No need to get personal! As you can see in this thread there are many people who ask for feedback. It’s not only what I want.
They promised several times to improve the communication, answered to some irrelevant topics and then there was silence again.
It’s a selfmade problem by Blizzard that people are upset about this.
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That’s kind of the point. It’s not the CM’s fault. They don’t have unilateral authority to speak and act. I don’t have to be a CM to know that - even if it hadn’t been explained in the past, it’s pretty unrealistic. They’re basically at the mercy of company policy.
Blizzard has terrible communication and community engagement, but it’s not the CM team’s fault and they aren’t useless. That’s not getting personal, that’s a specific rebuke of your statement.
The fact that this exchange is even taking place is thanks to a CM, probably much to someone’s chagrin.
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Yes, and for years now, with various CMs, they have repeatedly told us that they’re listening, it’s something they’re committed to getting better at, and they’ll definitely be super at it in the future. That’s the problem. Players are sick of them saying they’ll do it. Players want them to actually do it. At this point, they’ve said they’ll do it so often and failed to deliver, that we no longer believe them when they say it again.
I fully understand that the CMs are the messengers taking flak for the suits above them and, to a certain extent, I understand that they’re between a rock and a hard place but also, I just don’t care which level of the company is responsible for their inability to be able to communicate effectively to us, I just want them to fix it rather than hear, yet again, that they promise they’ll fix it.
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I totally agree, I was just calling out specific criticisms of people who literally have no say in the matter and do what little they can, whenever possible.
Now I am thinking about a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book where each choice involves you getting offended FOR other people, and depending on what you choose to get offended by, changes how people get dissapointed in your generation even more.
It’s funnier in my head…I swear it is so much funnier in my head LOL
As for the general sentiment of Blizzard not listening…We all know that already.
The PTR feedback forums have essentially been 95% “PLEASE DONT LET THIS NECROMANCER CHANGE GO LIVE BECAUSE ITS COMPLETLY POINTLESS, AND HERE ARE 100 WELL THOUGHT-OUT REASONS WHY ITS BAD, AND HERE ARE 289 DIFFERENT IDEAS YOU COULD TRY TO MAKE IT BETTER”
But we all know nothing will change for the more desired effects, the set is going to come out as “Bone Spear 3.0” and you better like it, because reasons…
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They do listen across forums, reddit, twitter, streams, etc. They do pass on the feedback to the Dev team, Producers, Designers, etc. The problem is we players don’t usually get any sort of feedback on the other side showing that the Devs heard what was passed on. Of course, they are not going to do everything players demand - we don’t expect that. It would be nice to have more engagement though.
There is also something else - when they do listen players often just plain ignore that. It is not fair to say they don’t listen at all. They do. They did make changes to the PTR mid cycle in response to player feedback. They unlocked this forum. There will be other changes to the patch when we see the patch notes.
The perception that there is not enough communication is not easy to get rid of - and it crosses all the Blizz games based on their internal policies. I do know for certain that is not the CM’s fault.
I keep seeing some misunderstandings about what the CMs do. Their job is not to sit on the forums. They:
- Collect feedback across multiple platforms. Forums, reddit, fan sites, streams, etc. Some is general feedback and some is targeted feedback the devs ask for - such as a class on the PTR. This involves weekly reports, meetings, etc.
- Write all the News Blogs, Patch notes, updates, etc. Those are a pain because they require lots of approvals and also localization to other languages.
- Create and implement player engagement plans across multiple platforms.
- Work with PR and Marketing on campaigns and planning.
- Contests, give aways, etc.
- Manage and interact with the extended Influencer community of aprox 30-50 people.
- Write and manage and set up Q&A sessions, live interviews, media engagements, etc.
- Coordinate with the Events team to create interesting activities and interactions for events like Blizzcon. Handle selection, scheduling, and logistics of getting live people to places like Blizzcon or PaxEast for events. Then handling all the on-ground work for all those activities.
- Deal with MissCheetah on occasion.
My point is that posting on the forums is a small fraction of what our CMs do. We currently have PezRadar - Community Lead (management role). FilthieRich - Community Manager. TomPowers - Community Manager. They cover all the Diablo Franchise, not just Diablo 3.
This goes for all the CMs for all the games. However, despite all that they do, the one failing tends to be timely reactions to feedback - that policy does not seem to let them provide.
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Finally, the root of the problem. I’m not getting replies to every one of my threads because you’re taking up all their time.
There are many examples of game companies engaging with their players that backfired tremendously. Often the greatest controversies have come as a response to something the devs said (“Do you guys not have phones?”, “pride and accomplishment”…)
I would love to see more communication, but we shouldn’t play dumb and pretend that “any communication is better than none”. We are asking them to take on a risk.
It’s not really a big risk to acknowledge stuff has been said tbh. What people are asking for and the fiascos you mentioned which are in many ways the result of terrible communication are entirely separate things.
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I gave extreme examples, but you said it yourself earlier that more communication from the devs would shine light on other issues such as resources allotted for development.
I hope for more communication, but I’m also realistic than anything substantive runs a risk of a negative community response.
