Guild Wars 2

I’ve been spending a good portion of today browsing the forums and checking out people’s response to the latest f&f ipdate. While it seems there are some who seem either unaffected or ambivalent about the patch, many are up in arms. While this is inevitable in an mmo, I hope the devs are listening. Furthermore, I hope they are prepared to respond. As a player immersed in a game you have come to love, you can’t help but become invested and defensive of it. So when it is tampered with in a way you find upsetting, it is natural to want to discuss it. So far there have been a LOT of one-sided conversations happening here, and I hope the devs will respond. Yes, you can’t please everyone, and it isn’t feasible or necessary to address every little complaint, but something is wrong when this many people are saying many of the same things (ie ranger nerfing, mystic forge gambling, wvw character-bound abilities).

I know it’s wishful thinking, but it would be nice to know someone is at least paying attention to our complaints.

Personally anything that can be considered negative gets ignored in my opinion, but one can hope.

The community is split in half Everflame. Half like what is going on, others miss the game that they bought months ago. What is more important than the devs “listening” (technically reading) is what they will do next. I believe they are paying attention to what players are saying because that is why we have gotten the patches that we have recieved recently (whether we as individuals like them or not.) Every thing that has happened is because someone wanted the change.

Of course the devs are listening, but I challenge you to do this.

Abandon all your preconceptions and REALLY read the forums. This is what you’ll find.

For every person asking for something, there will be at least another person asking for something that’s mutually exclusive. Now you, as a dev, without your preconceptions, need to decide who to listen to.

It’s easy to say rangers should be fixed. It’s hard to say how they should be fixed that won’t break everything else. It’s easy to say they shouldn’t have nerfed quickness, until you see that several people, including people who play mesmers, have agreed that it was OP and should be nerfed.

So who,. as a dev, do you listen to? Of course they’re listening. They have people who read these forums and flag serious matters, you can count on it. The question is, how many things are said on this forums that get a unanimous backing of the entire player base.

People used to complain a LOT about stuff to do at 80. The devs brought out the fractals and ascended gear. Some people loved it and some people hated it. Some people, those who hated it, said, the devs didn’t listen. But the people who loved it felt the devs did listen…to them.

What makes you think they’re not listening?

That’s an interesting point. Is this true? Is every patch the result of player requests or merely what someone somewhere has decided is best for the game.

Most “official” forums in most games are filled with negativity anyway.

Agent Ice.6578:

The community is split in half Everflame. Half like what is going on, others miss the game that they bought months ago. What is more important than the devs “listening” (technically reading) is what they will do next. I believe they are paying attention to what players are saying because that is why we have gotten the patches that we have recieved recently (whether we as individuals like them or not.) Every thing that has happened is because someone wanted the change.

Every thing?
That’s taking things a bit too far… :-)

I used to think that we are being heard. I trusted the devs to make the right decisions based on the feedback they received here and in-game. But, since the November Ascended-gate fiasco it feels like its a us vs them scenario. Yeah, they took a large amount of flack back then, especially from the manifesto bashing GW1 faithful but it should be no reason to shun everyone else who comes to these forums with a (sometimes) valid suggestion of complaint. Communication from that side of the fence (if you will) is at an all time low. We intermittently get fed scraps of info… rarely anything useful. So we are left in the dark most of the time as to where the game is headed and what is planned in future. Design direction aside, having someone come in once a week to answer questions around the most discussed topics on the forums for that week would go a long way in rectifying the communication gap that currently exist. But that is wishful thinking, at best.

They probably don’t fully realize that by ignoring players they give the impression of not caring at all about the player’s concerns. And I think (hope) that’s incorrect. I think (hope) they care and they have a solid plan for what they want to achieve in the game going forward. They must have valid reasons for all the nerfs and strange balance-related changes but they fail to bring those reasons to the table. Nobody expects a democracy, it’s their game and they can run it whatever way they feel like, but it is still important to feel like you are part of this growing, immersible world that they have created for us. And the only way for that to happen is by proper communication.

Everflame.1305:

That’s an interesting point. Is this true? Is every patch the result of player requests or merely what someone somewhere has decided is best for the game.

Nah, every patch isn’t. But there are people asking for a lot of stuff that others hate. Those who hate the change will feel they’re not being listened to. But they wouldn’t have to look hard to see other people have asked for the change.

