Developer lack of communication

[Natsuno]

I think the biggest mistake SE has made so far with this expansion was the way the media tour was handled. They really should not have allowed video or pictures to be taken. (At least not in the way that it did.) I can say that the only video I've seen from the Media Tour was Mr Happys general video about his visit. And I seem to be hearing more and more rumors from people who watched all the other vids complaining about stuff. I don't go out of my way to look for that info, but you end up hearing it everywhere (i.e. Twitch, in game, forums). I've never seen such craziness where SMNs go from hype of Bahamut in the Live Letter to wanting to change classes the next week.

What I'd love to see happen is that everything that was seen from the media tour be just complete bogus data and people be pleasantly surprised when the game actually comes out.

The media was probably told the same as we were during the live letter (assuming any media missed it), but they needs their clicks and views...

[RukiaFae]

Every video I've seen said the same thing. This is under development and subject to change. It is watermarked on every video.

[Mature]

I don't understand the logic of some people PANICKING over a game that is not even out yet.

Yes there is some "sort" information out but you have to wait until you have tested it yourself rather than ranting.

This forum sometimes feels like a class room full of kids not wanting to do their assignments cause they are too difficult but once they get on with it was never hard in the first place....

[MisterLucie]

Everything is subject to change as they said many times. It's not dev's fault when people are so eager to spam threads about the death of WHM and other nonsense before the expansion even gets released. What has to stop is all those premature theory crafts and death talks. Let the thing gets released first then try it out in the new context and then give serious feedback in the official forums. Threads like "Thx SE my WHM is now deder than ded" is not constructive feedback. Also you have to keep in mind that translators do many mistakes even when they are professionals.

"Our players are dumb and hysterical, let's completely ignore their concerns and just let them all be mad." is a very bad PR philosophy.

"This is an old build and the WHM design has been improved since then." takes about five seconds for a rep to type and calms a lot of people down.

[Pluvia]

"Our players are dumb and hysterical, let's completely ignore their concerns and just let them all be mad." is a very bad PR philosophy.

"This is an old build and the WHM design has been improved since then." takes about five seconds for a rep to type and calms a lot of people down.

Seems to work for WoW and really it flat out does say things are subject to change but I can understand if you want the watermark all these videos have to be directly posted into the forums. No one is saying they can't give feedback though

[Felis]

"This is an old build and the WHM design has been improved since then." takes about five seconds for a rep to type and calms a lot of people down.

But they said it

Every video I've seen said the same thing. This is under development and subject to change. It is watermarked on every video.

Do they really have to say how old it is instead of just that it is old?

[Selova]

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.

They have those conversations after completely ignoring player feedback for months and months and then finally addressing the classes over halfway through the expansion, despite having the feedback and resources to make class adjustments to avoid launching a expansion with broken classes and extremely bad class balance.

[MisterLucie]

But they said it

No, they didn't. "This could potentially maybe perhaps change" doesn't mean anything. "This is old and it has changed" means something.

[Felis]

No, they didn't. "This could potentially maybe perhaps change" doesn't mean anything. "This is old and it has changed" means something.

What interest us is the live version. So yes, the presentation version is old since the presentation started and Yoshida said that it is still the development version.

[Kaurie]

You say that but I took part in the alpha and beta of legion and they flat out ignored issues we brought up 6 months before the expansion released and took weeks or months to actually do anything about it let alone admit there was a problem. All of us testing DH telling SE hey we have too much AoE damage you may want to look into it Ignored until a good month after release when they have to finally nerf it because all they were taking for mythic + runs were DH.

I am saying that they responded to some feedback. There were blue posts which basically said, we've heard what you are saying and here is our response. It wasn't for every single piece of feedback, but it was there and widespread. Again, Blizz ain't perfect, but they give infinitely more communication than we get from Square.

Note that actually making changes is not the same thing as communication.. Here is an example..

Player A: Class X's ability is too weak and needs adjusting to remain balanced.

Company A: Thank you for the feedback, we actually are finding on internal sims that Class X is perfectly balanced.
Company B: .... Patch Notes later: Class X's aoe has been buffed by 10%.

Both listened, but A actually communicated, even though B made the change and A did not. B still didn't communicate anything.