On January 31 2016 00:32 avilo wrote: -Patch the game every 2-3 weeks not every 6-9 months
Well, to be completely fair, in the past there were multiple occasions where the community outlashed at Blizzard for jumping to actions too quickly (well, certainly not BL/Infestor lol) and many demanded they'd take a slower approach to give players time to maybe find a solution on their own. It has been quite a bumpy road and I feel the pace of balancing just something Blizzard can't EVER do right, no matter how they try to handle things - people from the other faction will always complain afterwards.
No. I'm 99% sure no one has ever been fine with blizzard taking 6-9 months to "wait and see."
And even if they were that age of development is LONG GONE.
SC2 should be receiving patches for balance/design/new cool changes every 3-4 weeks. Whether that is minor touch-ups to abilities, slight balance changes, etc.
Most people i think are negative when they see we get minor patches way too infrequently imo...in other games that are easily mentionable...they get patches every month sometimes every 2-3 weeks balance changes to champions/abilities and things.
SC2 NEEDS that now.
But don't you think that having such a high frequency of balance/design changes would hurt pro-play at the very least, as it artificially prevents players from having a settled meta game? Having to adapt to new stuff every month is not what StarCraft is about, I think, it's about constantly refining your skill in an environment where perfect play is non-existent.
I'd agree. 4 weeks is not enough for new metas to sink in/get figured out.
3-4 weeks per patch is necessary. You cannot take months to fix balance issues if you want your game to dominate all other competition, or to thrive on it's own.
Not to mention, you're acting as if every 3-4 weeks there is some insane meta changing patch that fucks the game over 180 degrees. The entire point of frequent patches/iteration on balance is you have a very quick refresh rate to the live game state.
If you change something and it's off in a bad way, you can change it so quickly in the next patch, and adjust it. Same goes for good things like re-designs on units or mech viability. You can literally get feedback more quickly and the game can stay fresh much more easily.
If you literally have a patch for -1 adept damage 80 days after the game releases...it's terrible. It's inexcusable. This type of patch change should have happened 3 weeks after release. Mech is still sucky, it needs changes now, not 9 months from now.
WCS changes, koreans competing, foreigner personalities...NONE of that bullshit the community talks about or all that drama matters at all for what brings people to SC2 is the GAMEPLAY itself.
If the game receives constant attention from the developers and patches, people will naturally come back to SC2 and be really re-invigorated to play the game and when you hear other gamers talk about SC2 they'll be like "oh yeah it just got this patch that made thors really strong vs air it's pretty sweet!"
Then SC2 is discussed in a positive light everywhere because it's obvious the game balance and design are being addressed, that the developers are about the game, and it gives the community a reason to stick with SC2 and care too.
SC2 with 1 patch every 90 days (3 months) to 9 months? People get fed up with this shit fast. It has happened over the years. People are TIRED of that shit. I'm not being negative i'm telling you the truth.
People are willing to be positive when they know they're being listend to and that the game they play is getting attention from the developers.
Now, i do think Blizzard has SLOWLY been learning this...and are doing a much better job at it as seen with dkim/blizz posting more often to the community, responding, and such but i feel like they are still on the training wheels of this generation's game development cycles.
Gone are the days of "we can patch this once and wait months to do shit." To compete and make SC2 thrive they need to really focus on the gameplay and keeping it fresh and hammering out any ridiculous imbalances quite quickly.
On January 30 2016 23:46 NonY wrote: Blizzard employs liaisons to the community so that developers don't have to read raw feedback themselves. Why is the team reading any unconstructive criticism at all? I agree that reading worthless and negative feedback is demotivating to the team and unwanted. But I know that Blizzard is savvy to the way internet forums work and the kind of feedback they can expect to get from certain channels. Their weakness here is at the "Community Manager" position and if it's empty for SC2 then it needs to be filled and if it's filled then that person should be getting thrown under the bus, not the community. I think it's cool that David Kim is making these posts but he should be working with the assistance of a liaison. If he and his colleagues are being instructed to read the raw feedback themselves, then I can't imagine what their boss is thinking. Someone with a lot less knowledge on game design and technical skill can get paid a lot less than David Kim and can spend 60 hours a week reading everything the community is writing and making organized and productive reports on all of the constructive feedback for the team.
