Saebyeok:

My biggest quarrel with this is that it completely alienates creators that haven’t been hand-picked. Giving the “big dogs” the information early culls the other creators as they have significantly less, or no time to prepare for those “big beats”.

Completely fair criticism. We don’t do enough currently to support small to medium sized creators, and that’s something I’m tasked with improving. Not much more I can say right now, aside from “I hear you”

Luknight:

This all makes sense, but I think you’ve left out the fact that this is an initiative started in the middle of a severe content drought…

Your feelings here are all valid, and I want you to know that the team is aware and frankly, feels similarly. To a T, every person I’ve worked with on T4 cares deeply about the player experience, and the current pace of updates isn’t something we’re satisfied with either.

I’m going to avoid promises and platitudes here, and simply state that we want to focus on letting our work speak for us this year.

GoldenFire:

Is it possible for you to give us a comparison between the last ExCard and the April fool’s patch of last year? It’s interesting to see if they share similar numbers.

I can ask, however to set expectations - we don’t generally share data publicly unless it’s something that really moves the needle.

I will say this: the April Fool’s card was the bar against which we measured the first Creator ExCard’s performance and it hit or exceeded all of our expectations

PowerPlay:

That was interesting. I watched that stream, and he noted he also attended that NDA creator meeting with OW devs. It made me excited to think that the big news that was tied to that meeting may be coming in the next few weeks. I don’t think it would be just another creator card, so maybe it’s a little bit further down the road, but still excited to find out what it is.

Not speaking to any specific meeting or otherwise, but there’s a lot of behind the scenes relationship management that the community team is responsible for. Making sure that creators are prepared for our “big beats” and are able to make the best possible content is to everyone’s benefit, player and dev alike.

ĿȀŖǠǂ1ǾǂƑPŜǃ:

I know. I am just stating what the situation is and that high numbers may be just half of the story.

For sure. This was a factor that was specifically pointed out during our initial analysis of the ExCards performance. Even with that knowledge, the overall impact was positive.

Luknight:

Ever going to acknowledge the bad? Doesn’t seem like it.

Sure:

• Specifically for Damage, there was an overwhelming number of Heroes for one person to handle, which lead to not every Damage Hero initially receiving the attention they deserved. to address this, we’ve divided the category among 2 creators for the next card
• There’s a perception among some players that personal biases play too heavily into the proposed changes. This is something that all of the creators we’ve been working with for the second card are very self-aware about, and they’re paying close attention with their notes
• Some players don’t understand why we’re working with creators and not the broader community. Our goals for this project (engaging with Creators in a unique and interesting way, instigating more competitive events in the community, and increasing CCV on Twitch) weren’t clearly stated ahead of time, so I’ll own that
• there’s a perception that this somehow takes away from developing other more meaningful updates to the game. I get this perception and, to be frank, there’s little I can say here to sway your entrenched opinion. All I’ll say is that this hasn’t had a detrimental impact on our current development priorities, and in fact was proposed with this consideration in mind

Luknight:

What’s the metric here? Out of the 60 million OW players who have bought the game, how many people did you see expressing excitement?

As much as I’d love to be able to reach each and every player, both current and lapsed, we all know that’s not practically possible. What I can measure and observe are the folks who are here, like yourself, who share their thoughts and feelings across the various platforms our community lives on.

We have tools that measure sentiment quantitatively, and experts whose job it is to interpret that data into meaningful analysis. We also have folks like me who often times provide more qualitative analysis, so we have a complete picture.

Generally speaking, sentiment about the ExCard was surprised (at it’s existence), delight because the changes were fun, and confusion over the purpose of the ExCard (feedback I’ve delivered internally).

Luknight:

No, you mean the content creators who are still left playing OW in 2022 were excited. That is, people with a combined viewer count lower than past OW streamers who have left for other games…

Does this somehow diminish their excitement?

There’s another halo effect of these kinds of activations: creators of that profile pay attention when developers collaborate with their community. When you have demonstrable proof and the support of your existing creator community, newer and lapsed creators are more inclined to give you a second look.

