Blizz considers R Sham most balanced class?

Q u o t e:
I'm still trying to wrap my head around why GC bothered to make the 'Totems Totems Totems' discussion if all they were going to do was remove Mana Spring from raiding and leave our outdated totem mechanic in place.

This is going to derail the thread, but I made that thread to get feedback from players. I did not label the post "Vote on your favorite totem changes" or anything of the sort. To be honest, I am somewhat reluctant to make threads like that again because no matter how much we caveat it, players still assume that they are going to see some of their suggestions implemented. It is just impossible to escape from that expectation no matter how many times we say "no promises."

We have some things we'd like to do with totems. We are going to be very reluctant to announce them until they are virtually set in stone.

Q u o t e:
They just want to have some kind of acknowledgement that their opinions have been received and you guys thought about them.

I read every single one of those posts. We thought about them and discussed them at length. When and if we decide to make changes, you won't miss them. There are definitely some things we'd like to do differently with totems. As I said though, I don't think it's a good idea to offer details at this time (or I would have already done so).

Q u o t e:
You've been saying this for 4 years, sometimes with specifics, and sometimes not. Until you actually make a change, there's no reason to believe you at all at this point.

Okay. We're kind of at a standstill though with that line of thinking. There's not much more I can contribute to the conversation if your response is automatically going to be "We don't believe you." :)

Q u o t e:
As you've contended multiple times you don't design this game around the player's whims, so I've got to ask:

1) Why do you still ask for feedback?
2) Why to players still think their feedback matters?

It is easy in short forms of communication, like these posts, to classify everything as being at two extremes. But life rarely falls into binary categories like that. Just because we don't implement every idea that comes out of the forums does not mean the feedback is without merit or players are wasting their time.

You can learn what problems players are trying to solve, even if their solution is one that wouldn't fly for one reason or another. You can learn what aspects of the game seem to be fun (at least to some players) and which ones are clunky (at least to some players). You can find bugs. You can detect which game nuances totally fly below the radar and aren't noticed. You can learn if an issue is huge problem for a lot of players or just something that is very important to a relatively small number of players or something that a lot of players just shrug and have no strong opinion about. In short, it helps to keep you in touch with the actual people playing the game (or at least that minority that spends the effort to post on the forums). The best way I can describe it is that we like to make informed decisions, and the forums represent one way to get that information.

Q u o t e:
GC, when you're at your best you're writing your least. You're bumping certain threads with "this is interesting", "we'd like to see more of this debate", etc., and then disappearing for the remainder. You're drawing attention to things you deem relevant and letting the community voice their opinions one way or the other. You can then monitor the discussions and chose to do whatever you want with the results, but you're not actively soliciting ideas for how some aspect should be changed. It's only natural the community feels a bit upset when after being directly asked "What do you think needs to be addressed with totems?" all they see after 70 pages is a few minor changes which don't seem to address the fundamental issues presented.

To be honest, the "this is interesting" responses don't really work well from our POV. They are inevitably followed by responses that say "That's it? No discussion of what ideas you like or which shortcomings we have that you agree with?"

Similarly, we tried some of the "Here is a thread on a very specific topic" threads based on suggestions that it might be a way to focus players on discussions other thant "buff X, nerf Y." But on the whole, I'm not sure they did more good then harm. We are going to have to try different things to see what works. The player response to the different ideas will help us make those decisions, just like it does for the game itself. The players overall had a bad reaction to the warlock, rogue and shaman threads I started, so we probably won't do that again.

I'm not just whining here -- I'm trying to explain our logic so that the next time someone suggests "Make a very specific thread for discussion" you'll know why we don't.

Q u o t e:
It's very frustrating to players when there's a very clear consensus in the community about a particular issue, and that issue gets no attention. When hundreds of shamans say "X is a problem" and then build after build goes by with no changes to that issue, many will ask themselves what the point of all that posting and feedback was.

There are no consensuses of the community. There may be a consensus by the 100 or so players who post on the topic. But we still don’t make changes just because players ask for them unless we think they are good for the game. Making players happy is important, but it can’t trump everything. Very often what might seem like a good idea turns out to have long-term negative consequences that the players didn’t think through.

The shaman community will nearly always agree that buffing shamans is a good idea. That doesn’t mean it’s good for the game.

Or as Adilira says:

Q u o t e:
It would make everything a lot simpler if you just ignored all suggestions except for my suggestions about buffing my class. Sure it might make some people who play other classes mad, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the greater good of the game. And by the game I mean my personal instant gratification and power fantasies.

Q u o t e:
Isn't it mainly important just to get the feedback to actually improve the game? To me it seems like that is much more important than any amount of irrational anger generated in a few forum-goers. Why not just do what gets you the most quality feedback (and ignore the occasional rant about blue posts)?

Sorry, but even these forums aren't the controlled environment you seem to want. A pity that the only thing you seem to have gotten out of the totems thread(s) is that if you don't want an answer then you shouldn't have asked the question.

