Guild Wars 2

….but I dislike some aspects of your company.

You have created a really great game. It’s immersive, expansive, with challenging content and entertaining classes. I truly enjoy logging in every day to play it.

However, you have terrible customer support and policies.

You have an infamous reputation for taking a very long time to respond to tickets and complaints. And when you do finally respond, if you respond at all, you often give vague or completely unhelpful responses along the lines of: “this is not a feature we provide.” With no alternatives or explanations, no matter how many times a person requests one.

You rarely, if ever, respond to player requests for changes in the game. The Engineer’s “hobosack” issue is the most infamous of these cases. You refuse to even acknowledge that it’s an unpopular feature, or that you are looking for a means of changing/ removing it, or even just flat out telling the players that you aren’t ever going to change it. You gave a vague response almost 2 years ago that was along the lines of “we are looking into it.” and then nothing since. Yet, you have found time to add numerous weapon and armor skins, kites, little follower pets including a blasted golden pig, and even time to change the memser’s phantasms so they they show the mesmer’s packpiece.

Your name policy. A person’s name is important, for all the reasons you say; a name is how a person identifies themselves, and how other players perceive them. So why do you not make it abundantly clear when they create an account that this display name is not just for the forums, but is plastered all over their account, and is even displayed next to their character names. You do not make it clear that this name is the primary means of identifying a player in and out of game, nor do you make it clear that they will never EVER be allowed to change it. Given the importance of their account display name, you should allow customers to change this name to better suit their desires for identification.

Once again, keep up the good work on the awesome game you have made, but please do more to improve your customer relations and policies.

OP, if you look at your thread in account support you will see you have been granted a very rare exception to the display name change policy because you self reported your own inappropriate name. You should be happy. I’ve never once seen this happen and I’m guessing it is only because you self reported. Select your new name wisely.

To answer your question related to their policy on display name changes:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Name-Questions-Please-read-merged/first#post2087181

JustTrogdor.7892:

OP, if you look at your thread in account support you will see you have been granted a very rare exception to the display name change policy because you self reported your own inappropriate name. You should be happy. I’ve never once seen this happen and I’m guessing it is only because you self reported. Select your new name wisely.

To answer your question related to their policy on display name changes:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Name-Questions-Please-read-merged/first#post2087181

Oh my, you are right. Good on you A-net!

Still though, I stand by what I say in this thread. I am not angry, nor am I trying to badmouth the A-net devs. As I said: I love your game. I am just trying to give some constructive criticism.

In my experience, their support is not slow at all. I usually get a response within 7 business days of my ticket. I’ve only had it go longer once and that was due to a high level of tickets probably reporting for the same thing that I was.

They have also be exceptionally kind with helping me with a mistake that -I- personally made and was not even entitled to their help. I mistakenly bought an outfit I owned on my account for myself when I meant to give it to someone else. That is a policy they have stating that they don’t refund gem items. But they gave me a one-time reprieve because they like to work with customers.

I know that not everyone will have the same experience, though I highly suspect you are upset because they gave you a response you didn’t like the answer to. At least they aren’t steam, someone “MAY” have accessed my account there so they locked it down and now I can’t use it. My ticket has been pending for 13 days without anything other than the initial auto-reply. Now THEY are slow and we are talking about actual dollars here that is trapped on an account I can’t use.

As for the naming policy it clearly states when you make your account name that it will be the name that is displayed on the forums AND in the game. And their naming policy is quite clear in laymen terms and everything about what is appropriate and not.

The hobo-sack incident is something they are looking to fix they have said as much just because it looks easy doesn’t mean it is and easy fix and its also a cosmetic change. There are countless other times ANet has listened to the community and changed things, even within a couple of days (Custom Gem Order Form I’m looking at you). You cannot make a blanket statement about them never listening to the community by singling out a few of the instances they haven’t had time or resources or the priority to fix while simultaneously ignoring the same amount of examples that discount your statement. It doesn’t work that way.

Finally, just because you think something is wrong doesn’t mean that ANet thinks it is. They can listen and take in feedback and still decide that its not what is right for their game. There are three sides to every argument about that anyone. What one person likes another may not, and ANet may have a third idea all together.

