I have seen coherent feedback that was ignored for over a year until the player base decided to leave and then that feedback was forced to be heard.
Feedback can be as simple as “everything sucks” i/e I care for nothing in the game at this time to “I dislike being forced to not have flying at max level because I enjoying playing alts as endgame and not having flying slows down the progression of my alt to a point of frustration were I don’t want to play the current content at all.” i/e I don’t care the current state of the game at this time.
Both are feedback.
You may not like how one is stated but that is still the feedback that was given.
Yep. This is a problem companies have - esp Blizzard. They think they are always right and that just because data shows “players engage in X content” that that is a good thing.
We might do something, but if it feels forced and it is not FUN then that is not a good thing. Numbers don’t mean fun. It can mean the opposite.
Blizz has not listened in a LONG time. They have been told that over and over. They have been told from all sides their communications on all fronts are very poor.
Right, both are valid feedback. One is more actionable than the other though.
The irony in this statement LOL. You are the exact reason why Blizzard thinks it needs to create an echo chamber to block out “whingers that use hyperbole and spite” - Carhagen 2021
personally i think Council Members should post discussion threads after meetings to see if the public has anything constructive to add, then Blizz can see those posts as well, and people can feel like their future isnt just in the hands of a chosen few.
There are a few options. The Council forum is going to be readable by ALL, so it won’t be secret. You, or anyone else, could read the threads there, make another on the larger forums, and discuss the same topic. Maybe some council members may even join in, maybe some will echo points from that thread they think are important to add to the Council forum.
Say the CMs put up a discussion topic for the Council about cooking crafting thoughts. They want input about everything from speed of leveling, availability of recipes, tying recipes to group content or achievements, usefulness of crafted items for raids or end game content, AH value and stability for goblins, etc. Maybe they want to talk about what makes cooking FUN for some, and what would make it more fun and engaging. You also like that topic so you make one in the broader forum too.
Having it transparent and readable means you don’t have to wait for a Council person to come post
true, but simultaneously CMs could help be the filter to keep the toxic commentary in that discussion to a minimal, the entire purpose of the council is that Blizzard wants feedback, but they dont want to wade through all the animosity either, in fact i’d argue that is one of the reasons that the game has gotten to this point.
Yes. I agree 100%. The CMs at some other game companies interact, set the tone, moderate, and otherwise work with the community to engage them. I get that is a tough job, but failing to communicate only makes it worse. I don’t know what the Blizz CMs tasking is exactly. I know it extends way beyond just gathering feedback, but yeah, my personal view is in line with yours.
If we can post here and sometimes have constructive discussions, can’t they? I have heard in the past they don’t want to “be blue” as it tends to skew the conversation when they show up. I wonder though, if they were around enough to be common and considered regs on the forums, would it still be so disruptive?
then maybe the answer would be to make Official Posts stay blue, but Blizz members can instead blend in with the players, that would also help unite the community and the company more, in the least it would be worth a shot.
Blues have the ability to set a flag on their post, from what I understand. So that it shows up in the Blue Tracker, or not. Untracked ones tend to be tech/cs or just general convo like we used to have about snacks, or mounts, or holiday content, or whatever.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I have felt for a long time that more interaction is better than less. I have told them that directly so this feedback from me is not new. heh. It is a drum I bang rather loudly. I am not their boss though so
They already got so much feedback regarding all of this - and these problems wouldn’t even need a council to get solved and make the game more addicting, accessible and encouraging to try everything out. I could dish out a very simple edited system based on the current one which would change the game not in a drastic way but increase the MAUs simply because the game starts honoring our time. It’s not this hard, every chess piece is already there. The achievement system needs only real rewards and more carrots on a stick to get everything moving.
The problem are the developers and not the community. Past ideas (I have read some of them) where great but nothing came out of it.
