Why do wow devs hate feedback?

Why are the devs so antagonistic towards actual criticism of their game? The system that are being implemented are so hilariously bad and any effort to tell them that said systems needs to go is met with hostility. Why is this even a thing?

Do these devs even play the games they are developing?

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painting a broad stroke here, but these days everyone takes criticism as personal attack on their ego trip

but personally i think that they prefer to listen to only one side of the feedback

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That’s the sad part about it. If you can’t take criticisms, then are they even working on projects that requires feedback to be functional?

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Have you ever worked on something 8 hours a day for a month. Worked hard to hit that deadline. Been hounded by your boss to just get it done. Spents two weeks researching and learning something new. Probably not since you made this post.

To have an army of faceless people who post non stop toxicity tell you, you suck have no idea what your doing. I would completely ignore you too.

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Objectively… because it’s not all their fault.

Imagine you were a dev. Your boss was told by upper management that he has to cut his budget down by a lot, fire a couple people and then expects you to deliver in the same time frame. Then when you do the best you can with what resources you have, people blame you for the outputs.

When higher ups cut corners, it causes a ripple effect. You cannot simply cut corners and get the same exact results.

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The managers and leaders were egomaniacs high on hubris and “rock star” mentality. They thought they could do no wrong. We suspected it before, we basically have proof now.

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There’s a clear difference from feedback and hateful bickering. The forums has devolved into the latter. There is rarely a post that I would consider is feedback from someone who wants to have a dialog. It’s always someone quick to make personal attacks and get mad at differing opinions. The irony is that they themselves can’t take any feedback. I’m sure you would react negatively to constant berating over actual feedback.

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Welp, keep making excuses for bad designs. If these devs has the time to fight people in twitter, then they’re not really working 8 hours a day for a month.

Seriously, when this particular dev was hired back in 2018, the same time the horrendous systems were implemented.

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Its been like this since WoD and onwards, Many people (myself included) have played the betas/alphas and given feedback and it is just ignored to the point where expansions have been released with bugs (BUGS) that were highlighted in the betas…

Its really simple they do not look at the forums what else can it be? fine they don’t want to change systems but to release an expansion with bugs that people have told them about cant be excused.

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Did you see how much good, genuine, spite free feedback was posted on the BFA and SL alpha and beta? All this vitriol is a result of it falling on deaf ears.

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They seem to like looking at data as their primary form of feedback, looking at the numbers to see what we’re doing etc. The problem with that is, it’s almost like they look at the data of something like mission tables and see 100% participation and act like that means they’re a success, but the only reason they have 100% participation is because they’re compulsory lol

Looking at participation data seems flawed because it doesn’t tell them whether we’re enjoying ourselves or just tolerating a feature because we want the reward at the end of the tunnel. Personally i wish they’d do a census once per expansion, make it so we fill it out on the launcher and only on active accounts so the numbers can’t be screwed with, that’s the only way they’ll truly know what we like and what we hate.

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No one likes being told they are bad at a job. Problem solving, logic, math and creativity are their weak points. Its the old caveman or scientist approach. They are more caveman using brute force instead of a middle ground that also uses logic to solve issues.

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It’s been a trend for awhile to see content creators lashing out at the customers when they complain. I’m pretty sure it started with the comic book industry, then we saw it in movies and television (Star Wars Rian Johnson being a great example of this), and now we see it in games. It’s amazing really. In the middle of a scandal you have people tweeting how players are “part of the problem if they are worried about when the next xpac will come out” etc. It’s just not good business to engage the customer in this way.

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Anyone who has any experience working with the “public” at large will tell you why this is the case.

You have all made your criticisms crystal clear for about the last 3 or 4 years. The criticisms have been taken into account, and they have decided to go in a different direction. The fact that you continue to show up and demand the changes when it OBVIOUS they aren’t going to happen is on you, and complaining about them despite this fact is no longer “constructive criticism”, it’s just you not being able to take no for an answer and move on.

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Your first problem here is that you assume our enjoyment is a factor in their decision making. They look and see 100% engagement and they don’t care about why, they only care that we are continuing to give them money.

I think a lot of it comes from the way the criticism is presented as well. There is a HUGE difference between constructive criticism, “The amount of rewards presented by the Korthia grinding systems is not consistant with the amount of actual hours one must spend to get to those higher ranks. The additional of some more power rewards or crafting items of value would make the journey feel more rewarding.”
and what most of the folks say on this forum “You’re game is trash and you should feel like trash.”

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You can’t find time to write a post on Twitter if you work 8 hours a day?? What kind of absurd logic is this?? Why do people assume when someone does something they don’t like they literally spend ALL their waking hours doing so, rather than 3 or 4 minutes??

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Well, I would ignore them in the sense that what they say won’t affect how I feel but I think everyones feedback is valuable though some less than others :laughing:

If you work in any capacity interacting with average citizens (at least in the US), I can state without equivocation that the “hostility” towards customers is not unique to Blizzard. If people pull the stuff they do on these forums at a restaurant, I could tell you EXACTLY how the staff talks about you when you’re out of earshot, but doing so would result in a forum ban.

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Except they got encyclopedias worth of constructive, well-written feedback along those lines as well. In fact one of the game’s best shamans quit around early BFA because his feedback, which most certainly wasn’t “hurr game sux durr” went unanswered.

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Which is why you’ll see people (more than usual) calling for the devs to be fired over this recent scandal :slight_smile:

The thought process:
‘Give me what I want’
‘No’
‘Ok’
something happens where you can get them removed if you cause enough uproar
attempt to cause as much of an uproar is possible to get rid of them and hopefully get what you want

I am so fond of how humans interact :laughing:

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