David Kim's Response on Community Feedback - Page 16

On February 02 2016 00:22 Ghanburighan wrote:
Talking about positivity, what happened to Psione? Everyone seemed to love that guy.

On February 02 2016 00:57 NonY wrote:
https://hbr.org/2013/03/the-ideal-praise-to-criticism

I don't know what it is about this kind of thing that makes people so stubborn. Humans are not a blank slate psychologically and will power isn't all-powerful. Tailoring an environment to be productive for humans psychologically in a particular way is like tailoring an environment to be productive for humans with two legs and two arms and two hands and ten fingers. While you might feel like your consciousness is perfectly malleable and adaptable and that your will power can get you to do whatever it is you need to do, the fact remains that there are better and worse psychological environments for humans in general. If your answer to every psychological hurdle is to "tough it out" then you are at risk of being surpassed by people who know how to change their environment to something closer to the ideal psychological environment. It isn't a credit to you to ignore this inefficiency. It's a problem that ought to be worked like any other problem and having an ego and taking pride in an ability to withstand counterproductive or unproductive comments is a detriment to your work.

The way to solve this situation is like I already said: a liaison. The negative comments of the community are not directed at the liaison so the liaison can read them without that negative emotional impact. They mine all the feedback for everything that's constructive and present it to the team in a neutral voice, removing any unnecessary negativity/abuse that the feedback originally contained. They also pass on all the positive feedback, since that is constructive too and is nice for the team to hear anyway. In a normal work environment, the leadership would be more positive and teach their employees to be more positive to each other, so that they can give each other plenty of feedback while also maintaining a positive work environment. It seems like this is the tactic David Kim tried to take with the community, but it's completely unrealistic for the dev team's relationship with the community to change in this way. The community will always be hiding their constructive feedback in posts full of unconstructive, negative and abusive messages.

On February 02 2016 01:11 BlueStar wrote:

Me for myself am working as such, and at the moment when I imagine writing such thing as david kim has written, I'll fly through the window out of the corporate world.

- To accuse your customers in being childish or asking for a treat is equal to suicide in terms of career development.

Someone from Blizzard must proofread the things DK writes to the public.

On February 02 2016 01:24 NonY wrote:

Yeah, it's funny that the one thing almost everyone is agreeing on here is that DK wrote the wrong things. And yet DK directly communicating with the community is the result of the community's demands. The community wanted this transparency! They wanted DK to take on this extra responsibility! I think it demonstrates how the demands of the community that seem reasonable and helpful are often misguided and unhelpful. If Blizzard ever listens to the community and it doesn't turn out well, then the community will say (1) That's not what we wanted. That's what one stupid minority group wanted and you shouldn't have listened to them and (2) We gave you the right idea but you failed in execution. To me it just seems like a very tricky thing for a video game development team, especially one with an esport, to be involved with the community.

On February 02 2016 00:34 lestye wrote:


The hell are you talking about ? Did you watch the Blizzcon panel at all? They didn't have any skins, they said they didn't have much time to do them, the skins they showed off were skins that shipped with the collectors edition of the game.

They didn't even have anything to show with the Nova maps, just that small teaser. I think you're overestimating how far they are along. The promises they gave weren't something they said would launch with the game , but as part of the long term support of the game. We just got a co op map a month ago I think you're wrong that they're putting the CO op map people on Nova. If you think the map artists and designers are responsible for the ladder rework, you're out of your mind.

I'm so incredibly confused why you're complaining about them taking pre-orders for map packs when half of the "features" they promised were monetized microtransactions to begin with.

I want to be clear. I'm not blindly defending them, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and am being patient. It's in their best interest to add those features.

On February 01 2016 23:51 Ghanburighan wrote:
I think it's partly correct to let wallets do the talking, especially as Blizzard is probably more sensitive to this. But that's quite extreme and discussion with the community might guide Blizzard towards making decisions which benefit both the developer and consumer: consumers enjoy the product more and spend more money.

As it stands, I haven't recommended LotV to my friends yet. I don't think it's in a state where we'd have fun playing it like we did with WoL and HotS. This is partly to do with the particulars of me and my friends, but not only - the deciding question is longevity. And I fear that if such pockets of resistance multiply, SC2 as a whole will suffer.

On February 02 2016 01:44 InfCereal wrote:
It's pretty sad the backlash DK is receiving for this. The SC team has been working on this for what, nine years?

Blizzard is being more open and receptive than they ever have been in the past, and we're shitting on them. Why in the world would these developers, who have committed almost a decade of their life into this game, want to develop features for a community that literally shits on them daily, when they're giving them everything they want.

We wanted community updates? We got them.

We wanted in game tournaments? Got them

Skins? Got'em

Casual game modes? Got'em

DLC? Getting'em

Ladder revamp? Getting'em

Blizzard has already stated they're expecting this season to run shorter than normal, so you can complain about the maps all you want, but you know they're going to put it right.

On February 02 2016 02:45 Clonester wrote:


So SC II literally your borderline girlfriend?

On February 02 2016 01:44 InfCereal wrote:
It's pretty sad the backlash DK is receiving for this. The SC team has been working on this for what, nine years?

