Guild Wars 2

Well said. I agree. Constructive feedback is good, though a lot of it…isn’t or surrounds requests to change core game features. Hopefully Arena Net stick to what they’ve set out before them and appease those of us who do enjoy the game!

I’m one of those who absolutely loves the game but thinks the arbitrary crackdown on how people play the game is completely ridiculous. I’m not talking exploits, screw exploiters. I’m talking about something that to a normal person, plays like they’d expect it would (e.g. I need x amount of crafting ingredients, these dudes drop them, I’ll go kill y number of them until I have enough).

The game has enough going for it for me that I can live with it for now, but it’s just a bit counter-intuitive that every time we’re presented a grind, and that’s not a bad thing in an MMO, they put roadblocks up to make it more difficult.

I really enjoy the variety of content in this game, but sometimes I want to just sit and do some low stress farming while I’m watching TV, talking with my wife, whatever. This is the first game I’ve played where that’s just not possible. I have to monitor my drops and then migrate to the next place if they start falling off, usually one migration is enough for me before I get tired of worrying about it and I play an alt.

It’s one thing to say “You have to think differently to do things in this game!”, and another thing entirely to say “If you do things differently than we think you should, we’ll fix that!”

That said, there’s still tons that I enjoy doing, they just need to tone the aforementioned down a bit.

meanignless negativity? Perhaps you haven’t been on other game forums but a lot of the “negativity” you read here are very valid.

You basically just told Anet to not fix bugs, broken events, badly tuned encounters, characters losing gold and items etc.

GG, just because you like something doesn’t mean you should will yourself to be so blatantly blind.

Certain dungeons should be nerfed into ‘playable.’ That’s my gripe, the rest is fairly fun.

Ignorant praise is not better than meaningless negativity.

ounkeo.9138:

You basically just told Anet to not fix bugs, broken events, badly tuned encounters, characters losing gold and items etc.

GG, just because you like something doesn’t mean you should will yourself to be so blatantly blind.

How do you come to the conclusion that I don’t want the developers to rid the game of bugs, badly tuned encounters and exploits?

I just can’t get any more clearer than what I said at the begging.

You don’t need to tell them..

Qelris.6901:

You don’t need to tell them..

Most MMO gaming companies are centered around making their games as appealing to the largest variety of players as possible. Guild wars 2 does this well. However, there is a line that should no be crossed because then the game loses its soul.

If people want raids, gear tread mills, mounts, duels, long grinds, exclusive tittles and items, changing the endgame philosophy and other old MMO ideas then it is in Anet’s interest to disregard this ideas.

The whining and complaining by players who are still attached to the old gaming mentality could be persuasive enough if the game developers end up caring more about profits than the integrity of their game.

My only interest is to make sure the game developers do not deviate from their ideology. God knows that the current gaming market is stagnant with companies and corporations not willing to take risks in innovative gaming mechanics for fear of disenfranchising their current costumers. This is not what video games are about.

@ounkeo: that is not what OP wrote and I am sure you know it.

I agree with Sugetsu, his description of the average complaints is correct. Forums like this are always flooded by a vocal minority and developers might mistake that for general opinion.

They already did deviate from their design philosophy when they released an incomplete game.

I can name over 6 traits on my class that either don’t do anything, or do not do what they claim to do.
Hell there is an entire STAT that doesn’t give ANY benefit on engineer. (the one you get from tools trait line)
The way the dungeons are designed? Jesus Christ how horrible.
Don’t get me started about Zhaitan.

The way I’ve seen it over 80% of the criticism is valid, if often poorly articulated, 15% is apologist stuff like this and 5% is the trolls and moronic posts.

Vocal minority is a rather loaded term. You might as well just say minority, since your meaning is that their opinions are invalid simply because they don’t agree with the majority.

ounkeo.9138:

meanignless negativity? Perhaps you haven’t been on other game forums but a lot of the “negativity” you read here are very valid.

