Guild Wars 2

Ever since the CDIs kept cropping up, there is an ever growing concern of mine which I finally attempt to address in public.

There are without a doubt a plethora of really great and well written thoughts from players in those CDIs, and it might just be me, but with certain things I don’t get the undertone out of my head of “we want it all, and we want it now.” Here is what has me worried:

I am not sure if everyone is aware of the concept to keep room for an expansive experience. If all the things which many people in the past months have cried for would have been in the game since day 1, or up to 6 months into the game, then the chance for having it detrimental to the future of GW2 is rather high. There are only so many things one can bring without a truckload of bugs to iron out and without oversaturating the player. Lots of content that has been long worked on can and will be blazed through within a fraction of the time required to build it, having a player soon again stand there saying “MOAR MOAR MOAR”.

This goes for the people who want an expansion pack, and I am one of them too, yet if have never brought it up for the following reasons:
Many things have been changing on a game-mechanic level, and the event systems are still being tested under a blanket. This is clearly evident with the living story events, and the different aspects of them. I am dead certain there is an expansion already in the works, but more in terms of conceptual lore and story and graphics assets instead of actually populating it with playable encounters. Look how much has changed in the past year, if they would have started working full front on these things, they would have been working for the trash can, as things got rewritten and all. Other than that, when looking at certain spots of the developers who are still in the company but you don’t see or hear them doing what kind of work, and when observing employee counters, I would be inclined to think we’re getting an expansion for certain, the question is only when – and patience is a virtue in this case.

The second big one being more skills, more weapons and all the whole shebang. Yes, I’ve all suggested that myself, but I also feel the need to mention that I don’t expect it any time soon. I expect new weapons in general and more unlocked weapons for professions in an expansion, not earlier. I actually do not even want to see them earlier. Alternate weapon skills could be done before an expansion pack hits, indeed, but I am on the fence about other additional support and elite skills being new content for an expansion or should be available before that.
Because the problem is, how would they mix these players who bought the expansion vs. those who didn’t? Not easy to answer from a marketing and fairness perspective.

Lastly, I want to promote the road of “cleaning up before going elsewhere.”
Sometimes, the goal for longevity is not putting out more new stuff and over-the-top ideas after the other, but rather going back and improve what is already existing. No, I do not talk about “rehashed content”. I talk about really improving and expanding old content plus fixing it. Not only playable content itself but also certain game mechanics or even interface parts as a whole. If I had to drop one example, only one, of the things that needs serious amounts of improvement (in my opinion) since day 1… I guess I would say… trading post interface. Cumbersome to work with. Horribly designed, bad performance.

But the same thing goes out to other content. Sure, I want to see an expansion, sure I want to see new zones, sure I want to see more weapons… but only when the time is right. What good would new stuff be if they would break old, unrefined things even more?

So what have I been intending to do with this topic other than ramble?
Sometimes one has to step above and beyond themselves and actually look at the bigger picture instead of what ones wants personally. I have left out a few suggestions in the CDIs because I realized… I wanted to change the game of GW2 itself. And that would have been the wrong to do. Even more, I’ve suggested things that I am not even absolutely wanting myself, moreso like… “would be nice if it is in, but I’m not all that a sucker for it” simply because I thought it would be complementing the product on a bigger scale far better than just my narrow point of view.

Ultimately, I hope some of us – including me – can take a step back and reconsider what would be doable based on existing mechanics AND reasonable for the GAME and not necessarily for us. Because in the end, forum users are just a fraction of a game’s population, and those users who actually WRITE stuff are just another fraction of the total forum users.

I’ll say this; as much as the prospect of Advanced, Sub, or Whatever Classes, I don’t see them being added without there being some form of an overhaul to the existing class system in Guild Wars 2. Even if it’s not done in front of us, I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of backdoor work to be done. Meaning that if it would be an option that ArenaNet is willing to explore, I don’t see it becoming a part of the game in 2014. Maybe mid to late 2015, or later, but this coming year is a time-stamp I very much doubt.

There in lies a problem that I can see coming forth in the near future in terms of the CDI’s development within the player-base. Currently I’m seeing a lot of of people enthusiastically giving their thoughts and ideas to ArenaNet, many of which won’t actually make it into the game within the next few months, or even more possibly, ever. What worries me is the reaction people will have once they realize that a lot of what they’ve said, supported openly or to themselves, won’t make it. I have a feeling that there will be a few groups “calling ArenaNet out,” on “lying” to them about the CDI actually affecting the game. I’m worried that some will, by the end of 2014, point back to some of these threads and “demand” that ArenaNet tell us why the ideas they believed to be good for game weren’t put in in the end. A simple solution to this would be for ArenaNet to keep some sort of transparency, but I worry what would happen if they don’t keep up with every idea, or areas they are working on.

At least I am not alone on this train, and I also share this concern with you about how players will react after posting page after page about their personal ingame baby waiting to happen.
From what we see, there are a good number of things even in the recent top3 lists which don’t seem to require much additional code for a similar process is already in place, but there are also others asking for immense changes of things that have no common basis to start from.