For example, people have asked for quickness to be nerfed. Those who love it, hate that it has been nerfed. I think it was OP personally, and have for a long time, even though I used it. But I used it because it was OP, knowing it was going to have to be nerfed at some point.

But there are lots of things people ask for that do get into patches. People asked for boss fights to be more profitable and Anet did that. And as soon as they did, people complained about overflow servers and dragon events being too crowded and lag.

Seriously, there’s not much a company can add or change without SOMEONE complaining.

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Agent Ice.6578:

The community is split in half Everflame. Half like what is going on, others miss the game that they bought months ago. What is more important than the devs “listening” (technically reading) is what they will do next. I believe they are paying attention to what players are saying because that is why we have gotten the patches that we have recieved recently (whether we as individuals like them or not.) Every thing that has happened is because someone wanted the change.

Every thing?
That’s taking things a bit too far… :-)

I used to think that we are being heard. I trusted the devs to make the right decisions based on the feedback they received here and in-game. But, since the November Ascended-gate fiasco it feels like its a us vs them scenario. Yeah, they took a large amount of flack back then, especially from the manifesto bashing GW1 faithful but it should be no reason to shun everyone else who comes to these forums with a (sometimes) valid suggestion of complaint. Communication from that side of the fence (if you will) is at an all time low. We intermittently get fed scraps of info… rarely anything useful. So we are left in the dark most of the time as to where the game is headed and what is planned in future. Design direction aside, having someone come in once a week to answer questions around the most discussed topics on the forums for that week would go a long way in rectifying the communication gap that currently exist. But that is wishful thinking, at best.

They probably don’t fully realize that by ignoring players they give the impression of not caring at all about the player’s concerns. And I think (hope) that’s incorrect. I think (hope) they care and they have a solid plan for what they want to achieve in the game going forward. They must have valid reasons for all the nerfs and strange balance-related changes but they fail to bring those reasons to the table.
Nobody expects a democracy, it’s their game and they can run it whatever way they feel like, but it is still important to feel like you are part of this growing, immersible world that they have created for us. And the only way for that to happen is by proper communication.

Did you ever consider that the changes might be the result of too much “democracy” – that they “listen” too much to players.

You see, there is reason to believe that what was presented in the manifesto video was the vision of the game Anet wanted if they could do whatever they wanted, ignoring commercial interests, game longevity and whining players. What you got today is most likely a product of “democracy”, that is, a product of listening to all the interests in and outside the game.

Well, the dev feedback tends to be fine on most areas of the game, except when it comes to class balance.

It’s pretty clear that there’s more unrest in the area of class balance than there has been since the game’s release and having little to no feedback on the reasoning behind the balance changes is pretty disturbing.

Honestly I’ve been wondering that myself. I really dont understand how they’re balancing classes. The three most complained about classes in PvP are Thief, Mesmer, and Ele right now. Mesmer and thief have been complained about since release, ele since whenever they got buffed. The only nerfs that were given out this patch were to Engineers (again, least played class getting nerfed everypatch), Warriors (because apparently they were too op in PvE so they got nerfed in PvP and PvE with no buffs, except to banners which still aren’t very good for sPvP), and finally rangers. No idea why they are nerfing these classes first. They’ve done this about every patch, leave the complained about classes alone and nerf the weirdest classes in ways people never even talked about.

I think about 50% of each patch is focused on fixing things but I don’t think anything can really be fixed until they can balance pve separately from spvp.

I bet most of the content in these patches has been developed for months so they are stuck with what they have until they are done rolling it out.

If the devs are listening (which I believe they are) the best course of action when navigating through all the chatter and decide who to listen to and who not to.. is just to:

Add stuff to the game! That’s it.

Don’t take stuff away, don’t nerf anything, don’t reduce anything.. just add and then add some more. If you start removing content, removing efficiency, nerfing classes, reducing effectiveness on things, people will inevitably walk away.

If they however, start adding to what they already have, make skills more interesting, more useful, increase in efficient ways to farm, more content with more rewards, they’ll be hard pressed to find anyone complaining.

Add stuff! Do not take it away.

People have been commenting on how boring the Claw of Jormag event is and since the patch it’s been a lot more exciting. Well, interesting at least anyway. Unless that’s just coincidence then the devs have listened to that feedback

My particular gripe (not charging Karma to post here on the forums) was not addressed. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it at least twice and as noone responded I can only assume 100% support from the community for that initiative.

