Specifically for Damage, there was an overwhelming number of Heroes for one person to handle, which lead to not every Damage Hero initially receiving the attention they deserved. to address this, we’ve divided the category among 2 creators for the next card
There’s a perception among some players that personal biases play too heavily into the proposed changes. This is something that all of the creators we’ve been working with for the second card are very self-aware about, and they’re paying close attention with their notes
Some players don’t understand why we’re working with creators and not the broader community. Our goals for this project (engaging with Creators in a unique and interesting way, instigating more competitive events in the community, and increasing CCV on Twitch) weren’t clearly stated ahead of time, so I’ll own that
there’s a perception that this somehow takes away from developing other more meaningful updates to the game. I get this perception and, to be frank, there’s little I can say here to sway your entrenched opinion. All I’ll say is that this hasn’t had a detrimental impact on our current development priorities, and in fact was proposed with this consideration in mind
As much as I’d love to be able to reach each and every player, both current and lapsed, we all know that’s not practically possible. What I can measure and observe are the folks who are here, like yourself, who share their thoughts and feelings across the various platforms our community lives on.
We have tools that measure sentiment quantitatively, and experts whose job it is to interpret that data into meaningful analysis. We also have folks like me who often times provide more qualitative analysis, so we have a complete picture.
Generally speaking, sentiment about the ExCard was surprised (at it’s existence), delight because the changes were fun, and confusion over the purpose of the ExCard (feedback I’ve delivered internally).
Does this somehow diminish their excitement?
There’s another halo effect of these kinds of activations: creators of that profile pay attention when developers collaborate with their community. When you have demonstrable proof and the support of your existing creator community, newer and lapsed creators are more inclined to give you a second look.
Somewhat related, but Seagull did return last week and seemed like he was having a pretty great time with Jay3 and Emongg.
For sure. This was a factor that was specifically pointed out during our initial analysis of the ExCards performance. Even with that knowledge, the overall impact was positive.
I’m just sad that if this potential sym support change happens (however bad it might be), it’ll just be stuck in this meme content creator experimental patch with no real future-
That was interesting. I watched that stream, and he noted he also attended that NDA creator meeting with OW devs. It made me excited to think that the big news that was tied to that meeting may be coming in the next few weeks. I don’t think it would be just another creator card, so maybe it’s a little bit further down the road, but still excited to find out what it is.
Not speaking to any specific meeting or otherwise, but there’s a lot of behind the scenes relationship management that the community team is responsible for. Making sure that creators are prepared for our “big beats” and are able to make the best possible content is to everyone’s benefit, player and dev alike.
I can ask, however to set expectations - we don’t generally share data publicly unless it’s something that really moves the needle.
I will say this: the April Fool’s card was the bar against which we measured the first Creator ExCard’s performance and it hit or exceeded all of our expectations
Yes, and I think it’s obvious why. What happens if the next tier of streamers all leave, and the next tier, and we’re down to 15 viewer streamers. Would you still consider it worth the trouble, or those creators worth promoting? Would their sentiment be a reliable metric for gauging the larger playerbase? I expect you might say yes, but I have my doubts.
The reach of these content creators clearly does matter. Whether as pure marketing tools or as representatives of the larger playerbase. Someone with 10K viewers is more representative of (some subset of) OW players than another streamer with 2K viewers, surely.
This all makes sense, but I think you’ve left out the fact that this is an initiative started in the middle of a severe content drought. To me, these reasons are not sufficient to explain why you are working with content creators over the broader community given that content drought. They aren’t being catered to alongside the rest of us, they are being catered to instead of us, while we watch. Our participation in this event is not equal to theirs. We don’t get to balance a hero however we want, we get to play a hero balanced by some streamer.
Compare this to something like Hitman 3, which had a similar initiative shortly after launch. The content creators made their wacky custom missions, but regular players had the entire game full of fresh new content as an alternative. “Regular” players weren’t directly faced with the prospect of becoming 2nd class citizens, because they also had substantial new in-game content to occupy themselves. The content creator stuff was a relatively minor, supplemental feature. But in our case, this is it. This is all we’ve got. VIPs having fun with balance, and we simply get to play whatever they think up. Clearly we have the less interesting, less fun role, and there’s nothing else of interest for us regular players to engage with. This isn’t just an amusing, optional diversion, it’s the only current in-game event.
Creator relations means supporting the entire OW creator community, to work to retain existing creators, to maintain relationships with folks who may have churned out, and to foster up and coming creators who are just starting on their journey.
Your feelings here are all valid, and I want you to know that the team is aware and frankly, feels similarly. To a T, every person I’ve worked with on T4 cares deeply about the player experience, and the current pace of updates isn’t something we’re satisfied with either.
I’m going to avoid promises and platitudes here, and simply state that we want to focus on letting our work speak for us this year.
My biggest quarrel with this is that it completely alienates creators that haven’t been hand-picked. Giving the “big dogs” the information early culls the other creators as they have significantly less, or no time to prepare for those “big beats”.
The gap between the likes of Stylosa and smaller creators like myself only makes it harder, and less appealing to make content on the game.
Completely fair criticism. We don’t do enough currently to support small to medium sized creators, and that’s something I’m tasked with improving. Not much more I can say right now, aside from “I hear you”
I’m still flabbergasted that nobody leaked everything yet, and alot of content creators were in the meeting. Since so many people saw it, leaking it anonymously on a public computer ensures it’s impossible for anyone to deduce the leaker.
I appreciate that a lot - I stopped making Overwatch News content after Echo’s release, and put my efforts into making Overwatch design instead. (I know am very lucky to work with NYXL on this front) and I am glad that creators do have someone like you to integrate with.
Always been a bit of a sting to feel excluded - but likewise I acknowledge it is unreasonable for me to assert that I should feel included in the first place.
The updates on the forums and Reddit help a lot, and even just knowing something is on the horizon is enough to get me excited to return to making Overwatch content.
The biggest problem that has been the case with every one of these so far (and this one looks to be no different thus far), is that you guys are picking creators that have no problems showing their biases, and will willingly dumpster or ignore heroes entirely. It’s really obvious when some heroes get meme changes or nerfs, and their favored heroes get serious balance changes or straight buffs. And even with all of that, it wouldn’t be as bad if it was completely isolated to just the exp card – but so far a little bit of it leaks to live every time. The last set of changes that just went live are evidence of that, and most of those changes were untested head scratchers.
The “community creators” are every bit as biased and s*** at game design as the rest of the unwashed masses, but just happen to be popular enough that y’all just said “f*** it” and let them make a silly patch. Again, it’s a whatever thing if it just stayed in its own side card/mode, but it doesn’t.
As others have already noted, if we weren’t in the middle of an extreme content and balance drought, these changes wouldn’t be nearly as popular as your numbers might suggest they are.
minor request for these cards; could this and future cards be archived so past creator ExP cards can be still playable in the future via workshop? sometimes new features are added that cant be replicated to the same degree or quality using workshop, it would be nice to have them available.