A lot of it boils down to complaining that this game isn’t enough like x game, or how some people don’t like the otherwise largely-enjoyable features that make this game different from other MMORPG’s, or the absence of certain things that (also imo, but likewise also in the opinion of most who bought this game) make other MMORPGs suck. A lot of people in here are basically spewing stuff that’s equally as ignorant as saying that Street Fighter IV will never be good as long as it’s not a 3D fighter like Tekken. Those complaints are, therefore, far from valid.

ounkeo.9138:

You basically just told Anet to not fix bugs, broken events, badly tuned encounters, characters losing gold and items etc.

No, he told ArenaNet to not change GW2 into something that’s not GW2. People who knew what they were buying don’t want a traditional (and extremely stupid, imo) cookie-cutter MMORPG gear treadmill endgame, they don’t want the time-rich to have some statistical advantage over the time-poor that would allow them to beat players better than themselves simply because they played the game longer. And they definitely don’t want that God-awful tank/heal/dps combat.

ounkeo.9138:

GG, just because you like something doesn’t mean you should will yourself to be so blatantly blind.

And just because you don’t like key features that make a game what it is doesn’t mean you should change what the rest of us bought said game for. And yes, I read through your post history, and you had the audacity to do exactly that. It’s rather selfish. There are enough games for you to play to get your carrot-chasing rocks off. Leave ours alone.

nonforma.7613:

Vocal minority is a rather loaded term. You might as well just say minority, since your meaning is that their opinions are invalid simply because they don’t agree with the majority.

not at all, it is a standard term in communications as opposed to a majority that is not vocal (mainly because dissatisfied customers are incited to voice their opinion a lot more than happy ones). Their opinion is valid, but for an outside observer it appears as if it was the general opinion, and that is the problem, not their opinion being invalid in any way.

Algreg.3629:

nonforma.7613:

Vocal minority is a rather loaded term. You might as well just say minority, since your meaning is that their opinions are invalid simply because they don’t agree with the majority.

not at all, it is a standard term in communications as opposed to a majority that is not vocal (mainly because dissatisfied customers are incited to voice their opinion a lot more than happy ones). Their opinion is valid, but for an outside observer it appears as if it was the general opinion, and that is the problem, not their opinion being invalid in any way.

You were not talking about an outside observer, you were talking about the developer.

which does not change the definition and is still a concern in this regard unless they do panels/polls. Grasping straws now?

Saying: “i want loot” may be a whine.
Saying: “killing wolves in a forest is more rewarding than doing an instance” is a valid argument about balance

Algreg.3629:

which does not change the definition and is still a concern in this regard unless they do panels/polls. Grasping straws now?

Yes, you are.

nonforma.7613:

Algreg.3629:

which does not change the definition and is still a concern in this regard unless they do panels/polls. Grasping straws now?

Yes, you are.

a pseudo-witty as meaningless reply.

Im pretty sure the OP is talking about the “OMG I HAVE TO GRIND” and the “OMG WHERE MY ENDGAME” Threads. In which case ANet is doing exactly what they should be doing considering the people complaining are people who were told months and even years before hand how the game was going to play out.

Strongback.6420:

The way I’ve seen it over 80% of the criticism is valid, if often poorly articulated, 15% is apologist stuff like this and 5% is the trolls and moronic posts.

And 32% of the numbers found on the Internet are made up.

Honestly there are too many people that have at least tried this game, we’re talking about millions here. That will give us thousands of people who won’t like this game for various reasons. And that will give us hundreds of trolls who like to whine on official forums of games they don’t even play anymore. Not even including people that like the game but like to whine even more, and complain about small things like if this was the end of the world.

So yes, the official forums are full of negativity, but hopefully Anet knows how to filter all that laughable crap to get the interesting feedback (which is really a very, very small fraction of what is said here).

Ouroboros.5076:

Strongback.6420:

The way I’ve seen it over 80% of the criticism is valid, if often poorly articulated, 15% is apologist stuff like this and 5% is the trolls and moronic posts.

And 32% of the numbers found on the Internet are made up.