I dearly hope when CDIs start to close down and conclusions have been reached, that ArenaNet is going to communicate which of the things listed are going to be focused on, and which are going to be pushed back for later – all providing reasons doing so… because an explained foundation for an argument lets people understand and leaves no room for suspicious debates.
For example, they’ve said a while ago that Guild Halls are pretty low on their priority list. That is absolutely okay to say, but if we would get a reason why, then a lot of us would understand it better or could discuss it more properly.
The same thing will make or break the aftermaths of the CDIs – if Mr. Whiteside continues to be as zealous with a summary and rough estimate about the things which have been mentioned several times, and why, then this should be good for a great many of people.

I firmly believe many people are happy enough to know if something is going to be worked on or not, instead of “it is somewhere on the list”. Even if it is within a 12 month period of time. Uncertainty and doubt is more often than not the trigger for riots.

Well when asked for our top three, it’s hard to stoop down to the smaller more doable features.

I think the community is afraid it’d be like admitting the game is near perfect as it is and only needs minor changes.

I could go pages on how out of combat first person (for example) affects immersion, jumping puzzles, adds potential to dungeon puzzles and changes the way we look at armor or stop to smell the roses. How screenshots can be a lot like horizontal progression for people who like to collect the nicest views without their knee’s in the picture or bad angles.

HOWEVER

If I suddenly have to choose between that and player owned housing, a much larger feature content-wise, I’d have to side with housing.

I know you just brought out one example, but of the many you could pick have picked, you chose a very interesting one because:

We had first person camera in open beta. They took it away from us. It is a feature we know that already existed and suddenly with one other beta patch it was gone. So that should actually be a really minor issue for them to fix.

A lot of the supposedly doable things based on what we’ve seen already in game would have a serious impact in comparison to the suggestions, which is the opposite of “admitting to be a nigh perfect game.”

What I hope to see is, after ArenaNet decides that it is enough talk (CDIs) and time for action, that we get someone of the coding team down to discuss the difficulty of implementation to our proposals. No, I do NOT say that the easiest things should be implemented first, absolutely not. But just giving us, the players, who have no clue about it, an idea of the effort required for our suggestions might or might not shine light on some things that are supposedly easy to do but for a weird reason, are not.
Who knows? Perhaps they removed 1st person view because the camera could get stuck in places, since it is an actual object in the game that follows us, and they couldn’t fix it? Perhaps there were bugs that couldn’t be ironed out where people got stuck in 1st person view and the only way to get out was rebooting the game?
We don’t know. Which is a problem, because the less we know about the reasons, the less we can understand, which ultimately leads us to grow more disdain. All I know is, 1st person camera was in the game AND GW2 is a heavily modified gw1 engine, and you could do 1st person in GW1 all the time. Why we still have to struggle with 3rd person view? Nobody ever cared to elaborate, which is sad, as this is causing aggravation.

I don’t want to make the impression of talking smack at Mr. Whiteside, nor at anyone of the community. The only thing I wish for is more awareness on our side, the player side, about the nitty gritty stuff, and it would help a lot if we know more about the insides. Hence my hope for some of the coding team to step up and discuss some of our suggestions, either soon or when the CDIs are over.

And of course, I hope we are going to get more information about why and how things are limited and which reasons ArenaNet had for doing things this or that way. Mutual understanding is pretty much the only way for the community and the developers to grow closer for a better relationship to achieve greater results for a more thorough experience.

As a closing word I would like to say, that I do not believe housing to be “bigger” than first person view. Simply because we do not know how many people would benefit from housing, nor how many would benefit from 1st person view. However, if I was to make an educated guess? I reckon it wouldn’t be housing. Simply because 1st person view is part of the interface, and the UI is the ONLY thing in any game that we have to deal with 100% of the time when sitting down to play it, thus drastically increasing the chance of them going for a zoom function to begin with.

The best content is worth bantha poodoo if people don’t get there because of unbearable nuisances within the interface, or other elemental parts of the game.

So I thank you greatly for bringing up exactly this example, so I could throw my 2 cents in about it, as this showcased brilliantly what I mentioned at the start of this topic: the bigger picture and objectivity vs. the awareness of self and the supposed awareness of the wants of others.

That’s correct.
On the other hand I think that if someone gives you the chance to point out if something doesn’t work/should work differently/should have been in the game since day 1 and 90% of the people answer the same it’s in their interest to at least consider that for a couple reasons:

1) People that use their time to come here and post essays on the CDI thread are the most interested in making this game better than it is atm. I’m not saying that the other don’t care, but it’s a fact that they care less/they’ve given up/they’re fine with gw2 as it is.

2) If They’re willing to improve and ask for my opinion I think that the most respectful way to answer is to point out what really doesn’t work in the game for me regardless of the entity of the issue. It’s up to Them to see if it’s something that can be fixed and if it’s something the playerbase as a whole would like to see implemented in the game. I don’t want to sound arsh, but it’s their job, not mine, i’m not qualified to do that in the first place.

That’s something you have to take in account to, imho.

