2 feature packs and 1/2 season, not enough
The thing about it is that… there’s GOING to be a segment of the player base who are ALWAYS going to be kittened off. They are ALWAYS going to be loud and boorish and irritating. They are hellbent on being angry and insulted, and will outright make up reasons to be insulted if they have to.
Is it right? No. But these people are GOING to be here, and they are GOING to be trolls. Arena.net can’t let them direct the discourse on the forums. Lock every loaded discussion they attempt to start. Ban them if you have to. But stop running away from them.
It’s not just Arena.net, for the record. More and more companies are dialing back from dialogue with their players, and it’s just as stupid when they do it. Stop letting the extremes dictate the interaction, for kitten’s sake.
See if you ban those people you get the reputation of censorship, no matter how unreasonable they are. If you don’t ban them, they destroy the forum. It really really is a lose situation for Anet.
But I still think they need to be more transparent.
I think you’re right in fact I truly believe they are building an expansion what I don’t understand is their complete unwillingness to divulge their plans. What sense does it make to let players leave because they have no news or nothing to look forward too? I mean if you’re building it why not just tell people and squash all of the negative publicity surrounding these doubts and concerns. You don’t have to set a date, you don’t have to give specifics, just knowing it’s coming would be enough for most people to stick around, or continue to invest money. I know I’d open my wallet again if I knew this was in the pipeline because their would be the security of knowing it would be more of a long term investment. Not knowing anything formally is why I won’t spend anymore money.
I have never in all my years of gaming seen a company do more harm to themselves through pathetic marketing practices as Anet. They are by far their own worst enemies.
Because they’ve been down that road. They TRIED to be transparent, and lay out their plans a year in advance.
The moment ANY of it changed, even in the slightest, the fanbase went on a rampage and started spitting the most vile, disgusting, entitled, bratty venom I had seen since the WoW message boards.
I do believe their silence is now because they do not believe they CAN be candid with their fans without their fans losing their collective kitten. And I don’t entirely blame them, even though I do think they should be open anyway.
Any chance there’s a business reason behind the silence. Not letting competitors plan their launches around their launch? Because that sort of thing happens all the time.
I wonder if it’s just coincidence they are releasing the feature pack the same time Destiny releases. Most games release on a Tuesday anyway, so it’s probably just that. Not that Destiny is any competition really, but it’s going to be tough for me to put time into both.
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See if you ban those people you get the reputation of censorship, no matter how unreasonable they are. If you don’t ban them, they destroy the forum. It really really is a lose situation for Anet.
But I still think they need to be more transparent.
There comes a point where it is infinitely better to have people badmouthing your place of business on Yelp rather than right in your lobby. It’s more along the lines of lose/lose considerably less.
It’s also very easy to counter the cries of censorship by (gasp) being open about why someone was banned. Gaile Gray used to have epic responses back in the GW1 days about why people were ACTUALLY banned, leaving trolls absolutely “rektd” when what REALLY happened was brought to light. Those skilled takedowns were a large part of the reason why there was little to no complaints about how players were treated by Arena.net in game.
It certainly takes more effort to create a stable community, but it CAN be done. Arena.net would need to invest a lot more manpower into it though than what they are currently. The moderation of these forums is extremely poor (and in the spirit of full disclosure, I admit to serving a two week forum suspension for telling some of those moderators EXACTLY how I feel about the quality of their their work in terms that were very aggressive and not constructive).
It wasn’t right, and I apologize for it in retrospect, but it doesn’t change that I do not like how the moderators do their jobs here, and I make no bones about it.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
Back to the subject of the thread, I think one of the problems with the current release format is that it’s too easy to grasp the additions when they hit.
Look at it like this: There’s a pile of 100 rocks, each weighing 10 pounds (4.5 kg). We’re told that we need to move them all to a different spot 50 meters away. We have a year to do it. So, every day on our way to work/school, we pick up one of the rocks and toss it into onto the new spot when we walk past it. It hardly seems like any effort at all, and we’re done with it well before the year is up without really trying. This is the LS/Feature approach.
Now, imagine that instead of 100 10 pound rocks, we have 1 1000 pound (450 kg) rock. Again, we’re told we need to move it 50 meters, and we have a year to do it. This time, we have a problem. With no tools or heavy equipment, we’re going to have a real problem moving this at all. So, we get ready, make a plan, set aside some time to work on it, and maybe even ask others to help. It’s a major undertaking. This is an expansion.
It’s the same amount of rock in both cases, but because one is served up in little bites it seems like no effort at all to deal with it. I think this is part of the problem with the LS/Feature releases as well, being broken up as they are makes it easy to not realize just how much was there.
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delicate, brick-like subtlety.
delicate, brick-like subtlety.
If the rest of the LS needs this big of breaks between small amounts of time for content releases then people are going to rage hard. Im guessing the new LS is coming late september/early october.
Thats way too long. I know they want to get in the feature packs but the amount of time delayed up until a feature pack is released is insane. Were waiting nearly a month for the feature pack to be released after its announced, thats not acceptable. They just need to cover it all in one week.
Right now the way things look, its 6 weeks of living story, 6 weeks off. Thats very very poor. That actually makes this worse than the first living story in terms of content delivery. Because then its not truly bi-weekly when you factor in the fact that 50% is breaks.
My god!
Can we please differentiate between “changing existing features” and “NEW features???”
Rehashing junk and acting like it’s new ‘does not’ make it “new.”
