The PuG update: you must make some changes in raiding, can't raid the same bosses all the time! 
I was always thinking why game designers listen to bad players. I mean it's a sure way to make their game become worse and finally unplayable. Obviously the designers are neither idiots, nor aiming on destroying their games.
Funnily, the solution came from real world politics, while it should obviously be in the other way, as the game world is simpler. Yet it's hard to recognize things alien to us, unlike they are in our face. Like rioting protesters. The solution is quite straightforward: if you ask 10 good players where developer attention is needed or where the game needs tweaking, you get 10 different answers. One will suggest faster raid content creation, the next want more HCs, the next more tricky encounters, the next better stories, the next more sandboxy questing, the next better PvP balance, the next 0.01% balance between PvE specs in HM gear and so on.
However if you ask 10 bad players what to change, you get the very same answer 10 times: "moar shiny to me". The answers may differ in formulation, one wants more mounts while the other wants more gear and the third wants the bosses come to Stormwind and give it to him as going to a dungeon to /follow the healer is clearly too time-consuming for his rich real life. But at the end, all their needs can be satisfied by making sure that they have more shiny today than they had yesterday without them making any extra effort or improving in any way.
Since showering shiny stuff neither need complicated design, nor extra effort from developers, unlike balancing elemental shaman vs moonkin in Morchok HM where the totems don't affect the other group, the developers move toward the simplest way. This way is also seems to be the most popular as clearly it got the most votes.
For this reason, if developers listen to players, they will make the game into a mindless reward-dishing machine even if the morons and slackers who demand rewards for nothing are a numerical minority. If we have just 10% M&S, the highest vote will still be "easy rewards" followed by hundreds of different suggestions, each getting 0.1-1% votes.
The same effect plagues politics, making sure that the democratic governments won't climb out of the economic crisis: the various productive people are split into various groups (gun freedom, gun control, pro life, pro choice, save the climate, spread the democracy, better education, and so on) while the various inactive groups have one voice: "more money to us!". This way the governments cut defense costs, privatize services, fire employees, but would never touch pension or welfare money. In times of boom they increase these as they are simple (just changing a number in the budget), while saving the climate is a bit more complicated, even if we have the money and the will.
The problem in both cases is systemic: If you listen to the people, you get various ideas from the productive people and a monolithic "gimme moar" from the inactives. You must not listen to people!
I was always thinking why game designers listen to bad players. I mean it's a sure way to make their game become worse and finally unplayable. Obviously the designers are neither idiots, nor aiming on destroying their games.
Funnily, the solution came from real world politics, while it should obviously be in the other way, as the game world is simpler. Yet it's hard to recognize things alien to us, unlike they are in our face. Like rioting protesters. The solution is quite straightforward: if you ask 10 good players where developer attention is needed or where the game needs tweaking, you get 10 different answers. One will suggest faster raid content creation, the next want more HCs, the next more tricky encounters, the next better stories, the next more sandboxy questing, the next better PvP balance, the next 0.01% balance between PvE specs in HM gear and so on.
However if you ask 10 bad players what to change, you get the very same answer 10 times: "moar shiny to me". The answers may differ in formulation, one wants more mounts while the other wants more gear and the third wants the bosses come to Stormwind and give it to him as going to a dungeon to /follow the healer is clearly too time-consuming for his rich real life. But at the end, all their needs can be satisfied by making sure that they have more shiny today than they had yesterday without them making any extra effort or improving in any way.
Since showering shiny stuff neither need complicated design, nor extra effort from developers, unlike balancing elemental shaman vs moonkin in Morchok HM where the totems don't affect the other group, the developers move toward the simplest way. This way is also seems to be the most popular as clearly it got the most votes.
For this reason, if developers listen to players, they will make the game into a mindless reward-dishing machine even if the morons and slackers who demand rewards for nothing are a numerical minority. If we have just 10% M&S, the highest vote will still be "easy rewards" followed by hundreds of different suggestions, each getting 0.1-1% votes.
The same effect plagues politics, making sure that the democratic governments won't climb out of the economic crisis: the various productive people are split into various groups (gun freedom, gun control, pro life, pro choice, save the climate, spread the democracy, better education, and so on) while the various inactive groups have one voice: "more money to us!". This way the governments cut defense costs, privatize services, fire employees, but would never touch pension or welfare money. In times of boom they increase these as they are simple (just changing a number in the budget), while saving the climate is a bit more complicated, even if we have the money and the will.
The problem in both cases is systemic: If you listen to the people, you get various ideas from the productive people and a monolithic "gimme moar" from the inactives. You must not listen to people!
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