Guild Wars 2

I was browsing 10 Ton Hammer this morning and found this article interesting. Would like to know what the developers think of this, that’s for sure.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/columns/persistent-worlds/persistent-worlds-where-profession-developer-engagement

Too bad it has misinformation, such as the Ranger Pet Names issue.

I doubt any Devs will respond here; though, of course, one never knows for sure.

Good luck.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Too bad it has misinformation, such as the Ranger Pet Names issue.

I doubt any Devs will respond here; though, of course, one never knows for sure.

Good luck.

This is only partially wrong. Pet names are wiped when you change your pets out for different pets, not when you use the pet swap mechanic. It is an actual thing, and has been since before the release of the game. There is no indication that it will ever be fixed.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Too bad it has misinformation, such as the Ranger Pet Names issue.

I doubt any Devs will respond here; though, of course, one never knows for sure.

Good luck.

I think the author means that if you have a pet moa called e.g. “Cedo” and a pet bear called “Mercury” and you switch out “Cedo” for a hawk, it will inherit the name “Cedo”. If you then change it to be called “Gaile” and switch it to the moa again, it is still called Gaile.

However he calls that a bug, and that is wrong. It is a way how petnames are handled by the game. It can be done different, and this method lacks some immersion, but it functions properly so isn’t a bug, but just a feature that is in his eyes poor.

For the rest you don’t see a lot of examples. I also disagree that there are too many bugs around. I think the author is confusing choices made with bugs (just like the petnames). one can say that the game lacks diversity. But thats not a bug, but a opinion.
Same as the statement bout spirits. I even disgagree there are huge issues with them.

It shows a lot of entitlement, which is imo the main issue with the entire article. By calling things bugs and broken, he is claiming to be entitled to have a dev response. As these are choices made and not bugs nor broken, he is also not entitled to have such a response. (though devs, feel free to respond to it, not being entitled to it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t

I also disagree with the lack of interaction. The problem is that a dev should stand for their choices. Going into the ranger forum and defending certain choices is recipe for dissaster. half of the complaints bout a class are not even justified cause they are based on people wanting to be invincable. So they have to be carefull in really interacting. But they do listen. They do share proposed changes and they do adept things based on that feedback. Just that it is not to everybody’s liking is a fact of life.

+1000 to Ton Hammer.

mercury ranique.2170:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Too bad it has misinformation, such as the Ranger Pet Names issue.

I doubt any Devs will respond here; though, of course, one never knows for sure.

Good luck.

I think the author means that if you have a pet moa called e.g. “Cedo” and a pet bear called “Mercury” and you switch out “Cedo” for a hawk, it will inherit the name “Cedo”. If you then change it to be called “Gaile” and switch it to the moa again, it is still called Gaile.

However he calls that a bug, and that is wrong. It is a way how petnames are handled by the game. It can be done different, and this method lacks some immersion, but it functions properly so isn’t a bug, but just a feature that is in his eyes poor.

For the rest you don’t see a lot of examples. I also disagree that there are too many bugs around. I think the author is confusing choices made with bugs (just like the petnames). one can say that the game lacks diversity. But thats not a bug, but a opinion.
Same as the statement bout spirits. I even disgagree there are huge issues with them.

It shows a lot of entitlement, which is imo the main issue with the entire article. By calling things bugs and broken, he is claiming to be entitled to have a dev response. As these are choices made and not bugs nor broken, he is also not entitled to have such a response. (though devs, feel free to respond to it, not being entitled to it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t

I also disagree with the lack of interaction. The problem is that a dev should stand for their choices. Going into the ranger forum and defending certain choices is recipe for dissaster. half of the complaints bout a class are not even justified cause they are based on people wanting to be invincable. So they have to be carefull in really interacting. But they do listen. They do share proposed changes and they do adept things based on that feedback. Just that it is not to everybody’s liking is a fact of life.

You have very incorrectly described the pet naming bug. If a pet is removed from the active pet swap, that pet’s name is lost forever. Not a game breaking bug, but if the Ranger is a dedicated companion class, then it is silly, perhaps lazy, not to fix it.

it is open secret that anet is lazy when come to bug fixing… if the bug is not game breaking, they will put it the least priority and when those bugs accumulate over the years, the numbers will get big enough to be of concern.

