This is a topic for which I am hoping some guidance or perhaps some insight could be provided. I don’t know if any of it’s answerable, but I’m hoping that it could be.
This is primarily a request for the insight and experiences of someone who has been working on WoW at Blizzard for a long time.
I would also request that Council members limit their responses only to additional clarifying questions related to the decision making processes phrased as simply and succinctly as possible.
Should answers be provided by the development team please allow these responses to simply stand as they have been given in this thread and perhaps consider starting separate threads to discuss specific answers if appropriate.
I will provide an example of a common feedback topic to better frame the context of the request but want to stress that the example is NOT the topic of this post in any way.
PvP systems, balance and gearing is something that the community provides enormous amounts of feedback on and has for a long time; but feels that their concerns are heard but not acted upon by the developers, or perhaps disagreed on by the developers and the player base.
Please consider the following questions for discussion regarding the thinking and factors that are considered in making decisions based on player feedback:
What does it mean to you when players come to BlizzCon year after year and ask for the same thing and Blizzard has to say “we’re not doing that” every time?
Does that increase the likelihood of the request being worked on eventually?
What are the most common reasons feedback cannot be implemented?
When you hear a request for a change what factors are most compelling in choosing to proceed or not to proceed?
How often do factors other than gameplay effect the decision?
How much individual or small team decision making is there or are large groups and numerous approval layers required?
How often do you perceive that solutions that make it into the game are allowed to work poorly for too long or are abandoned too soon before they reach their potential?
Another point I would request Blizzard address in this point is how, if at all, does Blizzard’s community data impact any changes even if it differs from internal testing?
For example, Venthyr Warlock has been severely underperforming in all aspects of the game in comparison to its other covenants according to data collecting sites such as Warcraft Logs. As a Warlock who spent all of 9.1 as Venthyr, I cannot stress enough the mass disappointment I felt each week the balancing wasn’t addressed. I remember in an interview, I believe it was Ion who said that sometimes community perception differs from internal testing. When analyzing the data collecting sites and noticing it matches player perception, are we to assume that the entire community just isn’t playing a particular specialization/covenant correctly or optimally? I would really appreciate Blizzard’s insight on this topic.
The best part is when they throw all that feedback away and do exactly what everyone said they shouldn’t do and then make fun of them for asking to “fix PvP” really makes people wanna pay the monthly sub for playing a game. I understand the idea of creating the image that the design team wants but if your entire playerbase is saying no maybe you should do something different.
I get that its not something that you want to address in the topic but it deserves to be mentioned as its still a huge problem
To add to this, if a spec/ability isn’t being played by the community correctly, at what point do the devs believe they should step in and explain how they believe the spec/ability should be played or retool the spec to be more intuitive?
Using your example, Venthyr Warlocks are the only Covenant/Class combo where it’s a dps loss to use the skill in almost every scenario (in optimal conditions, with the legendary, it’s a minor dps increase). If the internal testing is showing it performing fine, but the community has shown it’s a dps loss to the point most top venthyr warlocks never even use it, is there any point where you try to figure out the disconnect and how to address it?