Why you no implement this week rarrr?

thisolderhead.5127:

My particular gripe (not charging Karma to post here on the forums) was not addressed. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it at least twice and as noone responded I can only assume 100% support from the community for that initiative.

Why you no implement this week rarrr?

Nice suggestion but I don’t think Anet has the resources to do this, otherwise a “simple” dungeon finder would have been up ages ago.

Khal Drogo.9631:

thisolderhead.5127:

My particular gripe (not charging Karma to post here on the forums) was not addressed. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it at least twice and as noone responded I can only assume 100% support from the community for that initiative.

Why you no implement this week rarrr?

Nice suggestion but I don’t think Anet has the resources to do this, otherwise a “simple” dungeon finder would have been up ages ago.

A simple dungeon finder, which has links into the guesting, which ties into server side lag (perhaps), etc, – simple idea which are “so obviously simple it should have been done” can have some pretty big relationships to other subsystems.

Hence my sarcasm – should be easy to implement my idea, they had days to do it and are developers, couldn’t take too many resources surely… not as much as fixing the legandary skins particle effect problems… :P

Khal Drogo.9631:

thisolderhead.5127:

My particular gripe (not charging Karma to post here on the forums) was not addressed. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it at least twice and as noone responded I can only assume 100% support from the community for that initiative.

Why you no implement this week rarrr?

Nice suggestion but I don’t think Anet has the resources to do this, otherwise a “simple” dungeon finder would have been up ages ago.

sarcasm alert sarcasm alert

thisolderhead.5127:

A simple dungeon finder, which has links into the guesting, which ties into server side lag (perhaps), etc, – simple idea which are “so obviously simple it should have been done” can have some pretty big relationships to other subsystems.

Hence my sarcasm – should be easy to implement my idea, they had days to do it and are developers, couldn’t take too many resources surely… not as much as fixing the legandary skins particle effect problems… :P

Apparently its within other companies’ capabilities since 2000.

Would be interesting if devs could tie in game currency into PHP.

Khal Drogo.9631:

thisolderhead.5127:

A simple dungeon finder, which has links into the guesting, which ties into server side lag (perhaps), etc, – simple idea which are “so obviously simple it should have been done” can have some pretty big relationships to other subsystems.

Hence my sarcasm – should be easy to implement my idea, they had days to do it and are developers, couldn’t take too many resources surely… not as much as fixing the legandary skins particle effect problems… :P

Apparently its within other companies’ capabilities since 2000.

Would be interesting if devs could tie in game currency into PHP.

Wouldn’t be hard – ODBC + PHP = Simple old school solutions lining up in my mind.

Other games have entirely different back end engines, network, databases, kitten – and I agree it is a big tool to be missing (and hate 3rd party scams, erm sites being used as an excuse) but…

If we had two games based on the newest UR engine and they had entirely different features implemented by entirely different teams (with different end-goals) your argument about being able to cross-code that feature in might still hold true, for all we know Anet might have had it all good to go until they realised what other issues guesting had and have shelved it until they fix lag issues and the like.

Well lets look at what ppl have been asking for.
Ppl wanted a reason to do world bosses. So Anet adding in better drops from chest.
This caused them to become popular so we had lag.
So ppl wanted the lag to end. So Anet made small spaces for ppl to go to overflow making less lag.
Ppl did not want to go to overflow. So Anet pulled back on the rewards and make the events harder.
Now ppl want more rewards and the events to be easier (mainly Orr events).
So what do you think going to happen?

Point being this has happen over and over Anet dose listen they may listen too much they in the long run (about 2 months) DO changes the game off these forums. The funny thing is every time they do listen to the forums the forums get mad at them. If you ask any person of mind in this spot would they keep listening to the ppl causing the problems and making more problems with there ideals?

This is not the only time this has happen but its one of the most recent example. Alot of the progression is part of this a lot of class changes is part of this a lot of the lack of class changes is part of this a lot of the major events is part of this (guild events) adding in more type of coins to deal with RNG hate adding in more once a day rewards to deal with time consuming grind adding in fetch quest to give more of what ppl think will add depth. Its a truly never ending cycle and i must say is the biggest joke i have seen. To see ppl play out there parts so well but not seeing the big picture of what realty going on.

Anet should listen to exactly four people up here, and I am not one of them (but chances are neither are you!).

Everybody wants something.

For every person that wanted a quickness nerf, (Let’s call them A) there was a similar number of people that wanted it left alone. We’ll call them B.

