^This right here is a big one.
Most people who frequent the forms do so to post negative threads.
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Additionally when the game reaches beta testing the chances of any significant mechanical changes being made to the expansion do to forum feedback is close to zero.
So the pool of alpha testers needs to significantly increase to get a better sample size of data to determine whether an expansion mechanic is bad or good.
Complete and utter ignorance. Much of the feedback that was ignored during BFA beta grew into very large issues later down the line.
The first year of BFA was joked as live beta testing and you actually support that notion. Unbelievable.
As long as they design their game based on the “Time Played” metric, what we think is fun in the game will not matter much.
Support?
I completely agree that the first year of BFA was horrible. But I also understand that beta testing is not where mechanical changes to expansions are done. It’s mostly for stress testing and bug detection. Unless the mechanic is horrendously disfavored, like locking Azerite traits the way they did.
This.
Its for finding bugs the internal QA dept hasn’t reported. Just because you find a bug, doesn’t mean they don’t already know about it. But at the same time tens or hundreds of thousands of people brute forcing a game have a better chance than a 20 person QA Team.
And the stress testing.
Saying a few months before release “we dont like azerite gear” isn’t going to make them remove it.
Source : Years spent in video game QA
The issues people claim to be ignoring forum are the issues in the mind of people that want the game to be what THEY like, not something that many might not find ideal, but everyone can play.
Ignorance is to think oneself able to know what everyone wants, or care not what other people want.
The one example: Mission Tables. More people in the forums complain about it than they praise it, yet, more people playing like it and use it since the first one. Blizzard knows that to be true because they know how many players use it how many times for how much time. No forum can tell you that, because most people go to forum to complain. Few people go to forum to praise what they like. It is obvious that forum then will be an echo chamber to self righteous people that want the game to be what they want.
Therefore, it is the worse place to find advice on WHAT to do. It might be good to have a hint of direction to go, or as stated before, the few people who actually do constructive feedback on functionality, or new ideas.
The ignorance of saying something is “broken”, or something is “idiotic” barely never holds true.
And the game is still much better than most forum “know all types” make it to be.
Have you actually ever read beta forums? There are a lot of people who think that they got promoted to Executive Senior Director of Class Design, Paladin division on getting a beta invite. They tend to dominate posts on the forums. They produce a lot of trash.
I get that gamers have built this myth that beta is a magical co-design experience. It is not and the glorious co-design is a fantasy. Design by committee does not work.
and the current “team” that is designing the last few xpacs are a success?
All blizzard needs to do is read and interact with what players find enjoyable and what they don’t. It is not hard, but it does challenge the artists opinion that their design is god at work. The bad parts of the xpacs have been re-soundly called out in the beta forums and nothing but “we learned lots” is the response 2 years later.
I know not everyone on the internet (you and I included) know the right way to design games, but I know what I find enjoyable and what I find broken. Those broken parts of WoW have been talked about each time in Beta and “we learned lots” and “in a future patch we will address” and “oh, we did not consider” and “we know you don’t like” are way beyond acceptable in the world of customer service. The beta forums had all this in it and it was ignored only later to be addressed.
Just get it right at the start, don’t give us a beta release like BFA again.
Yeah it was definitely infuriating. Of course there were some complainers of “I don’t like this.” “This isn’t fun!” yada yada. But when it is a ton of people all agreeing on the same point of the mechanics / purpose of something being wrong and that feedback goes unanswered…it sucks.
I was specifically referring to the unanimous agreement in BfA Alpha / beta among Protection Paladins over how freaking worthless the Retribution Aura talent is. It made it to live, untouched. At the time, it added something like .7% to a raid groups overall DPS if selected.
Only if you have beta only last a few months, which seems to be Blizzard’s new business model.
It really shouldn’t be called “beta” testing. It’s more like bug testing. The window for feedback has been closed for a long time.
Even bug testing is being pretty generous given the state the game launched in.
I’m hoping they release monks in a state like they released DKs and Ret paladins in Wrath.
I main a monk and everything wrong in Legion is amplified in BFA and we will have to wait for WW and MW to be fixed in SL. The past "buff’s in 8.3 are not near what they needed to be for them to be viable in H or M raiding. BrM is ok and has been this whole xpac. Most teams don’t need tanks though.
Beta is too late already. The talking goes on in Alpha. Beta is for extended testing for bugs, the basic game systems are pretty much set in stone at that stage.
Betas are supposed to be a way to test the game and report bugs but most people treat them like an early demo. Blizzard does the opposite and treats betas like an early demo while we’re trying to help.
no, that’s now done entirely via spreadsheet outside any actual live gameplay.
If it doesn’t look good or feel well in beta, oh well, the Excel sheet has been set to read-only.
and that’s when the profits start to fall, they’ll learn eventually
I hope, blizz today are full rude workers that don’t feel the need to help those or listen to feedback. Us beta tester have to give it to them this beta if something is wrong. Every bug we see, every system that doesn’t feel right and every class. We all have to communicate to them and not just play the beta for fun.
I’m sorry you don’t like what I have to say but beta testing is not for major mechanical changes. If you want to do major mechanical changes you do that in alpha.