All that dev update stuff are why the devs don't talk to us

General Discussion
45

I’m all for laughing at the forums for twisting dev words out of context (lord knows they do it enough) but this isn’t the case this time around.

Jeff said “should go up next week”. As in it’s intended to, and in fact will, go out next week unless something unexpected were to go wrong.

The thing is something unexpected did end up going wrong, so the forums were just asking what happened. Jeff was even kind enough to say “I know I said we’d have it this week, and it was scheduled for Wednesday, but due to hiccups we’ll try for Friday, but no promises” Even in that post he’s still saying it not only was expected to be uploaded this week, but it still is so long as they can figure out the hiccup in time.

He’s not really leaving things up for interpretation like you seem to think.

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46

Starbucks has a policy called “make it right” that is exactly this. No matter what the situation/circumstance, apologize and rectify the situation. Your customer DOES NOT walk out the door still upset about whatever happened. A shame that hardly seems like the case with this dev team. There’s clearly this mindset of they know better and we’re just dumb. Its not healthy for the game at all.

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47

That doesn’t work like that in the gaming community since a while back. Now there’s this mentality that you might have seen around “You act like you’re entitled to anything, the devs are not obligated to give you anything, just be glad when they do”.

And while technically this is true, that’s not how it works. It only works like that for single player games or games with no continuous support. I bought OW because I knew the game would be supported for the coming years, it’s a multiplayer competitive game after all. This assumes that the game will have updates.

This is how it works in these type of games, devs give you updates, talk with the community, balance the game, the community spends more money with the game and the game grows. Just look at dota, every year that game looks like a brand new game, that should be the standard of the industry, the amount of updates and the size of them when compared to what we get here is a complete joke. I can tell you that I don’t even play dota but every year spend at least 300 bucks to support TI with the compendium. Meanwhile I play OW 10h+ a day but don’t feel like I should spend any money on it. This should not be happening, not saying this is the case for everyone, but at least for me I feel more likely to spend money on a game that I barely touch to OW, there’s just no incentive.

But OW isn’t the only game that screws up in this regard, look at fortnite, most popular game atm, their updates are 99% skins, zero content.

48

Stole the words right out of my mouth, couldn’t agree more :c

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49

What’s really funny is when they start talking about class action lawsuits to sue blizzard for banning people that broke rules they agreed not to break in the ToS :rofl:

50

And then there’s Mercy…

51

Customer always right is a crappy policy and just leads to entitled, wrong people though

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52

Thats partly due to the fact that we get so few updates from the devs making an announcement of one coming treated as if they announced the second coming of Jesus. If we got a ton of announcements no one would really care that much, as to sit on the forums screaming are we there yet?

Its also a language accuracy problem, he could have just as well said it should be up in the next 2 weeks and people would not be losing it now at the end of the week after waiting for a week, and the devs would have more time to do what they want. Its not like he said ‘‘it will be up tuesday’’ and everyone lost it on monday, he gave himself a time limitation of over a week, thats probably enough time to release at least a small update. Especially when you announce that the update has already been recorded.

Again a precision of language problem, they could just as easily mention the ‘‘different thing’’ they are experimenting on and people would know there would be more things to expect instead of teasing one thing and doing something completely different. The second option you mention can be interpreted as intentional trolling/ publicity stunt.
Most changes take a solid while to get implemented in the game its not like they were trying this one thing out and then a couple of days before the patch someone came up with a different idea and they went with that. Nothing is stopping devs from mentioning a couple of different changes they are experimenting with/thinking about making instead of mentioning one and then doing something completely different, which would naturally cause a reaction in the community.

54

Many people asked for change.
The change we got however was badly done, but a change needed to happen.

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55

That’d depend on what exactly the developers interests were.

If you actually have a development team that cares about the product and represents the player base it’d be entirely possible if you have a sufficiently large development team to not bother with feedback at all outside of the team and still provide the community what they want much of the time provided you listen internally.

So, just because a change someone suggests hits the live game it does not mean the developers actually saw it. (Sorry Grey:P)

56

I mean if you don’t like money then sure, see it that way.

57

The game is done doodes. That’s why the slowly disappear .Slowly fading away .Time to jump on a new game.

