Guild Wars 2

Well, when I started I was new to the game too and I loved the old leveling experience. So when they say it was not good enough and that it had to be changed in the way it is now they say at the same time that my experience doesn’t matter. Wow thanks alot you told me this.

Pirlipat.2479:

Well, when I started I was new to the game too and I loved the old leveling experience. So when they say it was not good enough and that it had to be changed in the way it is now they say at the same time that my experience doesn’t matter. Wow thanks alot you told me this.

Not what they’re saying at all. They’re saying they’ve run tests and not enough people play past the starting levels. They start playing, they get a few levels in and stop playing. That’s what they found through testing.

Now this game survives or doesn’t on it’s ability to attract new people. Why? Because all games have natural attrition.

If you want to take this personally, go right ahead, but business decisions aren’t personal. The fact is (unless Anet is lying which I don’t believe) that testing and experience and metrics showed that too many people didn’t like the leveling experience.

“Colin said, and I believe this, that the uptake of new players was absolutely not good enough and that until that was taken care of they wouldn’t be able to provide those other experiences.”

As I stated, here in lies the problem. Leadership and decision making! Instead of saying to themselves….hey, the uptake in new players is not good enough. We should probably make an expansion and revitalize the game. You know, get people interested in the game again. This will in turn bring players back and bring in new players who see all the advertisements, etc.

But instead they decided to revamp the leveling experience. Which in turn kitten’d off much of the player base (again, IMO).

Very bad decision if you ask me, one which falls squarely within the lap of ANETs leadership and vision.

Vayne.8563:

Pirlipat.2479:

Well, when I started I was new to the game too and I loved the old leveling experience. So when they say it was not good enough and that it had to be changed in the way it is now they say at the same time that my experience doesn’t matter. Wow thanks alot you told me this.

Not what they’re saying at all. They’re saying they’ve run tests and not enough people play past the starting levels. They start playing, they get a few levels in and stop playing. That’s what they found through testing.

Now this game survives or doesn’t on it’s ability to attract new people. Why? Because all games have natural attrition.

If you want to take this personally, go right ahead, but business decisions aren’t personal. The fact is (unless Anet is lying which I don’t believe) that testing and experience and metrics showed that too many people didn’t like the leveling experience.

My point to be more precise. People are giving Feedback. What you are doing is constantly telling People that their Feedback doesn’t matter and that they should shut up cause A-Net is all knowing and you like it oh and your wife does too. It not your Business to speak for A-Net. They can perfectely do this for themselves you are not in Charge. Give your own feedback but talking for them is not your Business.

Sauncho.8076:

“Colin said, and I believe this, that the uptake of new players was absolutely not good enough and that until that was taken care of they wouldn’t be able to provide those other experiences.”

As I stated, here in lies the problem. Leadership and decision making! Instead of saying to themselves….hey, the uptake in new players is not good enough. We should probably make an expansion and revitalize the game. You know, get people interested in the game again. This will in turn bring players back and bring in new players who see all the advertisements, etc.

But instead they decided to revamp the leveling experience. Which in turn kitten’d off much of the player base (again, IMO).

Very bad decision if you ask me, one which falls squarely within the lap of ANETs leadership and vision.

Okay let’s get this straight. They come out with an expansion. It’ll be level 80 content, because it’s an expansion. So people buy the game, and then they get to level 20 and stop, because uptake is good and what have they accomplished.

Before they release an expansion uptake has to be better. That’s the simple logic of the situation.

Pirlipat.2479:

Vayne.8563:

Pirlipat.2479:

Well, when I started I was new to the game too and I loved the old leveling experience. So when they say it was not good enough and that it had to be changed in the way it is now they say at the same time that my experience doesn’t matter. Wow thanks alot you told me this.

Not what they’re saying at all. They’re saying they’ve run tests and not enough people play past the starting levels. They start playing, they get a few levels in and stop playing. That’s what they found through testing.

Now this game survives or doesn’t on it’s ability to attract new people. Why? Because all games have natural attrition.

If you want to take this personally, go right ahead, but business decisions aren’t personal. The fact is (unless Anet is lying which I don’t believe) that testing and experience and metrics showed that too many people didn’t like the leveling experience.

