Guild Wars 2

I will give ANet one thing, they listen to the community. Look at all the changes that have been or are being made to the game.
I have seen more dedication to the players in the 2 months this game has been out than I’ve seen Blizzard give in the 5 years that I’ve played WoW.

I was just visiting some other forums for crits and giggles when I saw a topic about resurrection sickness. It was and still is such a stupid mechanic that essentially stops you from being able to play the game for 10 minutes (you are completely useless in combat) because your stat’s are reduced by 75%. That’s for rezzing at a spirit healer. You would need to do this if for some reason your corpse was in an unreachable area, or you didn’t want to waste 10 minutes running to your corpse. These players have been asking (me included) for that mechanic to be removed for years.

At least we don’t have things like that in GW2. And if there was, ANet would listen to the communities hatred towards it and remove it immediately. That said, there are still issues with the game but I believe they will be addressed and it could be much, much worse.

When I truly compare services nothing even comes close to the similarity in mindsets between the players and the makers of this game. Because after all, they are gamers themselves and actually play their own content. People say us MMO players have been spoiled? No.. we are only just now starting to get spoiled.

I actually enjoy seeing the devs post on the forums. Even if it’s a topic that isn’t serious. It just helps build a community between the players and the developers. The MMO I played before this the devs almost never posted in the forums.

I agree. I have been quite impressed at the changes and tweeks I’ve seen in the past few months. Its great that Anet is weighing and listening to comments, suggestions and complaints from its customers and adapting to make them happier!

On the same note, yet slightly different direction: During the Halloween events, I ran into an actual Anet GM in Queensdale! He was on his day off, but took the time to help us with an event issue and the problem was fixed in less than 10 minutes time. I’ve never played an MMO with that kind of service.

@Ageia I met a GM in LA during the halloween event. She just /danced and emote spammed with me lol oh and she said “:3”

I should have taken an SS.

I saw a dev doing Mad Kings Says with us. Hehe

Well dunno if they listen or not… I’ve reported several bugs already and I find it kinda disheartening to come back and see they’re still there.

I’d understand if it there something that seemed really hard to fix, but some are so simple that I don’t know why they haven’t fixed it yet (Rune of the Pack, Elementalist’s Cantrips CD reduction not applied to Mist Form, ALOT of graphical issues of broken textures and such).

But they do listen to us, people complained alot about Elementalist’s down state and they fixed it for the best! Among other stuff…

We do have the downed penalty, 25% less health each time you’re downed. It lasts just a minute or so.

I think they really have good intentions, that “when it’s ready” was something they really wanted. Yes, we’re suffering a lot of bugs, including progress-stopping ones in a few lines of the story-quests. I don’t think they’re deliberately leaving the bugs there to irritate, however.

They’ve nerfed pretty hard 2 of the 3 most-OP-complained-about professions (mesmer and thief, watch out warriors, you’re next).

They’ve stopped permitting players to go to other servers at will, after hordes of complaints re WvW.

Mostly I think they really want to have the best game on the market, and to please the customers.

Uh… so obviously you like Anet’s service. That’s great! Although I think saying that they “listen to the players” is not exactly the right wordings… it’s more like they “take player feedback into account when making changes”, although ultimately if what the players suggest doesn’t fit into their gameplay philosophy; they would over-ride it even if the idea is not flawed.

Like if they think it’s okay to release newer content while some of the bugs haven’t been fixed in the game, then that’s their call. It’s not technically a compromise like the phrase “listen to players” indicates IMO; again, it’s more like “taking player feedback into account when making changes” – which basically means like for example: if nobody wants mounts * then they won’t make mounts. However vice-versa, if equal amount of people want and don’t want mount, then they get the final vote. That could be as close as 58% want mount and 42% don’t want mount… (and hey, how many times does that happen in a voting for any game?… ^ like always).

But I’ll look at both sides here… and also say that:

A part of “engineering” (of any sort) is to find a way to convince yourself that the decision you’re making is the right one. It works if you’ve got solid facts… but if they’re taking player opinions as “facts”…. that’s very risky; I think that’s why they are very reluctant to just fix some of the bugs and make big changes to the game.

TL:DR – I agree that Anet are indeed giving players a say in the matter before they make the final decision. But sometimes they don’t.

