Playerbase level: critical. Override shutdown?

It pretty much doesn't matter from whom we get feedback, players disagree. That's the nature of these games. In general, the runes don't change a whole lot based on the Council feedback unless they make a compelling case and there is some amount of consensus. It honestly isn't much different than the rest of the forums - if you make one-line, useless comments, I am not going to listen to you. Either way, you can certainly understand why I can't preview all the new stuff to everyone. It'd just be a huge mess. There was also one expansion where Pox invited a lot of players (possibly all?) to beta test on a separate test server and made adjustments based on that feedback before launching on live. That was widely regarded as one of the most unbalanced expansions (because most of the feedback was considered by other players to be biased). It also didn't sell very well because players had already gotten to play with the new runes for 2 weeks.

For general direction of design, I do read/talk to a lot of players, both in-game and via the forums. Some people choose to participate, others don't. Personally, I think if you choose not to participate, you shouldn't complain when things don't go the way you think they should go. I am not a mind reader and whether you agree with your fellow players or not, their feedback is, on average, as valuable as your's.

Note: that was a general you, not to anyone specifically.

 

Specifically for this. From my perspective, most of the good players or players who think they are amazing at balance tends to be fairly biased and not nearly as good as they think they are. It's why specifically for the Council I request that they comment on all the runes, not just the ones from their faction (this is quite different than the way Gedden used them as faction reps). What I am interested in is a balanced discussion with various playstyles and point of views so I can get a broader picture than the one I see and the ones presented by whoever happens to post on the forums. Whether they can set a rune's value within +/- 3 isn't what I am looking for, and honestly would be silly to expect without giving them the ability to play the runes. Mostly, what they notice are things like abilities missing a "real champion" clause or that kind of issue.

A number of the Council goers are fairly quiet on the general forums, but are valuable contributors when given a more private area to work in. There are also players that direct message me or find me in-game to have discussions. All these channels are listened to, but of course it falls on me to make the final determination as to how much influence to give their feedback.

Some players make assumptions (usually wrong) about the structure and nature of things no matter how many times I explain them. For example, I honestly don't know what happened to @GabrielQ, but he hasn't posted anywhere, including the council forums, for months. It's actually getting to the point where he'll be removed for inactivity soon from the Council forums. It happens, people quit. It's just a game and they aren't being paid, and have no obligation to tell anyone if they are going to be gone, and we move on.

I think most players recognize the value of getting player feedback, both within the Council and on a wider scale. Some players like the idea of feedback in general, but only want a subset players to be seriously listened to (usually without listing who that set should be). Reality is that that is already how it works, different people get different influence depending on their approach and track record. Some players good at specific balance changes, others are great at catching abuse angles, some are good at playing devil's advocate and others still are good at providing alternative solutions to complex problems. This is the sort of thing that is invaluable for a design team and if I had a team of designers, I'd want them to have a varied set of perspectives and strengths like this as well. It's really not about being good at the game, or having a particular brand of "sense of balance" because it isn't that simple even if some players think it is.