Guild Wars 2

Galen Grey.4709:

I was there and they werent a tiny minority its like the only complaint you could see at the time!

There was a number of general “no endgame” complains, that’s true, but among those, the people that asked specifically for new geart tier were a tiny minority. Even most of other complainers didn’t want gear grind. They wanted new content – dungeons, new maps, new cool skins. Some wanted raids. Af all those things, Anet picked one that was the least wanted.

Galen Grey.4709:

But its not even just about the complaints. What happened in game at max level? people ended up farming Orr. Were cosmetic rewards to be had in those farms? nope, it was just the most efficient way to make money in game

True. But what was the money/mats needed for? Cosmetic rewards – mystic-forged exotics and legendaries. All of those were locked beyond insane grind – so the people grinded to get them. So what Anet did to change that? Introduced even more things to grind for, and even greater grind to get them.
Of course, by now, there was a shift in the community towards the more grind-heavy direction, but it wasn’t like that originally. And even now i wouldn’t say that grind-likers are in majority. It’s just everyone has been taught to understand that it’s the only thing they can count on in this game.

Copypasta is accepted practice within the game, so you guys shouldn’t be surprised about it being extended outside the game as well.

Tasida.4085:

How many other games have you played that the company actually gets out and interacts with the players on their level for hours or even minutes?

I know of a certian MMO where GMs partake in conversations in Capital cities. They also respond via PMs and explain problems and how they can/cannot be fixed if you put in a ticket and you are online. If not, you get an email with the details.

I’m not at liberty to say which because of the numerous infractions I’ve gotten for “comparing GW2 to another game”.

Tasida.4085:

ANET cares where other gaming companies don’t.

I lol’d. For reasons which do not need to be explained.

Pegaasus.3280:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

People are angry for a reason.
People hate temporary content for a reason.
People hate ascended gear for a reason.
People hate class imbalance for a reason.
People hate server imbalance for a reason.
People hate constant buggy content for a reason.
People hate watching you making the same mistakes over and over for a reason.

Why don’t you understand that?

Read this and learn Arenanet

Not everything there is true.

I am not angry at all

I don’t mind the temporary content because I realize not everything will appeal to me

I don’t hate ascended gear because I know the stat increase isn’t significant for the modes I play and I read every thread that comes out that does the math on the subject.

There is more but basically there is nothing to learn from that post because it doesn’t really say anything but generalities but not specifics and it states it in a way that makes it sound like the majority agree.

Astralporing.1957:

Galen Grey.4709:

I was there and they werent a tiny minority its like the only complaint you could see at the time!

There was a number of general “no endgame” complains, that’s true, but among those, the people that asked specifically for new geart tier were a tiny minority. Even most of other complainers didn’t want gear grind. They wanted new content – dungeons, new maps, new cool skins. Some wanted raids. Af all those things, Anet picked one that was the least wanted.

You’re right they asked for a variety of things but did arenanet really just give us ascended gear? Because actually they release a new map on their 2nd update and that is the same update that had the ascended gear and associated fractals. In addition that updated included new dynamic events, new jumping puzzles, new crafting.

Which of those did the majority of the players concentrate on? The new map with the added difficulty that people asked for? the new dynamic events? Nope the majority of the players went on to farm FoTM to get ascended trinkets. It wasnt arenanet who picked the direction, players did. As much as arenanet want they cannot do everything they have to focus primarily on what people want to play. As much as I would love to have new dynamic events all over because thats what I enjoy doing the most I don’t blame them for not doing that because the majority of the players wouldn’t play them.

Skan.5301:

Tasida.4085:

How many other games have you played that the company actually gets out and interacts with the players on their level for hours or even minutes?

I know of a certian MMO where GMs partake in conversations in Capital cities. They also respond via PMs and explain problems and how they can/cannot be fixed if you put in a ticket and you are online. If not, you get an email with the details.

I’m not at liberty to say which because of the numerous infractions I’ve gotten for “comparing GW2 to another game”.

ANET cares where other gaming companies don’t.

I lol’d. For reasons which do not need to be explained.

I know of 1 or 2 as well but p2w games? Can’t compare m8 I’m sorry to disappoint you. As a gamer for many years(more than I care to count) I’ve yet to find even a handful of games that respond to their community as ANET does and did. Shrugs….GAME ON

oZii.2864:

Pegaasus.3280:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

People are angry for a reason.
People hate temporary content for a reason.
People hate ascended gear for a reason.
People hate class imbalance for a reason.
People hate server imbalance for a reason.
People hate constant buggy content for a reason.
People hate watching you making the same mistakes over and over for a reason.

Why don’t you understand that?

Read this and learn Arenanet

Not everything there is true.

I am not angry at all

I don’t mind the temporary content because I realize not everything will appeal to me

I don’t hate ascended gear because I know the stat increase isn’t significant for the modes I play and I read every thread that comes out that does the math on the subject.

There is more but basically there is nothing to learn from that post because it doesn’t really say anything but generalities but not specifics and it states it in a way that makes it sound like the majority agree.

You are just a pve hero…no other words to describe you)) I’ m happy you love this fabolous content they are adding ^^

Pegaasus.3280:

oZii.2864:

Pegaasus.3280:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

People are angry for a reason.
People hate temporary content for a reason.
People hate ascended gear for a reason.
People hate class imbalance for a reason.
People hate server imbalance for a reason.
People hate constant buggy content for a reason.
People hate watching you making the same mistakes over and over for a reason.

Why don’t you understand that?

Read this and learn Arenanet

Not everything there is true.