58

Blizzard staff doesn’t really have a great track record when it comes to actually communicating with their player base. As shown by how many threads about Mercy that have been ignored/closed without any acknowledgement.

There’s also no reason for the PTR to exist, since the changes always go through, anyways. They hardly ever take feedback into consideration.

That being said, I’m not really mad. The dev update will go up when it’ll go up. I’m not optimistic that they’ll deal with any of the problems that actually face the game.

59

The overall company is worth a lot but no individual game dev could be paid enough to put up with this community

60

Most of the community wants Mercy to be nerfed and/or mass res removed. Because she was overtuned.

Mercy mains who love their hero being utterly broken and they cover it with “its fun” (because lets be real every broken thing is fun to play as), of course wouldn’t be listened to have their hero as broken as possible, and it stayed for about 2 years of the hero being broken both before and after rework.

61

I don’t really care anymore, what kind of bs they promise. I just want to know from them, if they actually have some kind of plan for this game. Or if it’s just going to be another 2 or 3 years of “changes and re-works” while they shove OWL down our throats

62

But the thing is - communications is an expectation when it comes to video games. It isn’t a right, it is a requirement, and many gaming companies lack the ability to do this for whatever reason. The amount of communication is what CAN differ. It doesn’t matter the type of content, but that the content, no matter how small, should be communicated. I am somebody who believes all communication should be provided, no matter how small, which is what I do at my company. It doesn’t have to happen BEFORE the changes role out, but if any questions are asked, we should be able to receive a response, even if it is a one word answer. Like, “any eta on the Torb rework release date?”

“No.”

Of course, the amount of communication can vary between agents and how much they’re willing/allowed to respond, but if I worked on a video game, I would be saying, “There is no current ETA, but we are experimenting with his ultimate currently. We believe that Torbjörn has too much potential in his ult, while lacking in his base kit. We’re trying a variety of different options, such as his turret building, but mainly focused on how we can make him more well-rounded entirely. This is why it is taking us more time than expected: we want to get it right the first time instead of attempting multiple iterations over the course of his rework before we finally find something that sticks.”

Or in the case of Mercy. A lot of players state Mercy feels extremely boring and lack luster after her constant nerfs. “Are you guys planning any changes for Mercy?”

“We are not currently looking to change Mercy. We believe she still has a lot of power, but her specific play style and ‘one healer fits all’ has been ingrained into the players play style with her. We believe that over the course of changes, whether it be other support nerfs, new hero releases, and players exploring with her kit and where she has the most potential will truly bring out her potential. We hear that players do not find her fun anymore, but the team overall disagrees with this opinion. We find her both fun and effective, but the players need to explore with this more. If, in the next year, she still has the same problems she currently does, similar to Sombra, we could definitely become interested in looking at her. It may not happen, but is a possibility. I apologize that this answer might not be what you’re looking for, but hopefully it answers your questions as to our output on Mercy and what we think of her currently. We appreciate you thoughts and concerns with our heroes.”

Bam, THIS. THIS would make communities build more trust in the team and their development skills. But instead, they choose to remain COMPLETELY silent instead of keeping the players updated with their thoughts. It doesn’t mean that things WILL change. They’re just telling us their thoughts on the heroes and game overall. No promises made, nothing. Just informing Torb is being looked at, but we’re not sure how he will be changed yet or when this will happen and why we don’t want to change Mercy currently. It fortifies trust in the developers from a customer perspective. You don’t NEED changes to speak. Just voice your opinion in the matter. That’s all people want. Any form of communication and what we can expect or are looking forward to. This would make an amazing gaming company, and sadly, almost no gaming company does this, and MANY more games flop than ones that are successful, and I believe this has a large part to do with it as the customers give up on the game, inevitably leading to the developers giving up as well.

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63

I’ve heard there are complains on the WoW side as well. Bad communications with different parts of WoW team and blizzard.

64

There are other games to play, and if you want to go all the way down to “they’re a multi-billion dollar company” by all means go throw money at an indy game of your choice.

65

People are only like this because they never communicate. Stop defending them when they have done absolutely nothing to effectively help the game in 2 years.

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