Psientist.6437:

mercury ranique.2170:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Too bad it has misinformation, such as the Ranger Pet Names issue.

I doubt any Devs will respond here; though, of course, one never knows for sure.

Good luck.

I think the author means that if you have a pet moa called e.g. “Cedo” and a pet bear called “Mercury” and you switch out “Cedo” for a hawk, it will inherit the name “Cedo”. If you then change it to be called “Gaile” and switch it to the moa again, it is still called Gaile.

However he calls that a bug, and that is wrong. It is a way how petnames are handled by the game. It can be done different, and this method lacks some immersion, but it functions properly so isn’t a bug, but just a feature that is in his eyes poor.

For the rest you don’t see a lot of examples. I also disagree that there are too many bugs around. I think the author is confusing choices made with bugs (just like the petnames). one can say that the game lacks diversity. But thats not a bug, but a opinion.
Same as the statement bout spirits. I even disgagree there are huge issues with them.

It shows a lot of entitlement, which is imo the main issue with the entire article. By calling things bugs and broken, he is claiming to be entitled to have a dev response. As these are choices made and not bugs nor broken, he is also not entitled to have such a response. (though devs, feel free to respond to it, not being entitled to it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t

I also disagree with the lack of interaction. The problem is that a dev should stand for their choices. Going into the ranger forum and defending certain choices is recipe for dissaster. half of the complaints bout a class are not even justified cause they are based on people wanting to be invincable. So they have to be carefull in really interacting. But they do listen. They do share proposed changes and they do adept things based on that feedback. Just that it is not to everybody’s liking is a fact of life.

You have very incorrectly described the pet naming bug. If a pet is removed from the active pet swap, that pet’s name is lost forever. Not a game breaking bug, but if the Ranger is a dedicated companion class, then it is silly, perhaps lazy, not to fix it.

Yea… the bug at one point was it would swap the names to whatever new one you pulled from your pet bank (i can’t remember what it’s actually called). Now it just defaults to the Juvenile and when you pull the first pet out again it will also be back to the juvenile name. I REALLY wish it was possible to save names for all my pets, it’d be a nice QoL change.

mercury ranique.2170:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Too bad it has misinformation, such as the Ranger Pet Names issue.

I doubt any Devs will respond here; though, of course, one never knows for sure.

Good luck.

I think the author means that if you have a pet moa called e.g. “Cedo” and a pet bear called “Mercury” and you switch out “Cedo” for a hawk, it will inherit the name “Cedo”. If you then change it to be called “Gaile” and switch it to the moa again, it is still called Gaile.

However he calls that a bug, and that is wrong. It is a way how petnames are handled by the game. It can be done different, and this method lacks some immersion, but it functions properly so isn’t a bug, but just a feature that is in his eyes poor.

For the rest you don’t see a lot of examples. I also disagree that there are too many bugs around. I think the author is confusing choices made with bugs (just like the petnames). one can say that the game lacks diversity. But thats not a bug, but a opinion.
Same as the statement bout spirits. I even disgagree there are huge issues with them.

It shows a lot of entitlement, which is imo the main issue with the entire article. By calling things bugs and broken, he is claiming to be entitled to have a dev response. As these are choices made and not bugs nor broken, he is also not entitled to have such a response. (though devs, feel free to respond to it, not being entitled to it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t

I also disagree with the lack of interaction. The problem is that a dev should stand for their choices. Going into the ranger forum and defending certain choices is recipe for dissaster. half of the complaints bout a class are not even justified cause they are based on people wanting to be invincable. So they have to be carefull in really interacting. But they do listen. They do share proposed changes and they do adept things based on that feedback. Just that it is not to everybody’s liking is a fact of life.

Petname isn’t a choice they made, it’s a legitimate bug they never fixed. You have failed to describe the mechanics correctly. Play more Ranger and you’ll get it. Some times the situation you describe does happen, sometimes the name is just lost and the pet becomes juvenile whatever animal. This is why it’s a bug. The name is lost to the ether.