I am not angry at all

I don’t mind the temporary content because I realize not everything will appeal to me

I don’t hate ascended gear because I know the stat increase isn’t significant for the modes I play and I read every thread that comes out that does the math on the subject.

There is more but basically there is nothing to learn from that post because it doesn’t really say anything but generalities but not specifics and it states it in a way that makes it sound like the majority agree.

You are just a pve hero…no other words to describe you)) I’ m happy you love this fabolous content they are adding ^^

Please read again what Chris Whiteside.6102 wrote.

Tasida.4085:

Skan.5301:

Tasida.4085:

How many other games have you played that the company actually gets out and interacts with the players on their level for hours or even minutes?

I know of a certian MMO where GMs partake in conversations in Capital cities. They also respond via PMs and explain problems and how they can/cannot be fixed if you put in a ticket and you are online. If not, you get an email with the details.

I’m not at liberty to say which because of the numerous infractions I’ve gotten for “comparing GW2 to another game”.

ANET cares where other gaming companies don’t.

I lol’d. For reasons which do not need to be explained.

I know of 1 or 2 as well but p2w games? Can’t compare m8 I’m sorry to disappoint you. As a gamer for many years(more than I care to count) I’ve yet to find even a handful of games that respond to their community as ANET does and did. Shrugs….GAME ON

You must be on some special server that others don’t have access to. I play on a T1 server, and I’ve seen an quite a few ANet employees running around in WvW on multiple, but anytime anyone addresses him or her personally, we don’t get any kind of response.

Galen Grey.4709:

LHound.8964:

Galen, i undestand your point, and obviously we can’t expect everyone to be pleased with every choice they make. However, the general development should be made towards the enjoyment of a large chunk of the community instead of a single individual desire.

But, how do we know what the community wants? The lack of a feedback tool to provide the feedback into the development tool, makes this forum the only tool for that purpose.

We cannot say for certain that the problems issued here and the solutions presented represent the overall consensus on those subjects. We can’t know, and neither can the ANet. So why are we the minority? Because we are the only ones that voice the oppinions in the forums?

I agree that some posts are indeed Rude, but so is ANet’s behavior towards the individual player that constitutes the community. It’s a two way road!

I believe its not even designed towards a large chunk but rather in a direction meant to satisfy everyone. Not that there could be the problem, satisfying everyone is obviously not easy.

Again looking at ascended gear there is a lot of bad about it if you look at it from a vertical progression point of view. Why would that be if not because that same bad is necessary so that people who dont care about VP can just ignore it?

We dont but Arenanet do using a combination of things, one being the feedback on the forum but two and perhaps more important depending how they behave in game. Now thats a double edged sword in that often I see people behave the very opposite way of what they say they want. Ascended gear is another good example. A lot of people state they dont want ascended gear but then each time a new piece is released they go farm and dont stop until they acquire it which again sends what message to arenanet?

We aren’t the minority, that’s precisely the thing, there is no minority there is just different groups that like different things. Minority or not no group should be sacrificed because they’re small. design decisions should keep in mind the needs of all groups.

How is Arenanet being rude to anyone? I never saw Arenanet being rude to anyone honestly.

Read some topics in WvW sub-forums:

- We were called “The minority” by ANet staff.
- We have been trolled in-game by a incredibly rude person from ANet staff. An apology was made soon after.
- We are being ignored after months of the same feedback.
- sPvP and WvW is incredibly flawed. A lot of people play those game modes, because they haven’t got another solution. Feedback related to the assiduity is biased.
- You can’t expect to please everyone.
- Personally i don’t care about progression (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, etc…). I care about Bugs, Class Balance, Server Balance and overall competitiveness. If you think they are moving towards satisfying the majority of players, either you don’t read enough the forum, or you’re very naive. People are complaining for months now!

Listen to your PvP/WvW playerbase and stop releasing things that go in a completely different direction.

We want less zerging, less passive effects (do not support skilled play), less broken/abusable mechanics (perplexity spam/stunspam/fearchain/stealthspam), less matchup imbalance, less orbbuffs V2.0, more entertaining/durable/thrilling sieges with actual fights and not groundtargetted spam, less siegeweapon overload and more rewards for skilled play.

People who play WvW and PvP dont need to get all the skill taken out of their hands. This game is getting easier and easier and classes get pushed into few OP builds more and more. Even when there is an issue with a mechanic being broken (e.g. warriors durability) the class gets buffed even more in the same direction (shouts/lungcapacity buff inc).
Yes 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, 10v10 and 20vs20 do matter! Because the players want it! And condition/cc spam are a big issue right here. They support the thoughtless game of numbers.
Players in WvW are in fact players that either like PvP in an open world environment or even siegebased or on the other hand dont care for the gamemode and just follow the loot train, no matter where they get it. Orr, Frostgorge trainframing, Queensdale or for Karma in WvW.

Why do we see more and more support for skillfree gameplay and none at all for people that actually play WvW for what we all took it? The open PvP heritage of DAoC and WAR? Move the PvE/Lootfocussed players back to the Living/Open world and please start enhancing the PvP experience the real group of interest for WvW wants.

How can it be that the needs of players that do not mind blindfolding aoe overload, huge fps-drops, insane skilllag and teleporting/warping during primetime in the mid&upper tiers as long as they get bags, currency and XP of any kind (blue, yellow, purple), are put above the needs/wishes of players that actually care about player versus player and guild/world versus guild/world interaction? Please stop protecting grinders from PvP-focussed “predators”. Give people the tools to kill the “blob” without counterblobbing or siegeoverloading the zone. Give us a laggfree game during primetime. Carebearing the “casuals” does no single favour to the gamemode and rewarding stacking in monozonetrains is killing the PvP in WvW.