I highly agree with this and believe it's critically important. Feedback from the internet is very deceptive from reality, so naturally this is something not everyone understands especially if they haven't had extensive exposure to it. If a development team member reads over a thread like this one and perceives it as a general community opinion, they are getting an extremely skewed picture of opinion in a negative and misleading direction.
To summarize the way of the internet, a very small percentage of players are involved in forum discussions. Most players stick to playing or watching the game, some will read forums, and very few are actually active posters on forums. Since the internet is a place of animosity where anyone can say anything, naturally forums become the perfect platform for the type of person who lives in negativity and ignorance, and absolutely thrives off of their statements being read by others to allow them a feeling of relevance and importance where it is otherwise unwelcomed in their realities. As such, they end up representing a significant portion of active posts.
This is really exacerbated by the nature of including a forum in the development process; it allows "that" type of person to legitimately feel involved and important when a high level development company is asking for the communities feedback.
Right this moment at 11:00 AM on Starcraft 2, there are 2800 games in progress in the NA region and 14,000 games in progress worldwide, representing a small portion of active SC2 players who are playing at this very moment. Add to this the players who aren't online playing right now, then add the huge number of people who only watch or talk about Starcraft and don't actually play. This thread so far has 177 replies including posts by people with more than 1 reply, in an environment that attracts naysayers and has no filter on ignorant anonymous statements. That is such a small representation of the community, and in general the worse part of it too.
Of course there is still a good representation of the regular player on forums as well, and also very intelligent, informed, and useful posters (highhorse disclaimer, I consider myself a regular type). This is where the community involvement is a great thing, and real discussions resulting in great progress can be had.
And so, involvement of an experienced community manager to filter the input and produce a list of constructive positive and negative feedback is critical for the approach of public community involvement.
If developers are browsing forums on their own time and getting demotivated as a result, it would be worth it to have a small discussion with all of them to establish a collective understanding of how the internet and forums really operate so they aren't needlessly and undeservedly hindered.
On January 31 2016 00:32 avilo wrote: -Patch the game every 2-3 weeks not every 6-9 months
Well, to be completely fair, in the past there were multiple occasions where the community outlashed at Blizzard for jumping to actions too quickly (well, certainly not BL/Infestor lol) and many demanded they'd take a slower approach to give players time to maybe find a solution on their own. It has been quite a bumpy road and I feel the pace of balancing just something Blizzard can't EVER do right, no matter how they try to handle things - people from the other faction will always complain afterwards.
No. I'm 99% sure no one has ever been fine with blizzard taking 6-9 months to "wait and see."
And even if they were that age of development is LONG GONE.
SC2 should be receiving patches for balance/design/new cool changes every 3-4 weeks. Whether that is minor touch-ups to abilities, slight balance changes, etc.
Most people i think are negative when they see we get minor patches way too infrequently imo...in other games that are easily mentionable...they get patches every month sometimes every 2-3 weeks balance changes to champions/abilities and things.
SC2 NEEDS that now.
But don't you think that having such a high frequency of balance/design changes would hurt pro-play at the very least, as it artificially prevents players from having a settled meta game? Having to adapt to new stuff every month is not what StarCraft is about, I think, it's about constantly refining your skill in an environment where perfect play is non-existent.
No that's a terrible argument by definition if you are "Pro" you will adapt to patch changes almost immediately or within a few practice games.
A lot of elitist SC2 players think LoL is a noobie game right? Yet their pros literally adapt every patch to changes to new champions/balance etc. If they can do it, SC2 players can do it even more easily because SC2 is the highest skill cap game ever created.
Adapting to new stuff has literally nothing to do with perfect play or refining skill, you can still achieve such things regardless of changes. Well, perfect play is unobtainable in the first place.
