I enjoyed the video and think it points out the problems perfectly. That’s coming from someone that thinks YouTubers are just keeping controversy going for views. That game forums are beyond pointless to gauging a picture of the game. Its all just a small tiny portion of a much smaller portion of the tiniest amount of players. That doesn’t mean they can’t be right. And the forums are fun for players to talk to others about specific things whether they have issues are not.
Still, things like azerite armor aren’t that big of a deal. I see the problems with it but that isn’t my entire focus. I’m one of those that have already stopped doing world quests for the most part and wonder when that mission table will stop putting rep on it because I finished. I haven’t done an island in weeks. It all seems very unfinished and I’m surprised so much is like this.
But my solution is either play something else or work on alts. I’ve never gotten the folks who lose their mind over something in a game. I had someone accuse me of being a Horde in disguise because I don’t agree with everything they said. Its happened the other way too so its not an Alliance thing. I just shrug and smile to myself because the big wide world is going to enjoy them so very much.
But the deal with games is I don’t think its ever one thing. When something changes to being unfun there’s not really one thing that will fix it. I’m sure people left over the armor or something but it was probably a number of factors. Getting worked up doesn’t fix when a game feels broken. Sometimes even the devs can’t fix it.
To get to the heart of the criticism – yes. When your theorycrafting community dies, your game will die. TC’ers do sooooo much work and identify existing and potential issues. QA and UX are usually really good about it too, but having an extra ~200 sets of eyes verifying and playtesting is an incredible resource.
When your TC’ers and top players say your changes are bad, they better listen. It may not be the power to make decisions, but the feedback generated from these players is usually up to par with their QA and UX teams.
Also, this issue would ALSO be alleviated if they responded more to more than one topic per month. Instead, people see a dev post, they see a dev ACTUALLY engaging for once, and they immediately try to get their concerns noted. This is also a result of them ignoring the community.
When you stop listening to your community, your game will die =p
Like warning about purning abilities and destroying class design.
There is a thread in the arena forums started by Venruki talking about PvP gearing in Legion. The big conclusion, bring back vendors. Thread still gets bumped like every other day. That was about 2 years ago.
2 months of BFA, BAM!! PvE vendors.
2 years of loot box gearing in PvP, BAM!! More loot box gearing.
They just mean some of their senior developers are moving to pet projects. When you work on the same title for 10+ years, it’s a creative black hole. Hearthstone was one of those projects.
A Pokemon GO for Pet Battles wouldn’t be a new AAA title, but it lets them explore Pet Battles with a Blizzard touch. Diablo Immortals is mostly for the Chinese marketplace, but honestly, the demo at BlizzCon wasn’t that bad (just a very poor decision to announce nothing for PC at BlizzCon).
I’ve bugged Overwatch folks for something like a Map Editor (similar to Halo’s Forge mode). There’s a lot of issues to work through, such as where to store this data and how to create/share/download this map data. I think they might actually do it, but we’ll see.
It’s funny because literally every multiplayer fps to date seemed to have worked out the issues of how to do player created maps. But by all means, maybe they will learn to “work through” the issue.
Your theorycrafters are effectively the voice of the community. No theorycrafters means you’re not getting the feedback you need to make the right changes.
We did warn them. Personally, I’ve pushed for more utility buttons, less buttons that simply increase your healing or damage output. Also, I advocate for more weaknesses on specs. Some rotations could use improvement, sure, but making their health down down faster doesn’t do it for me.
That means effectively scrapping their Conquest system. That’s the only issue I see. I’m okay with that sacrifice.
Isn’t that EXACTLY what we were told Diablo Immortal would be?
Makes their choice of announcement even more idiotic. Its evidence of how they just dont know us anymore.
Diverting resources away from franchises already struggling or at the least, trending downward while news articles describe ever worsening work conditions and morale. The doom and gloom seems pretty justified.
As you should know, Blizz isn’t some random developer. Blizz fans are BLIZZ FANS! They are loyal as hell and truly care about this company because we have seen people like Metzen get on stage and speak to us like he KNOWS us.
So few companys understand the PC gamer like Blizzard used to, but they are showing us repeatedly that they don’t anymore.
