Arcane mage was in a degenerate state of game play at the end of Shadowlands. The new talent tree for Arcane did nothing but push players into the exact same game play. Talents that were dead in Shadowlands were still dead going into Dragonflight.
They tried to do a complete overhaul of how to play Shadow Priest without any idea of what that game play would look like. We got a “build your own” Shadow Priest tree where some cooldowns and talents were contradictory and having two filler spells competing with each other.
Having been in most (all?) of the betas since BC, here’s my observation:
Alpha: They listen to SOME feedback, and might make some small changes. But for the most part, they have a vision, they’re going to follow it, and all the mountains of evidence you have to explain why something is bad/ needs to be changed won’t matter.
Beta: This is the part people still don’t seem to get.
Everyone wants Beta to be about feedback, and changing things etc.
Beta has one purpose: DOES IT CRASH TO DESKTOP??
As long as the game doesn’t outright crash to desktop, it’s good to go.
They don’t listen to feedback. They aren’t changing anything. No classes are getting adjusted. NOTHING MATTERS. The ONLY thing that matters once it gets to Beta is: is it stable?
That’s it.
And it why stuff is so broken when a new expansion releases. Because no matter what is said, no matter how good the feedback in Beta… it’s all 100% ignored.
This isn’t true because they made several sweeping changes for classes such as Warrior during Beta. Others such as Arcane Mage got radio silence while Priests got a big middle finger. Who remembers the blue post saying “Holy and Discipline priests will not get a silence because too many specializations have one. We know it seems unfair that literally every specialization has a silence except Holy and Discipline, but we just don’t care.”
Well, there is a rather obvious example of that not happening in the remix: its called the Frogger situation.
The Frog hyperspawns were a thing since the original MoP and when people played the Remix on the PTR they mentioned this, and when nothing was done about, people assumed it was fine and went on a farming loop. Then got smashed because Blizzard called it an exploit. Despite, as I say, it having been in the game forever and nothing being done about it, despite reports.
So…yeah, there’s that. Blizzard, over the last few years, seems to have assumed the position of launching things and then ‘hotfix’ stuff that turns out to be broken in some way. Rather than fixing things before launch.
You might be able to cherry pick one or two oddball examples over the 20 year history of this game, but for 99% of the situations, my post holds true.
Even in your post, you try and make the exception about Warriors (in which beta???), but also mention how they ignored every other class (which is to my point).
Bottom line is: they don’t listen. Torghast says wut?
I’m talking about Dragonflight Beta. Blizzard rarely follows a strict definition of Alpha and Beta testing. There are definitely times in Beta when they cherry pick the feedback they will listen to and actually change things. To say they only care about stability in Beta is false.
I could argue that it would be a good thing if they actually did follow your strict definition of Beta testing. In that case, everyone would feel ignored. It doesn’t help those subscriber numbers when one part of the player base is getting showered with attention while others are getting ignored.
Same with acquiring Legendaries in Legion. Everyone advises them how bad the idea was in alpha/beta and they went with it anyway, only fixing it in the last patch of the expansion.
There are certain kinds of feedback that I think it’s pretty clear Blizzard has not listened to. The thread commenting on the utter silence at the reveal of the Earthen was a pretty good example.
On the alpha they have been pretty good at listening to class feedback and implemented a number of changes. Yes not all classes - I think there’s separate class developers and some are more communicative/responsive than others - but that may have to do with the scale of the changes for each class.
On beta, they are usually pretty good with minor bugs feedback. But when there is major negative feedback about a big new system that is central to the expansion they may be seen as non-responsive - but it is usually too late to make the sort of changes necessary.
The big new system in TWW is delves - and given this will be a focus for solo players I hope they seek some extensive feedback from the target players (who aren’t typically on alpha) during beta.
There has been a load of threads about the profession system launched in dragonflight and problems with it. There has been some feedback on alpha and a lot of suggestions - but it really does need a focus on beta when more of it is working.
When you do something 99% of the time, that is your defined process. Whether you like it or not.
You seem to want to say "well… they do something 1% of the time (or less) and so there’s just no telling!!! "
Which is absurd.
Also-- WHICH Warrior changes. I never said they “didn’t change things” in the Beta. What I’m saying is that they don’t make changes based on the informed and conclusive feedback from the players. That’s a HUGE difference. They didn’t change anything about Warriors in the Beta for DF based on feedback from Skyhold. You can review the logs there for proof.
We have 18+ years of precedent. We have ENDLESS examples of people providing MOUNTAINS of feedback and evidence for things that are broken in beta, and are COMPLETELY ignored. And you’re trying to make a claim based on “well this one time, there was the one thing, that for a moment…” give me a break.
This JUST HAPPENED in MopMix!!! lol The issue with hyperspawning frogs WAS BROUGHT UP in the beta/ptr!!! And what did Blizzard do?? THEY IGNORED IT. The issue of scaling was brought up in the ptr. THEY IGNORED IT.
There is “white knighting” and there is what you’re doing. It’s a whole other level of blatantly saying things that are objectively false.
But I’m not new around here. I know what’s next. You’ll just dig in deeper. It’s ok… another Beta will be coming up soon to, once again, prove me right. Although I’m sorry to say that, since I don’t want it to be that way.
It’s because we’re in Alpha. When we go into Beta, changes stop coming other than minor tweaks here and there. At that point, they consider the game pretty much completed.
I just looked back at the Blue Tracker during the testing of Dragonflight. I am mistaken. Everything Blizzard did during both Alpha and Beta testing was put into a forum called Dragonflight Beta Test at that time. That is where a lot of the confusion is coming from for both myself and likely some others. What I thought was Beta testing was actually Alpha testing (according to the content of some of the Blue Posts).
The majority of my complaints should have been directed at the Alpha testing cycles. The attention that Warriors got was ridiculous compared to what Arcane Mages and Shadow Priests got at that time.
There was a MASSIVELY HUGE feedback thread on azerite armor, in BfA development.
It was a giant thread, hundreds of contributors, and Blizzard ignored it. Then one day Lore (remember him?) posted in the thread saying, “I don’t get it. What don’t you guys like about azerite armor?”
It was such a tone-deaf thing to post, given the massive amount of feedback sitting RIGHT THERE if only he or anyone at Blizzard would actually read it.
I’ll believe you when shaman or hunters get more than a single line of dev notes in any build. Or any dev response at all to the thousands of constructive feedback posts given.
