eSport - ahhh my eyes!


I guess this is where GW had that little difference due to the PVP and PvE being two seperate aspects of the game. I do not know if nerf/fixes affected both, but on a logical base they could have been separated(sp) and thus keep the apples away from the oranges.

WoW-wise I do recall agonies from the past cosidering fixes/nerfs that were totally craptastic due to arena play.

 

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As others have pointed out, there is just SOOOO much whineing that goes on in those forums. They really need groups of moderators to weed out the crying (QQ to use the venacular of the day) from the legitimate concerns.

Well, if we're talking about forum posts resulting in buffs/nerfs, you can't take the people complaining about ability X versus the entire rest of the population. You have to break it down by the number of people who actually play the class or compete against it, as most other folks would love to see their opponent nerfed or simply don't care.

But again, why would devs read the forums when they have community reps that can report back the most-voiced complaints and then go pull the actual in-game data for analysis instead of relying on biased, myopic individuals?

 

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As an example, on one hand, I'm glad to see that they're actively managing the game via hot fixes. I remember when small class fixes could take 6-9 months. However, I also think the new hot fixes magnify how bad the development process is at Blizzard. Why does nothing ever seem to be working correctly or be balanced when it's initially released? Where'd that Blizzard polish go?

As for the forums specifically, companies have adopted the idea that forum quantity is more important than forum quality ... that larger number of posters are good because it indicates your game is more successful mentality. Personally, I would respect the company that actively manages their community like CoH did in the beginning.

I'm not arguing for more bannings, just for the community managers to actively provide the community with some direction and focus. I think that Ghostcrawler's posts/blogs are a huge step in the right direction. Other simple solutions are forum games, which Sprawl and Arc? utilized a little while back. It's fun, people get involved and are focused on something other than just creating havoc/trolling.

 

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I know the little experience I have writing specs and areas for the dikuMUD I play can hardly be compared to the scale of something like WoW, but in my experience, no amount of in-house testing can anticipate what is going to happen when it is released on the population.

Obviously Blizzard has more resources to test things beforehand than I did, but it seemed like no matter how much time I spent trying to attack my code using different tactics, etc. It usually took about 5% of that amount of time for someone in the general population thinking outside the box to find an exploit or a bug in what I implemented. I imagine it's the same for Blizzard just on a larger scale.

You can test until your blue in the face and think something is ironclad, then you let a couple million other people try it, and inevitably they poke holes in it within minutes. At this point you've gone from being proactive to reactive and you have no choice but to hotfix it before it gets any worse.

 

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My only wish is that they'd keep nerfs and buffs to things like damage and not mess with the "fun" aspects of the game. Putting charge and intercept on the same cooldown for warriors just flat out removes a lot of the fun people have with their warriors. I'd rather take a 50% damage nerf. Now all pvp warriors are going to be little, waddling pengiuns. They will be perma-snared, rooted, etc. Kiting inc.

 

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Trade-offs.


Managers need to understand what it's like from a customer experience.


If you sit in a building with a "Blizzard" label on it, your game play will be automatically "filtered". It's a given. You just know too much. Aware of design decisions. Why things are the way they are from an internal perspective. Technical limitations for things.


The closest you can come to how your customers are feeling about the game, and how they are experiencing it, is gathering a general feel or tone from the forums.


You can have marketing gather feedback from emails, from feedback made during cancellation, from numbers gathered by a tool that measures instances, surveys, etcetera. You can have someone gather information from the forums FOR you. Chances are they will pre-filter/pre-consolidate that data. (You have to be careful about some employees not wanting to be the messenger of "bad news".) Or it could be that the employee skipped the one post that would smack you between the eyes as being vitally important.


All of those are good tools. None should be used separately to make decisions. Weighed, with filters taken into account (MANY of which can be/probably are political inside Blizzard), and combined will give you an overall feel from multiple viewpoints.


"Walking through" the crowds, doing a "townhall", getting "face to face" will give you one more set of data.


Not taking advantage of that last little personal hands-on checking is a trade-off.


It risks not taking into account your own perception of the customer's experience.


Loosing touch with customers is the first step in any company's decline.


They don't need to respond. It does take internal fortitude sometimes to wade through the stuff that is on the forums. And having a separate forum for players that you've trusted over the years to offer respectful/professional input is just another tool.


It should never replace first-person data gathering. It's your product. Own it. Be responsible.


Yes, I think devs need to read the forums for the games they've created (and the corresponding customers they have attracted).

 

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Problem is, in a small shop, you go tell the boss "Hey, our product sucks at this thing here, lemme show you" and the boss thinks about it and agrees or disagrees on the merits backed by his own experience with the product. In a conglomerate, you tell the boss that and the boss fires you and promotes the ass kisser, as it means less change and strife (aka "work".

Blizzard = small shop (bear with me)
Activision/Blizzard = conglomerate

/shrug

 

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This post illustrates pretty well why developers should not listen to forums. And SPECIALLY NOT about PvP.

 

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/shrug

Rift release is a few months away. The beta was better than WoW so I'm excited for the official release.

 

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