Anet listens to A, nerfs quickness. B complains.
Anet listens to B, leave sit alone, A complains.
Anet tries to compromise, nerfs it a little bit. A’s unhappy because it’s not nerfed enough, and B’s unhappy because they think it shouldn’t have been touched at all.

They’re constantly walking a fine line. My personal opinion? Class balance should be a very important subject, and I honestly think they should be doing weekly / bi-weekly tweaks. GW1 took class balance very seriously, and, earlier on, there was plenty of tweaks. One week might be “We’re gonna test out giving elementalists X.” Next week it might be “Yeah, that didn’t work. We’re changing it back.”

FINALLY they realized they should split certain skills. Maybe that’s an option?

Point is…just because a thread title is “OMG DEV WE WANT AN ANSWER” and there’s no dev answer doesn’t mean it’s being ignored. Nor does the well-stated threads about problems with the game end up actually being ignored.

For each action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. (Paraphrasing, don’t remember the quote entirely.) Basically, quickness. Nerfed effectiveness, but increased duration, slightly.

My only nitpicking at the moment, is class balance is VERY important and I feel like even if the tweaks are small, they should be done regularly. I understand how difficult outputting a polished patch regularly could be, but waiting a full month to output experimental class changes, and then waiting a full month to fix the ramifications of those changes might not be the best idea.

Sure, small bug fix changes come after larger patches, but my criticism is that some changes immediately and negatively impact balance, and people should not be made to wait a full month in order for something to be done.

Jski.6180:

Well lets look at what ppl have been asking for.
Ppl wanted a reason to do world bosses. So Anet adding in better drops from chest.
This caused them to become popular so we had lag.
So ppl wanted the lag to end. So Anet made small spaces for ppl to go to overflow making less lag.
Ppl did not want to go to overflow. So Anet pulled back on the rewards and make the events harder.
Now ppl want more rewards and the events to be easier (mainly Orr events).
So what do you think going to happen?

Point being this has happen over and over Anet dose listen they may listen too much they in the long run (about 2 months) DO changes the game off these forums. The funny thing is every time they do listen to the forums the forums get mad at them. If you ask any person of mind in this spot would they keep listening to the ppl causing the problems and making more problems with there ideals?

This is not the only time this has happen but its one of the most recent example. Alot of the progression is part of this a lot of class changes is part of this a lot of the lack of class changes is part of this a lot of the major events is part of this (guild events) adding in more type of coins to deal with RNG hate adding in more once a day rewards to deal with time consuming grind adding in fetch quest to give more of what ppl think will add depth. Its a truly never ending cycle and i must say is the biggest joke i have seen. To see ppl play out there parts so well but not seeing the big picture of what realty going on.

W.r.t. to rares dropping Anet did listen and made according changes to the issues it caused. Kudos to them for that and I wish they had the same focus with regards to class balance. IMO, they didnt do this out of wanting to please the player base and more of wanting to keep players playing.

I never made a single complaint about class balance, more specifically class tweaking until this patch – only minor issues and bugfixes that were carried out very slowly (re: Necro). (Btw, is the pick up consumable auto move bug fixed as well as the random hidden immobilize bug).

If Anet doesnt quantitatively view the number of complaints this patch generated and do something about it, I feel that it is doing itself and its playerbase a disservice.

DeadlySynz.3471:

If the devs are listening (which I believe they are) the best course of action when navigating through all the chatter and decide who to listen to and who not to.. is just to:

Add stuff to the game! That’s it.

Don’t take stuff away, don’t nerf anything, don’t reduce anything.. just add and then add some more. If you start removing content, removing efficiency, nerfing classes, reducing effectiveness on things, people will inevitably walk away.

If they however, start adding to what they already have, make skills more interesting, more useful, increase in efficient ways to farm, more content with more rewards, they’ll be hard pressed to find anyone complaining.

Add stuff! Do not take it away.

Way to add power creep to the game. Buff everything until it’s equal to the best thing, but there’ll always be something else that’s best. So you add more power. And then the monsters are even more trivial so people are bored, so they have to up that.

Bad, bad suggestion.

The main beef I currently have with this patch is just that a lot of people are left wondering about the reasons/justifications for the changes made during this patch. Whilst it is all good to speculate (e.g. quickness nerfed due to warrior frenzy; quickness nerfed to balance TW; etc), wouldn’t it be better to just sit the designers and balance team representative to bring us through the patch and the justifications behind the changes made (major ones, nobody is asking devs to explain why there is mouth flapping).

