CC was set up so blizz can say they care about playerbase input , they just forgot to mention that anything from the CC goes directly to the recycle bin.
That’s just for 1 patch, CM is talking about the next patch after that one.
This is exactly why I tend to avoid making my own statements here. I have pretty controversial opinions and my council title usually is used as a weapon against me by less than friendly forum users.
That being said I would love to be more active despite that if blues every responded to anything on here.
2 Likes
Continuing the discussion from Is council still about?:
Exactly, I’ll provide my personal “vendetta” against RNG from Holidays, A Reward Devs came to the forums in 2022 and said that there’s a fustrating experience…etc, then Devs start to update holidays for 2023…the solution is the same RNG scenario, therefore; same issues mentioned by Dev, now a % of players get the item but a lot of players are still grinding X amount of alts, limit instances issues, a boring encounter…etc , Players provide feedback and Hallow’s end happened with an Hardmode and a new Pet with low % drop that’s later mentioned in multiple threads and the Council live chat last year.
Then that feedback from Love is in the air 2023 doesn’t lead to any further change in the drop or limit instance…etc, not even an hardmode with some changes to the drop, so a better approach and the feedback from hallow’s end regarding new rewards with low % is ignored, Devs proceed to add a new saddle with low %… Why not hardmode for love boss? Did it work for Hallow´s end?..
During the live chat they mentioned the “jack pot” feeling, that works for some players, however; for others in the long run is a bad experience and there’s ways to reach that feeling with a BLP system.
This same scenario could be used for other systems on which the feedback is provided with time, It feelk like it has been falling on deaf ears, I don’t think Devs should reply to every thread but some sort of confirmation that’s being checked or input after changes are implemented, so the playerbase can provide further feedback.
3 Likes
Very much agree with pretty much everything there.
When they have something to say that they know players will want to hear, they say it.
Also, they are getting better at saying what they think players want to hear when players need to hear it. I’m not sure that counts as “communicating”.
Many years ago in a discussion on loot design (I think it may have been in response to calls for return of reforging), Ion said that the goal of the devs was for players to get a piece of gear and feel like they won the “lottery”. Yeah, he used that word.
As you mentioned its a matter of importance for someone, my issue is that C.C members keep posting asking for the feedback tool because it’s failing and the GD outside of that forum notice the same, there’s not like a guide, its like post anything that you want, however; only a small % has some kind of reply, so the player doesn’t know if the other parts are being consider.
Also, even if we got a reply that doesn’t mean that the Devs are actually understanding the player base, just like the example of the Love Rocket, We’ve a Reward Dev that mentioned the specific issues that the community has with this reward and then provide a solution that didn’t fix any of those issues, besides C.C members providing feedback during 1 year before that implementation.
Same with the last live chat, Ravij asked about the bad experience that was the grind for Arfus a new reward for a holiday, Devs proceed to keep adding low % in the next holiday update that was this last Love is in the air, As I mentioned in the OP message, Why CMs didn’t create or ask about the last patch changes?, There’s a lot of topics that could be relevant now, so maybe they can allocate resources with proper time before that event happens again or to provide something new or a fix when there’s not a big patch.
And this is a big part of this discussion…Blizzard didn’t draw good lines for this feedback tool, its like a GD with mix topics and a small sample of players that won’t be enough for some topics, therefore; a lot of dead threads, lack of interaction…etc
If Blizzard wants to continue with this idea, they should rethink the process, players feel ignored since its creation and there’s multiple threads about that, therefore; their current approach didn’t fix that feeling.
3 Likes
You know, you are right with most of this.
There is a lot of desire for improvement.
There should be change within the program.
There should be constant and viable updates to mechanical, in game evaluation of systems, rares, broken ensembles, and likely a 100 other things.
Is there truly any way to deny this.
What a good majority of our posts could include in the Community Council are more methods, takes, hypotheticals to improve each situation.
Many of us do as well a job as we can forwarding community concerns and issues.
While addressing the issues that are present is what most are doing, is essential to the growth and change of these systems.
At times the conversation in stunted in a few ways when its just back and forth banter.
Blatant explainations of posts that arent required. When someone feels the need to explain what was just discussed 6 times in every thread they have been in. Causing valid concerns or topics to dimish or derail.
I dont think there very many people a part of the program currently that want anything but the betterment of the game.
The short of it is,
What else can we do to provide a quality of life improvement as the people that are part of this experiment?
I think opening it to more people might be a good start. With the current amount of topics and the limited capacity it seems for many to participate I think making it a bit larger let’s say 150-200 people wouldn’t be the worse to try.
I have been in a few community councils in the MMO world and none had any major impact on the game design. The best you could hope for was Alpha / Beta access or meeting with your CM´s at a convention. Sometimes you had an extra forum of sorts, but it was quite often not very crowded.
Just like at the puplic forums, you had two types of people in them. Those that defended the game design 24/7 and those that hated everything.
The sad truth is, that no development team does truly sit down with you to talk about things. I believe the last time a WOW dev spoke to me in person was around Legion Alpha or Beta. Not sure, but If I remember correctly it was about mythic dungeon design and not having access to it through LFD.
Since then, the direct communication has gone cold, at least in my case and I also did not get an invite since then, after being in all since Vanilla.
