Developer lack of communication

[Ayer2015]

Or people could stop over reacting and acting like children..... If WHM doesn't play the way they intended it to, it will get changed. I understand some of the concern, and they have every right to voice it, but its been excessive.

The devs clearly stated that everything they were showing was subject to change and not final. People choose to ignore that however....

[Selova]

As someone who plays WoW as well, I can say that Blizzard does a much better job at communicating with their playerbase than Square does. Just look at all of the blue-post responded threads on their forums vs here. They aren't perfect, but that was specifically what I was thinking of when I said that two-communication sucks here.

CMs posting in "fluff" threads or posting automated responses isn't developer communication. They are CMs for a reason, it's their job to engage the community and relay information from the developers. CMs=//=Developers.

[Kaurie]

CMs posting in "fluff" threads or posting automated responses isn't developer communication. They are CMs for a reason, it's their job to engage the community and relay information from the developers. CMs=//=Developers.

Not really referring to fluff threads or automated responses; however, those are still better than FFXIV. There are a lot of good responses both by CM's and developers themselves all over the WoW forums. This includes their PTR forum, class forums etc.

FFXIV just frontloads information into a live letter and then ignores us for 3 months until the next live letter. WoW releases information and then goes into consistent back and forth discussion.

[MisterLucie]

CMs posting in "fluff" threads or posting automated responses isn't developer communication. They are CMs for a reason, it's their job to engage the community and relay information from the developers. CMs=//=Developers.

There's literally a giant post right on the front page of MMO-champ with a blizzard dev having a conversation with the elemental shaman community about what they feel is wrong with the spec and what Blizz is doing to tweak it. There's a large amount of notes not far under it regarding upcoming raid design and changes being made to it.

I wonder if there's a class community in 14 that could really benefit from a dev speaking to them about their distressing changes right now? Hmm.

[Airget]

There's literally a giant post right on the front page of MMO-champ with a blizzard dev having a conversation with the elemental shaman community about what they feel is wrong with the spec and what Blizz is doing to tweak it. There's a large amount of notes not far under it regarding upcoming raid design and changes being made to it.

I wonder if there's a class community in 14 that could really benefit from a dev speaking to them about their distressing changes right now? Hmm.

Why? Has anyone actually played the 4.0 release build yet? So what dialogue is there to have with nothing to base your facts on?

[MisterLucie]

Why? Has anyone actually played the 4.0 release build yet? So what dialogue is there to have with nothing to base your facts on?

Outdated information was released to the public with very flawed designs. Many members of the playerbase are upset about it. SE should be able to see this and let their playerbase know "Hey, we understand you're upset, but this information was outdated and ____ is what we're doing differently since that build."

It's PR 101. Instead of talking to their community when they realize they're upset, they simply allow it to fester and get worse by the day.

[Keridwyn]

Outdated information was released to the public with very flawed designs. Many members of the playerbase are upset about it. SE should be able to see this and let their playerbase know "Hey, we understand you're upset, but this information was outdated and ____ is what we're doing differently since that build."

It's PR 101. Instead of talking to their community when they realize they're upset, they simply allow it to fester and get worse by the day.

To be fair they did let us know the information was outdated. We accepted that and that percentages could change, that's why a lot of WHM were hammering on that. We doubt they're hiding actual SKILLS from us though and as it stands a lot of WHM are upset about the gaps in our toolkit we will be dealing with at launch. That is where a lot of our frustration comes in.

[Noata]

There's literally a giant post right on the front page of MMO-champ with a blizzard dev having a conversation with the elemental shaman community about what they feel is wrong with the spec and what Blizz is doing to tweak it. There's a large amount of notes not far under it regarding upcoming raid design and changes being made to it.

I wonder if there's a class community in 14 that could really benefit from a dev speaking to them about their distressing changes right now? Hmm.

I am going to clarify a few things, and MisterLucie I am just quoting you to provide context to my response.
FFXIV has live letters, with Yoshi-P and that is something far more relevant than a single developer, and he does it way more often. SE has both written and live responses to the community all the time, I honestly don't think you can compare Blizzard to SE because they are not nearly as interactive. SE also goes all over the place for the fan festival, listening and communicating with the playerbase.

For those that don't know, when you create a PV or in this case a Preview of the game to be presented you have a team that puts it together in conjunction with development. They were never going to have the latest version, and the warning that things are subject to change is simply because when they bundled it up back in April they had no way of knowing how much would change. The game was essentially a closed beta at that point, no one should expect every aspect to be done.

It is understandable to be emotional, but before you go on a mission to burn the world to ash, it would be helpful to analyze what you are truly mad about. I saw youtube videos on every class, minus black mage and there was plenty of complaints about white mage, but they also mentioned... well everything is subject to change and no values are permanent. It is also hard to say at what stage when they bundled up the game for the preview that the white mage even was in completion. They had more then a month to finish up classes and their are a lot, some were going to be further along then others.

Lastly unlike Blizard the dev's have a language barrier, They can't just read what you say, or even respond to you efficiently. How many people can scroll over to the Japanese forums, read their posts, and then respond to them? Let alone be a developer for the game in question where mistranslated become Lies. Watch, Listen, Think, Feel

This is of course... just my opinion so feel free to scroll to the next post ^_^

[Selova]

Clearly you\\'re playing some alternate version because all of that is false. All of their changes are datamined months before a patch is out, they literally changed the way a entire expansion functions in a patch and didn\\'t even put it in the patch notes or give any kind of information beforehand. They have PTRs and beta tests with tons of player feedback, all of which goes ignored. It\\'s the middle of their latest expansion and classes still suffered from things that haven\\'t been fixed from beta. Yeah, stellar communication.

[Kaurie]

Clearly you\\'re playing some alternate version because all of that is false. All of their changes are datamined months before a patch is out, they literally changed the way a entire expansion functions in a patch and didn\\'t even put it in the patch notes or give any kind of information beforehand. They have PTRs and beta tests with tons of player feedback, all of which goes ignored.

They actually responded to a lot of the player feedback in basically all of their forums. Infinitely moreso than the replies to feedback on the FFXIV forum, anyway.

It\\'s the middle of their latest expansion and classes still suffered from things that haven\\'t been fixed from beta. Yeah, stellar communication.

How do lack of changes = no communication?

Is Blizzard perfect? Heck no. They're just substantially better than square in replying to feedback.