Ion is at the heart of that problem. His ideas to make the game more efficient through the use of number crunching and pruning has slowly been dragging the entertainment value of this game through the mud since cata. Using mathematical calculations for the purpose of making raids a more enjoyable experience definitely worked but outside of that, it’s driven away far too many players that actually want something fun to do rather than “do this X thing this many times, receive Y reward”. Or the idiocy of believing that pressing button X when DBM (Deadly Boss Mods) tells you to requires any skill. The game use to have different ways of causing damage for each class through abilities that were situational but all that got tossed out the door years ago. They might as well just start calling this game a moba cause it doesn’t really feel like an mmorpg anymore.
The “name we prefer to be called” means this will be anon for players, right? Right? Otherwise you’re asking selected players who aren’t content creators to ruin their accounts forever.
How is this going to be different from the private councils (that we all at this point know have existed and still exist) you’ve had before when it will still contain private channels? Public exposure and accountability or bust.
How is it going to be different from how you’ve IGNORED, directly disagreed with, or insulted those private councils behind their backs? You need to start with an apology for that behavior.
You need to develop a set ENTIRE day or hour EVERY DAY you WILL be responding publicly to something discussed by the council for this to work. How will that NOT take away from actual development?
That last field sure makes it look like you’re looking for content creators and makes “all” players sound uninvited or discouraged from applying. I encourage you to not judge a player who wants to help NOW on what they’ve done (that YOU HAVENT) in the past, or not to ask for links to things when player contributions include leading raids, hosting events, helping new players, and just plain interacting with each other IN GAME to create the rich community environment that’s so vital to an MMO.
How many players will be selected from each playstyle? It’ll be even representation, right? Riiight? What about players that are interested in more than one play aspect? Will they be preferred or less preferred over players who only enjoy single aspects? Are you going to select players who are interested in mythics and raiding as well as other aspects over players who arent chasers so that you have a ton of raiders on the council who really only care about progression play, or are you going to try and balance those multiple interest applicants so representation remains as even as possible?
I propose that 1 player from every playstyle should be elected by the playerbase somehow, or that players should have a place to submit character names/realms they want to endorse - that will be considered if that player has applied- with the categories selectable they feel that player should weigh in on.
The first thing you should do once the council is selected is ask them how the Blizzard team has violated the trust of the playerbase and what you can do to make up for it; apologizing being a given, including making specifically named devs apologize to the community or specifically named name player(s) affected (at a minimum). I don’t know how this project has any hope of success without that step as initial. The game belongs to the players.
The game belongs to the players. The customer is always right (even when they’re not!). Publicly denounce “You think you do, but you don’t.” Many MANY of us have been playing this game for over a decade. We DO actually KNOW what’s fun and what we want.
Select critics OVER yes men. If this is a PR stunt to validate your goals and vision and keep ignoring everything that’s wrong. WE. WILL. ALL. NOTICE. You will do FAR more damage than good to yourselves and your community.
FF community comes to mind which makes these second.
Also this is 14 years too late. guess Blizz needs to show they care about their players as they have failed with their Employee’s. well guess better later than never
This is true. The developers can’t put the genie back in the bottle, too much trust has been lost the few years. We have news and statements which were a lie and deceitful and we know how it can be done better (FF14). We also haven’t seen a true apology from Ion yet, all he did was blaming the “old guard”. It would be the best for him stepping down and just be a raid creator.
“Do you want to mentor new players? Well, rather than having achievements showing you know how to level alts, we’re going to require achievements from current endgame content, because nothing says “I know how to answer new players questions!” like having an AOTC on the current raid.”
They are completely disconnected from the players.
I can assure you… we are giving them the BEST background checks available… spends 3 hours staring at a player’s profile background “This back ground is clearly blue.”
We need Blizzcon back. Not a virtual show but the real deal. I went to my first one in 2018 with my wife, she does not play games but loved it. We were hooked right away and went to 2019 too. We were making plans for 2020 right away so obviously this plandemic was a huge blow. Now to hear 2022 is also not happening just sucks. Also if you ever want to see something come as close to Vanilla-tbc-wotlk experience you all have to make a new expansion that is 0-60, same classes and trees just new dungeons/gear. Perhaps start it at a different time period before the events of classic and have some classic races mixed with new ones. Take away the meta/keep tbc QoL and we will come as close to the wow vanilla community as we can get.