Honestly there are too many people that have at least tried this game, we’re talking about millions here. That will give us thousands of people who won’t like this game for various reasons. And that will give us hundreds of trolls who like to whine on official forums of games they don’t even play anymore. Not even including people that like the game but like to whine even more, and complain about small things like if this was the end of the world.

So yes, the official forums are full of negativity, but hopefully Anet knows how to filter all that laughable crap to get the interesting feedback (which is really a very, very small fraction of what is said here).

Well said, I am not sure that I could have summed it up so succinctly as you have, Oro.

Strongback.6420:

The way I’ve seen it over 80% of the criticism is valid, if often poorly articulated, 15% is apologist stuff like this and 5% is the trolls and moronic posts.

Agreed, and that Anet allows it on their forum is a great sign that they’re receptive to constructive criticism.

ok guys come on seriously

people get emotional over little things, especially when people have waited quite some time for it

posts where the poster is infantile and going off in swearing tangents are ignorable, because seriously make your dam point

posts where people point out something is horribly wrong and there’s a substantial amount of people agreeing its wrong should be taken note of, even if the poster in question has a very harsh tone

that being said guild wars 2 has a big problem…. a Reddit problem

there’s nothing wrong with the people on Reddit, every social website has there idiots and intellectuals, that’s simply the nature of man but this particular issue is its massive mainstream appeal and upvotes/downvotes, these things on there own are not a big deal, in fact there quite fine its just when you combine them things go HORRIBLY wrong

popular opinion will always take priority over critical opinion… and then its viewed by the masses and critical opinion in any shape or form is ignored, it literally hides them

i am quite pleased that Anet finally opened up the forums, everyone’s views have been getting out now….. but dam it was late

Ouroboros.5076:

Strongback.6420:

The way I’ve seen it over 80% of the criticism is valid, if often poorly articulated, 15% is apologist stuff like this and 5% is the trolls and moronic posts.

And 32% of the numbers found on the Internet are made up.

Honestly there are too many people that have at least tried this game, we’re talking about millions here. That will give us thousands of people who won’t like this game for various reasons. And that will give us hundreds of trolls who like to whine on official forums of games they don’t even play anymore. Not even including people that like the game but like to whine even more, and complain about small things like if this was the end of the world.

So yes, the official forums are full of negativity, but hopefully Anet knows how to filter all that laughable crap to get the interesting feedback (which is really a very, very small fraction of what is said here).

I actually look at it the other way.

You don’t experience all the problems until you spend a lot of time in the game and get to the high level areas.

I imagine the majority of the praise is coming from the casuals who haven’t spent much time at all in the game and a lot of the criticism is coming from the people who actually have put a lot of time into the game and know what they’re talking about.

PS. “And 32% of the numbers found on the Internet are made up. " is a pretty daft thing to say when he’s telling you how he sees it, he’s not trying to pass his numbers off as facts.

Strongback.6420:

They already did deviate from their design philosophy when they released an incomplete game.

I can name over 6 traits on my class that either don’t do anything, or do not do what they claim to do.
Hell there is an entire STAT that doesn’t give ANY benefit on engineer. (the one you get from tools trait line)
The way the dungeons are designed? Jesus Christ how horrible.
Don’t get me started about Zhaitan.

The way I’ve seen it over 80% of the criticism is valid, if often poorly articulated, 15% is apologist stuff like this and 5% is the trolls and moronic posts.

I just wanted to note (since I main an engineer spec’d into tools most of the time) that the stat does actually lower the cooldown of toolbelt skills. It’s a display issue as far as I can tell. Look at “Toss Elixir R” with cooldown numbers turned on. Spec’d into Tools, it has a 60 second cooldown. Not spec’d into Tools, it has an 85 second cooldown.
I’m not saying there aren’t bugs. I’ve had my fair share of frustrations with bugged events or skillpoints. The problem I see is that people get so heated about things that it’s very hard to filter what the actual bugs and issues are.

