Why are we not hearing much from them?
I’m used to game like Space Engineer where the Dev interac with the players base.
Same goes for Eve Online , Stelaris and some other.
Forum is flooded by post that could have been addressed and stop the spamming of topic covering the same issue over and over again.
More communication from the Dev team would ne helpful.
What do you think ?
Because much of the playerbase has meltdowns like spoiled children the moment they see something they dont like
That they don’t care by the look of it.
Seems like they are relying on the CC and the game to promote itself.
OW1 was nothing like this when it launched.
if we had gotten used to communicating after Keller’s video repentance in March 2022 (really, check it out) probably now there would be no aversion to the developers to every single word they say that basically hides too many “unspoken” things like the Aggressive monetization, disabled features, disabled heroes, or delays that helped OWL 2022 unfold. People feel very ignored by developers in the little things, and patchnotes with stealth changes don’t help with that feeling.
A peaceful relationship was not created from the beginning, as Kaplan did in telling the banalities of his gameplay in the forum and in the updates in a very personal way. I’m not saying at all that he was the best for OW, the last periods always saw him too unprepared … but he certainly knew how to better establish personal relationships with people when he promised to communicate with someone, even when there was a discrepancy between what was announced and the result.
And today, unfortunately, I can say that:
we are without a reliable guide, I believe. People are angry and no developer feels confident that they are optimistic about the game that has obvious problems with “2” that not even the well-known Kaplan could handle brilliantly.
I don’t think I’ve ever come across a company that has as bad a relationship with its customers as Blizzard
even HMRC (UK IRS) and DVLA (UK DMV) put out more blog posts
and their support is more helpful than Blizzard’s!
plus if they screw up they actually refund your money!
Have you ever thought the reasoning why the community is so disappointed is due to lack of communication from blizzard?
But it is a more general politics in reality: people who for Wow asked for a classic of the world before Cataslism and were told “you think you want it but you don’t”. Then they started shutting down independent projects that recreated old WoW locks out of pure passion and finally … “we announce what you’ve always wanted: WoW classic”. and we’re not talking about different game directors, but about the same ones who had denied development for years. there is very strong hypocrisy that frankly … now deserves to be punished with the scandals that came last year.
But this is not enough: we just have to hope that the leadership of Microsoft puts in line the bad ideas of the direction of Blizzzard and activision, IF the agreement is really over. Why don’t we forget this: if the acquisition doesn’t happen … Blizzard is doomed to fail. including for the bad communication that people keep talking about just because they know that prosismatically Microsoft will respond, not Activision or Blizzard.
They probably don’t want to interact with the community due to the sheer amount of negativity and hatred displayed by the community. And I don’t blame them for avoiding the community. People here need to ease up on the negativity first. While there are very valid complaints and large issues with the game that should be discussed and addressed, there are also a lot of people here who complain just to complain. People here complain over the smallest, most insignificant things like “oh that Hanzo skin has locs and heels,” or “oh I got banned because I went to my door to pay the rent collector.”
but these existed before and also for much less.
Today’s situation is even worse: topics with really valid arguments are dwarfed by a “greedy blizzard” and left on the back burner, zero likes, zero visibility. They all know that they are empty words and that there is no interest in making them survive. Paradoxically today there is only the topic hce creates more scandal to make the news, to always remain visible. the only difference? that sooner or later to a very serious topic there was a serious answer of an orange, not a blue that says "you’ll see, wait patience (edition 2022).
That happens in EVERY community, Mr. Whipples. That does not stop other developers from doing their jobs. You should be on the same page as me on this one. Remember the real world? Odd that you magically seem to have the opposite opinion that you did last night. Very consistent of you.
Blizzard cultivated that behavior
Not every dev team has outgoing and professional speakers
I ask for it from OW every other post – as someone who plays Destiny 2 very often, I am used to getting a weekly article of all the devs thoughts on balance, future goals, upcoming hype, and actual timelines when they want to fix things.
I’d love that for Overwatch and though they seem to be testing the waters a bit in OW2 (basic dev articles that only address a couple topics + giving us a timeline on when bugged heroes will return or be addressed) it still feels light compared to D2
At the end of the day though, there is no rule or requirement that the devs on staff need to be outspoken with their community. Plenty of games don’t bother, honestly, and it doesn’t sound like anyone on the dev team signed up for that.
Investing some money into hiring a team to handle the talking points with the community would be best I think and go a long way into shaping this community to match OW2s goals but who knows, maybe they are still solely focused on getting pve out on time or just don’t see a need…
Communities form around speakers and solidify around them - looking at D2, I saw the constant talk from the devs and their plans for the future ease people through “deleting locations/content in the game, removing their weapons, reworking their whole abilities and an economic model that almost requires you to buy the game each year to get the new content” – and despite all the growing pains, the players adore it because they’ve been consistent in telling you exactly what to expect and quick to address/talk about problems. As a new IP, OW2 would do well to re-form its identity sooner than later and I think more communication would help with that!
Perhaps… And this is just a thought… If they listened to and communicated with their community, they would receive less negativity. This is general relationship advice: less communication rarely leads to less negativity.
Expect even less from them, keep your expectations low so you get less frustrations.
In that case Blizzard needs to re establish faith by being transparent with the community. And possibly not act like scared animals around them.
Or atleast stop promising they’ll do more communication every few months.
Welcome to Blizzard.
From time to time they say something along the lines of “We want to communicate more”, then post a couple of things and then they go silent again.
All I can say is that I miss Jeff’s update videos.
Paradox, Bungie and even Bhvr of all companies communicate regularly. Blizzard, not so much. It sucks, because it could really help to quell some of the complaints and show they’re listening, etc.
Unironically this. I think I’ve seen it about 10 times since I started playing OW in the back end of 2016.
Yes, I love the TWABs; they help keep us hype/excited for the future and keep us up to date on what to expect in upcoming patches/hotfixes while letting us know they’re listening to our complaints, such as with this season’s activity grind being annoying if you wanted to get those champions. Of course, they still miss things, but that’s ok - we don’t need every little detail; just a more open dev team that doesn’t treat us with disdain. I still remember that ice cream analogy used to deflect from a very real problem that years later they’re finally dealing with.
Seriously , Blizzard communication is not getting any better 
because they know how bad the game is
they have no idea how to fix it