yes, i do blame them.
sombra mains BEGGING for bug fixes:
- devs stay silent
they ignore her bugs and release random PTR nerfs, which even pros are against:
- devs stay silent
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Not trying to say they’re perfect though, all developers have issues. Being transparent hasn’t been Blizzard’s strong suit in years. Majority of the time when it comes to random nerfs like Sombra is recieving, whatever they maybe. It has something to do with either a shift on how other characters play or even a newcomer changing the meta. I can’t comment much more on that, because I don’t play Sombra.
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The developers do read forums.
With that said, they do so rather briefly.
You can view their activity here:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/groups/overwatch-developer
The Lead Writer is the most active on forums of the developer staff when it comes to reading threads.
The Principal Level Designer appears to do a solid job of reading topics that relate to level design.
One of the developers is relatively active on reddit.
With that said, everyone that is posting links on forums has read more posts than each of the developers.
If the developers read posts while they are not logged in it is not tracked. Some have stated they do not log in while off site so they may read more than it looks like.
Based on past comments that some of the staff have made I do not believe they have interns reading forums or they are doing a lousy job as they’ve missed things interns could have easily noticed.
Silence doesn’t mean they’re not working on things. And what players want doesn’t equal what’s best for the game. Balance is already pretty rocky as it is, so they need to find ways to incorporate changes that benefits everyone – whether “pros” like it or not.
Not to mention that “nerf” is subjective.
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It’s not fair to compare them to one of the worst cases lol.
Eh. A Youtuber used that comparison because both are toxic fanbases, so I went with that.
I also would like to mention, there was a gaming related news article about developers addressing the community. How you really rarely see that happen anymore and if it does occur where developer speaks out about something. It with in their own community of developers and not really often with gamers.
It went on to express t he issues of why this occurs, as developers fear the lashing out of their audiences, because lets face it a very huge chunk of the gaming community, is quite toxic, childish etc.
For example, a developer would have to carefully watch what they say to the community because if there is even one iota of a change the consensus doesn’t agree with about any development change…it clearly derails what was good about that change. The mob mentality kicks in, and gangs up occur.
Simply just look at how, normal average gamers are treated when they make suggestion to game play mechanics with any game that doesn’t agree with the status quo. Expect that to be even worse for a developer.
Now I’m not implying that our charges are going to be for the better, but even one small change how ever bad or good can affect the out come of anything else.
Also since the merger with Activision, developers also have to keep a keen eye on what they say about their game development. Whether to protect trade secrets, upcomming business opportunities, etc. If something is said that affects and issues or puts the company in bad light, would be a public relations debacle.
Finally one other point is, something you could agree on if you were in their shoes. If you were extremely rich or had a decent amount of stock invested within the company. Then surely you would want the developers to watch carefully what they say because that could affect your bottom level profits.
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Probably ones with a lot of attention. I think some topics are too delicate to reply to.
Yes, they do read them(proof is them replying to certain topics), but they can’t read/respond to everything, as they are busy making them game.
They do read the forums.
But let’s understand that they cannot respond too quickly.
They have meetings about the stuff we players suggest / request and decide if it is feasible. If yes, they also decide when and how it will be implemented, what takes priority and which ones can be delayed until later.
So the best thing to get a response is to make a constructive well thought of post. We can request but let’s also take the time to give supporting details.
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Remember two things specifically. Blizzard is big enough to have a group specifically to keep an eye on forums and information posted that are not Dev’s. I the past i have done this for other companies and we would read all forms of social media for information, then literally summarize the information to small one or two line info and pass it on.
Honestly, we ask for Dev contact on the forums, but if they were active people would complain they aren’t doing enough Dev work and putting out patches and fixes fast enough.
Secondly, the Dev’s are always trying to make things better in OW in general. They spend a lot of time in meetings and discussion groups about possible changes. Not to mention a lot of information is also given to Pro Streamers/Players through interviews and such. So they often release such information through those means to continue to grow the OW community. People hearing a Dev interview from seagull are more likely to be possible new OW players or people interested who haven’t bought the game than on hundred thousand people on the forums who constantly complain about everything. I recall Papa made a comment to Seagull that when they released LFG, they “Single handedly saved OW” then a week later they released Wrecking Ball/Hammond and they “Single handedly destroyed the game forever”. Which is all stuff people posted to the forums and reddit etc. So they are reading information.
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A lot of forums posts are not worth there time. I’m surprised they haven’t deleted heroes based off of some posts that people have made.
Blizzard is large enough but, the responses we’ve seen from the staff appear to strongly suggest that they haven’t been doing it.
The devs themselves aren’t on here frequently, they generally have better things to do with their time, plus anything they do say gets taken as holy scripture so they have to be careful. Instead, they have community managers that are constantly reading the forums and taking our feedback. They then meet with the development team to report on hot issues. If the devs decide to do anything about it is up to them, but they are usually looking far into the future and looking at other unknown to the community changes to see how things will be impacted. Only once they have something absolutely concrete will they say anything.
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When they need a decent laugh.
They may also be aware of some comments but not say anything or wait to choose their words. People don’t realize that they need to be a bit political with their answers as it is a product in the market.
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That is very true. They cannot just reply too quickly then say “my bad” if it turns out that they cannot implement it for whatever reason.
You can not hide, we see you!
We’re always reading the forums. Please don’t despair if your topic or post doesn’t receive a reply.
Thank you.
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Lol, super menacing…we don’t feel better now.
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Can I please have your opinion over here? Please. ^https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/worlds-best-sombra-player-does-not-want-to-play-the-current-sombra/148452