My point to be more precise. People are giving Feedback. What you are doing is constantly telling People that their Feedback doesn’t matter and that they should shut up cause A-Net is all knowing and you like it oh and your wife does too. It not your Business to speak for A-Net. They can perfectely do this for themselves you are not in Charge. Give your own feedback but talking for them is not your Business.

Actually I never said shut up and I never told people not to do feedback. I have consistently said, if you have feedback, how about presenting it in a fair manner, without embellishing, or making stuff up, or threatening to leave, or encouraging people to boycott.

Because constructive criticism is good. But insulting hard working devs personally because you don’t like an update isn’t criticism.

Show me where I have insulted anyone.

Vayne.8563:

Sauncho.8076:

“Colin said, and I believe this, that the uptake of new players was absolutely not good enough and that until that was taken care of they wouldn’t be able to provide those other experiences.”

As I stated, here in lies the problem. Leadership and decision making! Instead of saying to themselves….hey, the uptake in new players is not good enough. We should probably make an expansion and revitalize the game. You know, get people interested in the game again. This will in turn bring players back and bring in new players who see all the advertisements, etc.

But instead they decided to revamp the leveling experience. Which in turn kitten’d off much of the player base (again, IMO).

Very bad decision if you ask me, one which falls squarely within the lap of ANETs leadership and vision.

Okay let’s get this straight. They come out with an expansion. It’ll be level 80 content, because it’s an expansion. So people buy the game, and then they get to level 20 and stop, because uptake is good and what have they accomplished.

Before they release an expansion uptake has to be better. That’s the simple logic of the situation.

I think this is an inaccurate assumption. New pvp modes is not lvl 80 content. Nor new dungeons, more weapon skills, more traits, new skins, new races, new professions, etc. The story and new map, yes, but not everything.

In the end, I still think an influx of new players brought in by an expansion would outweigh any loss of retention of new players.

Simplified Ex.
Status Quo: 5 new players start game, 3 quit before level 20. 2 become veterans.
Expansion: Because of advertisement and buz, 10 new players start game, and 5 quit. 5 become veterans.

*Still more players in the second scenario. (Yes, I understand this example is an oversimplification)

Sauncho.8076:

“Colin said, and I believe this, that the uptake of new players was absolutely not good enough and that until that was taken care of they wouldn’t be able to provide those other experiences.”

As I stated, here in lies the problem. Leadership and decision making! Instead of saying to themselves….hey, the uptake in new players is not good enough. We should probably make an expansion and revitalize the game. You know, get people interested in the game again. This will in turn bring players back and bring in new players who see all the advertisements, etc.

But instead they decided to revamp the leveling experience. Which in turn kitten’d off much of the player base (again, IMO).

Very bad decision if you ask me, one which falls squarely within the lap of ANETs leadership and vision.

Problem is that the retention is in low levels, if you have a level 43 only , would you care for an expansion on a game you didnt like?.

Other point, your company give money to another one to make a game, the game dont have one of the objectives you wanted, even if they made others. You give them a lot of time to solve it and its not solved, you will invest more, like an expansion in money?

All this comes from Nsoft decisions: the game sold a lot, but its retention was/is low and they dont consider it in the standars they wanted, the inversionists want them to be in line before spending a lot of money.

Then anet needs to search forms to mantain people in game with a shorter budget (because they arent getting what Nsoft wanted they receive less); so they beggin to experimentate with both LS (that was make so that people get in touch with the game- specially season one) and feedback and tests of a new start system (yeah the one is finally implemented), plus China that helps to probe the starter system too.

That explain the poor content released we have in contrast to oder games, that in one update have like 10+ GW2 updates, specially compared to LS1.

Vayne.8563:

Sauncho.8076:

“Colin said, and I believe this, that the uptake of new players was absolutely not good enough and that until that was taken care of they wouldn’t be able to provide those other experiences.”

As I stated, here in lies the problem. Leadership and decision making! Instead of saying to themselves….hey, the uptake in new players is not good enough. We should probably make an expansion and revitalize the game. You know, get people interested in the game again. This will in turn bring players back and bring in new players who see all the advertisements, etc.

But instead they decided to revamp the leveling experience. Which in turn kitten’d off much of the player base (again, IMO).

Very bad decision if you ask me, one which falls squarely within the lap of ANETs leadership and vision.

Okay let’s get this straight. They come out with an expansion. It’ll be level 80 content, because it’s an expansion. So people buy the game, and then they get to level 20 and stop, because uptake is good and what have they accomplished.

