening to a specific subset of players then they will have to simultaneously decide on which side of players they want to alienate completely.
It follows logically for instance that you cannot cater to the people that want open world content and events while also catering to those that want to devalue it with flying immediately. Nor can you change how flying works without complaints.

All changes in the game will almost inevitably have an opposing and vocal opposition that prefers the version we have, and likely wants even more extreme version of it instead of the halfway measures we get in the name of compromise. For every player that wants uncomplicated gearing there is likely another that wants gearing to be as varied and diverse as humanly possible, balance be damned.

I agree with you. Having a unified vision of what the game should be would help them immensely. Right now their strength is in instanced content. Blizzard hasn't in over 15 years offered compelling world content. It seems to be a real blind spot for them especially compared to the competition. I think to date the only threatening world mob implemented in the game beyond npc guards for towns were those tauren on timeless ilse that charged you if you tried to run past them for half our hp.

[Sondrelk]

They should ask feedback from Rando's

Problem is that randos are not necessarily suited to giving good feedback. Most will probably jsut say things like something being bad without giving any ways to improve on it.

It would be very difficult, but hte mostefficient way I could see feedback being gathered is that you have moderators that are on the lookout for people on forums that do manage to give constructive criticism and try to gather as much of that as possible. It would be time-consumingand possibly not even worth it, but it would be possible.

[Lochton]

I am not sure I agree with the everyone aspect. From what I have seen a lot of players don't really understand anything about the game beyond the general idea that they are supposed to kill things. Anything hyped up even slightly in a ad form they will jump on hook,line,and sinker without any concept of what it actually is they are being shown.

No, but realistically for a company, the feedback should be from everyone.

For me, I'd prefer the feedback being from long-standing accounts, or high activity accounts, whether it being roleplay, raiding, PvP, world content, or achievement hunting (Long consecutive subscription periods, or people logging more than 8 hours a week, and so on. People who before they stopped playing also had long periods of a sub, or high amount of hours would be in consideration as well, even if they are not subscribed at the moment).