Cheeseburger dilemma (how players see devs)

#1 - Sept. 1, 2012, 5:25 p.m.

Recently GC posted about how Devs cant be too open to public opinion. His reasoning basicaly boils down to (paraphrasing here) "no one wants to get nerfed, but we need to nerf ocasionaly". Yet that misses the point of many players complaints and dosent address the big picture.

Lets say you go to a resturant for a Cheese burger, and lets say you hate mayonees (I do). So you look at the menue and read what comes on the cheese burger, and there is no mention of nasty mayo. So you order it and when it comes out BAM a big ol nasty glob of mayo on your burger. So you say "Hey when i ordered this there was no mention of mayo on the menue". Then your waiter says "Oh, well we decided its beter this way". You say "Ok im glad you think so, but i don't like mayo. Can i have the burger i ordered instead?" To wich the waiter replies "No, see you'll like it better with mayo". To wich you reply "I think I know what I like better than you do".Then the waiter "Well we still belive its better with mayo so thats how its going to stay" Then you ask "Do you want me to be a customer?"

The point is balanceing dps output / healing is all fine and dandy but changeing the way a class plays isnt nesesary to do so. Nerfing the dps output of skill A from class A while buffing spell B from class B,is also a viable solution. Some would say that cant always solve the issue of balance as some classes may burst dps better than others. Its seems Blizzards aproach to solve this would be to bog the class down w/ more skills, spreading ther dps out. When a much easier answer would be to lower one existing spell and raise another.

But if balancing is the true concern then why is there such a difrence in the complexity and length (length being most important) of the classes rotaion/priority list? I have mained a hunter since i started playing, but have also grinded up a mage,boomkin, s.priest, and prot pally. Three of these classes will have half or less than half the priority list of my hunter when they reach lvl 90. That is not balanced.

YES YES I KNOW other classes such as DK are plagued with over complexity and i feel your pain.

But i don't believe the changes are always intended for balance. Lets think about it, after a decade of this game they haven't got it right? They feel classes need tweeking? No they believe that changes to the characters offers more depth into the game. It dosen't. When it all boils down to it we come to fight the bosses (or players) and everything else is just mashing buttons. Game depth dosen't come from learning how to play, it comes from playing. Memorizeing 25 keybinds is no where near as fun as cordnateing attacks with a group, in order to defeat a ten story tall monster.

Lasty why it is unfair for Devs to change my class drastically. Because 3 years ago I made this character based on how it was then. If someone would have told me that Blizzard will add FIVE new CDs to the character in two expansions, rendering it a game of wackamole, well i would have probably rolled a difrent class. And YES i still can, But all the time an effort spent of this character will be lost and that isn't right.

But if you still say you know best and the players can't decide whats more enjoyable to them, Then why OH WHY did you just FINALLY decide to get rid of Minimum range. Truth is (at least on that one) the players know best.

Heres a great way to look at this. I ordered my Cheeseburger (made a hunter) a while back, and now Blizzard just slaped some Mayo on it, and i dont like mayo, and your not going to convince me its better with mayo.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#14 - Sept. 1, 2012, 7:29 p.m.

You have to consider that WoW is a multiplayer game in which players are very often competing, whether comparing damage meters in a raid or out and out trying to kill each other in PvP. Changes to your your character end up affecting everyone who comes into contact with your character. If you can order up exactly what you want, you're affecting a bunch of other people.

In your hamburger analogy, you're telling the restaurant "You should make sure that nobody can have mayonnaise because I don't like it."

I've actually used the restaurant analogy myself, because few restaurant patrons have the impression that they're going to be able to go back into the kitchen, give the chefs pointers, rearrange the menu and so on just because they think highly of their own opinions on food. Restaurants may honor your request to hold the salt or put the dressing on the side, and many chefs are probably thrilled to get feedback on the dishes they prepare to get an idea of what their customers like or not, but ultimately if you don't like a restaurant's food, you should probably go to another restaurant, not try and change the menu.

As far as class complexity, that's another attempt to serve a very diverse player base. Some players like a few buttons and some like to have a lot. If the restaurant required every dish to have the same number of ingredients, that doesn't improve the quality of the food. I only think it's a problem if some classes are so much more challenging to play that those players expect to do higher DPS as a result, or I guess if the number of buttons is truly stupid.

Also, remember that there is a huge difference between reasonable and optional. If adding an ability to your rotation improves your DPS by 1% then it might not be worth worrying about. I actually wish guides would focus a little more on describing both the "90% rotation" as well as the "theoretically highest rotation."

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#216 - Sept. 3, 2012, 3:23 a.m.

I think there are a couple of points here worth addressing that either came up since my initial post or I missed the first time.

I think part of what the OP is asking for is alternatives to the hunter (IIRC) rotation with fewer buttons. That's a reasonable request. We tried in the talent trees overall to make sure there was always a passive option for every tier so you didn't need a button. The level 60 tier has 2 active buttons and one that is somewhat reactionary, and the level 75 tier has 3 active buttons. We like the hunter tree overall and are unlikely to change it at this stage, but I think it's a fair criticism for players who like fewer buttons.