I happen to like the way the dungeons are designed. In fact, (I’m so going to get flamed for this >.<) I find many of the paths too easy. Does this mean I don’t see any balance issues? No. Magg’s path in CoF for example: The problem isn’t that the path is too hard or that the defense portion is too hard. It’s that the rest of the path is too easy in comparison. I’d be perfectly happy with them nerfing the defense portion IF they increased the difficulty of every other boss. That feedback however, is buried under pages and pages of “OMG TOO HARD FLAME ARENANET” posts. A (possibly) valid complaint is completely masked by what reads as a temper tantrum. Even the quoted post. A levelheaded analysis of “why” you believe Arenanet has deviated from their design philosophy (as opposed to a vague judgement). A list of “which” 6 traits you don’t believe are working properly. A description of “what about” the engineer specific stat that doesn’t look like it’s working. That’s what’s called constructive criticism. Most people post rants.

The problem and the reason why people believe they’ve deviated from their design philosophy is that everyone interpreted it as “They’re making the game the way I want it.” The reality is that some people are bound to be wrong about that. I don’t believe they’ve deviated from their design philosophy, and I agree with the OP’s hope that they don’t let the flood of negativity that plagues every game pressure them into doing so.

Don’t listen to every negative post in the forums…

…but please, for heaven’s sake, listen to the ones about the bots!

There’s a strong difference between a negative post and a constructive post. Don’t get the two mixed up.

Suggesting change in a constructive tone is never negative. You can’t possible ask the devs to disregard all suggestions that aren’t bug related, because then the product will never move forward.

Of the posts I have read, there are two real majorities:

1. There are those players (most of which are under level 80) that don’t want the game to change and are claiming it to be just fine the way it is.

2. The players who are level 80 who are asking for a reasonable means to play challenging content.

Think about it, though. How much challenging content existed in the PvE world outside of dungeons? I’m pretty sure every DE I ran to (even those “epic chest dropping” battles) required very little strategy and only relied on how many warm bodies were around to mash their keyboards.

And when you finally get an opportunity to experience some real challenges in the dungeons, either

1. It is incredibly difficult to find a group to do it with.
2. It is far too expensive to run the dungeon and attempt to learn the strategies as a team (without detailed youtube videos).
3. The reward to complete the dungeon isn’t really appealing (rewards don’t have to be a progressive armor / weapon upgrades).
4. The dungeon content is just clearly broken.

So I’m sorry, but if we’re going to brush off constructive criticism as “negativity”, then please, remind me never to offer anyone of you a job on my development staff.

This forum has so many trolls that I’m inclined to believe some are being paid to badmouth the game.

There are many posts with valid points… Also everyone agree the game has quite a lot of bugs, but it’s a new game and bugs will get fixed. It really pisses me off to see people complaining about bugs as they would be responsible for the end of the world, the certain fall of the game and all the doomsaying they manage to put up together. This hyperbole thing seems like common on troll posts. The good thing is… it makes them easy to spot.

Mmo forums are generally negative places as the people that often use them want to complain about things they don’t like, the majority of players don’t even visit the forums and are just enjoying the game. I only visit the forums because I like to be apart of the community but the true lasting community in this game won’t really be evident for a few months yet because some people will move on with the next big thing or just quit playing which happens with any new mmo.

People are unhappy because of the broken promises, misleading marketing, bugged basic systems, and unprecedented amount of grind (in a cosmetic skins PvP game). No one in my eyes wants a gear treadmill (yet gear costs thousands of dungeon tokens).

But yet all you see when people give criticism is mindless complaining. You don’t (the average pro-GW2 poster) actually read what people say, you skip-read it, project on to it and then turn in to a droning apologist and tell everyone to go back to WoW.

All MMO forums are the same. Someone complains, and they are met with a consumer drone telling them to leave the game. You know, when someone has a problem with something in the game, they aren’t attacking your personal character. You don’t have to associate yourself with brand and be loyal to them. You aren’t going to be rewarded for telling people to stop complaining.