Somewhat related, but Seagull did return last week and seemed like he was having a pretty great time with Jay3 and Emongg.

ĿȀŖǠǂ1ǾǂƑPŜǃ:

Seems more like starving the community for content and giving the bare minimum when people are desperate for any change no matter how bad it is.

Friend, I am a Community Manager, not a designer.

This is a small way that the community team can drive towards a creative solution for keeping the game fresh (through the ExCard), all while not having an adverse affect on T4’s other development priorities. The halo effect of content creators feeling excited, higher engagement with the feature in game, and increased CCV category wide on Twitch during the tournament, are all welcome additional benefits.

righthere:

The creator cards are a great idea, especially since it appears they’re iterating on the idea. It sounds like work has been divided up a bit better, and there may be a unified approach.

Grateful for the kindness and yes, we are iterating with a goal of improvement and optimization each go-round. Ultimately, we’d love for these collaborations with content creators to be both fun and sustainable, so we’re keeping an open mind as to how we can level up both the ExC and it’s related Creator Cup

Sylhiri:

I dunno, after the criticism last time you may want to soften the blow, lol.

Critique is great, however I personally believe the last ExCard was pretty successful, by multiple measurements.

• It had a very high adoption rate (meaning lots of players checked it out)
• It had a very high hours played (in comparison to other cards)
• Content Creators were generally positive about it
• Broadly, players were excited about it

I know that it’s easy to be cynical and only focus on the negatives, however you have to take in the good with the bad. Otherwise you’re just cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Arcadium:

Any insight as to the division of heroes? Why Sym with the hitscans and Sombra/Bastion with the projectiles? Or did Jake and the other person choose?

I don’t want to steal any of the spotlight from the creators here, so that’s all you’ll be getting from me today

McCrow:

In b4 they forget mei,echo and symmetra again.

They definitely didn’t forget them, especially Symmetra

HappyTeabag:

You spending less time on the forums as the team grows is a good thing for us as it means we get more from Blizzard even though we lose your personality.

I’ll still be around and reading forums/reddit/Twitch chat/Discord/etc… daily. It’s important as part of the team that I stay connected with your experience, all with the goal of being an effective advocate internally.

You’ll not be rid of me that easily

I said this in a previous thread, however it bears repeating here: the majority of my focus for the last month and change has been on strategic planning and alignment (since before the holiday break). This is normal for management around the start of the calendar year.

WyomingMyst and Jodie both did a great job of describing many of the responsibilities of the community discipline. This is on top of several hours of meetings/day.

I don’t tend to lean on titles in public (I don’t think they matter to players in the vast majority of situations, which is why all of our titles on the forums are “Community Manager”). As the team lead, over time I’ll naturally be focusing less on the day to day tactics, and more on team/community goals and strategy. As the team grows, I’d expect to see less of me day to day, but much more of folks like Jodie (and our eventual teammates).

I’m certain that it may disappoint some of you that I do not, in fact, sit on the forums with solitaire open in another window all day. Although, let be real…if it was on brand it would be Hearthstone.

IIkwcII:

I wonder how some of the devs feel about the news…

It’s exciting news, and I’m looking forward to learning more.

I do understand that folks may have questions about today’s news. I am certain that we’ll be sharing more information with you all as soon as we’re able.

Fair! But this one is from ME.

Y’all! Andy never left us!!

It probably feels like that since I have been trying to spend more time with y’all on the forums, but I promise he’s here!!

To speak to the other subject in this post, it can be difficult to quantify what Community Management is because our goals are qualitative. Our pro strats are driven by sentiment, awareness, engagement and building a healthy ecosystem around a game we love!

Blizzard is special to me because of how involved the community team is in the development process. Team 4 puts a lot of value on my team because of how much they value the Overwatch community-- which is all of you.

I am going to let Andy know that you miss him, and I promise you will be seeing more of us both from now on.

that’s what YOU think

Did I do it right???

Maybe mechanical skill??? But even then idk because each support hero is pretty unique. I think people underestimate the situational awareness, game sense, and teamwork skills you need to be a good support.

If not friend, why friend-shaped?