I’m just imagining a project manager sitting down with the dev team for a QA:
Blizz dev: “See people don’t like complex stats on their gear with different break points or having to go hit the dps post or use guides. They also don’t want to have to farm a gear set for each spec. So we made gear flex and homogenized all of our green stats.”
Manager: “Really? Because the numbers I’m looking at say sub numbers are down since those changes went in.”
Blizz Dev: “People don’t want to feel like they have to guild or group up to really experience the game. So we nerfed guild rewards and made content easier.”
Manager: “Really? People don’t want that? Because the numbers I’m looking at say sub numbers are down since those changes went in.”
Blizz Dev: “People don’t want a ton of content all at once, because it makes their weekly laundry list too long”
Manager: “Really? Cuz literally in every single other online game players are crying about not enough content. Oh, yeah also sub numbers are down since those changes went in.”
Blizz Dev: “People don’t like having to work hard for a slow trickle of really good gear. They would rather get rained on with an assortment of garbage gear for them to sift through for the valuable pieces. And also they feel just as happy about the gear even when they didn’t really do much to earn it.”
They do NOT get customer data from the dev team. I know that. I was a member of the “dev team” for several “best in their industry” companies.
The dev team creates the product. They do not research the industry. They do not survey customers, or talk to customers. Creating the product is their full-time job.
There is a separate department for that, called “Marketing”. There are industry researchers and surveys outside the company. There is a lot of data, and there are people who study this full-time and learn “what customers want”.
They just aren’t “devs” or part of the “dev team”.
That is more or less my point. There seems to be a huge disconnect between what is in demand and what is being produced by the dev team. So I agree, whoever is providing the dev team with their direction is the real culprit.
Which goes back to the “You think you want X, but you don’t” thing. If the feedback is saying we want X, but they are giving us Y, and sub numbers continue to drop…what data are they looking at that tells them we don’t actually want what we say we want?
Why can’t they be transparent about it? Something like, “We got millions of complaints that people want master looter back. But in pre-personal loot xpacs we saw that X% of our subscribers left and said the loot system was why. So we aren’t going to be reverting that, but we will look heavily into other options.”
But Blizz for unknown reasons avoids that kind of transparency like the plague. Which might not be that weird for a big company except for the fact that many other studios with wildly popular games are far far more transparent and actually engage in dialogue with their users. That kind of feedback in addition to soothing customers, could actually help inform users so that their criticism is constructive and usable by the studio, rather than just blind rage and noise.
It would be hard to believe that Blizzard devs can see user data on millions of players (in real time, too) but don’t use the data to help develop future xpacs. If so, their analytics must not be so good.
And all along I thought that Blizzard was sending out surveys to cross-check if what they see in the player data lines up with marketing survey results…
By all appearances they do get customer data from the dev team. And the dev team is getting that information from the voices in their heads.
I see no indication that any marketing research has been done in many years. That 255 character text box players were supposed to fill out with their “reasons for unsubbing” was a joke, and removing it while replacing it with nothing just evidence that they don’t care at all whether people leave over these changes they are making.
Remember, all these guys are on the same page. They have a grand plan that we can’t figure out ourselves right now, but even more players would probably hate it and quit now if they knew what’s coming.
I still see zero responsiveness to what paying customers want or will tolerate.
Here’s how I envision those meetings happening.
Manager: “What next?”
Blizz Dev 1: “Well, we could do [this].”
Blizz Dev 2: “Ooh, they’d hate that!”
Manager: “Let’s do it! That’ll make them sorry they complained!”
The thing is that NDA’s are usually in place to protect intellectual property so stuff doesn’t get leaked, or really touchy data like revenue or very specific business performance metrics.
No, I do not think it’s weird that Blizz doesn’t share their sub numbers, nor do I think they should. BUT, I think it would be fully to their benefit to release something along the lines of, “Hey guys, many of you probably saw we ran a quick survey displayed to everyone who purchased a character service in the last month, asking about issue X. We’re not going to get into specific numbers but it looks like the feedback regarding issue X is overwhelming negative. So we are going to be addressing this by looking at item Y, and how we can make it better.”
Is that so hard?
Also we are not idiots and we know big companies all bow down to the almighty dollar. So they aren’t maintaining illusions here. They can just say, we did this because we just don’t have the resources to support Z at this time. Or we did made this change because last year we saw a decrease in subs, and a lot of people said issue Z was the reason. So simple, and doesn’t even need to necessarily change what you are doing. But it goes a long way towards helping your fan base not feel like they are going down with a sinking ship.
“Irresponsible” is a mild term for how the dev team has bull-headedly rammed in changes they knew people would hate and created costly PR debacles that would have been easily avoided.
I bet they know a lot more than we do. I think it’s more likely that we gamers of yore just don’t like where the industry is heading. I am certainly no fan of instant gratification games.
Clearly you are unconcerned about the long-term health of the game due to decisions the devs have made based on their feelings and preconceptions.
You can’t analyze data that doesn’t exist. Nor can the devs, nor have they. There is no sign that any data has been collected through the sort of techniques that responsible companies and their market researchers use before spending millions of dollars of their investors’ money. Doing so would have prevented the debacles that have resulted in the loss of the majority of players over just a few expansions.
It doesn’t help to get worked up over the long term health of the game; I have no control over it. All i can do is post here occasionally and choose to pay them or not.
Still not sure what you’re talking about. Of course they collect data. There have been multiple public surveys and we see specific metrics show up in their annual reports. You don’t keep multiple analysts on staff but “not have any data” - thats ridiculous.
Data isn’t some kind of crystal ball. We all want it to be but it isn’t. Analytics are entirely after the fact. Market insights only tell you what the trends are, not what’s guaranteed to happen.