Nethaera lied, engineers riot

I think the more important part of the post you quoted was "over time", this patch doesn't encompass all of the changes coming for engineering. These changes aren't going to alleviate a lot of the concerns and complaints with engineering in a single patch, we fully understand that and are already planning or implementing more changes for future patches. Consider it a first step since the launch of the expansion to make overall profession changes. There's at least a few big additions coming in future patches, that I'm aware of, some of which hit specific points made in many of the engineering suggestion threads.

People asked for a look at some of things in the works for Engineering and professions in general. The preview that is up is not the extent of everything planned for the upcoming patch. More importantly, this patch is not the entirety of all changes to come. As I noted in prior posts, changes are going to happen over time and as much as I know people would love for everything to be "fixed" the way they envision it and overnight, that is not going to happen.

That said, however, it's important to keep in mind that the preview is only a glimpse of things that are planned and will be on the Test Realm before it ever goes live. That means that players will have opportunity to check things out and give direct feedback on those changes. Because these are not live yet, changes are bound to continue happening until they go to live. Once live changes can still happen but are generally a bit slower to come about if it could have significant impact on the community.

In the end, everyone should play what they enjoy most. If you are unsatisfied with a profession, you can do one of two things: you can stick with it, test and give feedback or you can do something else. Our preference would be that those with experience in a profession stick around, test things and give feedback on the changes. That is going to benefit the profession as a whole.

You can say I lied, but I haven't. I have stated that things were going to happen over time. They are. I have stated that the preview is just a preview and it is. I have said that dropping a profession may not be what some people should do. I've already seen a mix of people saying that they either like what they've seen or hate what they've seen or feel that it's worth waiting to see how the changes play out. I can't tell anyone what they should be playing. All I can do is give some insight into what is coming. Personal choices about playstyle are just that, personal choices. What benefits one person may not benefit another.

Test and see. Give feedback . Make your decisions based on experiences that are best for you. That's what I can suggest for you.

Q u o t e:


What happens when there are no more people to test?

If you had your choice to test out your sisters bike, or that brand new sports car which would you chose?

Would me testing out my sister's bike ensure that she had the best possible bike that was safe for her and easy to ride? I'd test the bike.

Q u o t e:


It was kind of a bad analogy. While one might feel obligated to test things for their sister's sake, as paying customers no one is really under any obligation to test things for Blizzard, especially if doing so worsens their experience.

Some people probably WILL stick it out and test stuff for you - but look, there has been a lot of feedback on engineering since the beta. A reasonable person might well ask - "if they haven't listened to my feedback so far, what's going to change and make them pay attention now?" This isn't an entirely fair thing to say - because what you listen to, and what you can actually implement in a reasonable time frame are two different things.

But from the point of view of a paying customer, it's still a reasonable question.

If you can give one piece of feedback to the devs, I think it should be this:

Most other professions have a perceived niche or purpose in the game. For a long time, Engineering's purpose seemed to be "PVP." I understand this isn't what you want any more, but right now, engineering isn't particularly good at anything. There is no perceived niche it fills or purpose it serves. Fix this - and you will have very probably fixed engineering.

You're assuming that no feedback has been taken into account based on a preview that is not encompassing all the changes for this patch OR even future patches. There is a lot of feedback that has been given that the team is aware of. There are a lot of ideas they still are looking at implementing based on what they feel will be the most beneficial to the profession and to the game. The importance of testing what is going into this next patch is a part of how continuing changes will go. If no one speaks up about things they still find lacking or could be improved upon, then things may not happen for you.

Consider this, to go with the car analogy, let's say you love a certain car brand. You think they are great, but you really think they should have a place to plug in your mp3 player and they don't on the model you want. You write the company and tell them you want to plug one into your car so you can listen to it and charge it. Someone else you don't know does the same. Now the care company is seeing that people want something and it seems like a reasonable request. Ultimately the car is their design and they will decide how best to design it, but you're the one that is going to be driving it. So your feedback could very well be shaping how the next version of that particular car comes out. Yeah, it's still a bit of a stretch when it comes to analogies, but there it is. Your testing something for YOU, not for us. Sure it helps us, but what we want is to continue creating something that YOU want to play. We don't design in a vaccuum but we do have a lot to consider when putting in changes. In the end, the health of the game and continuing beneficial progress are what are important so that we all can have fun.

Q u o t e:


That's a terrible analogy, and misses entirely the fact that, though we might very well love Dodges, we love automobiles as a whole. Listening to feedback is ultimately for the good of Dodge, not the driving public, because the driving public has more then Dodge to choose from.

The problem Blizzard has recently shown is that it's become aware of its near monopoly position in the field, and that's bad for just about everyone.

Yes, but you forget that industries as a whole even in competition tend to emulate each other when they see things that work. Of course at this point we could go into a whole other conversation that would swing this way off topic.

My point being, if you like playing the game you're most likely going to want to do what you can on your end to help us make it the best it can be. It's a bit selfish on both of our parts and yet it benefits us both.

There is always going to be some level of perception that we aren't listening if we don't implement a certain feature but as I try to remind people, not implementing something how you envision it doesn't mean we aren't listening. Sometimes it just means it isn't something we can do at this time, it's something we want to do but it won't happen for a bit, or it just won't work at all. Ideas are like sparks. Sometimes one catches fire and sometimes it fizzles out. That doesn't mean we don't want more sparks.

By the way, if we seem careful about what we say, it's because we have to be. There is a tendency for some people to either purposefully twist our words into new meaning or a chance for genuine misunderstanding if we don't. We do what we can to avoid confusion as much as we can.