The Daily Blues
Each day, WoW.com takes you through all the blue posts and other Blizzard news from around the internet. From the latest posts from Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) to the lowdown on StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3, we'll keep you informed.
In which a worthy read and QQ join under a common crab.
Table of contents
Ghostcrawler
Our job here isn't to effect change in the classes. When you sit down to write a post with that in mind, the likelihood that you will end up disappointed is many orders of magnitude higher than the likelihood that you won't. Your real job here is to tell the devs things you like and things you don't like about the game, and about proposed changes. They then take that feedback and use it to inform their decisions. This is our function here.
You can approach that function in many ways. Personally, I approach things in a very layered approach, stretching from the most detailed to the most abstract. So, my approach is generally like so:
1) Explain things I do/don't like
2) Try to explain why at a low level (e.g., specific mechanical issues)
3) Try to explain at a higher level (e.g., "I'm frustrated with the lack of connection between elem gameplay and the elem name/image/theme/kit.")
4) Try to provide explanations of my feelings that apply to intuition (e.g., the oft-used "Basically, elem feels too much like 'improved shaman', and that makes it very hard to identify with the kit")
5) Lastly, provide suggested fixes to the problems I outline in 1-4. Difference is, I do this not to give the devs ideas (though if that happens, great). Ideas are easy to come by. I provide suggestions because it shows another angle of what the problem exactly is, by saying what I though would ameliorate the problem.
Another style of post I do which is a bit tangential to the above is trying to discuss things with others, so that I may better understand their issues, and then provide the above suite of post styles to help them articulate it. I also try to get it to go the other way, and see if other players have the same issues I do, because that provides me with a sense of what I need to try and explain most fervently.
As a result, I can't really ever feel that my time here is wasted. I provide 31 flavors of feedback and try to facilitate community discussion. If I came here trying to get my pet solutions implemented, I would be extremely disappointed every day, because the list of things I would have on my plate as a dev of this game would be very long indeed. (Not that the current path is so bad, just that different devs have different views)
So tl;dr: Maybe re-think why you post here, and figure out if it's just going to frustrate you forever.
A very worthwhile read.
Specificity is good. (Brevity generally is too.)
Good: "Lightning Bolt isn't improved by enough talents so as a result, it does too little damage given its cast time."
Less helpful: I'm not sure why, but I don't like Lightning Bolt."
Even less helpful: "I want a new spell because mages just got one."
Not helpful: "I feel neglected."
its fairly easy to be discouraged as a DK right now considering most other classes have had extensive work done, and id like to keep this thread free from QQ.
This is QQ, though. If you have specific concerns, bring them up. I can't turn around and tell the other class designers "DKs don't feel that their class is done." They will look at me with blank stares until I give them more to go on.
While GC posts do bring trolls into decent threads occasionally, no dev response at all to reasonable shaman posts when other reasonable posts get responses leads to a group of people who love their class and want it fixed, but don't see any positive influence from the devs towards their thoughts and discussions. Which in turn, mounts further bitterness atop an already large pile... nay, mountain of depression that shaman feel.
GC's bosses: "Hmm. GC can't seem to be everywhere at once, and players get upset when he can't do so. Maybe it's better if we return to the forums of yore when nobody had the expectation of a blue post."
Other
I have 3 healing main characters in Live (Shaman, Druid, Priest). In the beta, I've only tried healing instances on my druid and it is a HORRIBLE experience. It's worse than pre-BC. I understand the intent is to make us more aware of our mana, and that mana is not an unending resource, and that we need to better manage that resource. But going OOM after 2 trash packs is annoying. So, not only do our healing spells cost a crap-ton of mana, but they don't heal for anymore than they did at 80, and everybody in the group is now taking TONS more damage and has 2 to 3 times the hit points they had in WOTLK.
If you really expect people to enjoy healing why would you basically force them to sit and drink for up to 30 seconds, effectively "stopping their flow of gameplay"? What was fun about healing in WOTLK and BC was that you were constantly doing something, whether it be healing or helping DPS on easy trash. But now we have to juggle between all these healing spells while watching our mana like a hawk. Make a few wrong decisions and youre OOM. There's not much room for error.
I cannot see myself playing a healer when Cata comes out if healing will be like it currently is. Sure, I will still play WoW, but I will be DPS'ing...something that is much less stressful (shouldn't be any stress in a game). I'm fine with that, but Blizz is making all these changes to the game to make it easier for newcomers to pick up and play....well, nothin easy about healing as it currently stands. I can only guess healers will become even MORE of a commodity than they currently are as people get annoyed/fed up and just play something else, whether its a diff. class/spec, or game.
ok, /rant off. But There is some constructive feedback in there...healing is stressful/annoying due to constant mana watching and requiring "too much" thought to pick the right spell for the right situation.
For all intents and purposes, we don't consider it constructive feedback just because you followed the Code of Conduct and didn't call us names. This is a beta test, so generalized feedback about how and (vaguely) why healing is not fun -- when we haven't even reached the level cap in the test process -- doesn't give us actionable feedback.
There are a few things to consider here:
If you'd like to give us constructive feedback we can take with us to the drawing board, give us scenarios. Tell us what rotations you're using, the group make-up, whether you're using CC or AoE, a play-by-play of specific pulls or boss fights, etc. We want to know what the specific cases are where you are being as conservative as possible and still finding it to be a struggle, or even just too frustrating. We can look into that type of data.
The basic premise of this post speaks to all feedback on these forums. Not only do generalized complaints do very little to give us areas on which to focus testing, you're actually accomplishing the opposite of what you're trying to. You're making it more difficult for us to implement changes and then get technical breakdowns from testers in order to keep this a civil, constructive environment where we can better iterate upon areas of concern based on real data.
These forums should not be used like the live forums tend to be, folks. If we can't get adequate and detailed reports from players about their experiences while testing, we'll need to find more players willing to work with us in this regard.
Blizzard
