Guild Wars 2

Why not go to weekly updates, at least for a while, instead of monthly ones? Until the game is mature and has everything finely tuned like much of GW1 later on, we could probably all benefit from having balancing issues addressed sooner rather than later. It also makes it easier to experiment with potential changes: buff something, watch the effects for a week, and then decide whether to keep it, revert it, or even buff it further.

A fair portion of the current player base is unsatisfied simply because everything takes so long to address right now. This change could probably preserve the base and maybe attract some of those who have left back to the game again. None of us (well, very few) expect the game to be perfect so early in its life. Please, ANet, don’t be afraid to try mixing things up more than once a month when some features (ahem, rangers/necros/engi’s, cowapult, various bugged events) have lots of things that need fixing. Just because content expansion patches are monthly doesn’t mean balances and bug fixes have to be monthly.

My second suggestion is to provide more communication around what the development team is currently doing in regards to fixing existing content. I think communication around new content has been great and filled with detail. However, for items that need fixing or refining…not so much. It’s nice to hear in a State of the Game podcast that the developers realize how some things are wrong (ele strong, ele smash! ranger scared, ranger hide!), but it just makes everything worse to hear these things then get a patch weeks later that addresses none of them. It’s fine if the team needs more time to get things just right, but tell us what you’re considering – even if you’ve tested it and found that it didn’t work. Maybe put it out there for player suggestions/testing/vetting similar to what some other games have done in the past. Just knowing that you are actually looking at the issues on players’ minds instead of seemingly ignoring your customers will go a long way toward making the community more helpful and pleasant.

It all depends on the schedule and structure of arenaet internally. I remember them saying they had a expansion and a live team, each split in sub groups as well. Not sure what each sub group is exactly responsible for and what kind of deadlines they work on though.

I would love to have weekly bug fixes and balancing though. The OP makes a good point.

Weekly news and update/fix to the game would be great whether it be small or big would be great regular-basis news for many players. It’d be something for people to look forward to each week. That’s only four news updates a month, which can’t be terribly difficult to find in the game. Something to say that improvements are being made and that players aren’t being left in the dark about the games development.

I have always been a fan boy of ANet, but they are totally tone deaf when it comes to the community. With the sole exception of Gaile Gray (and she is mired in the deep problems tackling account related issues) there really isn’t any interface at all.

This is largely why fiascoes like Ascended Gear and diminishing returns system occurred. Often when they are responsive after the fact, it’s still in a detached manner that’s more disturbing then the issue they are attempting to address.

Look at ANet’s decision to use GMT time for Daily and Monthly resets. Sure, it’s good for ANet but not so good for players who get their tasks reset at 4 in the afternoon.

It’s true that some devs listen to the players too much, but ANet seems to have taken that warning to heart a little too much. They don’t seem to looking at how the players are playing the game.

It just comes across to me as ANet intrusively meddling (yes, in game currency population explosion) in how people want to play the game with little care in sounding out the community beforehand.

Tone deaf.