I do agree that some of it is mechanics not working the way the community at large thinks they should or would like, some of them are the Ranger sword actually causing you to be unable to dodge for half a second or more after the end of the second animation, which is deadly and very much not working as intended. If it is intended then it’s just bad design.

There are a lot of bugs and many more design choices, and not just in the Ranger.

ANet does not, in any meaningful way, talk to us enough about anything they do. They used to, then they stopped. The last time we had a good conversation with anyone from ANet about anything to do with the game was the second time SAB came out, and they actively silenced Josh Foreman because of it.

Communication was so much better with the community with Guild Wars 1, Anet was on top of issues when they came up and responded to us on fan forums. The Frog chats in LA helped ten fold in letting the community know what’s going etc.

Since GW2 came out the"We have your money and we don’t care attitude came out" Far as I’m concerned its just all smoke and mirrors too me with all trust us we read every thread PR speak. When very little comes to fruition from many of the threads when issues go unaddressed to date still!

Also what Meta data did they looked at to suggest that it was too difficult for players to feed cows Hay in the Queens Dale Heart Quest that it needed changing too Dance for the Cows? Realy WTF Over?

I’ve come to the conclusion that development here is driven by the Good Idea Fairy and random Tumblr blogs.

I think ArenaNet aspire to the Valve approach, by which I of course mean that they intend to do as much talking to their community as a brick wall made of mute buttons sealed within a vacuum who have recently sworn an oath of silence in accordance with their Religion of Absolute Quiet.

Sure, they have a “Forum Communication Team” (which is a funny way of referring to Gaile Gray). Sure, they’ve posted to say that they will communicate more. Sure, there is a but. But. They rarely engage with us about the Big Issues. It’s usually about small stuff when it’s not saccharine thumb-ups on flavour posts or play nice admonishments as moderation.

Much has been said about a lack of speaking. When your customers actually want to engage you more, the customer imagines conversation, the business imagines compensation. ArenaNet need to have more courage. Not worry that everything they say will be enshrined forever online, picked over by thousands of malcontents, held up as an example of their failings when their words and reality differ. Worse than all that are the perceived inadequacies that silence fosters.

“The problem is that much of these issues aren’t even subjective: they’re huge problems and so obvious that I’m often amazed that A) ArenaNet have never acknowledged them (not to my knowledge) and Haven’t in the space of 3 years even made any attempt to rectify them. For a team of hundreds, how can it be that they do not have the capacity to sit down and say “Hey, you know what, let’s fixed the name bug on ranger pets this week.” or “Oh god, spirits are absolutely garbage. Their active is useless, they’re static and also die super easy in Fractal’s. Shall we spend some time fixing them for the next patch and perhaps we could bring them in line with warrior banners?” Better yet, “I am sick to death of my pet dying in every single boss encounter. Can we address this at last?”

Highlighted the best parts with the article. Makes an exaggerated statement and mentions a silly thing as an example.

Oh and one more thing. It’s not a bug it’s just designed that way.

The article is very pointed on profession issues, ranger specifically, however I think the issue is more than simply communication with the profession devs. It’s more communication with devs in general.

Maybe it’s changing times but in GW1 Anet seemed a fair bit more personable, they didn’t have an official forum but their community team was rather active in game and on third party forums. The general rate at which balance/bug fix patches came out felt faster and more substantial as well.

Since GW2’s launch however communication has really dried up to the point that shortly before the reveal of HoT many people were questioning if there was any development going on for GW2 at all. It’s gotten better since the reveal of HoT but it’s still relatively tame by many comparative companies’ standards.

Bug fixing/sweeping balance passes similar to what GW1 saw are more or less off the table as well. Despite their adherence to an iterative design philosophy they don’t seem to let that into class balance all that much and changes have historically been very minor as well as being rather few & far between.

Idk if anything will change, I just wish they would be a bit more aggressive on the bug fixing and class balance fronts, and being a bit more up front about it.