I keep seeing “listening” here. That’s only one side of the communication equation though. I’m sorry, but if you are “listening” then prove it by responding. No one is THAT busy that they can’t type a line or two in the official forums. That excuse is worn out. If someone is talking to me I don’t just stare at them, turn around and walk away. Dev’s should be held to a higher standard than what they are currently demonstrating.
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Blizzard, like many companies, does not like to go into detail about their internal structure, staff allocation, and staffing levels. You can’t even figure it out by going there in person. That sort of thing is often used by competitors to speculate about what a company might be working on/focusing on.
This is not really uncommon. The most you get from Blizzard are general ideas that teams exist and an estimate of “small” or “large”.
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True that as a company blizzard have many departments and many employees and being a Gaming company communication is key , we know the inner workings of a company but for customers to have raise issues only for the end product to still be shipped means tone deaf on the company’s part . It falls on the company to address its issue .
Take square enix FFXIV , as a gaming company when the developers speaks everyone listens ( Obvious when the audience cheers for the developers and NOT the game ) but when blizzard speaks its "do i not have phones " ?
The constant communication gaming company have with their fans is paramount , the respect they have for each other is clearly present regardless of investors blah blah blah going behind the scenes . Other gaming company can make each and every one of their fans feel important .
Both are companies of similar caliber and yet being both their customers can yet feel so different , if other gaming companies can do it I don’t see why blizzard cannot . Other gaming companies have similar structures to blizzard and yet they are going above and beyond to exceed their fans expectations .
We get that it might not be CM fault or whoever but at the end of the day when the product is shipped with defects despite it being feedbacked multiple times during testing then who is to blame ?
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This is a meme, that later becomes an actual parody board game, waiting to happen 
I’m actually afraid of that seeing the randomness in their doings.
Nobody asked for Rathma to be turned into useless garbage. So do not insult our feedback in such a way.
Yeah, like lengthy boring art panels instead of any info about D3.
And all of it is crammed into this forum, so they are failing the whole franchise at once with their inactivity.
For what exactly?
Then they should be called something else than “community managers”. And they should not have lied in their intro posts about how they would like to improve communication and such.
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Kinda weird you’d assume they lied when they said they wanted to do something despite knowing
- staffing has been in complete turmoil for years, and
- they don’t have the final say in anything
Kinda just seems like you’re trying to maintain them as a villain because they’re the only point of contact you have with the company. Stubbornly refusing a point to their existence doesn’t actually refute it, it’s just noise.
Again, you’re having this fit because a CM allowed it, in direct response to feedback from the community.
There’s a big difference between
The CMs are useless and don’t do anything, why do they even exist, all they do is lie to us
and
Blizzard needs to re-examine P&P to better-meet the needs of their community, improve internal communication, and expose more of that to the players.
Absolutely. In fact, my posts were pretty harsh. They were also specifically targeted at certain behaviors and shared my (unfavorable) impression of the tone of communication alternating between talking down to the players and deceptive PR spins.
You can absolutely communicate without these things. Communication typically backfires when you don’t. I gave my thoughts on the phone thing when it happened but the tl;dr there was that presentation was doomed to fail from the moment some brain donor decided to pitch a mobile game to a predominantly PC audience. It had nothing to do with communication happening - quite the opposite, Blizzard helped create that ugly environment by failing to communicate what it was or even (until the 11th hour) what it wasn’t.
EA attempted to spin harsh game balancing designed to drive microtransactions.
Neither is really a good example not because they’re extreme, but because they simply aren’t examples of communication being discussed here and are in many ways directly contradict what’s being asked for and even highlight the importance of it.
FFXIV was brought up as a positive example. They absolutely bury their players in information, even make a regular event of it. People happily pay a monthly sub and then bury them in microtransaction money while more-or-less worshiping the ground the developers walk on.
Is it an anomaly? Sure, but not because it’s a certain type of game. it’s anomalous because they’ve maintained a very careful relationship and clear, open communication with their playerbase that presents the image of a team that’s genuinely interested in their feedback and strives to address their needs and concerns. Every update is practically made, in part, by the playerbase.
It’s not the outcome (communication not leading to disaster) that’s significant here, but the process leading up to it (candid communication with the community).
Communication is only as disaster-prone as the communication itself. Going months without a word only to actively work against your community when you do appear is never going to be received well. Dishonesty or spin are almost always immediately apparent to the playerbase and a great way to insult them. Trying to push things on them that they don’t want or care about will cause them to push back.
None of these things are communication, though.
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I know Matthew isn’t a CM but he was relatively a chatterbox for a brief month or so. Then he just dropped off the forums. I wonder if got his keyboard taken away by management…
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Shouldn’t need to be pointed out here but this long silence after significant and poorly-received changes on the PTR while we wait on a blog post that is coming soon™ that will only serve to tell us how things are going to be, without even the benefit of further testing, is exactly the problem.
Waiting to see if we’ve been heard or are just going to get an undemonstrated “We hear you!” is an unhealthy tradition.
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Dual wield with a Hamburger?
Nope, OP, will be NERFED
You do know he has been commenting on D2R recently. I suspect that Blizzard modified his job duties to be more D2R-focused. This is speculation but makes logical sense to me.