Please Add Rationale For Patch Notes/Hotfixes

Community General Discussion
1

Please take a huge step towards communicating effectively and help the player base see things through your eyes by adding rationale for changes.

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2

Done and done.

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I’m asking for rationale on the official patch notes because the majority of changes will not be covered in the q and a.

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4

0 chance they answer any legit question on that Q&A. Half of it will be about Azerite armor as usual, then some islands and warfront stuff nobody cares about. Then some dumb RP realm nonsense along with a transmog question and it’s over.

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5

We’ve got some real cynical fortune tellers here. How many of you are directly involved in the selection process of the questions? How many of you have spoken to Ion or Lore regarding the agenda for Friday?

And if you all are so convinced that…

…what would be the point of doing a point by point dissertation for every element of 8.1? Is there a greater than 0 chance that you would accept their explanations? Is there any chance you wouldn’t crucify them for giving you exactly what you asked for?

In short, is there anything Ion and the rest of the devs could do or say that would satisfy you short of rolling back everything to 7.3 and committing seppuku live on stream? Let me post a few of the top questions from the official thread. You tell me what you would consider a realistic and acceptable answer.

I would seriously like to hear how you would answer these questions in a way that is both realistic and would not send the community into a foaming at the mouth rage.

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You’re not wrong - while I don’t pride myself on my “fortune telling” capabilities, I am cynical. The truth is, I don’t really even care what they have to say anymore. Why should I believe it’s going to be anything other than more lawyer speak and more of what I don’t want to hear?

So y’know what. I just memed it. Any plans to bring BFA to mobile? I hear you have phones. If you’re going to ask for questions you aren’t going to actually answer (at least based on every other BFA Q/A we’ve had), might as well have some fun with it.

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I honestly don’t expect much anymore.

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8

I think the rationale is to do some damage control, but just enough to make it seem like they care. There are still massive issues to be addressed.

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Thing is i didnt paint myself into this corner by ignoring feedback. There is no easy answer. The standard approach of silence certainly isn’t helping to calm the masses.

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Just how many more Blizzcons, live Q&As, reddit AMAs, gaming site interviews, blue posts, and dev diaries will it take before this “silence” nonsense is put to rest? Does Ion need to go door-to-door and have dinner with every single player? I think this is not about them not communicating. It’s about them not telling you what you want to hear.

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Funny you mention interviews as one of those avenues. After all the playervase learned about the fate of flying in Wod from a third party site interview.

I asked a simple question I did not call anyone names. I simply asked a question that seems to be on some other people’s minds. Of they answer it…great! If they don’t… Oh well.

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12

Sweet, can’t wait for more non answers and laywer speak! Ion will say nothing of value, and Lore will purely be there for emotional support.

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13

Funny how you failed to answer my question. Just to reiterate…What form of communication and how much of it would satisfy you? Obviously the claim that there is no communication is false. So what are you looking for?

A simple loaded question.

What answer do you honestly expect? Clearly you don’t think that’s been their objective so far. So what could Ion say that would satisfy you? Do you expect him to say…

“You’re right. We haven’t given any thought to class fun or balance until now. We’ll get right on that.”

The actual answer to this question would be something more like…

"We have always tried to put fun and interesting gameplay at the forefront of our game design. We implemented new features such as warfronts and islands. We continued features that worked well in Legion such as WQs and M+. I’m sorry that the playerbase has not enjoyed these features as much as we would have liked. We are currently working on ways to make these features more fun. But fun is a relative term.

As for class balance, we were going for a model where every class has its niche. We want each class to be able to excel at certain things, but not at others. That way in order to complete the highest level of group content I would benefit you to bring a variety of classes instead of just the OP flavor of the month. We are still working toward that goal. But class balance always has been and always will be a moving target. On every DPS meter there will always be someone at the top and someone at the bottom. There will always be one tank or healer class that is 0.5% better than the others. The class changes implemented in 8.1 address many of the concerns of the players in the best way we can right now. But this is an ongoing process. We’re going to see how classes perform in the new raid and other new content and base future changes on our data."

Would any of that satisfy you? What answer would?

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14

In the qna thread I basically asked a question that was just that. More so, the explanations should be coming way before the patch notes, so the community is relying on biased influencers or third party sites to tell then how to feel about a feature.

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15

Well this isn’t going anywhere. I suggest removing the stick and stop speaking for others :smile:

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I’m sorry but most of the things you listed have failed to address any of the actual core, philosophical changes that occurred with BFA. They have never explained their actual intention with Azerite armor, the question of: in what ways do the mechanics of azerite armor replace tier sets, artifact weapons, legendaries and lvl 120 talents?

If you compare the interaction of the Overwatch devs with their community, there is a night and day difference. They actual EXPLAIN the rationale for changes they are making and listen to players. There have been a multitude of changes adopted by the devs that were brought forward by the players. Overwatch doesn’t need Q/A’s every month to try and appease players because they are genuinely responding and providing information on almost everything they do. For WoW we have no f’ing what ***-backwards rationale is being used to justify so many of the terrible decisions for this expansion. What is the evidence? What is the data driving these decisions?

The clearest example to see the failure of the WoW devs and community managers interaction with the community is to look at the blue posts over the past two months, and twitter posts. 90% of them are the canned, auto generated weekly or holiday announcements. They HAVE to do these QA’s to try and give the appearance they are actually interacting with us.

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I love that people want Blizzard to document and justify every change like a PhD thesis for a video game meant for entertainment and fun.

Do you ask for scene by scene justification for your favorite movies?

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That’s not what patch notes are, or ever have been, in the history of coding.

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I think people want more class dev communication, similar to what they did at the very end of beta. Consolidated comprehensive class feedback feels ignored, and people aren’t always clear what their class niche and what their strengths and weaknesses are supposed to be.

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He said with the patch notes. Not days later in a Q&A