The name of the pet for a class that is forced to use them, while not mechanicaly broken, IS something huge. And if it is working as intended, as some dare to say, then it is worse, because, while a bug can be understandable, intentionally poor design is simply insulting.

Ardid.7203:

The name of the pet for a class that is forced to use them, while not mechanicaly broken, IS something huge. And if it is working as intended, as some dare to say, then it is worse, because, while a bug can be understandable, intentionally poor design is simply insulting.

I don’t think it’s poor design, I think it’s a pragmatic compromise to save space.

Think about it; at over 5 million copies sold, assuming half of the player population has a ranger(pet classes are popular), that would be 10 million names that have to be stored somewhere on Anet’s servers. Now imagine that it let you name every individual pet, and all those players named all their pets(there’s 61, including amphibious ones twice); that would be 152.5 million names would have to be saved somewhere.

Ticky.5831:

Ardid.7203:

The name of the pet for a class that is forced to use them, while not mechanicaly broken, IS something huge. And if it is working as intended, as some dare to say, then it is worse, because, while a bug can be understandable, intentionally poor design is simply insulting.

I don’t think it’s poor design, I think it’s a pragmatic compromise to save space.

Think about it; at over 5 million copies sold, assuming half of the player population has a ranger(pet classes are popular), that would be 10 million names that have to be stored somewhere on Anet’s servers. Now imagine that it let you name every individual pet, and all those players named all their pets(there’s 61, including amphibious ones twice); that would be 152.5 million names would have to be saved somewhere.

And yet they do still save where you tamed every single pet. Granted, the amount of data they need to store for that is infinitely less than what you’d need for storing names, since its likely just stored as a single / double digit (depending on how many tame locations there are). But still, if the reasoning behind it is “we don’t want to store anything extra for pets” then why in the heck are they wasting any space storing something so useless as where they pet was tamed?

Because, like you said, it takes much, much less storage.

Maybe the location tamed is an artifact of a time when they didn’t have nearly as many useable pets, and it was simply easier not to remove the feature.

Ticky.5831:

Ardid.7203:

The name of the pet for a class that is forced to use them, while not mechanicaly broken, IS something huge. And if it is working as intended, as some dare to say, then it is worse, because, while a bug can be understandable, intentionally poor design is simply insulting.

I don’t think it’s poor design, I think it’s a pragmatic compromise to save space.

Think about it; at over 5 million copies sold, assuming half of the player population has a ranger(pet classes are popular), that would be 10 million names that have to be stored somewhere on Anet’s servers. Now imagine that it let you name every individual pet, and all those players named all their pets(there’s 61, including amphibious ones twice); that would be 152.5 million names would have to be saved somewhere.

Hmm yeah, that would be 152.5m names at 19 characters per name. You can only use english letters so normal ASCII with 8 bit could be used for encoding a single character.

That would cause those names to use ~2.7gb of space.

That would be if you store petnames for each players pet. With the amount of names used chances are that there will be alot of dublicate names. Using database normalisation you could throw pet names into their own table and just reference the names when querying the rangers data.

In that case you could easily further cut down the data. Not that less than 3gb of additional data would make a huge dent.

Perhaps using a database would cause problems you aren’t anticipating.

Sometimes bugs aren’t fixed because fixing them causes legacy issues.

Ticky.5831:

Perhaps using a database would cause problems you aren’t anticipating.

What do you mean with that? Are you suggesting that they don’t use databases right now?

Frankly, I don’t know anything technical about databases, so you can take what I say at face value.

So simple. Just store the pet names locally in a .txt file against the pet and check the name for length etc on pet change in the management screen. If any of the devs could not code that in a single work day, they need to be replaced with someone who can.

Ticky.5831:

Frankly, I don’t know anything technical about databases, so you can take what I say at face value.

Ok to give you an idea. PostgreSQL is a well known, open-source database management system. The maximum database size is unlimited, with the underlying operating system being the limit. A single table (thing of an excel table for example) can store up to 32 terabytes of data. A single row in a table can store up to 1.6 terabytes of data. And a single field can store up to 1 gigabyte.

