I think there’s a fundamental difference between destroying the economy and wanting changes for a character in a video game
The bottom line is that many Mercy players (I would dare say a majority of her old playerbase and most of her new one) do not find her fun to play. If a hero is not fun to play, then their design has failed. Plain and simple. It’s very, very frustrating to them that Blizzard seems to not care at all, hence the constant posting. I hesitate to call all of it spam because some of it is legitimate discussion and thought.
I do agree with you on two things. 1) Mercy is currently balanced in the sense that she is not a troll pick while at the same time not being mandatory. That’s a good thing. She still is not fun to play, however, and I think she needs some serious work. 2) There are people who just spam the forums. A lot of people put thought and effort into their posts, only to be drowned out by the 5 others that go “REEEEEEEEE BLIZZARD FIX MY WAIFU REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”
I appreciate your annoyance. I get it, I really do. However, to say that there’s no reason for Mercy players to be upset and that their arguments have been “debunked” is just flat out unfair.
But Blizzard already does ignore General Discussion, as evidenced by the lack of posts. I’d wager the Mercy spam, if anything, has influenced them in ignoring the forums. So I don’t think you have an argument if at worst it would be the same as the current state.
I’ll give you a tip at how developer posts work about 80% of the time: They only post on something they’re already looking at or have already addressed (and they rarely post again in something they’ve posted, i.e. the state of Mercy). They more than likely search the forums or have a moderator notify them when a topic they want to address (but not in their own sticky) is created. Scan through blue replies if you don’t believe me. There are way to many random “this is something we looked into” or “this should be on the PTR soon” or that type of post. They do this so it makes the community think they are involved and influenced the change or the post, but the reality is we don’t. Blizzard is going to balance and change the game to maximize profits, and their current business model has OWL as a large part of it. So I’m not going to put much weight into any argument regarding how forum organization will affect Blizzard’s response to the forum’s opinion simply because changing from approximately zero to approximately zero is negligible.
That being said, it would help Blizzard if I turn out to be wrong and they do want to see what people think about Mercy in the future. The megathread just throws 340 different ideas into a single unorganized thread, making it impossible to highlight what ideas and themes come up the most. With a Mercy sub-forum, Blizzard could more easily see “23% of threads seem to make this suggestion in the title” or “half of the threads with 100+ posts lean towards this change.” Sure, they currently could try to search by threads with Mercy in the title, but that limits it and does not allow you to quickly scan which threads have the most posts, etc. I want to reiterate that all evidence on changes to ALL heroes suggests Blizzard puts little to no weight in forum feedback (other than bugs), but if they do, my suggestion would make it easier to organize ideas on the most posted about topic on the forums.
TL;DR: Spamming and annoying General Discussion isn’t and won’t get you what you want. It just takes away from the experience of all forum users. My proposal solves that issue, and would make it easier for Blizzard to organize your ideas if they decide to use them in the future.
Why would we need one for a specific hero? That’s just bias. I can only assume you hate Mercy or any discussion on Mercy given how awful the hero is to play right now.
Given how it appears to be biased against Mercy, I don’t feel it’s worth reading the entirety of it. Not to mention it does appear to be non-constructive. I’m going to leave the discussion now. I’ve made my points, all further notifications are muted. Have a nice day .
I actually read somewhere in this thread you had the idea to be able to mute threads by keywords in the title. I’d prefer that just to appease the people who are upset with having Mercy set aside alongside the people (like me) who are simply tired of seeing multiple Mercy threads in the top replied/new topics all day every day.
But since you said nobody liked that, I feel a sub-forum would be acceptable if done right. And once (if) Mercy mains ever get in a place where they’re satisfied with her, it can be removed or recycled into whatever the next hot topic is. Same goes for some of the threads like this one bringing up the topic, really, only at least this one tries to present a solution unlike many others.
The arguments against this and some of the comments baffle me, though.
“Mercy mains are tired of seeing people complain about the Mercy threads.” You say you have the right to express your voice to Blizzard otherwise they won’t listen. What we’re doing is the same thing, only to you instead of Blizzard. And there’s not even nearly as many threads in comparison.
“Every hero would need a sub-category.”
Yet not every hero is such a massive issue. I’ve never seen any forum for a game ever that has so many threads about the same exact issues for >one< character every single day.
“You just don’t like Mercy.”
She’s in my top five most played. I have fun with her. I like the hero concept and her lore. That doesn’t mean I like seeing the same thing every time I open up a site and constant bickering and arguing over it.
It’s spam, plain and simple.
Out of the multitude of threads you can see within the span of a few hours you cannot tell me every one has a clear, unique, and interesting argument or idea brought to the table.
And I feel spam should be set aside. It’s not “segregating Mercy” as much as it is just organizing the mass at this point.
Or just make several pinned megathreads about Mercy regarding specific issues with her. Instead of one massive thread that talks about literally everything, have one for potential res solutions, one for her HPS, etc. The big issues people have. Even if it’s five threads addressing specific things, it’s still better.
This is just depressing.
“I’m assuming your position because I don’t want to like it and am going to shut down discussion of it because I’ve made my conclusion and don’t like to be reasoned with despite not getting the point in the first place.”
People who do this make it difficult for topics to at least reach a middle ground. It’s frustrating.
If you don’t think it’s worth reading, don’t bother in the first place since all that was accomplished was piling onto the passive-aggressiveness that was mentioned in this thread (not that you’d know, it seems) already.
I strongly agree with this, but obviously there should be a sub-forum for every hero.
It would be nice to have a forum dedicated to talking about heroes you’re trying to learn or main as a means of exchanging strategies and talking about their performance.
But also, the forum user base is just way too large to lodge everyone into one single page. Threads constantly flood the main page and drown quickly, so only the most popular one tends to stay afloat (which in turn makes more controversial topics automatically stick).
But it would also limit opinions to only mains of that hero.
Let’s be honest here, would you ever go to the subform for Sombra? What about Bastions? How about Roadhog’s? Literally anyone else’s subform 99% of players would likely never touch.
It’s been so over talked about on the forums, and the people generally aren’t all that nice when you disagree with any of their views, that I can’t do anything but roll my eyes at any more mercy posts, I would LOVE to just not see them anymore.
I’m not sure it’s a GOOD thing to segregate them, but I sure as hell would appreciate the hell out of being able to filter ALL MERCY RELATED THREADS OUT OF MY FORUM EXPERIENCE.
Please and thankyou blizzard.
Back when the forum redesign happened, I thought for sure they would finally add them since, you know, every single other forum out there has them. Like seriously, hero-specific subforums, off-topic just for fun, come on Blizzard we need a bit more order in this place.
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