Second, there is a lot of supposition that we somehow baited and switched players by changing the game. We have to change the game. Many of the rules and mechanics in vanilla wouldn't be acceptable to players these days. So I think we're just arguing about degree of change. Some warlocks are saying their class changed too much and some rogues are saying their class didn't change enough. Those are all valid opinions and the kinds of things we try and take into consideration when we're deciding on class changes going into an expansion.

I hope you take my word though that every change we make, even the ones that end up not working out again, are made because we are ultimately trying to make the game more fun for the players, and not because we're bored designers trying to entertain ourselves by experimenting with your characters. We weigh every change. You still may not agree with them all, but I want to reassure you that they aren't made on a whim, and nearly every one began with player feedback at some point.

Finally, it has been mentioned a few times in this thread that when most players feel a certain way, that the developers should absolutely take action. I'd generally agree with that statement. The main problem with that strategy is that we don't really have any idea what most players want. (And no, you can't just extrapolate that if 4 forum posters feel one way, then 400,000 non-posters must as well).

Instead, we fall back a lot on logic, common sense, professional experience and a lot of gut instinct. We do use a lot of ways to capture player feedback, and the forums are one of those tools. They're good for pitching ideas or points of view, but bad for trying to figure out how many other players agree with you.

What happens nearly every time is some group of players advocates position A and another group advocates position B. What sometimes happens after that is the A players try to argue that they are smarter, more experienced, or more important players, therefore their opinion should count more. :) As you have all experienced, it can escalate into an argument quickly. We try to take both positions under advisement, consider what A or B would mean for the game, maybe try some things out internally, and eventually come to a conclusion. Sometimes we do A, sometimes B, sometimes nothing, and sometimes C. None of that means we ignore player feedback. It definitely does not mean that we ignore these massive groups of sensible players who are unified on a given position that is so self-evidently correct that we're obviously derelict in our jobs for not implementing their changes immediately. Those scenarios just don't exist. It would make our lives much easier perhaps if they did.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#279 - Sept. 3, 2012, 5:31 p.m.

Just my 2 copper here but in my opinion the problem is not the analogy so much as it always feels like anytime GC responds to any criticism over the years he consistently degrades the "way" you post be it bad analogy or "not constructive" etc. I may have missed a few posts over the years but he always seems to find a way to deflect from the intent of how a critical poster "feels" about an issue and rarely ever acknowledges that a critical post could have merit.

I do that a lot because it's in our (the developers') best interests to have clear, concise and specific feedback. Improving the tone of the discussion pays far larger dividends to me personally that turning the forums into an ask the devs Q&A. I don't personally (and neither does Blizzard as a company) have the bandwidth to answer even a fraction of the questions we receive. Therefore, trying to get the community to understand how to improve the efficiency of their messages can in turn improve the efficiency of our game design.

The second problem is, sometimes C just doesn't make sense. Literally, no sense. Example: What was the reason given for "homogenizing" Rogues? To paraphrase: "We wanted Rogues to feel like Rogues, and not have 30+ classes in the game to balance." After which we see Monks with three separate specs, Druids with four (4!!!), and even a complete change to one of Warlocks.

In this specific case, it's because rogues are a pure class with 3 DPS specs. If for example Combat had superior damage and Subtlety had superior control, then one is the PvE spec and one is the PvP spec and Assassination is probably dead. We thought the only reasonable way to let rogue spec be a choice was to share the utility and the damage, and make the spec choice about the way you do damage. Warlocks, mages, hunters and even the DPS specs of warriors and DKs follow a similar pattern.

I'm sure they must have statistical tools.

- How many people spec X v. Y v. Z?
- How many people use glyph A, B, C...?
- How many people talent D, E, F...?
- How many people use ability G, H, I...?
- In what parts of the game do they use A-Z?
- How do spec/glyph/talent choices and ability use correlate with time played in game?

Yes, we do all of that. I'd wager we collect more information than most players realize.

What it doesn't provide us is context. Do more players spec X because the guides tell them to? Because X does higher damage? Because it's harder to screw up the X rotation? Because X has prettier spells? Because X is more fun? Because they've just always played X?

Even more important, how much change would it take to get some players to go Y? How much change can we risk before everyone goes Y? We've caused that several times, and I hate it when that happens. It's a failure on the part of me and my team when it does.

A question to consider: Is there any real evidence on Blizzard's side that the majority want their chosen playstyle changed so much each and every expansion that they essentially have to relearn it?

We can't measure majorities for the reasons I mentioned above. Instead, we look at what players are complaining about, and try to evaluate the passion, legitimacy, and logic of what they say. To use just a few examples, players complained that warlock rotations were convoluted, that rogues had too many ramping mechanics, that rage was too boom or bust, that hunter minimum rage sucked, that mages had to be Frost for control, that totems were just group buffs with too many drawbacks, that Presences didn't match spec, and so on. Those are just a few examples, and I know not every player agrees with them.

As I mentioned before, you also have the cases (I see this the most with rogue and maybe shaman) that while the rotations aren't necessarily broken, the players are just tired of them and want something new. It's very hard to balance "Give me something new" with "I like my character exactly as they are."