Jeff had stated in an interview once “we’re very in sync with the forums”
They don’t look at feedback because they think they already know what we want 
I feel like this is one of the main reasons. For example, mercy is a very emotional subject for a lot of her player base right now. If a developer dropped in and said something they didn’t want to hear like “We feel she is balanced and fine right now” could you imagine the backlash? It would be worse than if they just stayed silent. Honestly with how toxic the forums are I don’t really blame them.
I don’t blame Tom for lurking, the backlash from him responding to the thank you thread was insane. I know people were frustrated but by being so toxic they have discouraged devs responding. If they didn’t want to respond to feedback before then they definitely won’t want to now.
Just my opinion, don’t need anyone to respond with a lecture on why what Tom did was wrong.
This community is so entilted. They dropped 30$ a year or two ago and they expect the game to always be like they want. Go create your own game if you’re so good at game balance and PR, and please, don’t come back.
Simple answer to the OP - your feedback is cool, but your suggestions are probably wrong. If they replied to that, they’d get into flame wars which would do more damage than good.
There are a hundred ways of fixing a problem and the devs are the experts in doing just that in the least damaging way.
Also, if the devs spent all their time replying to posts on here, they wouldnt get any work done.
A little more community manager involvement would be nice, but we get regular videos from the dev team when new stuff comes out, so i guess its not required.
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You sir, are a rare breed on these forums. It’s nice to see someone objective and reasonable.
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The game would be a very different place if the popular opinion or throw most vocal opinions were used to balance the game. I think the deva should at least be more transparent with peoples feedback, maybe saying why they won’t change heros in a certain way, even if it’s popular in the community
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They’re employing the Korean development method: ignore all feedback and add more skins. That’s where the money is at.
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u sure? i have not a single friend online on this game anymore thanks to recent hanzo changes and DF, Experts pfff.
Their feedback is minimal, all we see is jeff saying hello i am jeff from the overwatch team.
The game is in a poor state atm, people from bronze to top 500 agree with this, even certain pro’s are not afraid anymore to call it out since there contracts don’t allow them to criticize or be negative in any form.
II think it comes down to three factors affecting developer response:
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OWL focus - everything is now done with consideration on it’s impact there, and hence no “rushing” is allowed on changes… don’t want to tip over the cash cow
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Impossible to please playerbase relative to game design - the game is inherently going to have some unbalance, but what people consider “unbalanced” is relative - hell there are people who truly believe Brig is balanced for instance.
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Just plain arrogance - and I don’t say this with malice. I bet in the design rooms and number crunching Brig looked good, I don’t believe Blizz set out to make a truly unbalanced (though they wanted meta-changing) character… but in direct play that power set was clearly unbalanced and yet it made it out of testing and PTR into the real world… one can clearly see the problems but why don’t they fix them? Pride I think is the issue, that to admit mistakes requires humility, and when you are billions of dollars in revenue from four major IP’s it’s hard to swallow humble pie…
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I don’t think they are ignoring it. More like just being silent.
And… What sort of qualifications those people have? A big fat of nothing. User feedback is only used for consideration, no professionals used it as a guide book. Don’t @ me unless you have the relevant degree and track records.
I think that they have shifted the focus from the game to e-sports. You can also tell by how unbalanced some heroes currently are and why they do not care about that.
In addition, the communi-cation was not very good before, if you look at what was said for statements. What’s currently missing is the monthly update video, what they are working on.
Feedback is easy when you have no real stakes in the game. This is Blizzard’s business and many people’s livelihoods while for us it is simply our entertainment. Not saying we don’t want the game to be its best just like the developers do but I don’t think it’s much of a leap to say they’re more invested. Not to mention, they’re working professionals who have been doing this a long time.
I’m sure they read the forums as much as they can. It’s always a good idea to gauge the player base. But a lot of us have a misguided notion on what exactly goes on behind the scenes, what it takes to actually implement a thing, how that thing can potentially affect other things, etc. Plus, we have no idea of what the future road map is; all we see are things we don’t like and want changed while Blizzard is juggling balance, content feed, social changes, E-sports, and whatever else they have in store.
But the mere fact that people are confused as to why they don’t ‘just listen’ goes to show how little is understood about the process as a whole. We have no idea who is working on what (besides the Jeffs and other big names), we have no idea how much resources they can manage to spend, we have no idea what changes are ALREADY in the pipeline that can render our suggestions irrelevant , we have no idea what simply won’t or can’t happen.
And finally, devs don’t respond to feedback because forums are a toxic wasteland most of the time. Imagine all the negativity in this thread alone. It’s not their job to respond to all of us, it isn’t even their job to respond to the broad strokes like they do. That’s a huge risk and 100% of the time they respond, there’s a huge portion of players who cry, quit, or are otherwise angrier than before the response. Imagine slipping up and saying the wrong thing as a Dev because the idiots here. That would end up on every gaming news outlet within the day and be blown out of proportion instantly.
When it comes to forums, there’s very little to be gained by engaging with the player base, we often don’t know what we’re talking about, and we incur exactly none of the risk with our suggestions no matter how good or bad they might be (or more accurately, how good or bad we THINK they might be) .
why would they do that? lets put it that way blizzard tried be more communicative, i think it was a around a full year ago after the dva fiasco.
in order for them not tilting the community.
after awhile people complained that theyr were to slow or it wasnt the right plans. or do more, more and more.
is this a joker, right? each time the devs voiced their opinions it lets them open for attacks and the community knows how to use it. also why would they voice their opinions when people would attack them for having the wrong own opinions.
i odnt have to start as it would be the same as point 1 or 2.
it would certainly be nice but imo the devs gave up on the communication.
I agree with you - i hate 1 shots and being 1 shot killed, it just feels bad.
Either way, the guys at bliz are the shepherds of game design. They’re considering problems from a much higher point of view than the average player all while trying to stick to a specific vision.
Balancing a game like overwatch incredibly complex, 1 small change on a character can make them utterly overpowered or completely useless.
Here’s something to consider:
The number of possible team comps a team is: 28 x 27 x 26 x 25 x 24 x 23 = 271252800.
And you’re balancing that against a second team of the same number of possible combinations.
If my maths is right (and its usually not) that’s:
271252800 x 271252800 = 7.357808150784e+16
That’s about 73,578,081,507,840,000.
There are 70 quadrillion possible team setup variants for 2 teams in Overwatch
I can see how it’s not easy to balance them all.
because they dont care about the general public who in mass play the game. they only care about OWL players and the other top 1% of pro players. they have taken resources away from game development and put it towards OWL.
- They do what they do for a living and rightfully feel they can do a better job than an internet mob?
Honestly, do you crowdsource direction in the daily tasks at your place of work? I don’t think many people in skilled professions do.