I didn’t mean to imply that we got nothing out of the totem thread. It was great for generating ideas and feedback and figuring out what portions of the mechanic players dig or detest. I was just saying maybe there are alternative ways to get that information that don’t do such a fine job of setting up players for disappointment.

Q u o t e:
You ask for suggestions and ideas for improvement. We comply. Again, and again. Many times, i see the same good ideas advanced over the years. Those never seem to get any serious consideration. Instead, changes that were never asked for become the norm. The Earth Shield nerf comes to mind. It's not that you don't implement our suggestions verbatim, it's that you don't seem to be answering the concerns you asked us to voice in the first place.

That is all valid, but the basic thrust of your argument is “Don’t ask for our opinions if you aren’t going to make the changes we suggest.” In this case you’re saying little changes are acceptable, but making no changes is not. What we are giving you is a chance to be heard – a promise that the people responsible for the design decisions in WoW will read what your type. We greatly appreciate the feedback (or I wouldn’t still be here), but you should never approach these forums as a way to get your ideas into the game.

Q u o t e:
"player feedback has no impact on anything"

That’s not true, but if you feel that way, my advice would be to read but don’t post and make space for players who do want to take advantage of the opportunity to provide feedback. Honestly, I’m not part of the PR or community teams. Nobody has the expectation that I’m here. The main reason I do it is because I think it makes the game better. (But that STILL does not mean forum posting translates into your ideas showing up in WoW.)

Q u o t e:
Just as a random suggestion.. have you thought about doing some very specific polls?

Polls don’t provide the kind of info we want though. The sample size is small, it’s too easy to cheese the outcome without a lot of technical rigor on our end, and generally only the most opinionated will answer. But more importantly, the back and forth provides useful information. When player A says “How about this?” and player B responds with “Interesting, but you forgot about this consideration,” that’s a gold mine that polls can’t capture.

Q u o t e:
People, especially a large portion of the Forum community are going to have a bad reaction to it. You can try a million different approaches to how you post, but I can almost guarantee you will never find a method in which a large portion of forum goers will be upset about what you said.

True, it’s not realistic to expect everyone (or even a majority) to like the way we communicate, just as it’s not realistic for everyone to like every game change we make. But that doesn’t mean we should give up trying to improve ways to communicate. We iterate on that design just like we iterate on the design of the game itself.

Q u o t e:
First off, I find it hard to believe that you read every post. I check these forums a lot (well mostly the DD one...) and frankly the amount of posting is unbelievable. I waste... errr spend a large number of hours reading posts and I barely scratch the surface of what is being posted. Maybe you just read at an inhuman rate that I envy. However, I do appreciate that you read what your players spew forth and I am much more interested in the 2nd paragraph!

I would LOVE if you could tell us what the nuances that fly below the radar are... is there any chance of that? Also I would love to hear any scrap of info concerning your discussions with totems. I think that they are an interesting, but currently burdensome and clunky mechanic. Seeing/Hearing/Reading the discussions on how blizzard feels about them and what they changes they would consider making and why these changes cannot or should not get put in would make my day. Is there any possibility of getting to see these? What about after the changes (if any new ones come) are set in stone?

I read every post in the role forums. I don’t check the others as frequently. I’m pretty sure that won’t always be do-able, and when that happens, I will be sad. But someone will still read them all. We will keep hiring people until we have the bandwidth to read every forum post.

We’ll consider some kind of totem discussion like you advocate. We’d just need to figure out a way to do it that won’t launch a fleet of “When will see these changes implemented?” threads.

Q u o t e:
Wow. That's disappointing. Waiting to announce things until they're set in stone is what causes problems (for you and us).

Heh. A common theme on the forums lately is about how announcing things too early is a bad thing. :)

Q u o t e:
If our feedback can only come after it's virtually set in stone, how can one justify the claim that our feedback & input are relevant with regard to some of the major nerfs you're about to dish out? Reading our feedback isn't enough. You actually have to do something with it, otherwise our feedback effectively becomes a suggestion-box which you dump into the trash at the end of each week.

There is a lot of truth here. However, even “set in stone” doesn’t mean that much in WoW. Something set in stone today may be gone tomorrow. But in general, yes, that is why we like to get ideas out early, so that we have time to react to the feedback. We just need to figure out a way to do it that doesn’t end up deflating so many people.

Q u o t e:
I know several other players have already said this, and you even replied to one of them, but the player community just doesn't believe or trust you guys anymore. That isn't a knock or a whine -- I am just saying, trust is earned ... and you guys have done a whole lot not to earn it.

Then why exactly are you here? Just sayin. :)

Ultimately, it doesn’t have a big impact on our job if the community trusts us or not. At the end of the day they’re going to play the game if they’re having fun, and we’ll try to make sure they have fun. Whether or not they believe we’re doing that probably doen't count for much. I also have a suspicion that a great many players do trust us, but since they don’t have a major bone to pick, they’re not out here posting up a storm. I’m not trying to invoke some kind of silent majority here, but I talk to an awful lot of players and they are generally a lot more sunny than you’d predict from reading forum posts.