Why Blizzard is better at communicating than GGG

People JUMP on GGG's awesome communication but in reality, it is not that great. Blizzard does an even better job with Overwatch than GGG has ever done, ESPECIALLY when it comes to BALANCE changes. The changes Blizzard are intending to make are well known for months, and publicly available to test.

Does GGG do this? Not really anymore, the 'alpha' doesn't really exist and when they want to test upcoming major expansions they like to sell "beta" access.

On top of that, LEAD developers actually comment on their own forums, answering questions about critical issues, and giving insight on current topics.

GGG really doesn't work with the community anymore, and it's a shame. That's why we've had tremendously bad balance decisions.

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laycast wrote:

People JUMP on GGG's awesome communication but in reality, it is not that great. Blizzard does an even better job with Overwatch than GGG has ever done, ESPECIALLY when it comes to BALANCE changes. The changes Blizzard are intending to make are well known for months, and publicly available to test.

Does GGG do this? Not really anymore, the 'alpha' doesn't really exist and when they want to test upcoming major expansions they like to sell "beta" access.

On top of that, LEAD developers actually comment on their own forums, answering questions about critical issues, and giving insight on current topics.

GGG really doesn't work with the community anymore, and it's a shame. That's why we've had tremendously bad balance decisions.

To see if your claims hold any water,we need to compare it with a game of a same genre.You know,they got d3.

Now go there and see how many posts d3 developers done in the span of this last 3 years.

PS,its less than a months worth of posts compared with GGG.They got ptr's they completely ignore.Is this your metric of reference?

Press GGG tracker on google and see the amount of posts and replies,even amidst an expansion.

PS again:TOO many.

So in other words your posts has failed its purpose

Blizzard does a great job, with its new baby, sure but the game isn't even close to being the same genre as this. Blizzard is a much larger company and overall has less communication or usefulness then what you can find here (and on reddit) from GGG.

The working with the community stuff stopped for the most part in open beta, it worked for a while in closed beta for 2.0, but for the most part GGG doesn't want everyone to know everything about the content ahead of time, they want you to discover things, which is why even alpha testing (in terms of players) has decreased.

However, GGG does post on key topics, they participate in podcast, saying the lack of communication or that it isn't there or is less then blizzard (especially for d3) isn't anywhere close to being true.

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elwindakos wrote:

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laycast wrote:

People JUMP on GGG's awesome communication but in reality, it is not that great. Blizzard does an even better job with Overwatch than GGG has ever done, ESPECIALLY when it comes to BALANCE changes. The changes Blizzard are intending to make are well known for months, and publicly available to test.

Does GGG do this? Not really anymore, the 'alpha' doesn't really exist and when they want to test upcoming major expansions they like to sell "beta" access.

On top of that, LEAD developers actually comment on their own forums, answering questions about critical issues, and giving insight on current topics.

GGG really doesn't work with the community anymore, and it's a shame. That's why we've had tremendously bad balance decisions.

To see if your claims hold any water,we need to compare it with a game of a same genre.You know,they got d3.

Now go there and see how many posts d3 developers done in the span of this last 3 years.

PS,its less than a months worth of posts compared with GGG.They got ptr's they completely ignore.Is this your metric of reference?

Press GGG tracker on google and see the amount of posts and replies,even amidst an expansion.

PS again:TOO many.

So in other words your posts has failed its purpose

What does it have to do with Genre ?

It is a Comparison of Developer - Customer Interaction.

But even if it would be a Comparison of D3 and POE Balance wise , D3 is more transparent.
And that seems to be what OP is talking about.

In D3 everybody can participate in the PTR and submit Issues / Balance / Bugs etc., which the Developer encourage you to do, because they change alot of it because of the Players Input.

In POE it seems pointless to me to write anything in their Feedback Forums, because even on a 200+ Topic the Developers can´t even signal that they are aware of the Topic.
A simple " Hey Guys, thx for the Discussion and the Input, we are still here and participate in your Discussion, allthough we can´t comment it yet." would be great.

Now it seems like they are thinking " Yeah, write whatever you want, we do anyway what the F*** we want, no matter what.."

That was different a few Years ago, and that earned them Credit, at least from me.

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Shredzilly wrote:

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elwindakos wrote:

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laycast wrote:

People JUMP on GGG's awesome communication but in reality, it is not that great. Blizzard does an even better job with Overwatch than GGG has ever done, ESPECIALLY when it comes to BALANCE changes. The changes Blizzard are intending to make are well known for months, and publicly available to test.

Does GGG do this? Not really anymore, the 'alpha' doesn't really exist and when they want to test upcoming major expansions they like to sell "beta" access.

On top of that, LEAD developers actually comment on their own forums, answering questions about critical issues, and giving insight on current topics.

GGG really doesn't work with the community anymore, and it's a shame. That's why we've had tremendously bad balance decisions.

To see if your claims hold any water,we need to compare it with a game of a same genre.You know,they got d3.

Now go there and see how many posts d3 developers done in the span of this last 3 years.

PS,its less than a months worth of posts compared with GGG.They got ptr's they completely ignore.Is this your metric of reference?

Press GGG tracker on google and see the amount of posts and replies,even amidst an expansion.

PS again:TOO many.

So in other words your posts has failed its purpose

What does it have to do with Genre ?

It is a Comparison of Developer - Customer Interaction.

But even if it would be a Comparison of D3 and POE Balance wise , D3 is more transparent.
And that seems to be what OP is talking about.

