What blizzard needs is what nearly every forum before them had, the things that made other games great before world of Warcraft. And that would be dedicated class leads from the community. These class leads gather information and then have real conversations with developers. Blizzard used to do some things similar like this years ago back when the game was better. Back then though they had community managers that filled that role. In vanilla and the burning crusade I remember there being community managers over one or two forums and they would go back to the developers with information.
I donât understand with a multi billion dollar business how Blizzard canât afford to pay someone to do this job. IMO this is the lifeblood of the company.
You can go back and look at expansion after expansion and compare blizzards communication with the community and the quality of the game. You can see the hard break in communication in WoD. They totally ignored the alpha and beta testers. In Legion it was even worse and there was hardly any communication for the entire alpha and beta. Then BFA, by then communication was nearly non-existent. I got my alpha invite fairly early and there was no communication then all the way to beta. Even in beta we were asking what are we supposed to be testing where is the azerite gear. Then 6 weeks from release they finally figured out there was severe problems warriors were still doing nearly twice a damage of other classes, and that is when the mass of overhauls came. By then it was too late.
Blizzard decided to have huge arguments over the small things like Sylvanas and Taurens using blight on her own people in the Undercity. We spent probably 6 weeks on that topic alone. In the end as Azerite gear and class designs were a disaster. BFA will always be remembered for this.
Actually Warhammer Iâm almost certain is around 10 years older than d&d.
Hmm regular forum goers are on to us, I need to report back to the secret forum/discord.
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I donât have a problem with Blizzard creating a forum for what would be considered a type of focus group. What I do have a problem with is that per the discussions going on is that their feedback is no longer being considered. I also donât like the fact that there are people on the beta forums who put together good feedback information and that also seems to be ignored.
Lets face it, a company isnât going to wade through thousands of âI donât like thisâ with no objective reasoning posts. Which quite honestly are a majority of the posts.
But Blizz, ya all need to do better. Your hubris is showing and it isnât going to be good for the longevity of this game.
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Like instead of Blizzard keeping the facade of âwe are listening teheeeâ.
Just keep the general forums and delete the class forums, like if they already despise TC feedback imagine us commoners in the regular forums?
Be honest for once Blizz.
He had it correct - Warhammer is about 10 years younger than D&D. Maybe you are thinking of some D&D themed games specifically.
The invite-only forum was briefly visible to all during the transition from the old forum software to the current version.
It makes sense to me that no busy developer could or should wade through the forums - signal to noise ratio is just too low. I would have thought that since there are moderators anyway, part of their job could be summarizing the useful feedback for the devs; which would make the need for an alternate forum moot?
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I didnât know it was going on but after thinking about it Iâm not surprised its actually probably best to listen to a particular pool of players who are going to provide the most usable feedback.
It doesnât sound like its being as successful as it used to be.
After spending enough time on these forums, I understand why they donât listen to us directly all that much.
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I dont feel any way about it. I am a casual player of many games. If I donât like a game I wonât play it. As far as a separate forum for a feedback that has a higher value I agree. I didnât see anywhere in the ToS or anywhere else that the development team would listen to anything I had to say.
I do believe that there is an assumed perception that Blizzard listens to the overall playerbase, which is not the case. I also believe that Blizzard should be more open and vocal about this fact and not hide behind the perception of concern for the community. If you thought that you may be ignored by the dev team you might not sub. Why not just let them assume?
There is beauty and inspiration in being honest about youâre support and feedback model. Make it plain and simple that you have no intention of listening to low value feedback. Develop a path for anyone who would like to offer this type of feedback.
My concern for feedback is as follows. You have many types of players in this very broad world. How does someone know that their playstyle is represented in this valued feedback system? If it isnât then is that playstyle not a value to Blizzard? Do they only use the highest level raid teams and PvP teams as feedback? What do these people know about casual play? Do they even care? Again do not hide behind perceptions of caring for every playstyle. Be honest and up front about the type of feedback you want and it care about. This allowing people to think that you are when it doesnât seem you do care makes you look dishonest and that maybe you donât care.
This all boils down to people having an inflated sense of self worth. in the grand scheme of things you are just not that important and this forum has way too much garbage in it for blizzard to spend years wading through it looking for helpful feedback. They came up with a pretty decent solution in creating a separate forum for certain people who would probably have more helpful feedback and they try to utilize that feedback at times. This doesnât mean they always listen to that feedback but itâs a tool. The forum we are currently on is mostly for the player base to talk and interact with each other and it does a really good job of that, nothing less and nothing more.