I guarantee you, if SC2 received awesome patch changes every 2-3 weeks people would literally FUCKING FLOCK back to SC2 in droves. You put skins in the game, etc. on top of frequent balance patching...this game will slowly get back to #1 easily. EASILY.
There's some positivity for you.
Ok, given pro players may adapt way faster than the rest of the player base due to the sheer mass of games they play on a daily basis, I'd still say it takes more than a few practice games, as you have to develop different habits, form new muscle memory and that simply takes time. Learning stuff takes time, sure, experience may help you a lot, but you can't skip that completely - and due to the very difficult nature of StarCraft that's a very long, if not never-ending process.
I don't say it's not possible, but diversity in SC2 comes from different things than in MOBAs, they have literally one map they play on all the time, so it seems kind of natural to me they need to balance stuff/keep the game fresh by adding new heroes/altering older ones, hence I really don't think the comparison you try to make here applies very well.
We can have different maps to keep things fresh and potentially balance out the game a bit, but constant balance changes applied just to shake up the meta could potentially lead to FOTM (flavor of the month - it's a term describing cookie cutter-comps in WoW arena) compositions, certainly attractive and catering towards a certain player base, but not really healthy for making a stable 1v1 esport.
But of course I could also be wrong about that, it's just how I see SC2 as a game in contrast to other, more popular esports titles.
"Dusk Towers Defend 1 choke point to gain access to 4 bases is something unique to this map, and it’s already looking like it creates very different games compared to other map types." all my kek
also major lol@avilo comparing balance changes in MOBAs where you can just draft different comps to SC2 where you're stuck playing the same race
On January 31 2016 02:58 Ej_ wrote: "Dusk Towers Defend 1 choke point to gain access to 4 bases is something unique to this map, and it’s already looking like it creates very different games compared to other map types." all my kek
You don't understand, the entire map is 1 big choke.
I think its ok to make experiments, unique maps are nice for ladder play. But lets have more than "one or two" "standard" maps? The fact that a map don't have 6 gold bases, 10 rocks, a reasonable rush distance and a normal main base layout doesn't mean it cannot make good games! Or create some nice meta. Nobody had to play 100 games on prion terraces or Ulrena to figure its no good. I even admit Ulrena was not bad as i expected so props for that.
On January 30 2016 23:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i kinda like that some Blizzard employees read feedback directly without a middle man. if some feelings get hurt on both sides.. too bad. Without direct communication something always gets lost in translation no matter how good the translator is. if some feelings are hurt in the process of product creation .. me and my money don't care.
It's not about feelings and it's not about what you want. It's about making the game the best it can be. People who actually care about the game itself and not about the community have a right to be upset that community people have drawn so much attention to themselves that game developers now have their duties split between assuaging the irrational concerns of a bunch of narcissists and developing the game.
The whole point of having a middle man is so that something DOES get lost in translation. The job is to be a filter so that what gets through is more helpful than the raw feedback. Maybe it doesn't end up being perfect feedback, and maybe something good gets dropped once in a while, but you cannot seriously think that reading the raw feedback is more productive than feedback filtered by an intelligent and knowledgeable person.
The negativity is nothing to scoff. The whole "he's a wimp and needs to toughen up if words hurt him" attitude is decades old and just outdated. You won't find professional sports teams that tolerate a constant source of negativity. You won't find businesses that tolerate it either. And as far as outside criticism such groups receive, their answer is to ignore it completely and just do their jobs. Asking the SC2 team to read all that stuff and take it seriously is just not done by professionals in other fields. It's avoided in every industry for good reason. Companies have whole departments dedicated to handling those relations. Blizzard has one too but for some reason wants the SC2 team to suffer and become objectively less productive and worse at their jobs rather than utilize the skills of a community manager. It's indefensible.
your post is more thorough and has truth in it. my comments are an oversimplification. however, direct contact is necessary. Should they sift through every post written by Avilo fan-boys who have been claiming for 5 years Terran is underpowered? no.
However, direct community feedback is critical and its a big reason why ATVI funds Blizzcon despite it being a money loser.
