It’s not a rant, I think, it’s just an observation.
Out of every post on the forums, at least half would not exist if the devs simply stopped hiding from the community.
Don’t go around saying “we’re buffing Sombra’s ability to be an infiltrator” without addressing the complaint of her midfight capabilities.
Just saying “we think her midfight capabilities are exactly where we want them to, and we’re adjusting her so you can build a play style around her off fight capabilities” would already make people feel less lost.
Also, the whole “not talking to anyone about the changes” thing needs to change. You have a big pro scene with hundreds of players involved. Use that. Shield Bash have been nerfed many times now, and most people still don’t think it is at a good spot. This is the type of unbalance that should be detected at test phases.
And no, don’t worry about them leaking anything. I doubt that any other company would try to espionage your methods of balancing the game, specially considering how well that has been working.
We like this game, a big part of us could go as far as the say that we love this game. But it’s really hard to understand what you’re thinking when you have (allegedly) 40 million players, but every change in the game feels completely disconnected from the feedback of the community, without any statement on why the things are being done differently than what people are asking.
Really, it’s as simple as coming to the forums once a month and saying “y’all are wrong, because of this and that, so we’re doing X instead”. Speak to us.
TL; DR:
The dev team would make things a lot better if they didn’t hide so much of us. Saying what is being made and why instead of dropping random updates, or worse, making nerfs and calling them bug fixes.
You can’t expect them to talk about what they want when what is actually good for the game is miles off from what the forums want. The amount of people that want changes for the games benefit and not for selfish reasons is few and far between on the forums.
If a change isn’t the exact thing that the forums wanted then the will get angry and start throwing their toys all around the room.
I would like to defend the developers, but they haven’t done any justice to the game lately besides promoting toxicity for morally justice players. They don’t do very good executions on balancing heroes. It’s always the minimal instead of moderate or max.
Symmetra gains 2 meters on beam. Really? That’s it? After 2 years and 2nd rework her first buff is 2 meters? How can I defend developers like that when their delivering is so minimal?
Pro players have said it was fine. The upcoming second really isn’t going to matter in the long run, because a good Brig will have shield slam up to stop an ult or dive, etc.
The problem isn’t the character. The problem is user error, pure and simple. There have been countless threads about how to counter Brig, and they are usually ignored in favor of simply crying and using exaggerations as replies. “Brig three shot me!” Mathematically impossible if you’re at full life, but hey, you insist it happened, it happened.
Brigitte is about control, because she’s a support with tank like abilities. Crying about her controlling, is like crying about Ana for healing. There is nothing else to be said: the ways to counter her are there, pros use her occasionally (if she was truly broken, or so strong, she’d be in nearly EVERY game like…Tracer? Mercy?) and they have not griped about her.
Time to come to terms that the character isn’t the problem.
Well they said they’re scared to communicate with us on the forums. If you was there on the old forums when Mercy got reworked and given some nerfs, most had extreme reactions. Like death threats, or “I’ll do a bad thing to x dev if he doesn’t or do this or that” sometimes there would a bunch of threads saying I hate x dev or fire x dev.
Blame WoW for that; it’s the same team, and the WoW community literally drove them off the forums (to be fair in part due to their balancing decisions).
I don’t believe that. When you enter a business and genres like these you’re to expect some people like that. It’s up to them to stand up against that and to shut them up is saying.
" If you want to send death threats to me then you might as well say goodbye to any evolution developing in this game because you’re not liking my decision. The fact you’re getting emotional about it means I am doing my job good meaning you have to evolve as well developing new strategies with the new rework. By all means send me feedback and I will see what I can do to improve the hero performance. "
I will say that to my fans if I was to face them. I mean you’re going to send death threats to me because of something I love to do. Didn’t you know death means no evolution? Is that what you want for a game you love dearly? I rest my case.
Nevertheless they need to acknowledge their feedback especially on heroes players trying to help out on balancing. Doing that makes them happy and also the community as whole. They need to find the reasonable suggestions to make sure that hero gets the proper balance keeping them viable in the game and not some niche forever hero.
As for their rules and policy they need to stop rejecting every appeal because not all reports are valid. If they can do that then this game will gain their positive rep back than trying to rely on the lfg and endorsement concepts. That doesn’t help out with toxicity because that surfaces from anywhere. Accepting appeals on false reports builds up healthy relationship for your game and players to back them up.
the community was always toxic more then normal ppl can understand why. especillay here in the boards.
and that is not bc the devs dont talk to the community.
i cant say why so many ppl here have so much extreme reaction to a game. like the dev kill a real ppl.
and i think you are wrong. the dev have a lots of ppl they talk to, make test games etc.
but with a active player base around 12million you cant get everyone love the game or some changes.
i think if we all have our real name in the battle.net so everyone can read it, the communuity would be perfect and only some of them would be the exception of the rule
Ah yes, lets put the playerbase at risk of being stalked and harassed because the Devs can’t handle criticism, great idea.
FYI, last I checked Facebook and other social networking sites were just as toxic (often more so due to actual rl bleeding over) as any anonymous site.
If I was a dev I wouldn’t want to communicate with the forums either. Most of the rabble here is subjective and extremely bias. Not to mention silvers telling devs how to balance for a game where the only people who play this game optimally are in top 50p/owl is laughable.
You’d need to go farther than that to really make any dent in the lack of satisfaction and at least include numbers and more justification.
The thing is though at this point unless you have an absolutely excellent case you’ll likely get your words or arguments thrown back at you because the amount of trust some people have in the development staff is very low and it’s hard to write something that can’t be nitpicked.
Engaging people that make death threats is a mistake as it can cause more people to make them to get attention and can potentially cause people to follow through.
Additionally, I think you are failing to consider that people may prefer to not have change if they like something a ton as they may not feel that it can easily be improved and that most efforts would instead cause harm.
There’s a whole megathread of Bastion players being ignored.
There’s a couple of large threads full of Sombra players being ignored.
There’s literal pages of Mercy players being ignored.
It’s not so much that their perspective doesn’t match up with ours, but more along the lines of we feel like neglected children, being forced to scream to get any sort of attention and when we do, they only kinda listen to what we want and never get our full perspective.
Who knows, but the point still stands. If you attack something you love and cannot accept. Then it won’t evolve. Some people just want too much control instead of letting it balance out.
Well that depends on what we’re discussing about. For a game like this change will come with tweaks. That’s one thing people have to accept and not fail to understand it. As long voices are being heard and suggestions are put. The noises will calm down and negotiations will start.
I really wish one of the devs would try playing solo on console just to experience the madness. Its been over 2 years and still no vote for next map which would help keep team together but they need to crack down on bad behaviour.
I’m doubtful. People are going to complain regardless. Most do it for the attention. If Devs started responding more frequently it would just fan the flames of the haters who’ve convinced themselves on their own pride that their minds can not be changed.
In the direction this games heading, that’s highly debatable. An esports game that caters to casuals and is horribly balanced is painful for everyone involved.
The hardcore fanbase that actually pays attention to esports don’t care for low skill at the highest form of play.
The casual fanbase will inevitably jump on the next big thing that comes along and doesn’t care for esports to begin with.
The sponsors of owl slowly seeing the decline of owl because of this.
And the dev’s who are trying their best to fix what’s not broke while desperately avoiding bug fixes, balance issues and reverting mistakes looks terrible to everyone.
comes from incredibly toxic self entitled Mercy mains, who for some reason think that they’re so important - hilarious stuff
another 40% of toxicity comes from “LGBT threads” - this week is rather free of this forum plague, but in previous months this forum was drown in the identical posts