No. They didn’t. A few people that never heard anything came and did, but the forum response by and large was constructively give and the devs themselves felt very comfortable during that time period communicating repeatedly with the forums. Most of the 0 post count people that came and flipped out, were simply quoted what Jeff said on the forum by the people who actually use it and they calmed down.
The noose debate was the same everywhere, it’s an emotionally charged change that involves politics. That’s why people don’t speak about politics in polite company.
There were dozens of threads on the front page at any given time of people screaming about how terrible the changes were and that they and everyone they knew would quit if the changes went live so you are wrong people did flip out and despite being told it was not the direction they were going to go they still believed it would go live in the future.
If we are going to that response constructive then it sort of highlights why you never let the forums get a glimpse into what is going on behind the scenes because if that constitutes constructive I would hate to see what you consider poor feedback.
Because video game companies all copy one another’s user tool kits regardless if it makes sense or not. Blizzard doesn’t want to use it’s official communication channels to communicate, they’d rather go somewhere where they can have friendly rapport.
I think this is in large part because they don’t really have a significant and enabled community team, and instead send their head developers to do the communication. Community management is a soft skill, but it’s a skill nonetheless. And the people who do it have a personality type that isn’t really bothered by the lack of friendly rapport that is inherent to mass communication.
Also because they typically aren’t the ones developing it, the negativity stings less because they are degree removed from the creation process.
There was a lot of negative feedback, but very little of it could be characterized as screaming. You probably overly focused on the few that did. Negative feedback isn’t automatically screaming.
Because they trust content creators far more than the average Forum user?
People that that make content from the game, who’s job is based on playing the game, have a lot more on the line and are more likely to take into account the health of the game far more than the average Forums user.
They have a lot more riding on the health of the game and are therefor more likely to think of more considerate suggestions.
This actually is a biasing factor away from the health game and towards the health of their pocketbook. They are gonna strongly favor things that are fun to watch and that pleases the hardcore crowd that watches them, over anything else.
I am focusing on the dozens of threads on the frontpage at any given time during that that said exactly what I am saying they said.
Yes there were some threads that were giving proper feedback in the proper way (for example I posted in a couple of the threads in question that while being an all powerful god tank was fun the pace of the game and the way the matchups played made the game cease to feel like OW).
I am a good tank and DPS player. The people in that discord, except for the content creators, are way better. I would value their feedback over mine. The content creators role in that discord is to, though I suspect they do not realize it, function as pseudo community reps and be able to give feedback on what their communities are concerned with. They can obviously view the forums and reddit easily, but those are only two facets of where the OW community is.
I would dare to say the vast majority of the OW community does not know the contents of a patch until it goes live.
They didn’t. You characterized their responses as “screaming” because they were negative. I actually provided a link where anyone can scroll through and see that this was not the case. The majority of the responses WERE negative but they were NOT screaming. Blzzard employees themselves say that they prefer to comment elsewhere when the forums get that way, but the devs actually felt very comfortable talking here that entire time and gave multiple responses.
Being in a good state for the majority and getting lots of players, and being in a good state for viewing streamers are not the same thing. They are not mutually exclusive, but they are not the same thing. The masses are gonna, in aggregate, be less biased towards what’s fun to watch over what is fun to play than a streamer. Because the streamer’s livelihood depends on the game being fun to watch and play for a very specific subset of people, their fans.
Money is a huge biasing factor and something you should watch out for.
I gave negative feedback about it (even said what my negative feedback was). There is a difference between giving negative feedback and speaking hyperbolically about how it is the worst change ever, they are clearly prioritizing the OWL experience over everyone else’s fun (that one was always there), long rants about quitting over the change and saying that it is inevitable that it goes live.
There is providing negative feedback and there is that. I did not enjoy the changes. I probably would not play comp if those changes went live. I did not make a long winded rant filled with strawman arguments and hyperbolic nonsense in order to make that point. That is the difference between providing negative feedback and useless feedback.
Edit: Like right now we are giving feedback and while we both disagree, I would not characterize either of our feedback as meaningless or hyperbolic. We just have two different points of view and are expressing them in a proper manor.
Literally you can go click that link yourself and see that you’re wrong dude. Like put up some hard evidence or don’t. Up to you. The majority of the feedback was negative but not screaming. Saying a change is the worst ever is not screaming, for some people that’s an objective assessment of how they feel. It depends on how the rest of the post is constructed.
But people that play the game are far more likely to watch someone stream that game and a game that is good is more likely to attract more people which means more money for Blizz as well as more money for the content creators .
Not to mention that streamers and such also want to enjoy playing the game since that’s their job
Sure. But they are also likely to be very hardcore players. Casual audience is much larger than a hardcore audience. Cater too much to casuals and the game can have a huge spike and then die when they chase the next flavor of the month. Cater too much to the hardcore set and you get an increasingly small, insular group of people who mow down newbies too hard for anyone new to have any interest in joining and who dislike the kinds of unique, fun things that attract the bigger crowds. Many games have fallen into one of those two traps.
Streamers are more likely to be biased towards the hardcore crowd because the things that crowd likes to play tend to be more fun to watch. It doesn’t necessarily lend itself to drawing bigger playerbases, sometimes giving into them to much actually decreases the playerbase because the amount of people that leave do not outweigh the number of people that join from watching the streamer.
Not always, sometimes something can be fun for both audiences and not cause these issues. Genji is an example of a hero that is like that. But it’s certainly something to be aware of and a bias to keep in mind.
Its just sad, that they are running away from the backlash that they themselves created overtime.
The forums are not a saint thats for sure, but lets not pretend that the overall dissatisfaction with the devs is not warranted. I can come up with plenty of instances where they could have done the right thing by actually listening to the overall consensus.
For example, i dont even want to think about how many support players left the game and never looked back during the Mercy disaster. A lot of players simply left because of the rework itself, a lot of people were bullied out of the game for using the busted reworked version, then the ones who had enough of her overpowered state. Pretty much all of them would be still playing today if that rework was reverted and they went back to the drawing board. The list of bad decisions dosnt start or end with this.
The forums wont ever have 100% agreement on something among each other, neither they will endorse everything that they get, but in most cases it is pretty clear what the playerbase think of something. Even if Mercy rework or 2-2-2 wasnt that clear, the feedback on Reaper 50% lifesteal was and it still happened,same with Ironclad Bastion and the Genji buffs. How many months we had to suffer on Paris and Horizon and hate 2cp overall until they finally adressed it? That reminds me,why is Paris and Horizon still a thing in Quickplay? Take them out of there as well.
So yeah,i wonder how long we have to wait until they create a 2nd supersecret discord with different people because the first one becomes too “toxic”.
And most of them are gold because they aren’t playing it in a hardcore way, they just prefer the structure of competitive. A lot of them also just do it for golden guns, which the devs have stated and said they regret implementing it into the mode because it flooded comp with noncompetitive players.
In fact, the reason a lot of the reason gold and plat competitive players consistently express large frustration is that the majority of their teammates aren’t taking things as seriously as they are take it. It’s like one of the number one complaints from those ranks.