The great thing about BlizzCon is you're getting direct face-to-face feedback from people who actually.. you know... like ... ummm... SPEND MONEY. You'll notice that Morhaime is often wandering around Blizzcon without the aid of an entourage to stop anyone from talking to him. Morhaime wants direct contact and requests it continually ; he backs his words up with his actions. Furthermore, Morhaime leads by example not with ra-ra-ra speeches.
Pardo 2013: " the most exciting thing about Blizzcon is it brings the players together with each other and the developers together with the players". And remember, Pardo is Mr. Anti-Transparency.
As far as splitting their attention between "the mob" and game development. BlizzCon has been diverting the company's limited resources for more than a decade. Blizzard's top guys make a decision every year whether or not to hold Blizzcon and its a balancing act. There is no perfect formula for making those kinds of decisions. In a meta way.. software development is an RTS unto itself.
In conclusion, maybe DK should be doing these community feedback posts once per month rather than once per week. Maybe Dk is spending too much of his time dealing with "the mob". However, this is coming from an outsider with a 10,000 foot view of the action though. My "solution" is only slightly more than a guess.
Overall, DK is doing a great job and i'm having great fun playing LotV.
I'm pretty sure Blizzcon is setup the way it is for advertisement (both on-site, but probably mainly online) purposes rather than community contact on site, and that's why there is such a huge spending on it with deficit. You don't really need huge amounts money to set up a community gathering, but you need it if you want big production value for advertising purposes. It really tends to be a platform for announcements, speeches celebrating the awesome financially successful company, and generally generating hype for the upcoming releases of that year. They take the opportunity of having a large crowd they can get to cheer yelling things like "ALLIANCE! HORDE!" to send videos online suggesting general community super-satisfaction and interest in all their products. It is a bit fake of course, since the crowd at Blizzcon doesn't represent the community as a whole, aren't necessarily interested or satisfied with all blizzard games, and cheer the way they do for different reasons such as simply being at a live event and wanting a good atmosphere... Blizzcon generally feels like it is set up primarily for the profit of the company by broadcasting images of its success and products, rather than a true gathering for the community. I think it is naïve to imagine that the company spends all this money for reasons that aren't very selfish. Not that all companies are so selfish and industrially profit-centered like that, but Blizzard certainly has become that way. You can see it by looking at the pictures, the kind of speeches that are given, the general atmosphere and such details, small and large scale, it just screams advertising campaign all over, it is the primary aim that everything converges to.
There have been some aspersions cast in various threads, alleging that our team is small, that our team is allocated to other projects, or that we delivered an incomplete product. None of these have merit, and frankly this kind of commentary is demotivating to the team. The entire development team from Legacy of the Void is continuing to work hard on StarCraft II – we believe we delivered a compelling scope in Legacy of the Void, and we are excited to have the opportunity to add even more content and features in the months ahead.
Although we were disappointed to see so many unconstructive comments this week, we did appreciate that some constructive feedback is still occurring. Given the passion we see exhibited on both sides of the fence, we believe that the future holds great potential. Whether you are a supporter or a critic of our approach, we are grateful to you all for playing and watching StarCraft II!
I'm torn on this. I feel bad for DK and his team for getting so much crap but I also don't agree with quite a few of their decisions..
Let's at least be constructive in our criticism people
It's hard to have constructive criticism when they are going to be releasing MORE content that we will have to PAY for, before giving us the features that they told us would be in the game before the game was released.
They never even delivered on the last product, and they want us to pay for more before they deliver? That is a disgusting misuse of resources... Give us what we paid for before making us pay more! We paid for the game 3 times already! There is no way I could defend this.
There have been some aspersions cast in various threads, alleging that our team is small, that our team is allocated to other projects, or that we delivered an incomplete product. None of these have merit, and frankly this kind of commentary is demotivating to the team. The entire development team from Legacy of the Void is continuing to work hard on StarCraft II – we believe we delivered a compelling scope in Legacy of the Void, and we are excited to have the opportunity to add even more content and features in the months ahead.
