This is feedback from the perspective of someone who has been attempting to run long term successful communities in Blizzard games for a very long time. Particularly in WoW, D3, and now D4. We have a lot of experience with the social and clan mechanics here and I feel it is exceedingly important that devs hear this feedback before you get too far into d4 release. Please. You do need to hear these things because I am seeing a lot of the same mistakes being made that were made in d3 again in d4. These are major mistakes that will SEVERELY HAMPER our and anyones ability to create a successful, long term, active, desirable community.
It should be a very high priority for Blizz to ensure we have all the tools neccessary to create strong, desirable, mechanically rewarding communities. This is absolutely key to bringing longetivity to these games with a stronger and larger base. Equal to bringing new content to the game and supporting the game from the outside. You need to be giving us the tools to support the game from the inside at the community level.
As such I am going to list bullet points that I REALLY want you guys to seriously consider or at least responding too. Again this feedback is coming from community leaders who have been leading some of these games strongest, largest, and most active and long lived communities in these games.
- The applications system has the same exact mistakes the D3 applications system had only made WORSE becuase I can’t even right click on their names to whisper them to tell them all that they need to accept their application a second time to fully join the clan. You need to understand that this causes many applications to expire because a lot of players simply do not know they were ever accepted or have to accept their app a second time.
PROPOSED FIX - If a player applies to a clan and the clan accepts the application. Cause the entry of the player from that point. Do NOT require a second acceptance. It only gets in the way and is completely unnecessary. If a player has shown their acceptance to join a clan via application and the clan has accepted it the transaction is over. Done. Doesn’t need a second verification. This will end the problem of having to contact every single person or catch them while online by luck especially when we cant friend them on BNET due to our BNET lists being full being heads of large communities.
If you can’t do that then at least make it repetively clear in an easy to see way that they were accepted and need to accept a second time to fully join. Not just some small thing in chat easily missable.
- Clan member limits. I know blizzard had this idea in the past that groups should be smaller and more insular. But there was no bigger problem during d3 for trying to maintain an active succesfful community then having to deal with such a limited member amount. This idea does NOT help with community success at all. It forces us to have to use third party apps to organize our friends when the community is full and causes such huge inconviences it becomes almost a job, work, a bad thing just to try to have a successful active community in your games with this limit. It makes us have to micro manage.
PROPOSED FIX - No member limit. Let communities do thier thing. Let players join the communities they want to join. If they want small insular communities they can. If they want large active communities they can. ANd it takes a lot of stress off community managers.
- CLAN UI - D3 had a very poor clan UI. But d4 clan UI is somehow WORSE. I can’t easily right click to see information of applicants or easily whisper them. I can’t easily post a discord link in information. You give us no space to write out clan events and news.
The actual clan roster lets us see VERY LITTLE inforamtion at a given time without having to scroll a lot just to find a specific person in the roster. This is not good at all. We need to be able to effectively disseminate information of our clan and roster. We need to be able to easily give information in our clan windows. You give us no possible way in game to do these things in any simple or accessable way. Look at most MMO’s for guidance if you need it but its not hard at all to add simple spaces. Its not hard to add a calender like WoW has so we can organize information and events in an easy to access way.
Its not hard to create a roster window that we can easily access the information about members. This one is so mimimal it might as well not even be there.
Proposed fix - Let us access roster information easier in window with more space to view roster. Give us a calender and space to give clan events/information. Let us right click applicants to be able to whisper them and see their information easily.
There is much more to come but these are a few of the most major issues that need to be addressed immediately. Blizz I know you want to strike while the iron is hot with this game. To maintain as many players as possible in the base and make this game successful.
YOU NEED to let us do that as well from our side. This is a two way road here. We want the game to succeed as much as you want the game to succeed.
So you need to give us the tools do that from our end. Because right now we cant. We want too. We cant.
Edit - I am 100% willing to anyone official who reads this to volunteer my time as a community leader to help manage the project of ensuring clan/community success and longevity. If you are willing to work with me I will absolutely promise I can help lead a group of devs from blizz in a project to overhaul and ensure that clan and social mechanics in d4 are WORTH HAVING to ensure players can create long lasting, tight knit, rewarding communities that stand the test of time and help to ensure d4 maintains a larger loyal base. Please. I am passionate. I am willing. Consider it. Or if anything consider allowing me to consult. You clearly need someone from this side of things consulting. Not insultingly so. But passionately so.