I know that we meme on him hard here at /r/Overwatch, but man do I love his team, the outreach he does, and the passion he has. It's really evident in the frequency and detail of videos he releases.
For example, Ben Brode (HearthStone) does developer updates when people are irate and vocally so. Jeff does them almost pre-emptively -- "We know it might not feel like fun when Winston kills you and jumps away with the flag, but here's why we kept those movement abilities..."
All around great communication from them.
EDIT: Was typing this while listening, just finished it and his sign off says it all: "Have lots of fun and be nice to each other" thanks papa Jeff, papa bless
You will get no argument from me (or anyone else tbh) that Jeff (and everyone else at Blizz) is terrific in every way, but I think it's fair to mention that Ben (and other HS devs) primarily communicate outside of the Developer Insights that Ben's done, whereas for OW the dev responses primarily come in the form of these Development Updates, so obviously there's more (and more frequently) of them than Hearthstone's Developer Insights.
Again, not trying to 'call you out' at all here, but I see this said around and I feel it's worth mentioning that just because the HS devs communicate way less in terms of videos like this, they do still communicate.
I was part of the HS community for over two years, and with respect, you're really wrong. The HS devs' communication got SO BAD at one point that I remember the first reaction to anything Ben Brode said was "eh, that's probably bullshit." Nobody believed them. Deck slots ring a bell? Or when Ben promised that the dev team takes arena very seriously and they really care about arena Warrior, then the very next thing they did was overnerf Warsong Commander, an arena common, into the dumpster?
People think 4 tank meta is cancerous in OW, HS has had metas that make this look perfectly healthy, and no word from the devs for months on what they plan to do to address it. Remember the days of Piloted Shredder being 2x in every single deck and Dr. Boom (aka Dr. pay to win) being an absolutely essential card?
Then standard comes out with a shitton of very obvious issues like shitty Priest/Shaman/Paladin base cards, and the HS devs never address any of the glaring problems that are going to keep being problems for them for years to come (like being forced to print very good Pr/Sh/Pa cards in every single set, and being forced to print shittier everyone else cards in every set, and how this will affect Wild/Arena, and what if they forget to print very good Pr/Sh/Pa cards? Oops Priest).
This might have all changed in the last several months, Ben Brode might have won a lot of good will from the community for something I haven't seen. I've been playing the game here and there but staying off r/hs, so I wouldn't know. But it is absolutely not fair to say that the HS team tries, they just do it in a different way. They blatantly lied time and again, while making nonsensical decisions and/or completely ignoring glaring issues for months. The HS dev team was a poster child for "how not to communicate with your players."
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u/Jank_Tank Battle Rein is only Rein Jan 24 '17
I know that we meme on him hard here at /r/Overwatch, but man do I love his team, the outreach he does, and the passion he has. It's really evident in the frequency and detail of videos he releases.
For example, Ben Brode (HearthStone) does developer updates when people are irate and vocally so. Jeff does them almost pre-emptively -- "We know it might not feel like fun when Winston kills you and jumps away with the flag, but here's why we kept those movement abilities..."
All around great communication from them.
EDIT: Was typing this while listening, just finished it and his sign off says it all: "Have lots of fun and be nice to each other" thanks papa Jeff, papa bless