They are unlike Blizzard who doesn’t look at player feedback (and just release their own ideas); and that’s Blizzard’s lost because they don’t benefit from knowing what kind of decisions are the make-or-break decisions. For Anet this is ‘theoretically’ a win-win strategy (we players help them find bugs ‘free of charge’ for them right? :P). But in reality, it’s also a very risky strategy (the Blizzard guys weren’t dumb) because sometimes the media don’t really understand ‘what they are saying’. Like in the teams in the NBA, NFL, or NHL… they sometimes have to shut out the public in order to keep ’believing their team philosophy"…. but at the same time, knowing that the media are simply stating what they see as facts. Looking at both sides.

But I believe right now they’re taking opinions from their internal tester and the public; that’s not enough. IMO they should also collect opinions from “the best players”, such as:

- 10 of the Best PVE Combat Player.
- 10 of the Best Explorer (ie. 10 dudes who have logged hundreds of hours just on exploring the land of Tyria).
- 10 of the Most satisfied dungeon players and 10 of the most dissatisfied dungeon players (and what they think).

If Anet really wants this game to be casually fun and also skillfully challenging, then it can’t just be asking the “nice community people” or “people they trust” or “the top tiers players”…. it has to be a balance of all three. It’ll be difficult to do – but I think the decision coming out of that will be the most balanced decision for GW2.

You wouldn’t say that if you were a ranger on the ranger forums. Only after the huge explosion of dissatisfied players flocking to the forums did they bother to even have a single post on there by a developer.

my opinion on Anet listening is going to be sort of skewed until i see thieves put in line with the rest of the classes.

highest burst damage, highest condition damage, easiest ways to escape combat between stealth and teleport, fastest persistent run speed increase…. its obvious someone at Anet has a real thing for the class.

they may have changed a couple things you like, but seriously, people keep complaining about this one class and its just been allowed to be in a different league than the rest of the game.

Samfisher.7942:

You wouldn’t say that if you were a ranger on the ranger forums. Only after the huge explosion of dissatisfied players flocking to the forums did they bother to even have a single post on there by a developer.

Rangers are getting a rework, and like I said, if a bunch of people expressed their hatred… haha

Fritz.5026:

my opinion on Anet listening is going to be sort of skewed until i see thieves put in line with the rest of the classes.

highest burst damage, highest condition damage, easiest ways to escape combat between stealth and teleport, fastest persistent run speed increase…. its obvious someone at Anet has a real thing for the class.

they may have changed a couple things you like, but seriously, people keep complaining about this one class and its just been allowed to be in a different league than the rest of the game.

I would suggest playing a thief so you can see both sides of the fence. And try spvp tournaments with friends or guild mates if you want to experience any sense of balance. You really can’t expect not to run into a ton of glass cannon kitten thieves in WvW or hotjoin spvp. Of course they’re going to hit hard, build a bunker to counter them?

Have you ever heard of DayZ? The Dev team for that Mod are someone ANet should really look to become. Rocket has fixed loads of bugs and added in so much content in about the time it took ANet to realize how stupid the World Transfers are.

Here’s the point. I’m hoping that one day, ANet will get a LEGIT team working on bugs and fixing problems. Cause that is what this game needs. And until that happens I really can’t say I like them very much… Compared to when I first started playing.. It’s better. I’m hoping to fall in love with them (No kitten or insane) soon. When they remove World Transfers or limit it to once per month and fix the Warrior’s Vengeance bug that causes him to die twice.

And nerf the thief.. But lets not get into that right now.

Coming from a different game whose development team is completely invisible on their official forums (and whose community team is notorious for making vague and continually unfulfilled promises of future “improved” communication) I have to hand it to the GW2 team.

Yes, there is always room for improvement, and some issues have managed to fall through the cracks. But the level of interaction here on these forums is far, FAR more than I was seeing in my previous game.

I’m quite happy at the moment.

rezz sickness really??? Who cares about 10 mins when you wait 45+ mins to join WvW. I’d join spvp but only game is domination.

lol…they have enough money to run for years..

Knifeprrty.8274:

btw who cares about forums when they rather post critical info on twitter or facebook… really ya’ll know this game is dead in 3 months

because a small percentage of people actually read the forum. i bet not even 1% of the people that bought the game have visited the forums once. whereas a large, large majority of people (sadly) visit twitter and facebook much, much more frequently then the forums.

nvmvoidrays.2158:

Knifeprrty.8274:

btw who cares about forums when they rather post critical info on twitter or facebook… really ya’ll know this game is dead in 3 months

because a small percentage of people actually read the forum. i bet not even 1% of the people that bought the game have visited the forums once. whereas a large, large majority of people (sadly) visit twitter and facebook much, much more frequently then the forums.

Alongside the free advertisement.