Gamers and Complaining - Name a More Iconic Duo
Dragonflight’s Alpha and Beta cycles began mid-July and have been well underway, allowing players to test new talent trees, dungeons, and end-game zones. However, most of the player base does not keep up with the class changes directly by analyzing the week-to-week data mining, running our own testing, and combing through SimulationCraft results during this rigorous testing period. Testing and analysis are tedious, and not nearly as fun as watching our favorite content creator, reading Twitter rants, or popping into a Discord channel to watch the doomsaying about the upcoming expansion. Simply put, it is much easier to complain.
As a whole, gamers are expert complainers — but in an interesting study of Steam reviews conducted by the Empirical Software Engineering journal, there are things that gamers are often willing to overlook. Out of all the negative Steam reviews in this study, only 17% of them mentioned bugs, but 57% mentioned game design issues. In this way, players are more than willing to overlook bugs for a great game — but flawed game design will always draw criticism. This becomes quite evident when looking at the WoW community specifically; often bugs are laughed off while game design decisions are endlessly berated.
Before we get into any specifics, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Humans complain as a matter of survival. Considering that negatives in our environment pose more of a threat to our safety and well-being, our brain tends to recognize them more often than positives.
Research shows that the ratio of negative to positive can be as high as 5 to 1 – and for most people, that results in an average of 15 - 30 complaints per day. Essentially, complaining is a normal way for us to react to the world around us.
In this article, the aim isn’t to discourage WoW players from complaining about their topic of choice, nor to suggest that complaining is inherently bad. It is important to keep perspective about complaints. Even though players may have a hard time believing it, there might be nothing to worry about when faced with a slew of negative reactions to their favorite class or spec during the alpha cycle. We will also talk about when complaining works, when it doesn’t, and how to do it “better” to actually solve a problem.
Table of Contents
Types of Complaints
When we talk about complaining, we tend to lump all kinds of expressions of dissatisfaction together. However, there are actually 3 types of complaints, each with their own purpose, intended audience, and place within the ongoing conversation between the WoW community and developers:
CHRONIC COMPLAINTS
This type of complaint may need no explanation, as we’ve all met or seen someone who just can’t seem to stop ranting about how their spec/class/favorite battle pet is “dead”, and they use any opportunity to bring it up. However, research about complaining has shown that this type of chronic negativity may actually begin to get “hardwired” into our brain as an ingrained thinking pattern.
Essentially, every time we do an action, the neurons in our brain fire. Since our brain is an extremely efficient (read: lazy) organ, it is constantly trying to find ways to make things easier and require less resources for regular tasks. This means that when certain neurons repeatedly activate together (let’s say for fun, the neurons that store your knowledge and feelings about your class firing at the same time as your neurons that control negative emotion) the synapses that connect those neurons literally move together and get closer to make that process easier to do!
By no means is every complaint about WoW’s game design in this category, but if our favorite influencer/theorycrafter/content creator is repeatedly only giving negative feedback on a class design, we may want to consider the possibility that their perspective has been skewed by this chronic complaint brain hardwiring. This can be especially damaging during long periods of testing such as, let’s say…a new expansion alpha/beta cycle. Doing heavy amounts of playtesting at the beginning of a cycle and feeling negatively about the experience can lead to an ingrained complaint mindset, making it harder to think favorably of future changes — even if the future changes are good.
This phenomenon may even be partly why Blizzard has always done gradual waves of alpha/beta invites throughout the development cycle rather than one large chunk of players from the onset. Initial impressions can be more valuable, as it is less likely that testers go into the experience with a negative mindset based on past iterations.
There is even evidence that hearing someone else complain decreases our mood and increases the likelihood of complaining ourselves. According to cognitive neuroscience, we all have
Unfortunately, chronic complaints may not be founded with the intention of looking for a solution. We are not here to say that people should not create negative associations with a game that used to give them immeasurable joy. When we don't get enjoyment out of something we normally love, it is too easy to then spend our increasingly limited free time doing something that not only makes us unhappy, but also doesn't give us any enjoyment. But maybe, just MAYBE, there is another way.
VENTING
None of us are strangers to a good old-fashioned vent session. Whether we vent directly to our friends or scream into the void on Twitter, venting is less of a complaint and more of a way to connect with people around us and generate empathy. It is a way to express our dissatisfaction with a situation and often has nothing to do with needing a solution. Venting can even reduce stress and make us feel better about the situation if someone listens to our concerns and responds empathetically.
Source: “Brené Brown on Empathy”, RSA
Feeling heard is powerful and important, but it can get confusing in the context of discussing game design. Since alpha/beta access is not universally available to all players, many people form their own opinions based on the impressions of others, and a vent session intended to blow off steam can result in unintended outcomes. Someone having a therapeutic vent session in Discord or on a Twitch stream can make viewers feel as if their favored class or spec is “dead” because they are relying on others to do the testing for them.
This results in people advocating for class changes based on the opinions of others, without having done the testing themselves. In this case, a good workaround for venting can sometimes be to wait out the storm and hope that the game developers are handling things the best they can with the abundance of feedback they receive throughout testing cycles.
INSTRUMENTAL COMPLAINTS
Instrumental complaints are done to solve a problem or facilitate real change. According to some studies, people who are happy and aware of their own goals are more likely to make this type of complaint. Instrumental complaining is often done with empathy and mindfulness, and comes from a place of genuinely wanting to solve a problem but not being capable of doing it alone. We are also more likely to complain if we feel like we have a “locus of control”; in other words, that there is a decent chance our complaint leads to some sort of fix.