Although we were disappointed to see so many unconstructive comments this week, we did appreciate that some constructive feedback is still occurring. Given the passion we see exhibited on both sides of the fence, we believe that the future holds great potential. Whether you are a supporter or a critic of our approach, we are grateful to you all for playing and watching StarCraft II!
I'm torn on this. I feel bad for DK and his team for getting so much crap but I also don't agree with quite a few of their decisions..
Let's at least be constructive in our criticism people
It's hard to have constructive criticism when they are going to be releasing MORE content that we will have to PAY for, before giving us the features that they told us would be in the game before the game was released.
They never even delivered on the last product, and they want us to pay for more before they deliver? That is a disgusting misuse of resources... Give us what we paid for before making us pay more! We paid for the game 3 times already! There is no way I could defend this.
What content have you payed for that has not been delivered? For real.
You know, at start of release of new game when balance is all over the place, there should be frequent patches whereas there should be less as the game goes on and things are fixed
Patch 3 months into new game is bit....slow. especially when problems sHowes up during beta
As part of the unvocal minority (majority?), I do think blizzard takes way too much shit. Yes waiting is disappointing, but its part of the game no pun intended. I am looking forward to the coming ladder changes and I do hope they come sooner rather later, thanks for the feedback David Kim.
On January 31 2016 06:15 ProMeTheus112 wrote: I'm pretty sure Blizzcon is setup the way it is for advertisement (both on-site, but probably mainly online) purposes rather than community contact on site, and that's why there is such a huge spending on it with deficit. You don't really need huge amounts money to set up a community gathering, but you need it if you want big production value for advertising purposes. It really tends to be a platform for announcements, speeches celebrating the awesome financially successful company, and generally generating hype for the upcoming releases of that year. They take the opportunity of having a large crowd they can get to cheer yelling things like "ALLIANCE! HORDE!" to send videos online suggesting general community super-satisfaction and interest in all their products. It is a bit fake of course, since the crowd at Blizzcon doesn't represent the community as a whole, aren't necessarily interested or satisfied with all blizzard games, and cheer the way they do for different reasons such as simply being at a live event and wanting a good atmosphere... Blizzcon generally feels like it is set up primarily for the profit of the company by broadcasting images of its success and products, rather than a true gathering for the community. I think it is naïve to imagine that the company spends all this money for reasons that aren't very selfish. Not that all companies are so selfish and industrially profit-centered like that, but Blizzard certainly has become that way. You can see it by looking at the pictures, the kind of speeches that are given, the general atmosphere and such details, small and large scale, it just screams advertising campaign all over, it is the primary aim that everything converges to.
i don't think Pardo was bullshitting. i think he means exactly what he said. if Pardo had a history of political double-talk then i'd carefully parse anything he says. however, due to his past history of public comments i take him at face value.
On January 31 2016 06:15 ProMeTheus112 wrote: I'm pretty sure Blizzcon is setup the way it is for advertisement (both on-site, but probably mainly online) purposes rather than community contact on site, and that's why there is such a huge spending on it with deficit. You don't really need huge amounts money to set up a community gathering, but you need it if you want big production value for advertising purposes. It really tends to be a platform for announcements, speeches celebrating the awesome financially successful company, and generally generating hype for the upcoming releases of that year. They take the opportunity of having a large crowd they can get to cheer yelling things like "ALLIANCE! HORDE!" to send videos online suggesting general community super-satisfaction and interest in all their products. It is a bit fake of course, since the crowd at Blizzcon doesn't represent the community as a whole, aren't necessarily interested or satisfied with all blizzard games, and cheer the way they do for different reasons such as simply being at a live event and wanting a good atmosphere... Blizzcon generally feels like it is set up primarily for the profit of the company by broadcasting images of its success and products, rather than a true gathering for the community. I think it is naïve to imagine that the company spends all this money for reasons that aren't very selfish. Not that all companies are so selfish and industrially profit-centered like that, but Blizzard certainly has become that way. You can see it by looking at the pictures, the kind of speeches that are given, the general atmosphere and such details, small and large scale, it just screams advertising campaign all over, it is the primary aim that everything converges to.
i don't think Pardo was bullshitting. i think he means exactly what he said. if Pardo had a history of political double-take then i'd carefully parse anything he says. however, due to his past history of public comments i take him at face value.