About the hobo sacks, kits can be considered the engineer’s secondary weapons. So you need a way to show players their “weapons”, just like a warrior or a thief’s weapon swap. Maybe separate PvP and PvE hobosacks, since it’s more important to show them in PvP than in PvE?

I don’t know where you sent tickets, but mine usually got resolved in less than 3 days…sometimes in 1 day, and they were kind, nice and helpfull.

And i have some experience with waiting weeks for a ticket to be answeard…

Also i think they sometimes listen too much to player feedback…taking out WvWvW from Map Completion?…didn’t sit right with me this one, but ofc there are 90% of players who can’t be botherd to enter once a day WvW maps to make the achievement…it’s not supposed to be easy…but moving on.

I think the crux of the OP’s post had to do with his display name issue as referenced in the support forum. The other stuff I think was just added to accentuate his point as he was angry at the time.

I’m just mad I didn’t think of “Formulates Cat Maps” first for my name

DarkWasp.7291:

I’m just mad I didn’t think of “Formulates Cat Maps” first for my name

Well it was much better than his original display name.

I see Formulates Cat Maps is now Gern.

/yawn

I liked Formulates Cat Maps better. It was memorable. Gern is bland. forgettable.

Oh, well. Enjoy your new display name…… (what was his name again?)

DarkWasp.7291:

I’m just mad I didn’t think of “Formulates Cat Maps” first for my name

Haha, you can have it.

As for Gern, it has far more personal significance with me, which is the real purpose of a name, is it not ?

I cannot thank A-net enough for taking pity on my plight, they really pulled through.

Now, could you please get rid of those Hobosacks?

Gern.2978:

DarkWasp.7291:

I’m just mad I didn’t think of “Formulates Cat Maps” first for my name

Haha, you can have it.

In honor of your plight I took it as a character name. I’ll trade it back to you for 500 gold

JustTrogdor.7892:

Gern.2978:

DarkWasp.7291:

I’m just mad I didn’t think of “Formulates Cat Maps” first for my name

Haha, you can have it.

In honor of your plight I took it as a character name. I’ll trade it back to you for 500 gold

Hey. Not fair. >.>

That’s a cool, funny name though. Lol.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

JustTrogdor.7892:

Gern.2978:

DarkWasp.7291:

I’m just mad I didn’t think of “Formulates Cat Maps” first for my name

Haha, you can have it.

In honor of your plight I took it as a character name. I’ll trade it back to you for 500 gold

Hey. Not fair. >.>

That’s a cool, funny name though. Lol.

I have a few free characters slots so why not. I’ll make it a key/transmute charge farmer for a bit.

Customer service with any company is usually a mixed bag. That’s because there are lots of representatives and there are lots of tickets.

I know that if I do 100 things a day 2 or 3 of them are going to be wrong, because no one is perfect. That’s true of anyone.

So if you have a bad experience, CS is bad, and if you have good experience CS is good…however it’s doubtful anyone person has enough experience to really say. It’s like trying to figure out if the ecto salvage rate has changed. You’d need to know the results of thousands of tickets to really judge if it’s good or bad.

-I send a ticket two weeks ago, got an answer that fixed my problem in about 12 hours

-I play my engi a lot, but I don’t understand the problem with hobosacks.

-All my great character names got banned :’(

Like those before me, I just had to post as well to emphasis what incredible customer service and support A-Net has. They helped me to satisfactorily resolve a serious issue in a timely manner. They were reasonably fast, friendly, helpful, and responsive to my needs. One just has to have a little patience and understanding about how many tickets/issues they have to deal with every single day. As any good business that is overwhelmed, they will prioritize tasks….and getting a name change is NOT a serious issue which is why I am guessing you had to wait longer than you wanted to for support …and which I am guessing is the reason for all the negativity in your post.

Secondly, if you look at the direction of the changes that they have made to the game, you can clearly see that they DO listen to the player community. And if you have seen all of the ridiculous feedback that gets posted on this forum everyday by individuals that have no clue about game design/gaming psychology/the gaming industry then you would be immensely grateful that A-Net is not more responsive to player feedback than they already are.

Lastly, you lose credibility for the merits of your post by blatantly attempting to disguise what amounts to just another QQ thread as a “game-appreciation” thread with your title. If you genuinely want to offer meaningful, constructive criticism to help A-Net improve their services and game, be up-front and objective about it.