From my point of view, whatever you think you deserve or should have as a Council member is far from what you will get.
For puplicity and communities they do have streamers and influencers, with a much bigger impact and audience than yourself. Due the lack of internal knowledge, you can also hardly discuss future content, as most is not revealed to you or available for testing before PTR, where things just get a final touch but never a full redesign.
What you see on the PTR has left headquarters at least six months ago.
Last but not least, people that are chosen for these programs either by “random” selection or personal application / votes, rarely make a contribution for the entire community, but are often the same folks that run maxroll and other pro gamer websites, so the feedback they provide is as good as none at this point.
To be honest, I miss the days when devs came to your TV show with a brand new build, just made 48 hours ago. What could have gone wrong? 
It was fun nontheless, but today unthinkable and why Blizzcon & various online presentations have become so boring and “less informative”, as the news and content are already cold coffee.
Anyways, I am drifting away with my words, maybe the message has come across anyways. 
But in earnest they are, When was the last Q&A that was open to the public they did? like only youtubers and the community forums actually get attention which irritates me with a passion as were all paying customers.
I feel ya, every time I see a post asking for the Community Council to look into something or to raise an issue I see that same silence. The community remains unheard by the council and the council remains unheard by Blizzard.
The Future of Dragonriding's Dragon Customizations begs the difference. There are several examples of council members raising issues from the community.
2 Likes
Just a follow up but pretty happy a couple CC members felt fine participating in this thread. I know it might feel confrontational at times but discussions like this are great imo.
For me, it’s mostly a matter of time participating in the GD. But if you tag our threads or mention us, we (I) usually show up (at least reading what you guys have to say). But I agree that these discussions are healthy. We’re the same as you guys, we just want to help make the best game we can.
1 Like
I remember this. Ythisens was incredibly nice and gave you that “good ole Blizzard” vibe that made you feel welcomed to nerd out. (Not to be confused with the bad side of Blizzard – Ythisens, like most of the employees, made you feel good about supporting their work.)
I had been talking with Bornakk a lot since the MVP event. The MVP program’s CM had just left Blizzard and the future of the program was at risk. I remember chatting 1-on-1 with Bornakk and advocated for something similar to the Community Council. The last round of MVPs was quite diverse in their focus, but much like the PTR, sometimes you just need more opinions for discussions to take place.
To that effect, I think the CC is a better program than the MVP program (TS MVPs are still the best, but the non-TS MVPs weren’t going to actually influence anything meaningful). The CC having more diversity is genuinely good for discussion.
Blizzard reads forum posts quite a lot. Moderation aside, it was important for them to establish a “safe space” where discussions were far less likely to be derailed. You don’t get a lot of developer interactions due to the red tape involved, but also the derailment issue is REALLY bad. The CC is nearly perfect for what they’d want out of it.
Derailed threads → It happens every Alpha/Beta cycle. In this example, a Shadow Priest thread has some great discussions regarding some very nuanced details. A developer makes a post with some questions and answers about Shadow Priest development. Then the floodgates open up and you have random users asking things like “When are you updating Death Knight?” and “When it the next invite wave?” and it completely breaks the discussion that Shadow Priest community curated. :: So, developers might instead opt to lurk and not post anything specifically because the discussion is good – and replying to that thread isn’t worth the trouble. You know every post is a meaningful post, rather than spending triple the time to ignore the off-topic posts.
2 Likes
Like Safeguard says, it’s a “If you tag it, we will come” scenario. There’s been numerous threads of mine that have been linked and I’m always happy to delve into it to explain my approach or my idea.
There are several issues from the GD that I have personally championed due to player suggestion. Safeguard posted one. The one before it about the sharding issue was also requested by players in the GD, I even made a GD mirror linked to it so people can express their frustrations with the system.
I’d also like to point out that some of our members are EU and are pulling suggestions from their own GD forums. So it may seem it’s their own suggestion when it’s not necessarily the case.
1 Like
This is also true of the CC, which is about as far from a random sample as you can get. Self selected and vetted.
Like Zoums said, I appreciate you guys following up to be honest I’m quite honored. Glad to hear some of you guys are out here championing some causes. I’ve seen a few posts (this one is pretty recent and hits close to home) where people are feeling less than heard. Pre-made Epic Battle Grounds Need to Stop + Buffs and Revamps (Community Council Requested)
Is there some way to tag the CC in a forum so if I see this kind of thing in the future it can be brought to your attention? I understand you guys probably don’t work in shifts and things are going to fall through the cracks, likewise you need to choose your battles. and not everything is going to make the cut. It might however be a good idea to look for volunteers to scour for PvP related posts once in a while since PvP has more holes in it than Gary Bucey’s brain, and Blizz seems to treat it like the dog from the iconic film “The Fly”.
The best way is to link our CC born threads to a thread made in the GD or elsewhere in the forums. We’ll get alerted when our threads are linked elsewhere and it lets us know we’re being discussed! 
We can also see where our threads are linked when we decided to follow up or respond to our fellow CC members on our threads themselves.
Edit: You’ll also have to remember that our EU counterparts were forced to create a throw away NA account and since EU is their home turf they likely will not be alerted unless they poke their heads on the NA side so you might get a delay response form them. You can tell who our EU folks are simply by the lvl 10-20 alts they post on. 
1 Like