The wrong changes still happened with them in place, so…
Understatement of the year. This is the worst state I have ever seen class design and combat in. Its a snooze fest. And no, I’m not talking DPS meters, I mean actual engagement.
Yet the prune keeps coming. There is more prune on the PTR right now. Tell me again about how all this feedback is valued and listened to?
Yet no PvP vendors still, but we can give PvE vendors even tho they can target specific pieces based on the content they do. Again, feedback not listened to or valued.
Data structure and assets are designed for internal development. Such a tool would have to be built for the public. Halo: Reach had a very complex Forge system…Invasions in particular…it was a nightmare to make anything work properly in that mode.
So, it’ll take a while to see that addition.
Meh, Immortals will probably be very successful in the Asian market. If they announced anything related to Diablo 4, there would have been no issue. I have to assume they were working on something, but had nothing ready. I’d expect a announcement D4 in 2020 and set for 2021.
The people in control of green-lighting projects made a dumb choice. The team working on Diablo isn’t really in control of it… Operations messed up. Diablo team is getting the hate.
Hearthstone was originally 15 people iirc. It’s unlikely they’ll nail a hit like that again, but so be it.
WoW development is extremely complex. Most of the resources going into artwork, something these senior developers don’t really speak towards after the first few months. Once the concept art and reference pieces are created, the art team goes wild. And we at least agree that the artwork in WoW has been consistently excellent, yeah?
So announce it on stage in Cali, in English, as the keynote reveal of the entire franchise. They are out of touch.
Again, out of touch.
And how much market share will be left by then with PoE killing it, D3 being a dead title and Wolcen coming soon? The list of self-inflicted injuries is pretty big.
Card game with art assets and essentially no animations. Diablo Immortal is a mobile MMO ARPG. Thats apples and airplanes.
WoWs art and sound teams are top notch. Industry leaders. The Jaina cinematic was freaking amazing. An Overwatch Netflix series made up of content from the shorts and comics would be more successful than half their IPs.
But, they want to make WoW mobile games. With all the pruning and slowing down of combat with things like GCD changes, is sure looks like WoW is being prepped for consoles and mobile. I realize that statement is a bit much, I"m saying it out of snark to prove a point tho.
Blizz has lost the benefit of the doubt with much of its playerbase. Diablo, HotS, possibly WoW. What are they doing to regain that trust? Why are they communicating less when they clearly don’t know us as well as they used to? Simplest conclusion, they don’t care as much as they used to.
I appreciate the chat, really do. We aren’t going to agree on much of this, and that’s fine. I want people to know I am upset and have lost faith in the WoW devs and Blizz as a whole. But mostly, I want the CMs, MVPs, and even the clueless Devs that they no longer get a free pass. They have to earn it again.
You seem to be forgetting a few major games that have existed for nearly 20 years now that had map editors and fully functional user generated custom maps. Maybe you’ve heard of some of these games.
Totally fair. It’s perfect okay to be unhappy with a game’s and company’s direction.
This discussion has been pretty encouraging, despite most of it being negative. Just means there are players, such as yourself, who still want to enjoy their titles.
I would say communication has stagnated. When you have tens of thousands of questions, it’s just difficult to answer them. While I’ll keep details of private conversations in good faith, please understand that they also want to do a better job of community outreach. It might not seem like it, or it’s just words and you’d rather see action taken… just understand they do want to make it better. It’s not lip service, it’s just difficult.
That’s partially why I’m here, still talking and discussing whatever. MVPs do get some insider knowledge from time to time, but I play to both sides. Sometimes I gotta shill, sometimes I have to vent.
Right. But that doesn’t mean Overwatch was developed in such a way that this feature would be easy to create.
If it wasn’t, that would be incredibly short sighted and stupid. A map editor is one of the first things you set up for a FPS so that you can…you know…develop new maps.
You’re acting like there is some profound distinction between internal development and public development when it comes to map editing. If the devs were sensible in their approach, there would be none.
I’ll remind you of this other company which routinely pushes out game engines with FAR more sophisticated assets that has always had a map editor for their games. You may have heard of them. You know? Epic games? You know, Unreal Tournament?
![:wink:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/wink.png?v=6" ":wink:")
![:disappointed:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/disappointed.png?v=6" ":disappointed:")