Blizzard is being more open and receptive than they ever have been in the past, and we're shitting on them. Why in the world would these developers, who have committed almost a decade of their life into this game, want to develop features for a community that literally shits on them daily, when they're giving them everything they want.

We wanted community updates? We got them.

We wanted in game tournaments? Got them

Skins? Got'em

Casual game modes? Got'em

DLC? Getting'em

Ladder revamp? Getting'em

Blizzard has already stated they're expecting this season to run shorter than normal, so you can complain about the maps all you want, but you know they're going to put it right.

On February 02 2016 02:47 Mattitude905 wrote:


No.

If you had any reading comprehension skills, you'd realize when people are drawing comparisons. If you can't speak english then don't try to pick apart someone's post for the sake of insulting them. Pick up your ladahosen and stuff your face with brawtwurst before you come in here with your limited understanding of the English language.

On February 02 2016 02:59 Penev wrote:

Well this is ironic, he is joking.

On February 02 2016 00:57 NonY wrote:
https://hbr.org/2013/03/the-ideal-praise-to-criticism

I don't know what it is about this kind of thing that makes people so stubborn. Humans are not a blank slate psychologically and will power isn't all-powerful. Tailoring an environment to be productive for humans psychologically in a particular way is like tailoring an environment to be productive for humans with two legs and two arms and two hands and ten fingers. While you might feel like your consciousness is perfectly malleable and adaptable and that your will power can get you to do whatever it is you need to do, the fact remains that there are better and worse psychological environments for humans in general. If your answer to every psychological hurdle is to "tough it out" then you are at risk of being surpassed by people who know how to change their environment to something closer to the ideal psychological environment. It isn't a credit to you to ignore this inefficiency. It's a problem that ought to be worked like any other problem and having an ego and taking pride in an ability to withstand counterproductive or unproductive comments is a detriment to your work.

The way to solve this situation is like I already said: a liaison. The negative comments of the community are not directed at the liaison so the liaison can read them without that negative emotional impact. They mine all the feedback for everything that's constructive and present it to the team in a neutral voice, removing any unnecessary negativity/abuse that the feedback originally contained. They also pass on all the positive feedback, since that is constructive too and is nice for the team to hear anyway. In a normal work environment, the leadership would be more positive and teach their employees to be more positive to each other, so that they can give each other plenty of feedback while also maintaining a positive work environment. It seems like this is the tactic David Kim tried to take with the community, but it's completely unrealistic for the dev team's relationship with the community to change in this way. The community will always be hiding their constructive feedback in posts full of unconstructive, negative and abusive messages.

On February 02 2016 03:03 Darkwhite wrote:


The community can't just wave a magic wand at David Kim and get their perfect game. But this argument cuts both ways. David Kim can't just whine to his customers and transform them into his ideal fans either, who understand and love his game and praise him as their hero. David Kim is getting a paycheck to be able to cater to the needs of his customers. A lot of whom are probably still in school. How malleable do you expect them to be?

And when you think about it, the argument cuts a lot more strongly in the direction of David Kim. Statistically, it's a lot more likely than he and his team is performing below average along some or other axis, than that his customers are a particularly demanding, unreasonable and abusive subset of paying customers in general. And when you think about it, David Kim can at least conceivably be replaced. There is simply no way for Blizzard to abandon their current fanbase and just pick up some ten thousands of new, better behaved customers.



No. The solution is for David Kim to take a good, long and hard look in the mirror every morning and repeat to himself ten times: You get the response you deserve. When these people who kept SC:BW alive and kicking for ten years with next to zero support from Blizzard are acting up like this, I have to be doing something wrong. And because I'm a professional with a lot of talented people around me, I'll take responsibility and sort this out.

Installing a middle man between yourself and your customers is practically the worst way of going about things. Filtering the negative emotions out of the feedback doesn't refine it, it degrades it, and leaves you with a sugar-coated understanding of the realities. If you don't have enough confidence in what you are dong to handle negative feedback, then that's the real problem, no the feedback. Adding an extra layer of interpretation produces a Chinese whispers effect and leaves everybody frustrated with how their criticism seems to consistently get lost in translation. And your middle man will inevitably jump through hoops to present you with the things you want to hear, because you're his boss, and good news is always more popular than bad news. And that's how you wind up, where David Kim thinks the map pool is better than expected, and the community collectively shakes their heads in disbelief.

The fundamental disagreement here is that you are treating negativity as the root cause - as if there's some sort of runaway process that's come out of nowhere, and once you get that in check the rest will fall into place eventually. The other possibility is that the negativity is merely a symptom of something urgently in need of fixing. In that case, you need to confront the negativity head on, rather than locking the doors and hoping it's just some weird phase your customers are going through. Positivity and optimism tails behind a good product, not the other way around.

On February 02 2016 03:25 crazedrat wrote:
Most of what you people say is abstract babble... The maps aren't even that bad. I have zero issue with maps and for the other races I can tell you builds for each of the maps that work fine. As a Zerg I'd say Protoss is the only race that has a real problem with the maps, and only on PvZ Prion and PvZ Central, even on prion if protoss survives to take the golds they actually surge strong in the midgame... Central is hard but good for cheese, especially pushes at the 3rd or warp prism harass.. other than those two maps for Protoss PvZ it's not as bad as I keep hearing, and Prion actually is not that bad either, just play defensively and equalize.