Before they release an expansion uptake has to be better. That’s the simple logic of the situation.

Ideally, an expansion would introduce at least one new playable race and a new 1-15 starter zone in which players of that race would begin their adventures, along with many more new zones full of fun stuff to do and cool things to see ranging from level 15 and up to level 80. Mass quantities of new content spread across the entirety of the game. How about a new profession to go with all that new content? Heck, yeah!

Pirlipat.2479:

Show me where I have insulted anyone.

I don’t think he was referring to you personally, more in the general sense. However I do agree with Vayne, in that feedback CAN be critical, and thats fine, but there is a way to do it so that it doesn’t come off as insulting or an angry rant.

Morfedel.4165:

Nube one one seven.7039:

I`m just gonna leave this here as a reminder:

http://strawpoll.me/2555336/r

Oh wow look,a little more than 1.5K votes, less than 10% happy. So let me ask you this Vayne, as an editor, did you ever have overwhelming feedback point to something being an absolutely horrible change/feature/ect? If so, what did you do about it? Did you simply ignore everything that the feedback was pointing to as being horrible? Did you ignore any and all suggested fixes, did you attempt to figure out what specific parts were so hated, and why? Or did you simply do nothing?

I lot of people havent seen that. Until this moment, I hadn’t. Furthermore, you seem to be missing the point, they didn’t make the new leveling system for people who already knew the game, they made it for newcomers.

They should have had a way for veterans to skip the new leveling system at least in part, but aside from that, you weren’t really the target audience for it.

Maybe talk to a few newcomers who have legitimately never seen GW2 before, and see what THEY think.

Unfortunately, even if you have one or more level 80s, if you make a new character you are stuck with the level-gating. Just because i have two 80s doesn’t mean I don’t want to play alts of different classes. That’s just my personal experience, and why I think that line I bolded in is not a good way to look at it.

Pirlipat.2479:

Show me where I have insulted anyone.

I’m not saying you did. But that doesn’t mean people haven’t. On reddit, one guy called for a specific dev to be fired. Even here, one guy defended his right to call the devs stupid. Because it was tough love.

No one has a right to call the devs stupid. It’s not a right you get. People overstate cases, threaten to leave, try to get people to boycott the game, and zero of that is actually constructive. If you want to help the game, list your points calmly and logically and stop being so aggressive. All that does is turn reasonable people against you.

I’m not targeting a single person in this thread. But the amount of misinformation I’ve seen, the amount of threatening, the amount of insults was way off the scale.

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

Sauncho.8076:

“Colin said, and I believe this, that the uptake of new players was absolutely not good enough and that until that was taken care of they wouldn’t be able to provide those other experiences.”

As I stated, here in lies the problem. Leadership and decision making! Instead of saying to themselves….hey, the uptake in new players is not good enough. We should probably make an expansion and revitalize the game. You know, get people interested in the game again. This will in turn bring players back and bring in new players who see all the advertisements, etc.

But instead they decided to revamp the leveling experience. Which in turn kitten’d off much of the player base (again, IMO).

Very bad decision if you ask me, one which falls squarely within the lap of ANETs leadership and vision.

Okay let’s get this straight. They come out with an expansion. It’ll be level 80 content, because it’s an expansion. So people buy the game, and then they get to level 20 and stop, because uptake is good and what have they accomplished.

Before they release an expansion uptake has to be better. That’s the simple logic of the situation.

Ideally, an expansion would introduce at least one new playable race and a new 1-15 starter zone in which players of that race would begin their adventures, along with many more new zones full of fun stuff to do and cool things to see ranging from level 15 and up to level 80. Mass quantities of new content spread across the entirety of the game. How about a new profession to go with all that new content? Heck, yeah!

Presumably the level up of that race though, following the current patterns wouldn’t help. The experience has to be better, or there’s no point in making an expansion. Anet seems to think so, and they have more software development experience than I do.

It’s easy to think an expansion will solve all problems if it solves your problems. But that’s not neceesarily the case.

We’re human. We communicate via language. Human languages are composed of words. Words have definitions. To define something is to limit it. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to discuss anything without breaking it up into its components to be able to talk about it.

In spite of that, people tend to generalize in their speech and written work. If they dislike one aspect of a complex system, they say they dislike the whole system. This is because the negative aspect assumes a greater weight than other aspects which were experienced as positive or neutral.

