I’d say I don’t agree with this. Even if there is one or was one they would still take our feedback into account. Albeit probably a fair bit more to filter through on these ones.
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The thing is back then they made great games like Baldur’s Gate, Half-Life, and Diablo. Most developers wanted to make the best game they could.
These days it’s a lot of ‘How can we monetize this as much as possible?’
I think a lot of people underestimate just how much profit and monetization has always been a part of the games industry – at least once we get to the 90s.
We’re not talking about these forums, we’re talking about the private forums where Blizzard asked and invited certain handpicked players to test things and give them feedback.
No. But when hard data is provided showing explicit problems, the expectation is that Blizzard will try and see what’s going wrong.
Corruptions are a perfect example of a horrendous lack of tuning and adjustment before going live.
When you’re talking to me I expect you to address what I actually say, not what these mythical, “people” you refer to are saying.
I didn’t say Blizzard is doing it out of spite. I’m saying they’re ignoring feedback/testing/data and are also acting arrogant - because they are.
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Honestly? A lot of people give bad feedback and have some pretty bad ideas as well. I can see why they have secret forums to gain actual good feedback from devoted players.
Unless you have access, and unless I’ve missed something, we have a total of about 5 cropped screenshots of these “forums,” so I don’t think any of us can make any sort of assessment – particularly not when this whole thing starts from someone who quit three years ago and who is quite clearly aggrieved with the current developers.
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Monetization sure, but it’s a more recent trend of sacrificing things for profit. Game devs of old did what they wanted to try and provide as good a product - and the marketing people tried to make the profits.
The bigger an industry gets, the more profit-oriented people will take control.
Maybe, but before the days of micro-transactions and season passes and battle passes and everything the best way to make a lot of money was to make a damn good game.
Or to do one of those movie license games, but general wisdom among gamers is that those have always been best avoided outside of a few cases.
Was corruptions something the super secret forum was against? Do we know?
Again, you’re being vague but whatevs I’ll just let this drop.
This isn’t a new thing, nor is it the only thing we’ve heard of from players that have a direct line (of sorts) to Blizzard. We’ve also seen beta and PTR forums where there are people who upload immensely useful feedback with incredible detail and concise data, and it goes ignored.
Many problems that dedicated testers lay out as potential results from specific things going unaddressed get ignored - and the problem, unaddressed, tends to fall exactly where they predicted.
That may be true.
I think my frustration is with consumers trying to take an active role in what a developing product becomes, out of some sense that they deserve to have a say in what they consume.
To me, that process is almost a violation of a developer’s creative prerogative. It’s their little pipe dream, in the end, not ours. Consumption is then a choice.
It’s a trend that concerns me in the film industry too.
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No, but given the result when they hit live, it’s very clear that Blizzard didn’t do any internal testing or changes before rolling them out.
I didn’t think I’d have to point out how ridiculous Corruptions were and still were towards prepatch launch. Not when a passive can make up 80% of your DPS.
The thing is, Blizzard asked them to. It let them have a dedicated group of testers with extensive backgrounds and credibility - it was insanely valuable for testing early builds of systems, design, and tuning. It lead to some of the most polished class design we’ve had, but then they started ignoring them.
Developers aren’t universally the best people to test their own designs and systems.
Yeah but… you’re missing the point. What if the feedback people on the super secret forum was for corruptions? Did you even think of that? Or is it all “Blizzard bad, player feedback gud.”
/sigh I don’t want to get sucked into this really.
I’m sure they were in some ways interested in corruptions. But I’m assuming that if they did have the opportunity to test them, they wouldn’t have been quiet about the ridiculously broken and imbalanced state they launched with.
That specific patch just goes to show that Blizzard is so far out of touch. The prepatch, too, given how badly everything was tuned.
Shrug
I provide feedback on what I can. It’s up to them to listen to it and incorporate it. If they don’t that’s their decision. I can’t stop 'em and I’m not going to lose sleep over it.
They may disagree with me, they may even go so far as the be spiteful in that disagreement. Again, that’s on them. If they don’t make the game according to my satisfaction I’ll go play something else, and they’ll lose money. They may even lose enough money that it will provide a significant negative consequence to ignoring feedback or treating feedback with derision.
I can’t control them, I’m not going to try. I’m not going to call for anyone’s termination. I’m not their boss, that’s not my call.
What I will call for, is someone to take the people making such decisions and the people saying such things aside and explain to them how to communicate properly when your words are under a microscope and how to behave in public; especially as a representative of a multi-billion dollar company where the wrong words can create financial ramifications that their derriere’s cannot cash.
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It can work out well, but the developer really has to be in on it from the start which it sounds like Blizzard wanted feedback up until something happened internally and they decided to adopt the “we know what is best for you” mentality.
To use another developer as an example, Larian felt that getting player feedback during early access was so successful for them with Divinity Original Sin they’re doing it again for Baldur’s Gate 3.
In the end its up to the developer. They get the final say.
However since they want us to buy their games so they can make more games, getting feedback on the whole process isn’t inherently a bad thing. You just need a developer who can separate the crap from the good.
When your pipe dream also pays the bills and keeps the lights on, it’s rather important to consider your target market.
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Call me cynical if you want.
Why is this so shocking to so many? It’s just another example of Blizzard being hypocritical. Nothing new.
Also if you thought this forum was actually listened too, your kidding yourself.
Okay there’s less shock, now there’s more frustration and anger.
Understandable 
meh, not surprising, nothing new.
Is it a good thing? No, probably not.
Will it blow up in their face? Probably not. Cause from the sound of it, they were even ignoring those forums so… and if they don’t even listen to a private forums filed with content creators or whatever for feedback and choose to ignore them as well. That’s their loss, especially if Shadowlands turns out to be 
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Yeah, I hear ya.
I don’t mean to slam getting feedback in total. I think it’s just annoying when consumers interpret disregard for their feedback as “well, they’re just not listening at all”, when it’s more that the consumer doesn’t fully know what the developer wants their product to be.
Reminds me of John Updike’s 1st Rule of Literary Criticism: Don’t hold the writer accountable for what they didn’t attempt to do.