I don't rly know him, in any case what he said is probably true : the most exciting thing, what excites people who go to Blizzcon, is that they get to meet up and developpers get to meet players. But it may still not be the reason why Blizzcon is set up or the main goal it serves.
I think every 2-3 weeks is too much for balance patches, but I think Blizzard should do massive patches every 3-6 months that buff almost every underused unit and nerf almost every overused one, kind of similar to their early WoL patching philosophy or what Dota does with their numbered patches.
In addition they should release "emergency patches" every month to nerf/buff heavily over/underpowered units and races, and skip that month if balance is regarded by pros and the community as being somewhat decent.
"Perhaps you would get more positive feedback if you did what the community wants you to do, and not just what YOU want to do. You jump up and down talking about how much work you are doing and yet we rarely (if ever) see any changes and aren't even getting a new map pool for the season after thousands of posts talking about how much we don't like the current one.
There is no proof that you have done substantial work since release and people are pissed about it, as they rightfully should be. You can tell us that you have a wait and see approach, but all we see is blatantly obvious and easily fixed issues being ignored for months at a time.
I can say a lot more, but I won't since it probably isn't going to be read anyway and is mostly negative (which you don't want to hear, apparently). But please start releasing changes instead of sitting on your haunches waiting for players to work around the games awful current meta and map pool.
Positive CHANGES will result in positive FEEDBACK, corporate damage control posts aren't doing anything to help the game. We need changes, not whining from you and your team. "
I fully agree. 3 Months and all david and his team brought were 3 tiny balance changes. Thats it. No new maps or whatsoever. This is ridiculous imo.
On January 30 2016 23:46 NonY wrote: Blizzard employs liaisons to the community so that developers don't have to read raw feedback themselves. Why is the team reading any unconstructive criticism at all? I agree that reading worthless and negative feedback is demotivating to the team and unwanted. But I know that Blizzard is savvy to the way internet forums work and the kind of feedback they can expect to get from certain channels. Their weakness here is at the "Community Manager" position and if it's empty for SC2 then it needs to be filled and if it's filled then that person should be getting thrown under the bus, not the community. I think it's cool that David Kim is making these posts but he should be working with the assistance of a liaison. If he and his colleagues are being instructed to read the raw feedback themselves, then I can't imagine what their boss is thinking. Someone with a lot less knowledge on game design and technical skill can get paid a lot less than David Kim and can spend 60 hours a week reading everything the community is writing and making organized and productive reports on all of the constructive feedback for the team.
How exactly do you want Blizzard to prevent their employees from reading posts on the internet?
On January 30 2016 23:46 NonY wrote: Blizzard employs liaisons to the community so that developers don't have to read raw feedback themselves. Why is the team reading any unconstructive criticism at all? I agree that reading worthless and negative feedback is demotivating to the team and unwanted. But I know that Blizzard is savvy to the way internet forums work and the kind of feedback they can expect to get from certain channels. Their weakness here is at the "Community Manager" position and if it's empty for SC2 then it needs to be filled and if it's filled then that person should be getting thrown under the bus, not the community. I think it's cool that David Kim is making these posts but he should be working with the assistance of a liaison. If he and his colleagues are being instructed to read the raw feedback themselves, then I can't imagine what their boss is thinking. Someone with a lot less knowledge on game design and technical skill can get paid a lot less than David Kim and can spend 60 hours a week reading everything the community is writing and making organized and productive reports on all of the constructive feedback for the team.
How exactly do you want Blizzard to prevent their employees from reading posts on the internet?
On January 30 2016 10:41 Penev wrote: I'm torn on this. I feel bad for DK and his team for getting so much crap but I also don't agree with quite a few of their decisions..
Let's at least be constructive in our criticism people
I agree with you but I don't see why that makes you torn. Just criticize the community for being what it is, and when Blizzard makes bad decisions, argue against them in a constructive manner.
EPT