When giving feedback, saying, “I hate the update.” is a valid point. It is, however, not helpful if your goal is to achieve change. It is better to say, “I hate the update because of feature X, which I hate because of (reason).” If you can then go on to suggest alternatives, more power to you — but that’s not crucial. Someone else, or the developer, may come up with an alternative. However, the more specific the criticism, the better.

Take the NPE update. My initial reaction was that it would not work as a way to better teach the game. Since then, I’ve experienced it, and seen further information from the developer about it. I still feel negative about it, but believe that changes might be made to it which will allow me to eliminate or minimize my displeasure and still allow Anet to achieve their goals.

The NPE does not really do a better job of teaching the game. What it does do is to better foster a feeling of wanting to continue, to level up again and see what you get. The original game did not do an effective job of this. This is incredibly difficult for a vet to see when all they can think about is, “It used to be this way.”

It’s pretty clear that the NPE in its entirety is not going to be dropped, so I prefer to concentrate on suggesting changes that would make a better experience for vets leveling alts while maintaining the sense of reward that ANet was trying to foster.

ipan.4356:

…The downside to what you are doing is that you contribute to the feeling that people are not being listened to, that their issues are being dimunized, and you come off as belittling people who have problems with the way the game is being developed.

For example:

• In a different thread he bestowed his knowledge as a ‘shop owner’.
• In a different thread he bestowed his knowledge as an ‘educator’.
• In this thread he is bestowing knowledge as an ‘editor’.
  I can’t wait to hear which career he picks next to inform the unwashed masses.
• Scrolling further down it looks like he went with… ‘moderator’.

ipan.4356:

I’m curious, how do you believe these posts of yours actually aid Anet/GW2 in any way? I don’t believe they do, or at least not as much as you think.

Delusional? If the Anet crew needs/wants to feel good about their work, they can look into the eyes of their spouses and children knowing they are providing food on the table and a warm roof over their heads. Or a stranger that lurks their forums 8 hours a day.

Yeah, I’m going with delusional.

Vayne.8563:

15% of people post on forums. I know this from other forums I’ve moderated. This doesn’t mean 15% read forums. 15% post of them.

Stop dressing your opinions up as concrete fact when you swat at others for doing the exact same thing.

Vayne.8563:

But I still get thank yous from people every single week.

Congratulations?
So is this what drives you to do what you do? 8 hours a day. Every day.

Vayne.8563:

So, a person puts down a complaint, and it’s followed by another complaint and it’s followed by another.

If I were a person just reading, I’d see all complaints and no one actually saying, you know I like this, or this particular complaint is stating things that aren’t quite true, or this is really exaagerated.
That’s 80, maybe 85% of the lurkers, some of whom may not know better. They may, they may not. I don’t know because they don’t talk.

Where do you expect people to lodge their complaints? The Better Business Bureau?

Ultimately, all of this just looks and feels like one big ego stroke.

Odyssey.2613:

ipan.4356:

…The downside to what you are doing is that you contribute to the feeling that people are not being listened to, that their issues are being dimunized, and you come off as belittling people who have problems with the way the game is being developed.

For example:

• In a different thread he bestowed his knowledge as a ‘shop owner’.
• In a different thread he bestowed his knowledge as an ‘educator’.
• In this thread he is bestowing knowledge as an ‘editor’.
  I can’t wait to hear which career he picks next to inform the unwashed masses.
• Scrolling further down it looks like he went with… ‘moderator’.

ipan.4356:

I’m curious, how do you believe these posts of yours actually aid Anet/GW2 in any way? I don’t believe they do, or at least not as much as you think.

Delusional? If the Anet crew needs/wants to feel good about their work, they can look into the eyes of their spouses and children knowing they are providing food on the table and a warm roof over their heads. Or a stranger that lurks their forums 8 hours a day.

Yeah, I’m going with delusional.

Vayne.8563:

15% of people post on forums. I know this from other forums I’ve moderated. This doesn’t mean 15% read forums. 15% post of them.

Stop dressing your opinions up as concrete fact when you swat at others for doing the exact same thing.

Vayne.8563:

But I still get thank yous from people every single week.

Congratulations?
So is this what drives you to do what you do? 8 hours a day. Every day.

