There. I said it. Fight me. #BlizzardbringbackJeff He at least engages with the community and you can hear as to the decisions he makes for Overwatch now. I don’t think he has to appease me or anyone. At least with communication you get a sense of why they make the decisions they do and at least appear to address concerns the people paying for the game feel they don’t want in their game addressed. Point in case, account wide essences.
Ion, you’re not getting a Christmas card this year. Layers of a bloated system, a lack of player fantasy and a design that’s feeling a little mobile gamey (daily chores)… It’s not satisfying. (To me)
Seriously I do not always agree with Jeff Kaplan but I do love the guy. He is extremely visible, awkward, yet funny and intelligent. His communication is gold. The WoW classic dev team is on top of their game. The blizzard retail team is okay but can definitely do much much better. They do not need to look at other companies. Look at what Jeff Kaplan is doing.
And having pushed to masters and waiting for Sig/Orisa to get toned down for almost a year while browsing the forums and reddit says otherwise.
Especially among the pro players and t500 streams. He’s not as well received as you think.
Aww common, send Ion a christmas card, but make it a virtual one… with a button to click roll, and each time he lands on the right symbol he gets a part of your christmas card… but he only has one try a day… so if RNG is on his side he’ll have the full christmas card by… easter.
As for the Kaplan comment, it’ll never be enough for the forum player base.
Who are a far smaller player base than the general population.
People can hate any developer for their preferred game. No developer is going to make a game where people aren’t complaining about one thing or another. But there’s no denying that Jeff really tries to communicate compared to others.
Even if he didn’t speak for as long as before - GOATs was bad, Orisa/Sigma was bad - he’s still infinitely more communicative than the WoW team. Lore and Ion even stopped doing their QnA (granted, they said virtually nothing but fluff topics during them, or walked around the concerns of the questions) and it feels like the CMs don’t respond on the forums at all.
Overwatch ain’t doing that hot. And let’s be honest: Ion may be stubborn, bad at resource management, and pathologically incapable of giving a straight answer, but a lot of WoW’s problems are likely coming from the big suits.
I don’t see anything changing. People may want X, Y, Z back but it’ll just be another, ''I didn’t get this so he is bad and should be fired!"
This game has really manifested a whole host of really oddball mutations of a player base that will always be on the losing side no matter what happens.
Or maybe the current team should stop being so defensive with their design path and be open to a bit of critique from said player base. Nothing worse than designing out of fear and ego.
Oh yeah. Ion is a stubborn manchild for sure. I’m old enough to remember when he was popping off on various MMO forums like a crazy person before he worked for Blizzard. Needless to say, I have very little respect for him and eagerly await the day he stops inflicting his ideas on WoW.
I just don’t think Kaplan would suddenly make things right again.