In D3 everybody can participate in the PTR and submit Issues / Balance / Bugs etc., which the Developer encourage you to do, because they change alot of it because of the Players Input.

In POE it seems pointless to me to write anything in their Feedback Forums, because even on a 200+ Topic the Developers can´t even signal that they are aware of the Topic.
A simple " Hey Guys, thx for the Discussion and the Input, we are still here and participate in your Discussion, allthough we can´t comment it yet." would be great.

Now it seems like they are thinking " Yeah, write whatever you want, we do anyway what the F*** we want, no matter what.."

That was different a few Years ago, and that earned them Credit, at least from me.

Well the amount of communication "needed" largely depends on the game, overwatch for example is a new game with new changes happening soon based on feedback, so its no suprise that they are going to be communicating a lot for such a new game.

D3's transparency isn't always a good thing, I guess for D3 it doesn't matter they largely don't have things like legacy items, temp leagues with mods and other various things that play a large factor in the game. Anyone can submit bugs in this game, anyone can submit feedback in this game, those aren't exclusive in this game to alpha testing or beta testing.

In terms of changing a lot based on impact, GGG doesn't need as much player feedback to change the game, D3 literally changed to a completely different game basically from its vinalla version and multiple times in-between with things like pargon levels, set quest and the cube. PoE's changes need to be more tactile and less focused on massive power creep, like D3's is. (granted poe has had some massive power creep so idk :/)

D3 now is a game essentially made by the fans and completely based on feedback, PoE started as a game made by the devs with changes along the way, but is largely molded as the game they make and want to play.

200+ replies is mostly people going back and forth or low effort post like "lab sucks" You want them to specifically comment on a topic they have already addressed in at least the podcast, but likely the q\a thread as well? I mean repeating yourself multiple times apparently isn't enough.


It really wasnt that different a few years ago, maybe you saw more post from GGG, as topics weren't repeated as much. But lots of these things have been addressed and they aren't being ignored.

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laycast wrote:

People JUMP on GGG's awesome communication but in reality, it is not that great. Blizzard does an even better job with Overwatch than GGG has ever done, ESPECIALLY when it comes to BALANCE changes.

If you think transgender is fine, let's bite.

As a Ancient warlock on WoW, I can say that you are 12 and you don't even know blizzard, never talk with them about game design and number balance.

Blizzard is SHIT's dog of the Deceiver.

The closer GGG get to adopting the stance Blizzard take, the better things will be.

And because of that, the further away it's going to get if you refuse to understand what it means.

Blizzard is better at everything even if their games are horrible now

See, the thread topic instantly merits the obvious reply here....

I left D3, because of a failure of Blizzard communcitation. You see, Blizzard ran a public test realm, and put changes to one of the sets on there. The set in question is supposed to let you burn things, and give you damage for things that are burning, up to a cap. Simple enough, right? Well, during the PTR, players told Blizzard it was broken, no damage was getting added. Blizzard ended the PTR, patched it to live....And the bug was still there, the entire set was worthless. To top it off, Blizzard was giving that set away to that class, for an incentive to play in their latest Season.....Then making it worse, a bug report thread was made. It reached TWENTY SEVEN pages before a Blizzard response. The Blizzard reply, you ask? "We can't fix this until the end of the season, as it may unduly affect the power of the Wizard class."

Blizzard's communication is god awful in any game that isn't brand new. Right now, Overwatch is new and shiny, so they care. Go to their other forums, and you'll quickly see that they don't. Hearthstone? They don't care. D3? Nope. WoW? Not really, but more than the others, because it's money.

GGG has one game...And they kind of HAVE to care. So they communicate where they can. As for, "Lead developers"...I'd rather they were off developing, but...The CEO comments, which is probably better TBH. Making test realms available? Alphas? That's expensive, man. You'd need a special server, or a server you could partition, and that's money GGG does not have to spare. Blizzard is rolling in dough, GGG is NOT. Cut them some slack in that regard. As for working WITH the community? Check the news page. Isn't ZiggyD part of the community?

I'm not going to say all their balance is great, but there's also the issue..ARPGs are complicated affairs. They can't expect EVERYTHING players will DO when they add something to the game. There's a lot more of us then them. We'll always think of things they didn't, and when we do, that can cause issues. Balance will never be perfect, really. I agree they could be closer, and there have been some issues lately, but there have also been noteworthy GOOD changes.

Most game companies would not have had the guts to make the chaos conversion change. It needed to be done, because every elemental damage in the game was suddenly becoming Chaos, and Poisoning, and you were flat out ignoring Reflect, Resistance, and getting almost free single target damage by doing it, because poison, without any need to lose AOE speed. It was TOO MUCH...But Blizzard? They would have left it. GGG? They nerfed it....And because there were so many copies around, because it was so popular...They removed legacies as well. Did it upset people? Yes. Was it the right thing to do? Yes. Would other companies have done it? No, probably not. The ability to make unpopular but needed balance changes is hard to find, after all.


TLDR. Blizzard doesn't care after the game loses that new game smell. They have more money than GGG as well. GGG has better care, better communication, and better balancers, on less money. GGG wins. Blizzard is awful.

to be honest the balance related communication from GGG is as good as nothing.

- power creep?
- ascendancies + power creep?
- melee?
- why ranged gods got the most broken item to date?
- CoCS?
- curses?
- why content is balanced around 'meta-builds' cutting most other builds out as early on character selection screen?

im not even touching minor things like individual item/class/asc balance etc - these are just the major topics of concern.