Let sieges take hours to be finished for the people who love that. Siegeweapons deal way to much damage to structures and golemrushes are just overkill.
Once you give us the tools to bust the blob and make sieges of a reasonable length for the people who actually play WvW for what it was intended (massive sieges and massive !PvP!), the blobning problem will solve itself as the players that are abusing this gamemode for the simple fact of grinding will move on back to what they usually even like better. Grinding in the open world PvE.

Make WvW a better place for the people who came from WAR, Aion, Rift, SWOTOR, etc. hoping to finally find a gamemode full of epic fights between worlds and got rewarded with a zergfest with just and only epic and massive performance issues.

Do this for WvW. The people who dont like it will stick to the other modes of the game anyway. Afterall there is loot too.

And please please pretty please separate WvW from tPvP and PvE. So many gamebreaking changes to classmechanics that vastly have affected the PvP experience in WvW only happened to either balance PvE or a PvP oriented capture mode.

Astralporing.1957:

True. But what was the money/mats needed for? Cosmetic rewards – mystic-forged exotics and legendaries. All of those were locked beyond insane grind – so the people grinded to get them. So what Anet did to change that? Introduced even more things to grind for, and even greater grind to get them.
Of course, by now, there was a shift in the community towards the more grind-heavy direction, but it wasn’t like that originally. And even now i wouldn’t say that grind-likers are in majority. It’s just everyone has been taught to understand that it’s the only thing they can count on in this game.

That true or to level up / gear up alts which again Arenanet can tell which one it was by looking on what they did with the profits they made.

As for the insane grind, players made it an insane grind when they locked themselves in Orr farming. If arenanet wanted legendaries to be an insane grind they wouldnt have spread the requirements all over the place so that people could progress towards their legendary no matter what content they play. Doing events in a level 1 area gets you closer to your legendary you didnt have to farm Orr for that, it was a player choice which told arenanet that for those players reward was more important then fun which in turn has repercussions to design as well.

Yes and No, ascended gear from where I am sitting evolved a lot based on player feedback. Initially it was we need VP, this game needs to be more like other mmo etc.. etc.. so we had FoTM and ascended gear was acquirable like other MMOs by playing that dungeon. Feedback said people didnt like that, they didnt want the grind so then new ascended gear was acquirable by doing dailies that lasted for a while and it was great because you could literally play anything you want for a an hour or so and progress towards your ascended gear. But people complained against that as well and personally I think that a lot of players were dishonest here and tried to misrepresent their greed which end up working against them. People didnt like the fact they had to wait a few weeks per piece and they blamed that on the time gated nature of dailies not realizing that while yes time gating forced the wait, the wait length was a deliberate design decision. so they tried to get rid of the dailies by saying it felt hollow that the best gear in the game should be had via challenges, boss fights etc.. and so now they made ascended weapons requiring various challenges but of course people didnt really want the challenges they just wanted a quick way to get the gear by being able to farm it without a time gate and this wasnt it.

Bottom line, people didnt ask for the grind true, but they always chose grind when there were other options and they rejected systems that were designed to specifically avoid the grind.

I just want to add something here since you asked for feedback OP
You spent 5 years developing an incredible world.
Since then you have done some things that might not have been so good for that world

I’ll just leave this here:
saw it in another part of the forum and funny as it is you need to think about this for a bit

If Chris finds the forums quite contradictory/not helpful for a lot of elements in relation to feedback, perhaps a post those very forums was a bit of a backwards move?

Perhaps this could have been better focused as a blog post, stating that, due to the result of not getting enough “constructive feedback” from forums, and it being a select number of players that visit the forums, that they’ll put an in-game survey up.

I think you’d get a lot better/refined results from the playerbase as a whole (and not just forum posters) if you put a questionnaire up In Game(I can not emphasise those words more), with the questions that you specifically want feedback on, or you find are the hot-topics currently being discussed. One questionnaire per account, that would pop up once for everyone, and is mandatory before continuing to play.

There you go. Two birds. One stone….well more like multiple birds, and one stone
– It’s the wider response of players instead of just a select number in the forums.
– You get to pinpoint the topics of discussion that hold the most weight instead of trawling through feedback that isn’t helpful and pinpoint the area with the most disapproval.
– You completely avoid the unhelpful criticism, for hard data about what’s good/bad. (and if you give people a small text box to comment issues when they disagree then you funnel ideas into that. It keeps it cleaner)

“groundbreaking content”

You mean world bosses with increased hitpoints? The complete LACK of raiding instances. No GvG (in a game called GuildWars?) RNG still running the game. Lack of precursor fixes. Lack of dungeon revamps and bug-fixes

And most of all, still no Chainsaw kit for engies. (this one makes me the saddest)

It’s the little things that tick players off. For example, the harpies in the Cliffside fractal. I’ve been dillegently reporting their invulnerability/knock-down spam/stuck in combat at insane range-bugs for months now. When, after 3 months, I still get heaps of repair bills because of the same bug (which to me is gamebreaking), even the meek players get raging.

It could be that it’s not a priority because most people melee-rush through fractals these days, but when you hit them even once with a ranged attack while not on their platform, they go invulnerable while their friends start knocking you down like crazy.

Which would be bad enough on its own, except there’s a second bug that causes you to sometimes get defeated instantly when knocked off (even at full health and no downs yet).

Clearly you can see that at some point, people need to vent steam when this keeps happening to them?

