Fans posted questions about the questions for upcoming Ask the Devs and got blue replies. The full thread gets redundant and nit picky due to people not reading the OP Blue announcement, so here are quotes of the core bits. Click to the blue source if you want to read every word, though it’s mostly people asking if the questions must be about v1.07, why the questions are about v1.07, if anyone knows what the questions are supposed to be about, etc.
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We’re not asking for PR-friendly questions. In fact, we encourage critical inquiries that are detailed and provocative.
What we are asking for are questions that actually can be answered by our developers. They’re not going to be able to share release dates or necessarily confirm upcoming projects, but they can provide insight into design choices, acknowledge awareness of certain issues and concerns, as well as discuss (in a more broad sense) their direction for the game.
Sounds like this could be pretty good; lots of questions, direct answers, and a fast turn around time.
“acknowledge awareness of certain issues and concerns”
Wish it read “Provide specific details about what can (and cannot) be done regarding certain concerns and issues repeatedly brought up in the forums the past few months”
This is a great opportunity to be honest with us about their limitations (maybe provide some insight on why core issues haven’t been touched in awhile) and give a realistic assessment of the future of the game.
They already have asked that on seperate matters over the last weeks/months.
There’s basically only 1 question that is important in regard to this game and it is “Do you plan to completely overhaul this game so that it has the chance to be a worthy successor to the Diablo franchise?”.
It is already, stop your trolling…
lies
I believe ‘the horse has all ready bolted’
you are dreaming.
Non-PR, direct answers to questions…. ya, I believe that when I see it.
Seriously, if it were up to me I’d fire all these useless PR puppets and make interaction with the community a requirement for all the Devs. Answer a question once a week and post a preview of things they are working every 2.
Valve has NO PR persons, no marketing department, no one whose sole job is to pay attention to the community. They say that’s everyone’s job, they need to see the cost of their decisions when it comes to shipping products.
I’d put a live webcam in mike morhaimes anus so we can see some unreleased games
you would only see dicks
Hmmm was just reading through the official forums. I thought this was a free for all Q&A I now see it deals with only the content in the next patch on the PTR which I could care less about. Oh well… Maybe the topic in next month’s Q&A will be “Tell us what you’d like worked done on again because herp derp we furgot and our forum CMs dunt tell us nuthin”
I hope the answers will be Non-PR too. I’m sick of their reply samples. I hate the fact that they are too afraid to talk about numbers, exact things. Jay Wilson’s good bye message and Rob Pardo’s reply is quite the example of a typical Blizz D3 response.
I hate that they tend to answer in a way too official way, sometimes almost like their job would be to write a novel. 🙂
I have a question:
When the game will be playable and addictive ? Is it going to happen at all ?
Perfect wording.
it’s playable…just not what it could and should be
This reads like a corporate report for management.
But that’s what they are these days, yes men that make money, not games.
that will be PR bs all over. Blizzard people will deliberately pick BS questions which are vague and can be answered without either denying or admitting a subject-matter or state of affairs and it’s negative effects on the game.
I would have questions concerning blatant inequalities and shortcomings which are obvious to anyone who spend 1 hour in inferno or who is able to read the tool-tips for Item comparison fields.
e.g. i would ask if they really do not acknowledge the Inequality and if they do why the haven’t done anything about it.
if you’d do the research on eg. Diabloprogress you probably find out that less than ~2% lvl 60 character use a different gem from Emerald. in the top 100k you probably wouldn’t find a single Topaz in a weapon.
why is it that they introduce a new higher ; incredibly expensive Gem Tier just to “address” the state of the ruby even though the Topaz and Amethyst are not much more or less useful.
Why don’t they adjust the stats of all currently existing Gems to create an equilibrium – i mean as it stands now all gems but the emerald would have to receive massive buffs and/or changes to reach the level of usefulness the Emerald is currently having.
how could such a change be of disadvantage to any player ?
it’s not like they nerf anything – like they did for IAS.
I would also ask there are 3 affixes dedicated to flat damage other than watering the Item pool down with inferior affixes.
I could gather probably 100 questions like that concerning very specific details of the classes’ game-mechanics / Itemization and none of these questions would be picked.
because the answers would inconvenient, uncomfortable, purely motivated by monetisation or submissive.
And no company as big as Blizzard has become can have that. because Blizzard makes no mistakes. Blizzard only improves upon perfection.
Well they did say that they would answer the top rated question, which is rated by the communuty. So, in theory we could see some very critical questions answered. Although it remains to be seen whether or not they will actually go by their word. We’ll see soon though…
Im just happy that they are trying to listen at least. Is it just a coincidence that we’re getting this shortly after Rob Pardo’s post on the forums? Is it possible that some of the higher ups were unaware with Diablo 3’s failings? Or are they aware and are they finally interested in making this game worth playing? Interesting to say the very least.
On a side note, POE has some fantastic game systems, and its a shame we Diablo players have such a barebone game as Diablo 3. The game is extremely fun to play… But there is such little content to play..
They said they’d pick the top rated questions, yes, but they also put the ‘no questions which you know we cannot answer’ disclaimer there. This means, they’ll likely find themselves unable to respond to anything they don’t like the sound of.
I wouldn’t expect them to switch from pr monologue to real customer dialogue anytime soon. But I think it will be interesting to see how many episodes they’ll point towards a solution coming with their expansion product and when they’ll return to picking ‘favourite dye colors’ inquiries again. 😉
The WoW Q&A’s are hit or miss. Sometimes they’re really informative, other times people keep asking over and over again about the Dance Studio. Since this is a step up from the old D3 paradigm of only explaining terrible ideas after they’ve already been made, I’m hopeful. Also, I find it interesting that Jay stepped down before Blizzcon. WoW devs usually get yelled at during the panels, I can’t imagine what the D3 panels are going to sound like.