I don’t believe they PvP much at any level.
They should play at a high level and still be smart enough to design for a wide range of players. Unfortunately the real issue at hand here isnt even about whats possible in the realms of difficulty. It’s that the kinds of “difficulty” they put in isnt fun. It’s like when your boss asks you to do a double. Yes you can do it, but do you want to do it? Will it be fun?
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So everyone on here want the game to be actually hardcore hard with no exception and weed out the weak and kick them off of this game and just bully them mercilessly? What an amazing community we got here. (Sarcasm)
It’s a catch 22,I worked cleaning machines for 33yrs,normally (unless a mishap happens) it basically the same routine. You know what you are doing and the supervisor doesn’t bark on time it takes,but lord and behold an higher execute walks in claiming they know my job and it can be hurried only to fail ,yeah,well that is in most cases a problem. Just let them do the job and prove it works. In the long run it will cost them.
Or they’ll get caught outright rigging things in their team’s favor, like the dev did on Zskarn this tier.
What? Come on now ,they didn’t 
People will be mad at you for anything, the reason specifically is irrelevant, they’ll find something to be mad at.
For example, just above you is a screenshot of a video with some Diablo 4 devs playing the game.
But I watch (some) of the video and looked up the devs in the video on linked in and both of them are level designers. Does that role require people be good at the game? I would argue not in their specific context, the closest impact they had on the actual gameplay is the pacing of the dungeon.
But it didn’t stop people tearing those devs to shreds, because people are mad at Diablo 4 for other reasons.
I viewed the video,only thing I see is people playing the dungeon,wether they are good at it or not doesn’t matter if they are having fun with it.
People are critical at time watching these,and point to flaws (some they do make themselves) . In the long run,they are not elitists,if they were than the regular person would bark and say so,saying you’re not playing as a regular but at a level they can’t reach,then why present it to us.
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This is pretty much true.
A lot of players openly mock game designers for showcasing something they worked on with a gameplay demo and their gameplay being subpar makes people mad.
It’s not exactly unexpected that game designs play at a very low level relative to the community who criticizes them. A lot of the time, players who show disdain for the developers are projecting their own expectations upon others unfairly. A developer can be pretty casual and is happy to complete LFR once each tier, and that’s that. The fact is that this relaxed behavior is pretty much the most common way to play games. Playing a game hardcore/min-max’ing/optimizing is extremely niche.
Game designers should attempt to create situations where the player can create their own emergent gameplay organically. Unfortunately, most of the toxic community of players – for any game – are too focused on optimizing the fun out of video games.
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People should take this stance,but in a rush ,monetized world we live it they pretty much everything streamlined,they truly miss the whole point of gaming.
“Developer” is an insanely broad title.
The person who designs the environment in a dungeon so it looks like the lair of a Black Dragon, or a palace where Air elementals like to hang out is a developer, the person who sprinkles NPC’s in a city and writes the dialogue of them interacting, or how they’d go about their business is a developer, the person who animates cinematics is a developer, the person who does sound effects to make a Pyroblast, Fireball and Fire Blast all sound different is a developer, the person who works behind the scenes and makes it so a group with players from multiple data centers can all play together is a developer, and so on.
All of those roles are crucial to ensuring that WoW as a game actually works and none of them involve having any knowledge of high end-gameplay, or really any gameplay at all.
But people don’t care because the point of being mad at Devs isn’t because they genuinely think that the guy who works on UX design needs to be a HoF level player, it’s because they’re mad at something else related to the game and the guy fumbling his way through a fight he almost certainly had nothing to do with design-wise makes an easy target.
Yeah,that’s true,I keep forgetting that I admit.
I think it’s fair to say people don’t want their time wasted, and that’s a reasonable expectation. However, I think some players go too far, too often, with the “optimize the fun out of the game” playstyle.
Some of the most successful games are rather chill. Minecraft is a good example. The whole point of the game to do whatever the heck you want. Players impose restrictions and rulesets on themselves to fit their playstyle. Skyrim is very replayable, and mods spice up the parts you might find boring. But Skyrim is largely you exploring the world, making your own fun.
In a game like WoW, there’s a bit more of a curated experience, but the game itself provides a ton of activities to do. The idea of “too much content” is wild for a current expansion. So, the designers have to be a bit more clever which giving the players opportunities for emergent and organic gameplay.
There are two principles that come to mind, which really stuck with me for a well-designed game: (1) Your creatures should lose convincingly, letting the player feel like they won with their skill or a bit of luck, and (2) Allow the player to feel like they outsmarted the designer.
An example of #1 is giving players progressive buffs, like with LFR Determination. Or it can be hidden, like with Bad Luck Protection. Maybe the player respawned at a checkpoint during the campaign a few times, so the enemy guns are slightly less accurate so you can complete that mission.
An example of #2 is giving players the chance to do something unexpected. A fun example of this using the Bronze Timelock on Dragonriding races. You can pre-place your reset point and then activate it during the race after the final checkpoint/ring. It would be incredibly easy to hotfix this, but they left it in. (Obviously, this is a mild example.)
There’s no wrong way to play a game. If it does not make you happy, find something else to waste your time on. If it makes you happy, waste your time playing it – but enjoy your time either way.
As an example I literally saw just a minute ago, I saw a preview on MMOC for a secret-finding event that Blizzard are doing, which offers nothing but cosmetic rewards and literally the first comment is:
Nice this is way better than fixing arena pvp rating inflation or m+ meta being as consolidated as it’s been since m+'s inception
Like my brother in Christ, why do you expect artists and quest designers to fix a system that is completely out of their sphere of influence.
To which he responded to someone saying something similar with:
At this point a couple pvp streamers could fix pvp rating inflation better than blizz’s own devs, let the art team do it i don’t care someone do something
The point is, he’s mad at the state of the game (not unrightfully, no idea on PvP but the M+ meta is complete garbage), but yelling at artists (or really just the guys who post the promotional material for upcoming events) isn’t about fixing those issues, it’s having a target to be mad at.
Yep! It’s effectively everyone at the studio who works or gives feedback on the game during development.
I also agree that many toxic players spout mean words because of a skewed perception of what matters in game design – creativity. You don’t need mechanical skill to be creative, though it can certainly help. But the moment you get a content expert on your team to playtest your game with an objective comments and skilled hands, you can level up any designer from decent to great.
The main issue though – the amount of negativity and hatred makes it hard to consume feedback when its littered with asinine comments and threats.
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Of course developers play their own games. The problem comes when the marketing geniuses put some artists in a “marketing” video telling them to play high end stuff and discuss. They are artists. They are not going to know about the mechanics and systems.
So stop doing that, Blizzard.
Stuff like that is why the devs dont really interact with us much. No matter how benign or unrelated to someones issue it is, if they see a dev posting about dwarf beard additions, you bet the entire comment sections gonna be filled with people with an axe to grind about pvp, m+, mount drop rates, why they cancelled starcraft ghost, you name it.
I have to agree with you take,yet,with further thought on it ,there is no way a developer can’t know most of the needs of players even when they are playing the game.This is where we have a problem ,they can only see,feel or understand the game through their experiences ,even with help in ptr that can’t be an accurate count,nor a accurate reference.