Essentially, this is the type of complaint that developers are searching for when parsing their testing feedback. Unfortunately though, this is a greater challenge for developers than it seems. Thoughtful and mindful feedback is often far less flashy or controversial than the previous two types of complaints. Instrumental complaints can often get buried in favor of complaints that stir up conversation by offering an extreme or polarized stance; this is especially true when most feedback channels (e.g. game forums, Twitter posts, and Reddit threads) work through some sort of engagement system that prioritizes the displaying of content that has generated the most buzz.
Complaining in the WoW Community
Complaining within the WoW community has a long, rich, and often fruitful history. People frequently pull out their pitchforks in response to design or tuning for a very simple reason: It works…kind of.
The most recent vocal outcry occurred during Season 3 of Shadowlands, when Blizzard proposed a substantial nerf to the Blood Death Knight tier set bonus that would have resulted in not only a huge loss of power, but also worse-feeling gameplay. Complaints poured out of the community and everyone from MDI competitors to casual players begged Blizzard to reconsider. In a surprising turn of events, Blizzard did just that. By dialing back the changes they had originally made and changing the set bonus in a less drastic way, they were able to tune Blood DK’s while also taking into consideration the community's feedback.
While on the surface, this is a heartwarming story of the community and developers of a game working hand-in-hand to find a common solution; however, it seems to be more realistic that it was a fluke chance that, out of the thousands of complaints that people have about class balance changes, this is the one that got a response. There are literally millions of differing opinions on virtually every aspect of WoW’s game design, and striking a balance is difficult.
As players and members of the WoW community, one of the more frustrating parts of giving feedback is the inconsistency of responses. Sometimes, large outcries (like the Blood DK example we outlined above) result in changes being revised or reverted, and blue posts explaining the developer’s goals. Other times, the community’s complaints lead to radio silence from developers both on changes and design philosophies. A history of inconsistency in responses has led the WoW community to be just as inconsistent and loud about their feedback in return. When feedback is responded to sporadically, or certain classes feel favored over others, it breeds resentment and a higher likelihood of chronic complaints taking focus away from the more productive instrumental complaints.
You Might Not Be the Target Audience
I know this might be a tough pill to swallow, but here it is: Our needs and wants are not more important than someone else's. When changes are made to a class or game system, a player’s immediate thought patterns revolve around how it affects them. Players then complain that these changes are either bad or pointless for the way they play the game.
Changes are made for a multitude of reasons — improving accessibility, trying to solve problems for a specific subset of players, preventing exploits, future proofing for upcoming additions, and more. Players often think they are “right” because, from their perspective, a change seems harmful or silly. However, they rarely have the whole picture in mind. The deluge of complaints that we see on forums or Discord might just be a very vocal minority, as most people give positive feedback much more sparingly (remember, we complain about something approximately 5 times more than we praise it). Often, the opinions we see the most are of players in the spotlight, such as content creators, competitive players, theorycrafters, etc. These demographics usually (but not always) want games to be more complex and rarely prioritize accessibility; this is not to say that they should, but a player's role is to provide feedback based on their individual needs, and a developer's job is to consider everyone's feedback.
How to Complain Productively
Now that we’ve covered different types of complaints, you may be thinking to yourself, “That sounds like fun, I would also like to join in on the complaining”. Well let’s jump into HOW to complain productively. For the sake of simplicity, we are only going to discuss how to make instrumental complaints that aim for a solution.
When developers navigate player feedback, they must first decide what kind of problem is being presented. A player disliking something could mean that it is not working as intended or clashing with other elements of game design. Developers also must parse feedback that is based on perception rather than actual data points, as most players are not actually commenting on forums and other community channels — most players just play the game without airing their complaints publicly.
From our research, there is a lot of advice out there from developers on how to make sure our feedback is heard. This mostly boils down to “not being an a**hole”. However, the most interesting and perhaps counterintuitive advice is: Don’t come up with solutions. The developers have the bigger picture in mind and are the ones who are the most qualified to fix an issue; the feedback they need towards making a change is to know how a certain mechanic or skill makes players FEEL.
Unfortunately, this may be one of the areas that leads even results-oriented “positive” complaints to fail; often, we see well-meaning players and community members create long forum posts or feedback documents that are chalked full of solutions. This makes it difficult for a developer to parse WHAT their proposed solution is meant to address, as it’s rare that a player-generated idea can be implemented directly into a game with no iteration. In order to solve the problem, we must focus on how the game design is making us feel and communicate with developers the feelings we want instead.
Although game developers are human and are capable of making mistakes too, they are passionate about their work and want to make the best product possible for their community. Despite what you read in on the forums, developers are not out to get you personally by making a change you disagree with.
Conclusion
Despite its negative connotations, the act of complaining is an extremely natural and healthy part of our thinking patterns. Besides expressing ourselves, it allows us to find mutual connection with others and fix negative aspects of our environment; but this comes with negative consequences when we are exposed to a constant stream of complaints about topics that we are passionate about. With the existence of so many avenues of communication including social media, online chatrooms, streaming services, and forums, it’s no wonder that we’re often flooded with other people’s complaints when looking up anything to do with WoW’s current and upcoming content. Complaining through these channels continues to be an important source of communication between game developers and the player base.
Having said that, it is very easy to fall into a negative mindset that is more focused on complaining than working towards a collective solution. By focusing on making instrumental complaints, we have a much better chance of contributing to a balanced game for players and developers alike.
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About the Author
Sessa currently mains a Protection Paladin and is a moderator for the Hammer of Wrath Paladin Class Discord. She also writes Mythic+ Dungeon guides for TankNotes and likes to unwind by finding new ways to frustrate her group with “experiments” when running keys.
