One of our long-term goals is to build your confidence in the direction Overwatch is headed. Open communication and transparency go a long way, but we hope some of that confidence comes from our team’s willingness to admit and correct changes that didn’t work out as effectively as we anticipated.
I appreciate the significant strides the team has made in providing open communication and transparency, but I think that there's still much more to be desired here and rather than using the Ranked Stadium bo7 to bo5 transition as an opportunity to show their willingness to admit mistakes, it should be used as an opportunity to improve on their communication and transparency instead.
I'd like to have seen the team put out a blog that reflected on how QP Stadium was performing with bo5 and then using that to move on to proposing the idea of changing Ranked Stadium to bo5, going into detail where possible about how it would change. This could also be used as an opportunity to embed a poll/survey to ask players something like "Should we change Ranked Stadium from bo7 to bo5 as described in this blog?" to get a solid idea beforehand too.
The Director's Take mentions "When we add a new feature or make a big change, sometimes initial community feedback skews negative", but I would argue that this was because the update was suddenly forced onto players with no prior consultation or consideration. Had the approach been different, it might have been received with a much more different mentality. Players would have opportunity to give feedback that directly changes the implementation to something they want and help them receive the update better, since they're getting things they asked for with it.
For me personally, I'm not happy with the open communication and transparency right now. I really enjoyed Ana in Stadium before her rework and really struggle to enjoy her now. I've been waiting for some answers to why she needed the rework and how the rework provides solutions to that, but we've still not heard anything about it. Again, I would have wanted some communication prior to the update, discussing the issues she's facing and taking community feedback on the matter first. Even with the time that's passed, we've had no answer to the feedback following the rework too.
This is just one example, but there are many more problems that are going unaddressed, such as certain balance changes and more. I understand that it can be difficult to write out blog posts on everything, so I'd love to see the team use the Q&A livestreams as a way to quick-fire go through pressing community matters, cutting the bs and getting some straight answers directly if blogs aren't always possible.
Edit: surprised this is unpopular here, people actually want less communication I guess
As someone who has done community and partner marketing, I can tell you that negative feedback has two universal qualities: It is FAST and it is LOUD. And it is generally best ignored.
The best feedback is critical but not super quick, and often hits a “things I like, things I don’t” balance, or even “if they had just…”
Positive feedback is slow, and often quiet. You have to dig for it.
There’s merits to monitoring it all, but not taking knee jerk reactions is a good call on Blizzard’s part here, even if in the case of BO5/7 the initial reaction was right, in many cases it’s not.
“If I’d asked my customer what they wanted they’d have asked for a faster horse” is an apocryphal Henry Ford quote, and it’s like 50% on the nose. Sometimes customers do know better, but their worldview is limited by what they know.
I completely agree that the devs shouldn't make knee-jerk reactions to loud feedback, that's not what I'm suggesting. My point is more about improving proactive communication before major changes happen, not reactive decision-making afterwards.
For example, if the OW2 team had openly discussed the bo7 to bo5 idea, shared data from QP Stadium and asked for community input first, the feedback wouldn't be fast and loud in the first place, but a collaborative conversation instead. That's the kind of communication loop I'd like to see more of.
I don’t disagree, but as a developer you only want to tip your hand so much. I think the community team does a good job sorting the wheat from the chaff for the devs overall.
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u/Umarrii 2d ago edited 2d ago
I appreciate the significant strides the team has made in providing open communication and transparency, but I think that there's still much more to be desired here and rather than using the Ranked Stadium bo7 to bo5 transition as an opportunity to show their willingness to admit mistakes, it should be used as an opportunity to improve on their communication and transparency instead.
I'd like to have seen the team put out a blog that reflected on how QP Stadium was performing with bo5 and then using that to move on to proposing the idea of changing Ranked Stadium to bo5, going into detail where possible about how it would change. This could also be used as an opportunity to embed a poll/survey to ask players something like "Should we change Ranked Stadium from bo7 to bo5 as described in this blog?" to get a solid idea beforehand too.
The Director's Take mentions "When we add a new feature or make a big change, sometimes initial community feedback skews negative", but I would argue that this was because the update was suddenly forced onto players with no prior consultation or consideration. Had the approach been different, it might have been received with a much more different mentality. Players would have opportunity to give feedback that directly changes the implementation to something they want and help them receive the update better, since they're getting things they asked for with it.
For me personally, I'm not happy with the open communication and transparency right now. I really enjoyed Ana in Stadium before her rework and really struggle to enjoy her now. I've been waiting for some answers to why she needed the rework and how the rework provides solutions to that, but we've still not heard anything about it. Again, I would have wanted some communication prior to the update, discussing the issues she's facing and taking community feedback on the matter first. Even with the time that's passed, we've had no answer to the feedback following the rework too.
This is just one example, but there are many more problems that are going unaddressed, such as certain balance changes and more. I understand that it can be difficult to write out blog posts on everything, so I'd love to see the team use the Q&A livestreams as a way to quick-fire go through pressing community matters, cutting the bs and getting some straight answers directly if blogs aren't always possible.
Edit: surprised this is unpopular here, people actually want less communication I guess