LHound.8964:

Read some topics in WvW sub-forums:

- We were called “The minority” by ANet staff.
- We have been trolled in-game by a incredibly rude person from ANet staff. An apology was made soon after.
- We are being ignored after months of the same feedback.
- sPvP and WvW is incredibly flawed. A lot of people play those game modes, because they haven’t got another solution. Feedback related to the assiduity is biased.
- You can’t expect to please everyone.
- Personally i don’t care about progression (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, etc…). I care about Bugs, Class Balance, Server Balance and overall competitiveness. If you think they are moving towards satisfying the majority of players, either you don’t read enough the forum, or you’re very naive. People are complaining for months now!

if they really dismissed you in WvW subforum (which I dont follow) because you were a minority that would have been very wrong.

Ohh please, I;ve seen that video and that developer was actually very very VERY polite. The amount of abuse he got before he “lashed out” was unbelievable. And how did he lash out? by saying stop stop ruining his game.. in appropriate yeah sure, rude or trolling? No by any stretch of the imagination. Yes Arenanet apologized and in my opinion they just didnt have to because seriously the ones being rude where the other players. You want to do GvG in WvW, fine, I dont like it because it damages WvW but you have the right to play as you please just like anyone else. But that applies to everyone else, before anyone knew the guy was a developer they didnt allow him to play as he pleased just cause he stopped in the middle of the battlefield he was insulted pretty badly, players on his side conspired with the other side to get him killed. No one bothered to politely explain to him what was going on and politely asked him to step aside they just went on the attack from the first moment. So dont go walking the high road blaming the employee in question for not following the high standards when everyone was following way lower standard then his. We’re all human and we all lash out when attacked. Whats more people had the audcity to call for him to be fired over that… seriously?

How are you being ignored, you got plenty of changes to WvW and a new map every like 3 months for sPvP… at most some of the feedback you wanted didnt get implemented fine but ignored?

A lot of things are subjective, I am not much of a PvP player so I cannot really comment objectively here but i did play a couple 100 hours of sPvP and WvW didnt find anything flawed so while its likely I missed a few things before of my experiance is it really that bad?

Every single patch has balancing in it, how is that ignoring people?

dear Chris, I think that having prompt feedback from A.Net saying why they didn’t implement what we players requested or “yes we will add this because it’s a great idea” ecc would immediately solve 90% of the buzz in the community.
Every player is playing through a class, yet the class forums are the rarest to be seen with devs tag actively talking: this is counterproductive for both parts.
When you see people in anger, ask yourself why they are in anger: probably, those people used to be your number one supporters.
Customers are all alike, people aren’t: no great challenge can be accomplished through customers only, if you are looking for greater things you have to deal with people.
And people want communication above anything else, something that is lacking in the way we need it.

oZii.2864:

Pegaasus.3280:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

People are angry for a reason.
People hate temporary content for a reason.
People hate ascended gear for a reason.
People hate class imbalance for a reason.
People hate server imbalance for a reason.
People hate constant buggy content for a reason.
People hate watching you making the same mistakes over and over for a reason.

Why don’t you understand that?

Not everything there is true.

I am not angry at all

I don’t mind the temporary content because I realize not everything will appeal to me

I don’t hate ascended gear because I know the stat increase isn’t significant for the modes I play and I read every thread that comes out that does the math on the subject.

There is more but basically there is nothing to learn from that post because it doesn’t really say anything but generalities but not specifics and it states it in a way that makes it sound like the majority agree.

tl;dr “I like Anet as my main classes are OP atm and I can kill all the noobs in wvw”

Read my second post.

Well thanks for reaching out to the community, but over the past year I have seen ArenaNet heading exactly opposite the direction that I (I’ll just speak for myself) would like the game to evolve in.

The reason I bought the game is for two reasons:

• The Manifesto
• Because I loved Guild Wars 1

Because of the above, I expected certain things from Guild Wars 2:

• Extreme horizontal progression where item stats do not matter and progression is aesthetics only, and you can get max stat items in less than an hour – NO GRIND, NO GEAR THREADMILL
• Extremely deep character customization, making me think what skills to bring and what gear to equip on my character
• Extremely fast to max level and max gear a character to max to make it easy to have alts (takes me 3 hours to get a GW1 char to 20 and have him kitted out)
• An enviornment permanently shaped by players, not devs
• Exciting, carefully balanced PVP

Thus in my eyes, the devs have done a few things wrong and are continuing to do things wrong:

• High level cap that takes ages to reach (in my opinion, having levels in the first place is a mistake)
• Restricting players to a single class and having very very few skills and traits per class – thus very few options to make interesting builds
• The boring stat system (power, vitality, etc) and the item system that came out of it that only offer simple +stats, instead of ‘cool’ situational bonusses such as +20% enchantment length or +10 armor when in a stance. In my opinion, stats can and should be completely removed from GW2 and such bonusses on items should be replaced by a whole boatloat of diverse situational bonusses that are a direct part of the characterbuilding/planning process.
• The legendary and ascended items. Exotics were just about right, maybe even a bit too hard to obtain in the first place. I don’t want a gear grind; this game shouldn’t be about obtaining items with stupid stats in my opinion. Again, items should be diverse in what they do and not have bigger numbers.
• PVP and WVW just isn’t interesting at the moment, but I think that is largely because of the above points, with the inability to make interesting and diverse character builds and the game focussing highly on the base stats.
• The dynamic events don’t care that I’m there, because next hour they just replay and reset themselves. Thus they lack meaning and epicness.

I personally don’t think that temporary content is the biggest issue, I have much more problems with the fundamental game mechanics (stats, skills, items, progression).