Vayne.8563:

So, a person puts down a complaint, and it’s followed by another complaint and it’s followed by another.

If I were a person just reading, I’d see all complaints and no one actually saying, you know I like this, or this particular complaint is stating things that aren’t quite true, or this is really exaagerated.
That’s 80, maybe 85% of the lurkers, some of whom may not know better. They may, they may not. I don’t know because they don’t talk.

Where do you expect people to lodge their complaints? The Better Business Bureau?

Ultimately, all of this just looks and feels like one big ego stroke.

You know, it’s quite funny that people who have lived their whole lives have held down different jobs and they have different experiences to back up what they say and think. There are things I feel more qualified to comment on because of my experiences and things I feel less qualified to comment on.

I don’t comment on graphics very often because I don’t have an eye for graphics. I did do some alpha testing for a 3D rendering company and I know a bit about it, but I definitely don’t have the experience I’d need to offer an opinion that might hold some weight.

As for the rest of your personal attack, it’s quite okay if you feel this way. I have no problem with it. It doesn’t change anything I said in my OP. Clearly if you had something to say about that, you wouldn’t have had to bother with this diatribe.

Oh and as for the 15% forum thing, if you read entire posts, I did say might be 10%, might be 20%, but in every forum or list or bulletin board I’ve ever had anything to do with, 15% is a pretty good average.

Relating personal experience is perfectly valid. I don’t think many people would disagree with the fact that the majority of people who visit forums don’t post.

It’s tiresome seeing your name plastered everywhere with the same theme of belittling, marginalizing, and contradictory double talk post after post after post.

Sorry if I come off …sharp. It’s not a personal attack. But hey, you can certainly go ahead and report my post again if you’d like. Afterall, I’m pretty sure I’m not the guy everyone hopes to avoid when they click on a thread.

Odyssey.2613:

It’s tiresome seeing your name plastered everywhere with the same theme of belittling, marginalizing, and contradictory double talk post after post after post.

Sorry if I come off …sharp. It’s not a personal attack. But hey, you can certainly go ahead and report my post again if you’d like. Afterall, I’m pretty sure I’m not the guy everyone hopes to avoid when they click on a thread.

I was gonna say the same thing, but it’d be more fun to let people look for the contradictions by themselves buried throughout his walls of texts ala Where’s Waldo.

Leo Paul.1659:

Odyssey.2613:

It’s tiresome seeing your name plastered everywhere with the same theme of belittling, marginalizing, and contradictory double talk post after post after post.

Sorry if I come off …sharp. It’s not a personal attack. But hey, you can certainly go ahead and report my post again if you’d like. Afterall, I’m pretty sure I’m not the guy everyone hopes to avoid when they click on a thread.

I was gonna say the same thing, but it’d be more fun to let people look for the contradictions by themselves buried throughout his walls of texts ala Where’s Waldo.

Again its a cognitive distortion (Chek: 14 Always been right in the link) :

http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/0002153

This kind of distortion tends to cause contradiction over time, since the guy who have it try to “win the argument and probe his values, etc. are the right ones” with whatever argument he get to his current predicament, lately losing the logic in his complete blabbering (contradictions).

The same goes when he post and post, etc like trying to get the last word of it, its also a part of this distortion.

The idiom “one bad apple ruins the bunch” comes to mind. Like a truck full of bushel baskets, some with bad ones and some without. Either way you slice it, all of them will be tainted by the bad ones.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t comment on graphics very often because I don’t have an eye for graphics. I did do some alpha testing for a 3D rendering company and I know a bit about it, but I definitely don’t have the experience I’d need to offer an opinion that might hold some weight.

No, go ahead, share your thoughts, please. It didn’t stop you before with shop owner, educator, editor, moderator…

Add Program QA Associate to the list?

Again:
I have nothing against you voicing your opinions. What I do have a problem with is you clearly and intentionally wording your opinions and experiences as fact, and then going around jumping on others for doing the exact same thing.

Odyssey.2613:

It’s tiresome seeing your name plastered everywhere with the same theme of belittling, marginalizing, and contradictory double talk post after post after post.

Sorry if I come off …sharp. It’s not a personal attack. But hey, you can certainly go ahead and report my post again if you’d like. Afterall, I’m pretty sure I’m not the guy everyone hopes to avoid when they click on a thread.

If they bother you so much, feel free to skip my posts. I’m okay with that.