I see a lot of angry posts about the monetization, and I get it and all but people put all the blame towards the devs. Isn’t that just activision? like the devs have nothing to do with the monetization model or at least don’t have full control over it
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The monetization isn’t their fault, but they’re as transparent when it comes to new features and balance changes as mud and they don’t really ever listen to feedback. They almost never post on their own forums anymore. Like, last patch they added a nerf to Junkrat with no explanation whatsoever in the patch notes. They make patch note changes without documenting them. The list goes on.
“But when they post, people are just angry at them!”
Well, if they posted more often and actually communicated, the more quiet people would actually see merit in trying to communicate back and yeah sure there would be screaming people but there would also be plenty of very happy people that feel like the devs actually care about them. Because, right now, it really doesn’t. Since Jeff left, nobody seems to want to communicate with the playerbase at large and that just increases the overall enmity. The devs don’t post here. The CMs don’t post here even after introducing themselves. Nobody does. To regular players, the lot of them are as brickwall-ish as the board of directors that make all the draconian monetary decisions.
This company used to invest money into people to interact with their communities, exclusively. In the WoW forums, every class had their own representative. You see nothing like that anymore.
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You’re 100% correct that people often blame devs for decisions they have no part in.
A lot of it is this: Kaplan specifically said they’d never do monetized heroes, and he talked A LOT about how horrible it would be for the game.
And the devs now have to roll back all those comments and say, “We really think it’s fine” with all this doublespeak about how owning more heroes (somehow) isn’t actually a tactical advantage because counterpicking no longer exists (lol).
Were the devs basically ordered to make crap up in order to justify the decision? Yes. But I don’t blame people for being mad at the crap the devs made up.
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the monetization may not be their fault but the balance crap and the lousy state of the game is their fault also people were very patient with them they deserve all the hate they get
…actually it’s us, the players at fault really… 
Well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of longtime Ow1 collaborators have left in the last 2 years: kaplan, goodman, michel chu, the executive producer, one of the producers who publicly blamed Kotick for having " changed ideas about the plans within OW2 too many times" (probably referring to the 5v5 introduced just a year and a half ago and the BP business), concept designer ben zhang, julia humphreys (at blizzconline she directed part of the pve, but joined women who left blizzard after the scandals) and recently artist nesskain (video origins artist).
But I have to say one thing: placing the blame entirely on activision seems to me a “romantic” excuse to make Blizzard innocent. because at least the developers should have an opinion before proposing a lucio-oh souvenir (a 2016 spray with a box created on the first day of 3D modeling) and accept that it is a resource worthy of attention with all the functional bugs that it is having Ow2 (including disabling features like Find a group and workshop). maybe the BP and coin management is the marketing person’s fault? probably yes… but at a certain point there are also faults for those who have accepted to be influenced a little too passively everywhere (see also hearthstone and diablo). but development negligence is not the fault of activision marketing: “Ow2 will allow us to update the game faster” is the least kept promise of Ow2, look how much it struggles to fix bugs and how badly it justifies itself on that new Tracer bug instead admit that if she wasn’t the mascot she would have been quarantined like Mei and Bastion until the next patch. Ow2 in its data conversion has serious problems on the hotfix. Ow1 was definitely very responsible to avoid deactivating a hero even for one day, it’s just wrong that OW2 has accepted this situation twice.
the lack of communication? I think it’s a habit they picked up from the oW1 dry spell consisting of just “when there’s new stuff we’ll tell you.” but this has made them highly apathetic in being “in the community”: they prefer Ama organized in one day rather than using the forum, the “blues” are the only official figure, the patch notes do not deserve comments (and too often have ghosts unannounced fixes), to answer questions they create faq pages… and there is a fear of considering certain previous statements canonical (and this also penalizes the lore section, not just the development philosophy).
I can only wish that it gives the same development peace of mind granted to the studios it has acquired so far. Because one thing is true of OW2, quoting Illidan: it wasn’t ready. packaged too early as an Esport that could no longer accept another year with outdated Ow1, but at the same time completely disorganized to address all the functional problems for home users. the consequence? lots of unnecessary content (reskins, intro re-animations with bad timing, souvenirs, charms) and too much bundle spam (or rather, ban shops), too many special promotions active at the same time, etc.
Who is doing that? Who is blaming the rank and file developers? Or is this just your assumption, that when someone says “Blizzard” they mean the guy who makes the doors in the game?
People are criticizing the system. Obviously that means the people who came up with it and not really the the ones who were put to work on it.
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Blizzard doesn’t mean Devs, blizzard means whole company.
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Angry posts that you’ll see around where they specifically blame devs
Activision-Blizzard higher ups are making decisions yes, but we dont know much about who is responsible for this fully.
It could be they just got told how to set up prices and shop and thats it, they could be invovled in this, who knows really.
COD, a far more lucrative money squeezing game has a better system than OW2. Nothing was stopping the devs adding something to actually engage players other than themselves.
The monetization is awful and it’s the higher ups fault but if communicating that by saying the devs are enabling this gets it across to more people then it’s worth doing