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smushes tin foil beanie to his head
rabble rabble rabble
am i doing it rite
Now we have to weed out the leader, brb changing forums.
Its funny, with the horrible design philosophy they have been following and bleeding players that they could be condescending to anyone.
Additionally, as someone who works in IT and is regularly involved in new product releases, if I had a time frame for a product to be released and I had to say, âWe need to push this release backâ after a date was announced I would be mortified. It means I didnt set the right expectations upfront and I failed to manage my team correctly.
Iâm not saying they did the wrong thing by pushing it back, but it should be a humbling experience and if they continue to be condescending after that debacle they need to rethink what they are doing.
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These forums have never been about devs getting âhelpful feedbackâ. Forums are intended to be a place where people who like to argue with random strangers on the internet can go to blow off steam.
Iâm sure somebody keeps track of what actual players are discussing, but if you allow yourself to ignore obvious troll threads you will find very little real discussion takes place. Nevertheless, it often seems to come as a surprise that people who said they hated some idea and would quit over it - and did - werenât convinced by moronic trolls repeating talking points endlessly.
The issue with the âpretty decent solutionâ (as you describe it) is that when these people came up with ideas, they ignored them because it wasnât what they wanted to hear.
Firstly, private forums for high value feedback are common. There is no agreement made anywhere that Blizzard will or should listen to any player.
Blizzard is implementing a dying game model that still requires payment for content updates as well as a monthly subscription. This has been adjusted as late to only the newest content is paid and the rest is free providing you pay monthly.
The problems that I see in this private forum model is that when you take advice from a selected few, you will only get the feedback that you selected for,not what may be the most important. Just because you had a small part in the games design or implementation does not mean that you are correct or even interested in what players overall may think. These teams are compartmentalize and distant from one another and each deal with and interpret feedback differently. Since only the newest content is still charged for this is where I will assume the majority of feedback will be chosen from and not older content. This is where focus and changes will be applied and this isnât something that Blizzard wants widely known. It may upset players who enjoy old content or spend time in other parts of the game maps that either want changes or dont want changes. Blizzard has a well documented history of trashing content under the guise of updating it.
Since Blizzard is employing a private feedback forum then there is a problem with communication between Blizzard and the community and herein lies my concern. Instead of providing a structured path for issues to be resolved, they have had to retreat behind a wall of indifference and privacy to accomplish a given task. Which is very telling in that they arenât very talented at dealing with their problems.
Simply provide direction on what is and is not valued feedback. Allowing people to see how professional and structured feedback is communicated will enlighten a large part and give them the tools they need to begin to be part of the solution. Simply put, you must attempt to make what you need, and it is absolutely apparent that you need more and better feedback. What you are getting currently is inadequate and damaging.
Well, I mean it depends on the function of the forums and exactly what type of info theyâre obtaining from them & who theyâre obtaining it from. If theyâre completely ignoring this forum, thats a huge mistake on their part, as I feel at the very least they should be keeping a close eye here to get an overall idea of how things are received across the board by the general public.
As for a good use of seperate exclusive forums⌠Some of us dont understand every little aspect of how a class is supposed to play or a lot of other mechanics that some people who have mastered WoW do, and I could see it being very beneficial to Blizz(And us) to target these individuals & get proper feedback from people that know what theyâre talking about.
And to share this feedback because it will give an insight into understanding how another class or spec works. This can embolden players to break their fear of these things and then we may have more and better healers and tanks not to mention dps.
Itâs not surprising personally.
No offense, but most of the people here on GD donât know a damn thing about how the game actually works. And the changes they cry for reflect that.
âUhh, I think mages should uh get heals because i keep dying, and this is unbalanced cuz, paladins heals, so mage heal too plz?â
Look at 90% of the threads people create just to complain. Whining about blizz giving away a free gift as a promotion for purchasing a 6 month sub just to name one. People really wonder why they donât come here for serious feedback about the game?
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Well, this is the first time i heard about a secret forum???
How can people post feedback if it is secretâŚ
Some guy on twitter was saying that there is also a secret npc linked to the BMAH that always have the dinomounttm available⌠The location is not yet know.