Basically LoL patch notes – makes me feel involved and that devs are communicating. While I might not agree with the justification, at least we would know exactly why the team felt the change was needed. This is especially so in a game with PvE, PvP and WvW – right now I nobody really knows which aspect the nerf/buffs made were supposed to balance :P

In Guild Wars 1, there used to be on the forums a place where devs explained balancing decisions when balance patches came out. I’d welcome something like this for Guild Wars 2, and frankly, can’t understand why it hasn’t been implemented.

Maybe yes and maybe no. In part for sure, they have bug trackers etc. I see some devs posting around, so some have the time to read some stuff. Others have nothing to really do with development, such as support teams etc.

Then most devs have little to no say apart from the few that do, and those filter up I’m sure. You have lead devs, investors and even lawyers and statisticians. They even often now put other games under the microscope to figure out how they lure players as well as shrinks to tell them what we really like. Fine oiled machine… lol

Daywolf.2630:

Maybe yes and maybe no. In part for sure, they have bug trackers etc. I see some devs posting around, so some have the time to read some stuff. Others have nothing to really do with development, such as support teams etc.

Then most devs have little to no say apart from the few that do, and those filter up I’m sure. You have lead devs, investors and even lawyers and statisticians. They even often now put other games under the microscope to figure out how they lure players as well as shrinks to tell them what we really like. Fine oiled machine… lol

Is Anet a MNC or something? I dont think even NCSOFT is one.

Since NCSOFT is based in Korea and they have wholly owned subsidiaries abroad like ArenaNet or NC Japan I think that satisfies the definition of multinational corporation.

Behellagh.1468:

Since NCSOFT is based in Korea and they have wholly owned subsidiaries abroad like ArenaNet or NC Japan I think that satisfies the definition of multinational corporation.

Actually i think NCsoft sold all shares and made a new company based here in the US to handle US/EU company related things. Not sure the whole story though, but they definitely still are everywhere.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Is Anet a MNC or something? I dont think even NCSOFT is one.

NCSOFT CORP

I’m not anti-corp though, don’t get me wrong
Their mmo’s do change though, and not always for the best (lookin at you CoH )
But ANET has done well with gw1, so unlikely to go very wrong…

Geotherma.2395:

Behellagh.1468:

Since NCSOFT is based in Korea and they have wholly owned subsidiaries abroad like ArenaNet or NC Japan I think that satisfies the definition of multinational corporation.

Actually i think NCsoft sold all shares and made a new company based here in the US to handle US/EU company related things. Not sure the whole story though, but they definitely still are everywhere.

They sold off NC Interactive to a new entity, NC West Holdings, that NCSOFT also own in totality. They folded local control of Carbine and ArenaNet under it as well. This formalizes a paper entity called NC West that they created back when they virtually dismantled NC Europe and NC Austin and moved them to Seattle a few years back. The idea is to have a unified strategy to market their games outside of Asia as well as develop games in the west that would also be popular in Asia.

Behellagh.1468:

Geotherma.2395:

Behellagh.1468:

Since NCSOFT is based in Korea and they have wholly owned subsidiaries abroad like ArenaNet or NC Japan I think that satisfies the definition of multinational corporation.

Actually i think NCsoft sold all shares and made a new company based here in the US to handle US/EU company related things. Not sure the whole story though, but they definitely still are everywhere.

They sold off NC Interactive to a new entity, NC West Holdings, that NCSOFT also own in totality. They folded local control of Carbine and ArenaNet under it as well. This formalizes a paper entity called NC West that they created back when they virtually dismantled NC Europe and NC Austin and moved them to Seattle a few years back. The idea is to have a unified strategy to market their games outside of Asia as well as develop games in the west that would also be popular in Asia.

That’s curious. We and Asia tend to play games much differently. Will be interesting to see if that changes anything, although it may change very little I suppose. I wondered because the reports were very vague and didn’t include much ideas or input.

Personally I think it’s a way to box up their western properties so if they don’t succeed as well as they would like they could put the whole thing up for sale.

Behellagh.1468:

Personally I think it’s a way to box up their western properties so if they don’t succeed as well as they would like they could put the whole thing up for sale.

Maybe a certain company.. could at that point break off into its own entity if allowed :P