Useless feedback is anything that isn’t…well… Useful. AndyB said to be specific & to avoid hyperbole, so anything non-specific & hyperbole is what I would consider useless, and I’ve seen a whole lot of that since the patch went live.
If all of these changes stay as is and no other changes are made to any of these heroes I’ll eat my words. But, I find that extremely unlikely. If people make clear these heroes need changes then they’re not going to stay as is.
I think it’s best if the devs don’t listen to the players on most things. Most players have no clue how to balance a game. That being said, you should always give feedback on things you don’t like or things you’d like improved. Just because devs don’t respond, doesn’t mean they aren’t paying attention.
Positive Feedback: encourages the devs, especially if they make a change or game addition where the player reception is otherwise generally controversial or angry; they seem to love responding in welcoming safe space threads where the commentary is largely praise and tend to avoid threads with harsh criticism (probably doubles as a form of PR, as threads with dev responses will generate more activity, causing them to rise to the top. A positive thread that causes the negative threads to drop out of existence makes sense to reinforce the reception they would prefer us to have).
Negative Feedback: provides material for YouTubers looking to make "entertaining content." (seriously, they eat up your hot takes and love talking about your "can't make this stuff up" sort of ranting stupidity!)
All Feedback: creates work for the few Blizzard employees that moderate this place, thus guaranteeing them a job during these difficult times. All feedback is always good feedback, even when it's bad feedback, as people talking about the game is free advertisement, especially when conversations about Overwatch pop up in social media and news about the happenings in the game ends up on other news sites. Reputation can be mended, broken promises can be fixed, it's keeping the Overwatch brand name alive is what matters most.
It depends on how you read the statistics.
For example:
If McCree has a 100% pickrate, meaning a McCree always on both teams, there is no way his Win Rate can ever be higher than 50%, as one will always win and one will always lose. Seeing that at GM most of the played heroes have higher win rates that, he would seem weak.
But no, it is his pick rate that makes his win rate suffer. This means, that the more a hero is picked, the less his win rate will be, as he will be mirror-matched more often, resulting in one of the McCrees to lose.
Another thing is, that McCree has always had a fairly low win rate, which may be due to his high skill requirement. People would like to play him to prove to themselves that they are highly skilled, but many are not, which makes his overall win rate suffer.
Also, unlike many easier heroes, if you are having an offday, you will really suffer, which again will put pressure on the win rate.
I can’t see them putting a limit on Ball’s grapple as anything BUT them listening to a very vocal subsection (who are likely low-ranked, as this problem disappears once you hit gold) who hate seeing spin2win. I can see no other reason for this.
So they listened to THAT group, but they don’t listen to the much larger group saying McCree shouldn’t be getting buffed, or the even larger group who were very frustrated with some reworks (Sombra, Symmetra), etc.
It feels like they do listen, but only to certain groups. It honestly starts to feel like favoritism towards certain heroes and their fans, after a while, and a disregard for others.
While I am extremely cynical in terms of any “user feed back, customer satisfaction poll” or anything along those lines. It isn’t entirely pointless. They in general listen to the volume of responses, even if not their content. Very few times they have reacted to back lash so extreme they couldn’t ignore it.
Then there is also the issue Streamers and Pro’s some times pay more attention to what the fans want, and then the Dev’s listen to them.
But in general, no. No one really listens to the forums. Twitter, Redit, Youtube, Twitch, instagram anything has more exposure than the official forums.
See that makes sense, however there’s regularly characters with similar or higher pickrates couples with higher win rates. I don’t think this factors in till you approach 16% (is this the max pick rate considering he can only be one of six on either side? It’s something around this I think…).
In a vacuum this also makes sense, but the people picking him are of the same rank as everyone else. He’s doesn’t play insanely different to other hitscans, so doesn’t this mean he is a weaker choice than the others?
I think the biggest problem as that when you analyse this sorta stuff you end up requiring more info than the data provides. It would be fascinating to see McCree in particulars stats broken down by map, matchups and experience of the players select him (especially this last one). It may well be that McCree is dragged down by flex players choosing whatever the strongest matchup is to counter the opposition whereas if the stats only looked at mains/one tricks he would be performing much better. On the flip side, if someone can reach a rank playing a variety of other heroes but is routine beaten by mains of chars he is supposed to counter, than it doesn’t seem like his is a very effective counter
Its the wrong view. If you just play the game you are a casual gamer. Every one that goes to the forum, watches videos and tutorials is not a casual player. They are the more “hardcore” audience. The middle between casual and pro/CC so to speak. They are the ones that give valuable feedback for the “casual” crowed.
Most people dont care. They just leave the game. Thats why having the forum+dev+CC/pros is so important to hold the game together. The current realization is about 80% dev 20% pro/CC 0% forum/reddit. And it shows. It SHOULD be 50% dev, 25% pro/CC and 25% forum (reddit). Thats when you have a healthy balance. The devs are just to proud to admit that they have made countless mistakes and NEVER GO BACK! They see it as a weakness and this kills the game.