You don’t like ipods? Well I have an ipod so that means you are insulting me because my self image revolves around the things that I consume. This is the type of thing that gets people arguing. People are voicing their opinions, just get over it.

Zen wants to make us believe that every single poster who complains about something has legit reasons for it.

Good try!

There are many who have… Yet many others who don’t. I’ve laughed at and agreed with complain posts here, two completely opposite reactions. Guess I’m just bipolar.

deriver.5381:

Zen want to make us believe

Tell me more.

Yeah, all these well-worded threads telling ArenaNet how much grind is in the game contrary to the manifesto (marketing video of lies and half-truths) are all just totally troll threads and invalid, right? We should “go back to WoW”, right?

Yup. Very vocal minority. This game is great, combat is engaging and challenging. Love that I can’t sleepwalk through it. Dungeon are hard enough, even though it is sometimes hard to find decent teammates. Delightful artwork, small secrets, intricate details in landscape design and dialogues makes me wanna take my time and explore everything.

As a former business student, I don’t agree with the opinion that “if ArenaNet just go for profit they will lose their soul and wreck the game up”. If they really care about profit they will follow their VISION and keep to the identity of the game. A MMO with no identity fails more rapidly than others. A company seeking profit isn’t bad in itself, but a company seeking profit unintelligently is the problem. So far so good for ArenaNet. And with the beta in-game surveys and other tactics to get feedback from players, they’ve got enough talented analysts to keep it that way and get the real opinion of their gamerbase.

Disclosure : Never played WoW, never will and never cared. Never went to Orr yet, no pressure whatsoever to rush to the so-called endgame. Just enjoying dungeons and WvW and casual exploration. Got 7 characters, 1 of which is lvl 80, others between 15 and 35.

And those are the only threads around, right? Take your time to read again what I posted… Maybe you need to read it twice to understand.

I’d say “go back to wow” if you were here asking for gear treadmill, for instance. It’s not the case, right? Then get your facts straight and understand what is happening around you. There are dozens of troll (yes, troll) posts being created everyday and a lot of unjustified negativity, and they have nothing to do with the valid complains we have around.

indeed

if someone want to improve this game by adding feedback, he/she will post it on suggestion sub-forum, not in general discussion
general discussion thread = QQing + flaming+rage quit

I don’t like threads like these. You have no right to tell others not to voice their negative opinions, they have as much right to criticise a game as you do to praise it. If it’s mindless trolling then yes there’s no place for it, but constructive criticism is helpful and very much needed. Nothing is perfect, and just because you enjoy it doesn’t mean that developers shouldn’t strive to continually improve it.

I’m taking this thread as an opportunity to say that you guys made a great game.
A great game, that has more problems than I thought it would have, but it is still miles above what I played in recent times after quitting WoW years ago, namely Final Fantasy XIV, TERA and The Secret World.
People are used to a lot of quality and quantity from playing WoW, even if many are hating on the game now. GW2’s systems need finetuning still, in certain areas like PvP a lot of it, and that takes a while, which is probably the hardest part to accept for many after all this development time and beta testing.
After following this game for 2 years now, I came to the conclusion that you cannot just release a WoW killer, it’s impossible. An MMO needs time to evolve. WoW wasn’t like this at the beginning anyway, it took years for the game to reach its pinnacle. This is why I approve of fixing the foundations of GW2 now, rather than flooding people with content that is built upon shaky systems.

Just in case people are still confused, this is constructive criticism:
the class blah has so many bugs like so and so and so pls fix them asap (and yes i intentionally made it sound a bit whiny)

this is meaningless negativity:
the dungeons are sooo hard, legendaries requirements are too hard, i dont want to grind why is d game punishing me for not grinding by denying me access to dungeon exotics, pls change d game to suit my preferences, etc.

I think one of the most important skills for any game developer is to be able to shift through the noise and get to the real issues and underlying causes. ArenaNet has had experience doing this in the past with GW1. Although you’ll see similar-sounding complaints about their efforts there as well, from what I’ve seen they’ve been very responsive and kept GW1 going as a respectable game (even if it one I personally don’t enjoy as much as GW2).

