I think at some point they had enough money. Now they’re just coasting.
I’ll agree it’s off to a not off to the best start, but I think it’s still too early to call it a complete total failure.
The real council is Twitter.
I think that it would benefit from a bit more time.
They’re probably figuring out responses to stuff now and have to make sure everything is squeaky clean because no responses are likely better PR than “bad” responses.
I’m still confused… There are people who DIDN’T think the CC was going to be a failed PR stunt from a company great at failing in PR?
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I know I am
having a team that was in more than infrequent contact with the devs or at least blizzard staff. As it stands they are cherry picking topics and giving “well look at looking into that in the future maybe if we feel like it and hell freezes over” responses to those cherry picked topics while ignoring everything else. Almost seems like they dont want to hear from players.
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Was the goal to improve communication between the players and devs or was it to have the devs respond to every single post and implement every suggestion there? I think some peoples expectations of what it was going to be were way too high.
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I think most of the problems are already know to the devs. It’s not like they’re dumb, but they have different views and goals for the game.
The community council just gives them a way to make the players understand that they are actually listening to feedback while most of the time not being too keen on implementing solutions where it would change something that interferes too much with their design philosophy.
On the other hand, small problems might get fixed easier.
The question is, are there much more other players checking the community council, that aren’t in the forums already? And therefore, is it just a way to condense the forum into a smaller forum, so they don’t have to read as much? I think that’s it, a community resumée.
It might tackle some of the problems, but many of the bigger problems are laying within the design philosophy of the game.
If you actually thought the Council was going to actually produce something useful, then you might be a bit naive.
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It was poorly implemented from the start.
The forum should have been sorted into specific categories with members only allowed to post in the categories they were chosen for their knowledge of. (That way members wouldn’t be posting outside the wheelhouses Blizzard chose them for.)
In a pinned thread at the top of each category, each member should have been introduced by Blizzard and an explanation of why Blizzard choose them. (That way the community could see how many members were representing their area of concern and why these particular members were chosen.)
Then single Suggestion Threads are opened in a staggered manner in each category and left open for seven days where every member of that category is allowed to suggest ONE subject to be looked at. No comments on other members suggestion and no duplicate subjects allowed.
Blizzard would then choose one subject and open the floor for discussion on it, also taking part in the discussion, explaining why a particular idea might be possible or not due to budgetary, engine, ect constraints.
And when I say Blizzard, I mean an actual employed dev, not some unpaid intern or other.
At the end of twenty-one days, Blizzard would make a final comprehensive post outlining exactly what they could change or add and what they could not change or add and why. And what they would work to implement. And when. Or not.
And lock the thread.
Then another suggestion thread would be opened and the process would start all over.
Note: members could game the system by deciding in advance what suggestion they would like to discuss and just having one member post that one suggestion in the Suggestion Thread that week.
I did chuckle to myself reading the blue post about the success of the CC.
Raised awareness to domination gems
Pretty sure we all assumed they were going away in 9.2, and to think Blizzard wouldn’t have thought about it (or clarified it) without the CC section is honestly scary.
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I’d say it’s safe to say it was 100% just a PR move to try and salvage some of their image to stock holders, and now with the buyout instantly improving that image and stock prices kicking back up, the CC is no longer necessary and will just be another green tag title like MVP.
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Some companies have entire departments for exchanging information with the public.
If only Blizzard was more than a handful of programers and artists.
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Bolded the important part.
The CC has been a thing for like a month. The only feedback that is going to be seen in the immediate future is stuff that is easily fixable, or they were iterating on already, like tier sets (which would be changed with or without feedback in many cases).
Complaining that the game isn’t immediately fixed within a month of feedback is silly because most of the ways that feedback can be implemented is long-scale stuff. Like if you say “hey, I don’t wanna grind for power in a system that gets deleted as soon as the expansions over” and that feedback gets taken seriously, the implementation of that feedback isn’t gunna be deleting covenants and conduits before the next weekly reset, it’s gunna be discussions within the groups designing the new expansions and either pruning down or simply not implementing power based systems.
Declaring the CC system a failure now shows nothing but impatience.
Y’know, assuming you’re taking the route of assuming that CC could have been a success and not just claiming its a cynical PR move.
You think people would have been happy with a dozen blue posts a day from a CM going “good feedback, I’ll pass that onto the devs”?
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So many excuses.
Blizzard promised better communication. They haven’t delivered.
No one is asking for the game to be fixed overnight. The fact that you pretend that is what’s being asked for just makes zero sense.
Your strawman argument is on fire.
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It might not be a huge amount of feedback, but compared to the literal months of radio silence where the only blue post would be a reminder about some event? Yeah, it’s better.
I mean, people very obviously are, I’ll just quote OP.
What impact would the CC had to have had to make YOU think it was successful?
Not giving players the finger over pvp gearing would have been a good start.
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I think people are confused about something. The Community Council isn’t about the average person giving just any kind of feedback. Blizzard can get bad or mediocre feedback on these forums each and every day… No, the Community Council is about giving GOOD CONSTRUCTIVE feedback, which is very rare.
Almost all of the posts in General Discussion regarding “suggestions” or complaints are absolutely terrible. They’re echo chamber reiterations of things already said on the forums, suggestions and complaints that other people spouted, which then get regurgitated back onto the forums as an “original idea.” Beyond that, they don’t actually explain how to fix a problem that they think they see, or how to improve the game with suggestions that aren’t really suggestions.
I understand people can get frustrated but 95% to 99% of the time, you aren’t helping.
Here’s a great example of a complaint that’s completely unrealistic. They add no information, but make a statement based on emotion and very little facts. PvP gearing was actually pretty great in SL, and probably some of the best gearing in quite a few expansions. It was the avenue to get some best in slot gear, which was a much older model of the game that a lot of people liked… But here we have someone making a complaint about it, stating that it’s somehow bad.
Do you people understand how unhelpful you are? Is it sinking in yet? If you want I can go post by post and explain why it’s poorly written, poorly thought out, and of zero help to the community or to Blizzard.
How about this one, with someone complaining that Blizzard doesn’t communicate… while talking in a thread dedicated to the COMMUNITY COUNCIL, an organization built to facilitate communication…
Again, do we see how poorly the GD communicates? It’s not Blizzard that communicates poorly, it’s the tens to hundreds of thousands of people that decide that they need to voice their thoughts on these forums while upset.
Also, “Your strawman argument is on fire.” this doesn’t mean anything.
Eh? It was a response to another post, it wasn’t supposed to be a doctoral thesis on PvP gearing and the issues associated with the current methods.
No, it wasn’t.
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