What I personally want to play this game for:

• Discovering new character builds that noone else found before (not possible)
• Equipping my character with fancy clothing, armor and weapons in combinations that almost noone else has (already possible)
• Influence the way the server evolves and make it different from other servers (not possible, outside the elections we had, which were not per-server unfortunately)
• Build a nice place for myself, such as a nice house, and haul loot and decorations in there (not possible, home instance is terrible because other players cannot easily see it, and it is not customizable)
• Compete with others based on creativity and skill (not really possible)
• Challenge myself playing multiple accounts and doing all of the above with them (not possible unless using outlawed programs. In GW1 it was possible because game had much easier controls. GW2 is the only MMO that I have only one account in, normally I have 3 accounts…)

To touch on a few previous posts, TC does have a few devs who check in and/or play and/or RP there. There were a few in the last day or two who answered questions and promised to pass on some requests.

*crosses fingers for minimap and chat able to be on the same side because blind on one side*

Pegaasus.3280:

You are just a pve hero…no other words to describe you)) I’ m happy you love this fabolous content they are adding ^^

I haven’t done any of the new Content since Scarlet’s Invasion. I know not every release will appeal to me. I will be doing the halloween stuff but might not do any of the new content in November. You can’t please everyone it has nothing to do with loving the content it just doesn’t appeal to me when a release comes that does I will participate.

I mostly WvW nice try though.

oZii.2864:

Pegaasus.3280:

You are just a pve hero…no other words to describe you)) I’ m happy you love this fabolous content they are adding ^^

I haven’t done any of the new Content since Scarlet’s Invasion. I know not every release will appeal to me. I will be doing the halloween stuff but might not do any of the new content in November. You can’t please everyone it has nothing to do with loving the content it just doesn’t appeal to me when a release comes that does I will participate.

I mostly WvW nice try though.

I play wvw too..but you are a thief you can’t understand the frustation of certain class users ( like rangers ). Lucky you who loves Op classes

Here’s the deal with “Constructive Feedback”, because the term is a bit deceiving.

Demanding feedback to be constructive is often times nothing but a ruse. If the feedback you receive is unfavorable, you can always claim that it’s not constructive enough and wash your hands of any and all responsibility to react to it. It’s true that a lot of people around these parts like to post angry rants but ultimately feedback is feedback. It is not up to the community to fix the problems with the game; we only need to voice our opinion.

Basically, if I dislike the Living Story I’m not ALSO responsible for coming up with a better story myself for my opinion to become “constructive feedback”. Unless I’m mistaken, the wording in the OP seems to indicate that ANet does exactly what I described above however. “Bad”/Angry feedback is ignored because it obviously can’t be very good feedback, right? Call me callous bit it sounds like this thread is a demand for more positive, not more constructive posts from the community.

Hello Chris,

Thank you for taking the time to post.

Since you mentioned that you read many of the posts on the forums, especially the ones that are polite and respectful, please allow me to express my thoughts.

In the last year or so, I have noticed a lot of ANet devs popping on the forums to remind everyone that our posts are being read and considered. I’ve also noticed that it often includes a plea for players to be patient, and understand that “big things” are coming.

The problem however is that there seems to e a disconnect between what is being said, and what is being done.

Since day one, many forum users have been asking for more clear communication in regards to the game. This means that not only listening to our ideas and feedback, but engaging us on ideas that are, and aren’t working. Most of us feel that communication and respect are a two way street, and when we take our time to support your game, write posts, create art, etc, only to be faced with coldly calculated public relations responses (or worse silence), it can be a bit frustrating when someone finally shows up and asks us all to be respectful and have patience.

Secondly, there have been times when certain ANet employees have taken a very active role on the forums (which you’ve stated you would like to do), much to the delight of the community, only to be slapped on the wrist and silenced.

I feel that if you’re going to ask for our continued patience and support, that you start being much more transparent (or black and white as you’ve put it). We need to know what you’re planning, and what we can expect, so we’re not sitting here six months from now even more frustrated and concerned.

As well, I think you guys need to consider a more directed approach to gaining player feedback. The forums are great, but too many ideas, too many opinions, and too many conflicting opinions, make trying to gather any sort of meaningful feedback a very difficult task. Many have suggested creating an honest feedback system (I suggested an in-game system almost a year ago) that would give ANet some of that “Feeling” feedback that login data clearly lacks.

I think you’ll find that most of your community will show you the respect and patience you desire, if we get the feeling that you’re after our hearts and minds, as much, if not more than our wallets. We love your game, and we want to support it, but most of us don’t have the time to wait around as your Guinea Pigs, while you experiment.

Find a way to get clear and honest feedback, and then be transparent with what you say, and what you plan to do. I think you’ll find that when your community feels like we’re “friends” instead of “gem store potentials” we’ll be putty in your hands.

I just wanted to say a few quick words in regards to the “manifesto.”

I think for many it is the running joke (for some it is much more serious) around here that ANet used the manifesto as nothing more than something to prop under the leg of a wobbly table.

For many in the community, it can be super frustrating to hear devs continuously ask for patience for all the great things coming, when for many those words have lost all meaning.

When a community supports something based on the promises and expectations set by someone, it can be very disheartening when you feel like you’ve been manipulated.

So, as your parents used to (or should have said), do what you say you’re going to do. IF you claim you’re going to be more, “black n’ white” then don’t just say it…do it. Posts like this by ANet make us feel nice for a few moments, but in reality it’s just fluff.

That said, here is what I think the solution is.

create an in-game system that allows players to provide feedback to honest questions

Don’t do it on the forums, or through email, or hidden away in some Reddit feed. It needs to be available in-game, to all players.

i think what the community needs are some “representatives”
and those to talk with the anet devs

maybe this will improve the communication ?

nethykins.7986:

If Chris finds the forums quite contradictory/not helpful for a lot of elements in relation to feedback, perhaps a post those very forums was a bit of a backwards move?