Ummm, that’s not just a little disingenuous. If you tear down a house and build a palace, you have a palace.
The new path of TA is NOT a rehash and NO ONE can say it’s a rehash. It’s a completely 100% new path. An 80th level path with new enemies, new maps, new bosses and new rewards.
The Tequatl revamp took something that was essentially nothing and made it into something much more than it was. If you call this a rehash, I’d have to say you’re misusing the word. The closest thing to a rehash I can think of is the AC dungeon upgrade, but even that has completely new bosses in it with new mechanics.
Agreed, for the most part, however the new content mentioned here results in a zero sum. Taking away one piece of content to introduce another in its place does not increase the amount of content.
My god!
Can we please differentiate between “changing existing features” and “NEW features???”
Rehashing junk and acting like it’s new ‘does not’ make it “new.”
Ummm, that’s not just a little disingenuous. If you tear down a house and build a palace, you have a palace.
The new path of TA is NOT a rehash and NO ONE can say it’s a rehash. It’s a completely 100% new path. An 80th level path with new enemies, new maps, new bosses and new rewards.
The Tequatl revamp took something that was essentially nothing and made it into something much more than it was. If you call this a rehash, I’d have to say you’re misusing the word. The closest thing to a rehash I can think of is the AC dungeon upgrade, but even that has completely new bosses in it with new mechanics.
Agreed, for the most part, however the new content mentioned here results in a zero sum. Taking away one piece of content to introduce another in its place does not increase the amount of content.
Taking away something that’s not used is not taking away content either. I have a guild of 150 people, many of whom do run dungeons, but it was almost impossible to badger people into running the F/U path of TA. It was bad out there.
I used the LFG tool a couple of times and it took forever to get a group. Disneyworld closes down rides that people don’t frequent too. They put a new ride in it’s place. Hopefully the new ride does better.
Again, I still consider the battle for Lion’s Arch content, because I played and enjoyed it. I did run the TA path they took out a few times and it was fine…but having to run it again and again…it wasn’t worth the time to find the group.
Taking away something that’s not used is not taking away content either. I have a guild of 150 people, many of whom do run dungeons, but it was almost impossible to badger people into running the F/U path of TA. It was bad out there.
I used the LFG tool a couple of times and it took forever to get a group. Disneyworld closes down rides that people don’t frequent too. They put a new ride in it’s place. Hopefully the new ride does better.
Again, I still consider the battle for Lion’s Arch content, because I played and enjoyed it. I did run the TA path they took out a few times and it was fine…but having to run it again and again…it wasn’t worth the time to find the group.
There is a poster on these forums, I think his name starts with a V, who has on multiple occasions pointed out that someone not liking a piece of content developed and implemented by the devs does not mean that it is not content. It was a playable part of the game. It was removed. New content was added to replace it. At the end of that development cycle we had essentially the same amount of content.
My god!
Can we please differentiate between “changing existing features” and “NEW features???”
Rehashing junk and acting like it’s new ‘does not’ make it “new.”
Ummm, that’s not just a little disingenuous. If you tear down a house and build a palace, you have a palace.
The new path of TA is NOT a rehash and NO ONE can say it’s a rehash. It’s a completely 100% new path. An 80th level path with new enemies, new maps, new bosses and new rewards.
The Tequatl revamp took something that was essentially nothing and made it into something much more than it was. If you call this a rehash, I’d have to say you’re misusing the word. The closest thing to a rehash I can think of is the AC dungeon upgrade, but even that has completely new bosses in it with new mechanics.
Agreed, for the most part, however the new content mentioned here results in a zero sum. Taking away one piece of content to introduce another in its place does not increase the amount of content.
Taking away something that’s not used is not taking away content either. I have a guild of 150 people, many of whom do run dungeons, but it was almost impossible to badger people into running the F/U path of TA. It was bad out there.
I used the LFG tool a couple of times and it took forever to get a group. Disneyworld closes down rides that people don’t frequent too. They put a new ride in it’s place. Hopefully the new ride does better.
Again, I still consider the battle for Lion’s Arch content, because I played and enjoyed it. I did run the TA path they took out a few times and it was fine…but having to run it again and again…it wasn’t worth the time to find the group.
Really? Where can I replay the battle for lions arch, id really like to, sounds fun. Citing actual content that players have to do. From the first living story, its very few. Probably 10% of the content added in the first season can be done now.
Taking away something that’s not used is not taking away content either. I have a guild of 150 people, many of whom do run dungeons, but it was almost impossible to badger people into running the F/U path of TA. It was bad out there.
I used the LFG tool a couple of times and it took forever to get a group. Disneyworld closes down rides that people don’t frequent too. They put a new ride in it’s place. Hopefully the new ride does better.
Again, I still consider the battle for Lion’s Arch content, because I played and enjoyed it. I did run the TA path they took out a few times and it was fine…but having to run it again and again…it wasn’t worth the time to find the group.
There is a poster on these forums, I think his name starts with a V, who has on multiple occasions pointed out that someone not liking a piece of content developed and implemented by the devs does not mean that it is not content. It was a playable part of the game. It was removed. New content was added to replace it. At the end of that development cycle we had essentially the same amount of content.
As V has also pointed out, I consider Battle for Lion’s Arch content too, even if it’s not there anymore. Quote all the stuff, not just the stuff that fits your theory.
If the Battle for Lion’s Arch and the Marionette is content, so is the other content that was removed.