Written about a month ago in response to someone accusing the devs of silencing those who simply don’t agree with them:
“This isn’t a case of ‘silencing the playerbase’, comments and feedback are constantly being read and heard. However, that doesn’t mean that the team has to agree with those sentiments.”
So if they seem unresponsive, no matter how passionate you are in whatever it is you’re trying to convey, then please don’t jump to the conclusion that Blizzard simply doesn’t care.
To be perfectly honest I wish that post (or something along the same lines) were stickied so that everyone would be made aware that we’re not being ignored or “silenced” by the devs, but nor are they obligated to bend to our demands as reasonable or as passionate as they may seem.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t voice our concerns, but when those those concerns become this obsession to get the devs to respond or act on our behalf and they don’t comply, then we should either work around their decision or find something else that we do enjoy.
For the sake of yourselves, other forum posters, and the devs please keep in mind that if your posts or concerns doesn’t get addressed the way you like, it’s usually intended to be that way - at least for the time being.
That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t change false silences, ignored posts of feedback, and the fact that the devs don’t say anything anymore.
There’s a reason the Mercy Megathread was called a void. Bastion has been ignored for years, despite feedback. The devs outright ignored what the community was saying with the Sombra changes, ignored her bugs for months that made her unplayable, despite feedback. They ignored Roadhog post nerf, Ana post nerf, Doomfist for months post nerf, despite feedback. They’ve literally been adding bandaid patches to Reinhardt since launch without fixing his bugs, just hiding the old ones with new ones, despite feedback.
The devs shouldn’t spend all their time on the forums. But they shouldn’t act like they do, and they certainly shouldn’t be leaving us in the dark.
I agree, there’s a distinction between devs not fixing issues and holding onto an opinion that they are rightful to because they are the devs and designers of the game afterall. I also agree that there are issues with the game that have lingered for what feels like far too long.
But like I said if the players can’t handle the pace with which Blizzard responds, then focus on something else. Too often I see these spiteful posts that really can’t be doing any good to those making them or those around them. That was my point of the OP. When I hold a grudge toward (fill in the blank) I realize that I am hurting myself more than anything, and I want to see that our community grow out of that mindset that life or whatever sucks if we don’t have our expectations met.
For me personally, I want there to be a system in place that makes it EASY for groups (new or established) to formulate a battleplan before and during the match, and my HOPE is in the upcoming clan system + accompanying social features to address this. But what if it doesn’t fulfill that particular wish? Then sure - I will be disappointed, but I will also try to work AROUND whatever it is I’ve been handed. That can look like me appreciating the other parts of the feature that I may not have asked for even though it’s not my own ideal set of features, or if I really can’t handle it then simply leave.
So whatever your concern is, whether that be hero viability, glitches, gamemodes etc… don’t let those things affect your quality of life. From the blue post I quoted above, it’s clear that they are listening but that doesn’t mean they have to agree with everything we want. And they ARE working hard, even if it’s not in the areas that we want them to be focusing on.
It’s interesting that you bring this up, because in combination with Baja’s post about:
…I can see that Blizzard has indirectly done this by having megathreads and using very careful language whenever engaging the subject matter to make it where it IS an open discussion, but at the same time they are trying to be as respectful as is possible to such a diverse group even on very touchy matters such as hero balancing. It’s a very fine line to walk and I think overall (not entirely, just overall) they are doing a good job at being diplomatic between different groups, even though it’s ironically from not saying anything sometimes.
The total view numbers on most staff are rather low to put it mildly.
Only seven accounts have broken 20,000 posts read (That’s the point where regular users get the ability to post links)
Only one of them Michael Chu is on the development team
The other six are Mods/Support:
Personally, I’ve read more posts than all of these staff individually and I don’t think I’ve got a full grasp of everything on forums.
You do have one staff related user that has actually read more than I have and is quite helpful but, unless I’m mistaken their purview isn’t summarizing forums.
While it is technically possible that they read posts while not logged in or have parties provide summaries they’ve on multiple occasions had responses that clearly missed large sections of feedback or did a poor job of interpreting it.
I think all of that is because they know where to appropriate their time, and seeing how unconstructive MANY (not all) posts are in the official forums it makes a lot of sense that they don’t spend more time than they do sifting through all of the filler to get to the feedback that is actually helpful.
Whenever a dev says that they appreciate how a certain post is written, it’s telling of what they are looking for…and that’s not what this place consists of 95% of the time to be quite frank.
Also, I can’t believe that you think they are unaware of the main issues and concerns of the game. They are aware, but like I said they are busily working on things that they hope improve the game even if it doesn’t fit our schedule.
We’ve had several examples where the lead developer didn’t seem to be aware.
Last year you had a thread about Doomfist bugs that bounced around the front page for around three weeks. Yet, when someone replied to him asking him to fix Doomfist he just lashed out at them without showing any apparent awareness that threads with nice details already existed and had been in play for weeks.
In November last year after the Mercy rework he was talking about how nobody pointed out that she was potentially stronger than before when plenty of people myself included had mentioned precisely that.
He then proceeded to fail to notice that many of the complaints on Mercy were about how it feels not the results. (You don’t have to agree but, you should at least show awareness of where complaints are coming from. People aren’t going to respect your opinion on an issue if you seem to be unaware.)
We’ve also had multiple occasions where content had significant issues on the PTR and proceeded to live despite having significant amounts of feedback be it bugs or balance issues like the “Omnic Crisis” (It’s been well over a year and Bastion still hasn’t recovered.)
It’s also relatively easy to become unaware of issues in games that have multiple modes if you aren’t following feedback from a variety of sources. (Skill based matchmaking makes this worse. Without matchmaking you can run into players from a wide variety of skill levels but, with it you’ll generally meet people at the same level.).
For example, I spent around 2,000 hours on TF2. After hour fifty, I basically never played on 2Fort because I grew to hate it. None of my friends liked 2Fort either and most of the forums I visited tended to bash the map. The thing is, 2Fort was actually the most popular map in the entire game . The map my friends liked the most was cp_steel. At the present time cp_steel has 3 people on it and 2Fort has 2,185 players. The impact of balance changes on cp_steel mattered to me because my friends and I played it a ton but, for the game as a whole it didn’t matter that much. The results of balance changes on 2Fort didn’t matter to me personally as I didn’t play with anyone that liked the map but, for much of the game it was a big deal.
Just because most developers get bashed unfairly doesn’t mean that some of them aren’t legitimately doing things wrong some of the time.