Perhaps this could have been better focused as a blog post, stating that, due to the result of not getting enough “constructive feedback” from forums, and it being a select number of players that visit the forums, that they’ll put an in-game survey up.

I think you’d get a lot better/refined results from the playerbase as a whole (and not just forum posters) if you put a questionnaire up In Game(I can not emphasise those words more), with the questions that you specifically want feedback on, or you find are the hot-topics currently being discussed. One questionnaire per account, that would pop up once for everyone, and is mandatory before continuing to play.

There you go. Two birds. One stone….well more like multiple birds, and one stone
– It’s the wider response of players instead of just a select number in the forums.
– You get to pinpoint the topics of discussion that hold the most weight instead of trawling through feedback that isn’t helpful and pinpoint the area with the most disapproval.
– You completely avoid the unhelpful criticism, for hard data about what’s good/bad. (and if you give people a small text box to comment issues when they disagree then you funnel ideas into that. It keeps it cleaner)

If I could +1 this more than once I would.

Damage control? Interesting…
I think the leading difficulty is the development direction GW2 is taking. Or really the uncertainty of it’s long-term direction. Many, as you know, are fearful of the game becoming just a gear grind. And others/same question the existence of a solid traditional expansion plan, if such a thing is even in actual consideration or in development beyond just a nothing is off the table type of response. Uncertainty, it’s certainly a problem child. There are mmo’s that are rather transparent, still do well, and by example.

One way to put it, the honeymoon doesn’t last forever, and there comes a point where the husband just becomes concerned about what the wife is going to bring home from her latest shopping adventure. Or was that from an I Love Lucy rerun…

DanH.5879:

i think what the community needs are some “representatives”
and those to talk with the anet devs

maybe this will improve the communication ?

Those representatives would need to have nerves of steel because ANET doesn’t really listen to our feedback. It’s like talking to a brick wall.

nethykins.7986:

If Chris finds the forums quite contradictory/not helpful for a lot of elements in relation to feedback, perhaps a post those very forums was a bit of a backwards move?

-snip-

I couldn’t agree more. In fact I suggested the exact same thing over a year ago, and it was largely ignored.

I know a few will take issue with the “mandatory” part, and I am torn. On one hand, it makes sense to “persuade” players to give feedback, but on the other I’m not sure if that would result in the best feedback if someone is forced to do it before they can play.

I think the best solution is to include a survey on the character select screen that allows users the option to fill it out.

DanH.5879:

i think what the community needs are some “representatives”
and those to talk with the anet devs

maybe this will improve the communication ?

Those representatives exist. They’re called Community managers/Community Coordinators etc.

If they’re not actively keeping in contact with the community – and I mean outside of the silly Facebook and twitter statuses that are very one sided (they post, we read) – then they’re not fulfilling their role completely. They’re no longer being the line of communication between player and devs, and instead being a mouthpiece/megaphone for GW2 advertisement where ‘Retweets’ and ‘Follows’ are their main goal.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

nethykins.7986:

If Chris finds the forums quite contradictory/not helpful for a lot of elements in relation to feedback, perhaps a post those very forums was a bit of a backwards move?

-snip-

I couldn’t agree more. In fact I suggested the exact same thing over a year ago, and it was largely ignored.

I know a few will take issue with the “mandatory” part, and I am torn. On one hand, it makes sense to “persuade” players to give feedback, but on the other I’m not sure if that would result in the best feedback if someone is forced to do it before they can play.

I think the best solution is to include a survey on the character select screen that allows users the option to fill it out.

I have to say, I can not take credit for what I posted, because, even without searching the forums, out of the thousands of players that play, and those that frequent the forum, I’m quite sure this would have popped up more than once over the lifetime of the game.

The mandatory part is what I see as a kind of safety net for ANet. Players can’t say that people were never given the opportunity to fill in the form, or that they accidentally closed it and couldn’t get it back, or that anyone was able to opt out and thus leaving their opinion as unaccounted. As well as the whole ethos of “no player’s opinion is unaccounted for, or unworthy of reading”. It’s definitely a positive way of looking at things, even if the mandatory thing is a little heavy handed.

The problem I have with things like having it in the player select screen, if it’s hidden away, is that No-one will see it.
Case in point: ANet seemed to kick up a fuss about new/revamped DE’s not getting any feedback, though this happened while they were giving a large fanfare to the LS. Because no-one even knew these were improved, revamped or changed, no-one knew where to look or what feedback to give, and that in turn got some dev talking about this being how we don’t give feedback on stuff actually changed in game.

If it’s not mandatory, it’d need to have to be in bight lights, highly visible, and visible to even the newest player what it is, and what the questionnaire means in the long run.

nethykins.7986:

DanH.5879:

i think what the community needs are some “representatives”
and those to talk with the anet devs

maybe this will improve the communication ?

Those representatives exist. They’re called Community managers/Community Coordinators etc.

If they’re not actively keeping in contact with the community – and I mean outside of the silly Facebook and twitter statuses that are very one sided (they post, we read) – then they’re not fulfilling their role completely. They’re no longer being the line of communication between player and devs, and instead being a mouthpiece/megaphone for GW2 advertisement where ‘Retweets’ and ‘Follows’ are their main goal.

You mean community reps like what CCP does with EVE. Elections and all that from the players. I’ve though about that, especially since they did the recent NPC elections, but yes they hire people to do that job. Most games are rather hush-hush about development and rather keep it all internal. hehe look at what happened with SWG, and the surprise NGE patch, the community completely left out of a major core game changing patch, absolutely no idea until patch day. If they bring players in, it means that they may need to be more transparent, and not all game projects can or are willing to do that. So they strike a middle ground, hire reps.

