“Improved Communication” isn’t what is happening - Zero Clarity on Patch Changes

bias? unprofessional? Zantai has got to be one of the most outspoken and community driven game developers I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing and talking to. He is very passionate about what he does with his team and they are constantly giving updates to what they are doing and when it will potentially be released.

If Diablo team had even half the dedication that Zantai’s team has then D3 / D4 would be infinitely better.

There’s nothing unprofessional about being a down to earth gamer who connects extremely well to his community.

All the criticism about Blizz communication is completely fair. They are the ones who are constantly talking about “We are working on better communication”, yet they have made pitifully little progress. Many other game companies have regular developer updates, they engage fans, and keep their fans updated on changes that are coming. They don’t promised that at some point in the distant future they might get around to communication better, they just do it.

Is the community communications understaffed? Definitely. Who’s fault is it? Blizz’s. Rather than layoff a thousand people when they are making huge profits, maybe they should have shifted several people to the community side until they needed them for other duties.

They are getting criticized because they have been making the same, lame promise for the past several years and are doing nothing about it.

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Not only fair, but long overdue. Not going to mention any names, but comments like “Do you guys not have phones?” and “F*ck that loser” show exactly how contemptuous D3 developers are of feedback.

@Micro; I have difficulty believing you’d take this position as a guy who values rationality and logic above all else.

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Relevant quote from a separate post here:

I do want to touch on something specific that you said though—specifically the “too late to give more feedback” or “permanently implemented with no going back.”

It’s never too late to give feedback, and no balance change is necessarily 100% permanent. Diablo III is a live, actively supported game, one which we are committed to updating for the foreseeable future. It won’t make this patch, sure. But not making one patch doesn’t mean it will never happen and that you’re not being heard.

Feedback from the community doesn’t require a response to every thread. Discourse is important, but we realistically cannot respond to every piece of feedback that’s given or posted. I’m here to temper that expectation because it is, in practice, impossible (even if I had a team of twenty community managers under me).

We absolutely can do better, within reason. But we have a lot more going on beyond Diablo III. I hope that lends some context to at least my situation; and I’ll try to be a little less infected to the best of my ability, too. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Except in this context he means too late for the next season, so the point still stands.

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This community wants the D3 updates, season info., patch details and changes.
If there is any way to provide this information in a timely and accurate manner it needs to be addressed better than it has been for several years now.
The games of the future have no bearing in the current environment of D3.
There is certainly some amount of interest in upcoming titles, but just not in this forum environment.
Hopefully there can be adjustments made to provide this information a lot better…

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I mean, Barb (outside of zDPS support) has been in a relatively bad-to-mediocre spot for years, what’s another 4 months to find out if the devs finally figure out what they’re doing, right?

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No one believes the developers are listening to feedback. With zero transparency even if they were we couldn’t possibly know what effect it is having. You’re passing on reports and they disappear down a dark well for all we can tell. They never respond or explain anything.

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Great, can the dev’s finally fix the party bugs? Specifically, not being able to join games with level 0 characters, or joining a friends game but getting an error message and have to go to the lobby and click resume. I hope you play this game and know what I’m talking about.

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will we ever see the return of the support Witch Doctor from back in the day when Twister Wizard was meta for push? i feel like with the current state of the game it just gives more options for groups if the passives that were made “self only” and no longer group based like the “enemies affected by your poison skills deal X amount less damage” on Witch Doctor (don’t remember what it was called).

Most of us here realize you can’t respond to every single thread, but there are many important topics that do not get responded to for days, weeks, months, or longer.

Most of us here realize you have many other responsibilities other than responding to topics on the forums (blogs, Blizzcon stuff).

Most of us here realize you are doing the job of 3-5 people or more and trying the best you can.

What most of us can’t understand is why the higher ups don’t see this and spend a few bucks to add a person or two to help you out and deliver on the “improved communications” that continually is brought up, but is not being addressed. You deserve a day off here and there, vacations, even time off to be sick, but the machine shouldn’t come to a grinding halt because you off the grid for a day or two.

Yes, it will cost money to add a second or third CM, but how much money is getting thrown down the drain because customers are being dealt with poorly. The bean counters and marketing guys need to realize that unhappy customers do not buy your product no matter how cool it looks. Again, 3 CMs at 50k a year will smooth this communication issue out a ton and more than pay for itself down the road when Blizz tries to sell us D4 or that mobile trash game.

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Unfortunately, shortly after they posted about improved communication, Activision Blizzard decided to gut non dev positions. Which included community managers.