To me the main concern about the CDI is that it’s not rapresentative of the whole playerbase and could do more damage than good.
If they really want our feedback before taking action they should advertise some sort of Poll or yes/no questionary as a secondary step after this one.
But again, i’m not in charge, so the best that i can do is just to give my honest opinion and to hope for the best.

Oh totally. Neither am I qualified to decide and judge what is right for the game, and it is their job to figure that out. Yet, why should we make all of our lives more difficult than they should be? Granted, some of the problems will never disappear.

One of them is player-entitlement, which is a growing disease cropping up in the last decade. People think only because they bought a game, they can dictate whatever they see fit to the developers, or think they are entitled to 100% of the content because it is what they bought… both being logical fallacies, naturally. This ties to what you said about the people posting here not being representative of the entire playerbase, and to a certain point I agree with you. If I would grab a few examples from the recent CDI topics, then one clearly sees some posts of expectations and wants from people who don’t want to spend a single buck in gemstore and want everything presented on a silver plate. Then you see those who really provide great and logical additions to the game itself. And of course, those who want to come around and want to bring as many things they are used from other MMOs into this one, because it is their “favourite recent one”, and not because it is fitting to the game. How the relation of these three groups are in real numbers cannot be measured.
It still boggles my mind though, why developers in general do not try and create an ingame survey / poll for their needs of feedback, like we had in GW2 beta. Address the masses where the masses are… right in the game.

So it is going to be a stretch for the developers to do both, please the community but still let the game be directed in their own vision. Which is not always as possible as we think it to be, which brings me to the second point:

Gaming industry isn’t fun. It is not sunshine and butterflies.
Being a developer who has to answer to a higher authority because they’re just a subsidiary, isn’t fun.
Being a Community moderator isn’t fun. They have to deal with the flak of the players and need to walk knife’s edge of trying to calm them down without being allowed to say certain things.
On the same token, games are in high demand, meaning there can be a lot of money made, which is where big companies kick in. There is a difference in making a good living from a game, or milk as much money as possible from the playerbase.
We will never know how much ArenaNet truly is in control, after Nexon has been driving deep into the roots of NCsoft. We will never know how many decisions about the marketing and presentation of the content are in the hands of ArenaNet. I remember the faux pas of Josh Foreman about the reward system and availability of the Super Adventure Box where he mentioned it wasn’t quite how he envisioned it to be, to put it mildly.
Will our ideas be measured and weighed by how good they are for the game or by how much additional income could be generated through the gemstore? We simply don’t know because we can never be sure until this stuff goes live.

GW2 might have done well on paper and finances, but I am not sure if it has done good as a game itself during this year, to give an impression of “this is built to last” such as GW1 did – which is still frequented. At least something was happening, else we wouldn’t have gotten the CDIs all of a sudden.

I welcome this move, don’t get me wrong. To me – someone who has mentally quit with GW2 and only plays along with the guildies – it was a spark of hope that ArenaNet somewhere sat down along the line saying; “okay, this can’t go on for long, we need a better plan.”

I remember how people have been sceptic and sarcastic when the first announcement of the CDIs happened. Some people still are, because in the end it will be depending on how ArenaNet will communicate their brainstorming and how they will implement the new features.

To be fair, I’m a hesitant about the outcome as well, and I’m not as naive to think everything will happen in a short amount of time. Putting it bluntly, the only think I hope is them going to say which things they are going to prioritize, nothing else. I’d be surprised and my faith in ArenaNet reinstated if they manage to pull off 3 things mentioned on the list before July 2014.

If there is one thing I wish for the CDIs, then it is ArenaNet managing to restore the good reputation they’ve lost, and something tells me there is a small part in this of why they are exactly pushing the CDIs to the foreground. A game can only live for so long with people passing by, dropping money and leave after 4 months. Bonding with the playerbase and not disappointing the regained trust and faith is probably the best thing ArenaNet can do as of today.
And we should help them in the best way we can, without thinking about the dark side of this dedication.

I think the sort of “exclusivity” of CDIs is totally intentional. It looks exactly like what it is. It’s a discussion that allows both the players and devs to see what’s being thought on the other side.

It does not guarantee that the top voted subject will be done. A more public poll is a bit more risky. Even if it explicitly said the top voted feature might not be possible, I think most people would still expect it. Fans would start throwing around that word “promise” again.

Of course that will still happen with the CDI, but perhaps not on such a mass scale.

Khunvyel.3972:

Ultimately, I hope some of us – including me – can take a step back and reconsider what would be doable based on existing mechanics AND reasonable for the GAME and not necessarily for us. Because in the end, forum users are just a fraction of a game’s population, and those users who actually WRITE stuff are just another fraction of the total forum users.

That’s the developer’s job, not mine. Our role, as consumers, is to let the developer know what additions/changes to the game would entice us to spend money. The developer’s role is to determine which/how many preferences ought to be or can be accommodated. If I tell the developer things to add because I think they’re reasonable and not because I’d like them to be put in, I am skewing the feedback away from what will make me give them money. I don’t think that’s what they want.