I’m just curious if they actually pay attention and do changes based off of the feedback threads, i never see any interaction with the players just every now and then maybe a change. Are the threads really worth putting any effort into?
In my opinion, no. At the end of the day, they have already made up their mind on most things and are not going to change regardless of what we say. And the feedback of a lone individual user or even a small group will likely go unnoticed.
However, there have been numerous examples where a large enough collective pushback has happened that they did take notice and change course. For example, the world quest reversion that was cancelled. But those are few and far between.
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They are not, we’re here to complain to each other. We are the void!
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A feedback thread is not a place for Blizzard discussion. In fact, Blizzard replying to feedback threads, historically, causes A LOT of spam within that thread, derailing what was once a good place for feedback. For example, let’s say Monks get a post from a developer who addresses a lot of questions… almost immediately, usually the first reply, “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FIX [SPEC]”.
Feedback threads are a place for you to drop your feedback, and move on. They absolutely do read feedback. They do not, however, always act on feedback. Whether you agree with a design, the simple fact is that they are the game designer, and it’s their job to make creative decisions regarding their assignments.
Also, player feedback is usually a massive wall of text, hard to read, and harder to digest. This is arguably the best feedback post I’ve seen in years. It’s easy to read. Easy to digest. Clear and concise feedback goes miles.
As a side note, usually players are asking for massive changes, and that’s literally not possible in most cases. If you want your feedback to be effective, it’s extremely simple.
Per topic of your choice:
- What do you like, or dislike, about it?
- What makes it fun, or not fun?
- Are there examples in gameplay usage you can provide?
. - I think Eclipse has ran its course. It feels like it’s just a way to force two fillers. I don’t find it fun to cast 2 Wraths or Starfire to trigger Eclipse. It’s nice to pick my Eclipse buff, but it’s not really fun to play around. Eclipse doesn’t really matter when so many spells are Astral damage and/or don’t snapshot the Eclipse buff itself.
You get 3-5 lines to make your point. 30sec for a quick read. They have a ton of feedback to go through, and no one wants to read a wall of text because it comes off as a rant. Writing good feedback is a skill. Some are better at communicating feedback than others. The post I linked is an example of an amazing feedback post. Apparently, it was a 10 page google doc that was edited and formatted down to what you see.
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Bingo, forums alone probably aren’t nearly the volume needed to get a quick adjustment. It’s have to be other places too like Twitter, wowhead, YouTube, streamers, etc.
Blizzard forums feedback destination.
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I think you can count on one hand the number of times that voluminous feedback has influenced Blizzard in a manner of direct attribution of changes from user feedback. It’s not zero. Some of the loud complaints about Pathfinder at the end of Dragonflight’s Emerald Dream patch did have some effect, yet the continued perseverence of this same team decrying the changes to the toggle flight button or a “pseudo-Pathfinder” flight gate for TBC flying has not had the same effect. So Pathfinder was eased, but not removed equivalently between Skyriding and TBC flying
It would be a mistake to assume that, even if you have great feedback, that the opinions expressed in this forum will be taken directly. There are development teams, Community Reps, player reps, and other teams inside Blizzard providing feedback on a daily basis that we do not participate with and we do not understand what internal dialogue Blizzard has.
We are here to discuss with players. While there is some transmission to Blizzard, it is sparse, undocumented, and typically only on surveys or constructs that they inquire to us about.
TLDR; No, feedback threads are not effective at instructing Blizzard to take player feedback.
It feels like my feedback seems to reach them somehow, so discussions here do appear to matter, however the ideas are percolating through the community.
I try to provide feedback on the beta forums.
Most of the feedback people post is a proposed solution to their problem and not a description of what’s making them feel bad.
So most feedback on the forums is poorly thought out and not actionable.
The only feedback they consider is when you quit the game, meaning cancel your sub, and fill out the survey why you quit the game.
You got to hit em where it hurts, their pockets.
Yeah pretty much the only times when we have made blizz bend the knee is when they see massive sub drops
They seem to have listened after shadow lands crapshoot at least.
Alot of the people complaining in forums don’t like something but don’t give good suggestions either. Some systems are there because there is literally nothing better.
An example of how useless some players are about advice would be this hunter I used to know. Constantly berate the hunter dev for this or that. But honestly I rather think that the dev is leaving a class with less defensives than the rest for reasons not just because they are dumb/don’t know the class/loves to piss their player base off.
I find it hard to believe that a player be it some streamer or some high key pushers knows more than the person literally writing the code of the class.
Yes, feed back is important. The question is, what do Ion and others mean when they say they listen to player feedback.
Blizzard not only develops the game, they run it as well on their servers. They have the ability, if they so chose, to load the code with all sorts of sensors and data collection routines so that they can see everything that happens.
So say you take your Demon Hunter into a raid, you blast one of your spells at the new buzz saw mechanic and the system crashes. There, you’ve just given the developers feedback. Say you use that spell and your damage totals are far less then they should be. There, you’ve given them feedback again without saying a word.
So are they looking at your feedback? Probably. Are they reading the things people say? Well maybe.
Now we don’t know if they have this type of analysis but for the life of me I can’t imagine why they would not.
Oh I misread the title.
I read it as “Feedback threads offensive” I was like… “huh”
But ok I see now. I believe in some capacities yes.
The feedback we gave about bronze during remix they upped the rate of how much you get along with fixing some scaling etc.
They made the rings neck trinkets account wide after it was suggested on here. I think they listen to it but in a limited capacity.
I do notice that PTR feedback generally is just thrown to the wayside. There needs to be better considerations for PTR feedback.
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There has been plenty of very concise feedback, the vast majority of which has been ignored.
The kick in the teeth has been for specs such as frost DK, where they acknowledged the community feedback but stated someone on the team felt it was more important to re-work breath than take on aforementioned feedback.
Regardless of the situation, it’s absolutely shocking that employees are basically coming on the forums on saying that the players are wrong. Again, that is why we have such a contrast in specs. For example, again with DK, rider of the apocalypse hits the mark and incorporates player ideas and inspiration from WC3, but frost doesn’t hit the mark, doesn’t incorporate player feedback and is based only on one NPC - the spec is literally unexplained lore wise and weak.