Galen Grey.4709:

LHound.8964:

Read some topics in WvW sub-forums:

- We were called “The minority” by ANet staff.
- We have been trolled in-game by a incredibly rude person from ANet staff. An apology was made soon after.
- We are being ignored after months of the same feedback.
- sPvP and WvW is incredibly flawed. A lot of people play those game modes, because they haven’t got another solution. Feedback related to the assiduity is biased.
- You can’t expect to please everyone.
- Personally i don’t care about progression (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, etc…). I care about Bugs, Class Balance, Server Balance and overall competitiveness. If you think they are moving towards satisfying the majority of players, either you don’t read enough the forum, or you’re very naive. People are complaining for months now!

if they really dismissed you in WvW subforum (which I dont follow) because you were a minority that would have been very wrong.

You want to do GvG in WvW, fine, I dont like it because it damages WvW

How do you back up these words? Please be so kind to answer as I dont understand what damage could be done.
And yes I support you on the topic of who was being rude and also I dont GvG.

I’m genuinely curious what posted ideas were actually actioned on.

At any rate, I don’t see anything really changing because a CM posted something on the forums. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to take away from this. That you’re listening?… I don’t see it. That you’re going to start listening more in future? Well, some real discussion would actually go a long way to that.

We’re apparently giving you ideas, but we really have no way of identifying which of our contributions are beneficial and which ones are wasted time on our part. Do we have a real impact on the development of the game, or not?

I think is is disrespectful and antagonistic to refuse to acknowledge customer input. Sit in a room with another person and never directly respond to them when they talk to you, and you will very quickly alienate the other person and turn them hostile to you.

Another way to distance yourself from any other social entity is to hide your identity and responsibilities. Decisions come down and customers have no idea what person or persons at your company is responsible for them. The contributes to stacking the deck against yourselves in terms of building a trusting relationship with customers.

The lenghts some of your company proclamations go to obfuscate who the decision makers are related to specific issues that are controversial with players is astounding. Almost everything is attributed to a global “We” as if every employee there was involved in reaching a consensus based decision.

You have built a very closed and insulated social unit that purposefully avoids communication based on facts, and specializes in one way communication based on spin.

This reminds me of the Massively article from just about a week ago:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/10/01/flameseeker-chronicles-when-good-guild-wars-2-commentary-goes-b/
And then also this from just today:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/10/08/the-soapbox-stop-hurting-the-people-that-love-you/
I agree a lot with both these articles.

Am I the only one that thinks this post was just one lengthy “throw some dust in their eyes” damage control type? Because after months of ignoring feedback and even stating that the forums are a vocal minority so they don’t care for them as long as they don’t notice players leaving the game it is hard for me to just accept this on blind faith.

Pavel.8531:

Am I the only one that thinks this post was just one lengthy “throw some dust in their eyes” damage control type? Because after months of ignoring feedback and even stating that the forums are a vocal minority so they don’t care for them as long as they don’t notice players leaving the game it is hard for me to just accept this on blind faith.

I’m certain this has a lot to do with it.

There are some pretty obvious “tells” in the post.

zeromius.1604:

• Since launch ArenaNet has made it so that no one content type is more rewarding than another.

Yeah they have, TP flipping, it remains easily the easiest way of making money in this game. Personally I find it ridiculous because as you say they have made all other areas of the game relatively socialist. So why should it be different?

you guys have got to communicate back!

this is the worst game forum for having devs interacting with the players…..i think the best is marvel heroes albeit a different game but i think they have 3 informed people posting daily around 25-30 times each

but seriously, it is a two way street…..we give you feedback and we don’t know if your hearing it because you don’t make a simple post saying if you’ve heard it or not…so we get countless threads about the same kitten problem to make sure you hear it

i know you devs are busy making content for the game to hit your every 2 week deadline…but with the gem shop raking in tons of dough(apparently) hire 2-3 people who sit in on meetings and their only job is to reply on the forums

Jordo.5913:

you guys have got to communicate back!

this is the worst game forum for having devs interacting with the players…..i think the best is marvel heroes albeit a different game but i think they have 3 informed people posting daily around 25-30 times each

but seriously, it is a two way street…..we give you feedback and we don’t know if your hearing it because you don’t make a simple post saying if you’ve heard it or not…so we get countless threads about the same kitten problem to make sure you hear it

i know you devs are busy making content for the game to hit your every 2 week deadline…but with the gem shop raking in tons of dough(apparently) hire 2-3 people who sit in on meetings and their only job is to reply on the forums

Again, I’ll reiterate..They have those people…but they’re closer to being forum moderators and twitter/facebook posters (actual jobs in our current day and age) than communicating with the community and relay information back and forth.

You have to communicate back, there’s no way you’re reading everything. Condition cap has been untouched for over six months, an issue like Necromancers’ Staff 1 skill being obstructed for no reason when attacking many different objects remains in the game, so what other conclusion can I draw other than it’s not being taken care of and will stay in the game for months and months.

nethykins.7986:

than communicating with the community and relay information back and forth.

then they don’t have those people that we need!

i don’t care about facebook posters or twitter posters

i care about people saying “Hey, your absolutely right and we are in the works to fix this soon!” or “I’ll pass this along to <insert dev here> who is responsible for that” and then coming back and telling us his or the collective dev communities response

half the time in the rare chance they say they will pass this along….we get zero response to it afterwards never knowing if it got lost in the ether somewhere down the line

I just want that Guild Wars 2 would be more like the original Guild Wars.
Sadly it feels that they have nothing in common anymore.

