In the context of this discussion im assuming you think im trying to gatekeep the feedback that gets send to Larian. Correct?
Telling other people that their feedback is not valid is not okay. You did this. I'd appreciate it, personally, if neither you, nor anyone else, did that. That's all. I apologise if you felt personally attacked - I quoted you primarily, but the remark was intended to be phased in an open way to anyone reading as well, not just you specifically.
Another example. Say im hired as a cook and my job is to cook steak. My employers tells me im not doing a good job but need to improve. Ok but how? Are the steaks to raw? Are they not well done when they need to be? Do I keep burning the steaks? Do I need to much time to cook the steaks properly? Am I not seasoning the steaks properly? Theres so many areas to go with this very generic feedback. Without more input other then 'you need to do better' I dont know in WHAT area I need to improve, or how to improve. If I dont know what exactly im doing wrong how do you in gods name expect me to fix it?
Add to that 100 people might offer 100 different anwsers and its (at least in my opinion) not hard to see why very generic non-descriptive feedback is getting both the players, who wnat something fixed. And the developer who wants to produce the best possible product, exactly 0 result.
I'll try to explain it to you, if you're interested (if not feel free to skip over):
If you are the steak chef of a restaurant, and one day someone tells your boss that they thought the steaks were bad but doesn't, or can't, give any greater detail, that's one point of data. It means very little on its own, practically nothing, because it is one point of data. There are countless ways it could have come about, only a very minuscule percentage of which could actually point to there being a problem with the chef's work. Even if that person, instead of saying the steaks are bad, wrote an essay with detailed bullet points about why they found the steak unsatisfying, and spelled out their thoughts and opinions about every aspect of the cooking process... it's still only one point of data, and it still means virtually nothing on its own; again, there are countless reasons for how and why the reviewer came to the point of writing that review - only some of which may point to there actually being a problem with the steak, especially if there are few or no other complaints.
If, however, on another day, another person reports that the steaks are bad, and on another day, a dozen more people say the steaks are bad, and then more, and still more, and still more, all leave their comments to say that the steaks are bad... then that
IS useful feedback. It tells you that there is, indeed, something that should be looked into and addressed, in a way that a single point of data, no matter how complex and in depth it may be, does not. It confirms that there is a problem that resources need to be devoted to fixing; there is no longer a plausibility of it being just a bad day for the chef, or just a bad day for the reviewer, or any other small one-time anomaly... At that point you can look into WHY people are coming to that conclusion, and you can examine the reports for more detailed feedback, or seek more detailed feedback, and you can examine the situation yourself and see if you can pin down the core reasons that are leading to this dissatisfaction... but you wouldn't be doing that without that initial confirmation that there was, indeed, an issue that many people all felt.
You can try to say that each of those individual reports that just say "it's bad", and little else, aren't helpful or useful but the simple fact is they are: they are serving a valid and valuable purpose in the process
So again - even if it is lacking in detail or specificity, please don't try to tell anyone else that their feedback is not valid or useful because it is vague. None of us are in any position to tell anyone else what feedback has merit and what doesn't, or how much of some feedback is enough; I don't, you don't, no-one here does. I agree with you that it's good to
encourage people to give as much detail about their impression as they can, and be as directly helpful as they can, but that is what we should be doing: encouraging, not railing at vague ill-defined groups of people for giving 'unhelpful' feedback.
And the fact that my words get twisted to paint some narative that im painting everyone with the same brush and am some tyrant that wants everyone to only read the feedback that I approve of is, in your own words 'either overtly disingenuous, or wilfully ignorant.'
So you understand, this is why it looks like you were saying that to some people:
[...] Alot of it is: its to much like divnity. And theyre saying that to the studio that made divinity. The engine used is called the divinity engine... (IIRC anyway) Dont know about you but I dont really think thats helpfull feedback. At all.
The few times people do elaborate further they bring in things that were never promised, dont make a title a baldurs gate title, cant really be narrowed down because people dont know themselves or have nothing to do with the game at all, etc etc. Mostly it comes to how their expectations havent been met somehow. [...] They (generally) still cant narrow down what it is exactly that feels off to them and if anything, theyre just repeating themselves over and over. People also get defensive or offensive to others if they ask them to explain, leading to things kike you bring up.
Your choice of phrasing here reads as though you are, quite genuinely, saying that
Most of the time, critical feedback offered is vague and lacking in detail, without anything tangible to take on board or respond to... it reads further that you are saying that, while
Most of the critical feedback is like that,
Even When it's not, and people do elaborate further,
Those accounts end up being based on falsehoods, or else have nothing to do with the game.
You don't allow, in your words, for the suggestion that there is actually a lot of good critical feedback provided; you use fully encompassing terms, with no room for anything else in your description. That is what you wrote, and it comes off as you saying, without any middle ground or alternative, that all negative feedback being offered here is either vague or unfounded, and that all of it is, thereby invalid. Those of us who have put a lot of work into providing detailed and focused feedback over the course of the EA might understandably feel the need to object to such a statement - you can't really say you weren't talking to us because, by your wording, whether you intended it that way or not, you ended up doing so.
This isn't an attack, and I've no ill-will here... it's just intended as an explanation for why myself or others seem to have read that as being your opinion, or why it came off that way by the end of the post.