I do agree with the OP that many of the complaints seems to stem from expectations created by previous experiences in MMOs. Education is the best solution. As someone who has been following the game, I had a good idea about what to expect so I’m very glad to see ArenaNet has delivered on what they said they would.

deriver.5381:

Zen wants to make us believe that every single poster who complains about something has legit reasons for it.

Good try!

There are many who have… Yet many others who don’t. I’ve laughed at and agreed with complain posts here, two completely opposite reactions. Guess I’m just bipolar.

I present to you three threads I opened w/ the intent (logical arguments made) to promote positive improvements for the level 80 PvE experience – only to be abruptly met by skip-read flame war.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-endgame-PVE-feels-like-a-boring-standstill-and-what-can-be-done-to-fix-it/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/What-the-LFG-system-should-be/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/How-did-Dungeon-Grinding-survive-the-cut/first

To me, grind is a question of perspective. I don’t consider running events over and over for the next few weeks and months to be a grind because I like to play them. I like the mechanics of combat and playing with groups of other people to do difficult content. The fact that this will eventually result in the acquisition of a legendary doesn’t mean I’ve grinded out said legendary, only that I’ve achieved it through normal gameplay. The people that claim that the game is all grind are the ones that aren’t willing to wait very long for their bling, or don’t enjoy those aspects necessary to acquire it. And that’s not grind. That’s people finding key aspects of the game unsatisfying.

I can commiserate though because I too find key aspects of the game unsatisfying and resent being “forced” to participate them, in order to achieve any kind of long-term goals (hello WvW, you filthy kitten). To me, the WvW aspects are nothing but grind without an ounce of enjoyment to be had. But that’s just my perception. It doesn’t mean that WvW is really that way — it just is to me.

Either way, the no grind philosophy is in place, as far as I’m concerned. Which doesn’t mean that people are going to universally enjoy those aspects of the game they need to take part in, in order to reach their personal long-term goals. That’s a lot different from a game forcing you to repeat the exact same content for weeks and months, just so you can access new content. To me, gating off content behind a gear acquisition treadmill, IS grind. In GW2, nothing is gated off and everything is accessible to everyone with a minimal need to repeat anything. So, promise fulfilled.

Sugetsu.9174:

occasional in game bugs

If only they were that occasional. On Monday, prior to the patch, the bugged issues in the game were ridiculously high. They are already climbing again.

I do enjoy the game, I do think it will improve. I do understand the reasons behind some of these issues not being caught prior to release.

However I don’t make false claims like “occasional”. Stream would have been more appropriate.

Oddbot.6578:

Yup. Very vocal minority. This game is great, combat is engaging and challenging. Love that I can’t sleepwalk through it. Dungeon are hard enough, even though it is sometimes hard to find decent teammates. Delightful artwork, small secrets, intricate details in landscape design and dialogues makes me wanna take my time and explore everything.

As a former business student, I don’t agree with the opinion that “if ArenaNet just go for profit they will lose their soul and wreck the game up”. If they really care about profit they will follow their VISION and keep to the identity of the game. A MMO with no identity fails more rapidly than others. A company seeking profit isn’t bad in itself, but a company seeking profit unintelligently is the problem. So far so good for ArenaNet. And with the beta in-game surveys and other tactics to get feedback from players, they’ve got enough talented analysts to keep it that way and get the real opinion of their gamerbase.

Disclosure : Never played WoW, never will and never cared. Never went to Orr yet, no pressure whatsoever to rush to the so-called endgame. Just enjoying dungeons and WvW and casual exploration. Got 7 characters, 1 of which is lvl 80, others between 15 and 35.

The creators of this game have shown time and time again that they care more about their costumers than profit margins. The level of detail that you find in every area of the game is impressive, almost obsessive. You can’t get quality like this from profit oriented games because share holders and investors would be putting a lot of pressure on dead lines.