Really drawn out and overly praising some aspects of the game was weird to me at least. Doesn’t feel like a casual post i guess is what im saying feels like a PR post. Either way understood and I agree even though i know sometimes im a part of this problem. It’s just not cool seeing a game you enjoy go in a direction you don’t.

Lunaire.5827:

I’ve always felt ArenaNet’s participation both in-forum and in-game was leagues better than that of any other game company I have seen.

That being said, would you please stop posting things exclusively to stupid social media sites and actually add them to your official site or forums as well?

Thanks! ^.^

Can’t agree with that first statement Rift’s Dev team is way more interactive with their community than Anet and they are a lot better on streams as well. Planetside 2’s( SOE in general atm is doing well with communication) team is way more communicative with their community letting them vote in and weigh in on the development of the game. Countless other non mmo devs are all over there forums and reddit pages.

With anet we get a post here a stream every once in a while with nothing really hinted or talked about that would get me as a player excited. Communication is actually one of the things i think Anet needs to work on the most.

Hi Chris, gonna say a few words here even though I don’t do much posting on the forums. I am a fairly casual player who’s pretty much lost faith in Guild Wars 2, even though not completely. I think a couple of things can still be saved and, in hoping this, I keep playing and enjoying the good parts of the game.

I realize it must be very difficult for ANet not to read all the posts, but to take action where the community is split and there’s a lot of debate. Also – and some people might call me naive for this – I don’t doubt you guys actually read our messages and hear our pleas. However, there is a tendency to offer vague responses from what I’ve seen.

Admittedly, not all matters can be solved immediately or get an answer straight away, but there are some critical points where I would really like for Arena Net to make a stand. Let me give you an example: gear tiers. From what I’ve seen (I might be wrong so if a fellow poster can correct me, the better) the response to this matter is something in the lines of " hopefully this will be the last tier we’re introducing".
Now, this is a critical part to Guild Wars 2, and from my point of view a mistake has already been made with the Ascended Gear. And I am going to be honest here, the last thing I want to hear as an answer to this problem is something starting with “hopefully”. This should be a clear yes or no, being one of the pillars of the game. I realize a clear answer can result in a loss of players, but vague answers won’t do much good either in the long term.

Also, I think it would be great if you find a way to gather more feedback from the players. I haven’t read all this thread, so it’s possible someone suggested this before; if that’s the case, I second his/her opinion. Take into account that there are a lot of players who aren’t posting on the forums but still play the game. Thousands upon thousands of silent people who play the game, maybe read the forums, but never post a reply. With a few exceptions, I am one of them. If these people were to be asked directly to participate in a survey, I think a lot of them would gladly do it.

So why not have more surveys? They’re easy to make and they don’t even have to be long. Two or three questions related to a specific subject and that’s it. Advertise these surveys on the website – not only in the forums section – so you get people’s attention, maybe build some hype around them, give the respondents a chance to win an in-game prize (pets, consumables, little things) and do whatever it takes to gather as many answers as possible.

I am not sure if the technology permits it, but if possible, have these surveys in-game, sent by email or something. You can then organize the answers and make them public with graphic pies and stuff like that, show transparency with the statistics. Ask people about living story, about gear tiers, about expansions and whatever is important.

Again, if these things have been said before in this thread, then add me to the numbers :p

ANet,

Since you’re reading posts, and looking to involve yourself more in community feedback, here are a few posts I’ve written in the last year that have addressed this.

Feel free to take a few moments and give them a look.

In-Game voting suggestion

Link: Here

Posted: Sept 9th, 2012

Vocal Minority

Link: Here

Posted: Nov 25th, 2012

Treating us like friends instead of gem purchasers

Link: Here

Posted: March 15th, 2013

These are just my posts. There have been countless others that have provided very constructive feedback as to how to engage with us. It seems very strange that you keep saying that you want to work on this game ‘together’, be more black and white, and engage the community more….yet you reprimand devs that dedicate their own time to do just this, remain silent for days, never address threads with a huge amount of feedback, and release things into the game no one asked for, or cares about.

Zumy.6318:

How do you back up these words? Please be so kind to answer as I dont understand what damage could be done.
And yes I support you on the topic of who was being rude and also I dont GvG.

There are various how I think GvG the way its being practiced in that video damages WvW. Its essentially a chain of events

1. its taking spots of players who want to do proper WvW.
2. killing each other doesnt contribute to the score of WvW taking objectives does hence you’re reducing your world ranking over all
3. because your world loosing ranking people interested in WvW are likely to transfer to other servers thus making a bad situation worst
4. new players who might join WvW on that server will try their best to fight for their world only to run into a bunch of people not taking part that alone is demoralizing imagine what effect it has if like it happened in the video your world that suppose to back you up conspire with the enemy to get you killed never mind them not lifting a finger when you run to them for help. Such players will understandable feel WvW efforts are pointless
5. The attitude itself, people in that video were too entitled, they are clearly abusive to people who are not part of their gang which in itself will drive people away from WvW.
6. if your server is doing bad and atmosphere is generally abusive new players might not even get to the point of even bother with trying WvW in the first place.

Thats how I think it can be damaging.

Again not saying they’re doing anything wrong or that they shouldnt be allowed, they’re free to enjoy the game just as you and I but they should at least adjust their attitude a little bit. The least they can do is be respectful of the players playing WvW as intended.

What these people are doing is akin to someone joining a dungeon party and not participate in the dungeon rather do his own thing whatever that would be.