So, good luck with getting them to rehire for positions they found to be unnecessary.

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I like how you specified you got a lot more going on but my question is this: are those two coming out this week? Surely they are not

Wouldn’t it make more sense to prioritize talking about the next patch/season at least right there and then between seasons?? I mean everyone is expecting a patch tomorrow and a new season on Friday and we got absolutely nothing about any of them.

Don’t do this anymore, it’s not the first time it happened and it’s really annoying. We really should know when the next season starts once the previous one is over and it’s not too much to ask!

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Look at the Lamentation fiasco. A massive thread. Huge support. Huge amounts of likes. A massive upswelling from your player base, and the one and only Barb build that would have been competitive with other classes has been gutted and we’re promised that you might revert the nerf at some time in the future.

Barbs have been hearing this for so many years that we no longer believe it. We’re no longer listening to what you say you’ll do, because it’s not the same as what you actually do.

If a 1700+ post thread asking you to not nerf something because it gives Barbs the ability to be vaguely on a similar level to the other classes is ignored what’s the point of providing feedback?

“Recently Played With”
Broken since December 2018.

Grouping / Clan Chat / Seasonal players seen as Non-Seasonal, etc
Broken for two months.

Armoury profile pages
Broken for six weeks.

Would it be unreasonable for us to expect updates on things that have been broken for weeks and months on end without a response?

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I completely agree with this. But I think the balance of it all isn’t quite right. We all understand you can’t be here 24/7 answering our every thread and every post but for many of us… we often feel like the balance isn’t quite there yet.

The community shouldn’t feel like we’re not being heard and sometimes we don’t need a full essay response from the developers. Just “Hey, this thread is particular constructive and I’m reading it. Just to let you guys now.”

Now you might say, “But we if do that others might feel ignored and angry.”

And honestly? Who cares. Stop trying to please everyone. You end up pleasing no one. Stop letting people’s selfish behaviors get in the way. Let them be angry that they’re not getting attention. That’s on them, not you.

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I really don’t mean to be rude here but to me this reads like “my job is so hard guys but I pinky promise I’ll do better” and while I’m sure that’s true we’ve been hearing that same tune for quite a while now and there is no evidence whatsoever of improvement.

This isn’t even directed at you specifically Nev, balancing in this game is relatively simple math and yet time and again a great many things are wildly off mark. In addition to this ongoing state of imbalance, on the most recent PTR two new sets were introduced. However, one of these sets had no damage reduction (a complaint since literally forever for Monks) and both of them were comically undertuned. So weak that I cannot honestly believe they went through any internal balance testing. The second version leaked to us via Blizzcon (for whatever reason not shown to everyone directly but that is another issue) did nothing to change my opinion of this. The Monk set seems very likely to underperform and the Sader set seems mind blowingly over tuned, again leading me to believe that there was no internal balance testing done on these sets.

While I could maybe give this a pass, there also won’t be a second PTR. This strikes me as a colossal misstep. Between this, the enormous nerf to Rend Barb and the giant rift between what you are saying and what we can see happening I am left feeling like there is no point leaving feedback at all.

Additional examples:
General widespread dislike of Rat Runs, while all alternatives have been consistently nerfed.

General widespread complaints about lack of toughness for certain classes consistently ignored for literal years.

General widespread complaints about lack of diversity in meta 4 man groups, while zMonk zBarb Star Pact Wizard and RGK Necro have been the clear go to group since Season 12 (again, literal years).

General lack of diversity on the high end for many classes. The best Monk build since (at least) S12 has been Wave of Light. The best Wizard build since S12 has been Star Pact. The best Barb build since (at least) S12 has been Hota. Coming up on 7 seasons of the same builds every season for 3/7 classes.

The longstanding large gap between classes in solo push capability.

I could go on and on but I think the point is clear by now. If not, see the several thousand replies in the Don’t Nerf Rend threads.

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Gonna give you a tip, my dude, I understand why you’re angry buuut.

This is not a healthy way to start a conversation.

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It might not be constructive, but it is accurate.

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There is no anger involved. That is just my honest opinion when I read that post. There is a clear break between what is being said to us and what is being delivered and that divide has been there for a very long time.

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Is it so hard to comment on a thread, with so many people begging for a blue post, saying that we read comments and threads, and we will soon make an official post about the lamentation nerf or something like that. Or is it necessary to call the boss just to say that? It doesnt make sense to me. The CM of Path of Exile Bex_GGG is constantly replying on threads and is in general very active.

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