The number of rows a single table can have is also unlimited (as long as you don’t exceed the 32 terabyte limit of the table itself).

So not even 3gb of additional data in a seperate table is peanuts for a database.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Too bad it has misinformation, such as the Ranger Pet Names issue.

I doubt any Devs will respond here; though, of course, one never knows for sure.

Good luck.

This is only partially wrong. Pet names are wiped when you change your pets out for different pets, not when you use the pet swap mechanic. It is an actual thing, and has been since before the release of the game. There is no indication that it will ever be fixed.

Sorry to digress for a nitpick, but that isn’t a bug — it’s the intended design. So, it might be an “actual thing” but it’s not an actual bug and so doesn’t need to be fixed. (It’s certainly annoying and I wish they would change it; it’s just not a cheap change.)

The article doesn’t seem to load? What was it about?

Mo Mo.1947:

The article doesn’t seem to load? What was it about?

Anet seems to of have made TenTonHammer to delete the post to try and snuff this situation rather than deal with it.

Can’t delete the web cache though :v
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5UE_TlnfUfcJ:www.tentonhammer.com/columns/persistent-worlds/persistent-worlds-where-profession-developer-engagement+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

well the author or ten ton probably changed their mind.

But, the thing is, anet is always busy, working hard, but so much of their work is wasted. They need better management of resources and direction. They have to multi task better.
Heart of thornes is consuming their everything, look at FFXIV, they released a major patch with new story, a whole new game mode woven through out the world, a huge casino with a ton of minigames, like 2 months before releasing their expansion. with s

Meanwhile heart of thornes will release like 9-10 months after thier last content release.
and this is what is always happening. They are always too busy on some project to do anything else. And Even when these projects hit, they feel rushed, buggy, and often in the wrong direction.

phys.7689:

well the author or ten ton probably changed their mind.

But, the thing is, anet is always busy, working hard, but so much of their work is wasted. They need better management of resources and direction. They have to multi task better.
Heart of thornes is consuming their everything, look at FFXIV, they released a major patch with new story, a whole new game mode woven through out the world, a huge casino with a ton of minigames, like 2 months before releasing their expansion. with s

Meanwhile heart of thornes will release like 9-10 months after thier last content release.
and this is what is always happening. They are always too busy on some project to do anything else. And Even when these projects hit, they feel rushed, buggy, and often in the wrong direction.

Doesn’t matter if they are busy with HoT at the moment, the post was a trick to make the title click-baiting to bring up issues with Ranger that has been present for almost 3 years, and coming from even the beta version. For years, people had submitted ideas on how to fix the class, from constant posts on the forums and from the CDI, although all of those suggestions were ignored. And now you see here, after raising awareness about this topic, Anet has chosen to try and snuff the forum post rather than giving a real reason to address the issue. The original poster has not received a forum email discussing why it was removed and wasn’t marked for any strikes, the post was just locked for no reason at all. They even went to the extent of having the post for TTH to be removed to even more to avoid the issue, rahter than confronting the problem of the current state of Ranger. Just shows how much Anet is trying to avoid this, and hopefully have people forget about it.

That’s a whole lot of assumptions Doogy.

Varonth.5830:

Ticky.5831:

Frankly, I don’t know anything technical about databases, so you can take what I say at face value.

Ok to give you an idea. PostgreSQL is a well known, open-source database management system.

Ok, all I’m saying is that perhaps relying on another program to access a database brings up more potential problems than it’s worth when there’s an internal solution present that, albeit less popular, is more practical.

Ticky.5831:

That’s a whole lot of assumptions Doogy.

The only thing I said that could be an assumption was Anet’s reason to act on this issue, everything else listed can easily be found in forum posts in the Ranger Sub-forum. So far, Anet has taken a very poor way of method at approaching this issue that Rangers have been pushing for years. The thread was locked, and then the thread gained alot of pubilicity when Anet decided to lock the thread instead of explaining their reason why. The original author of the post continued the post going on reddit here, and that caused alot of the reddit community to cause a literal explosion in views, eventually leading up to the post originally here, but that link doesn’t work because it was deleted. Although, the post can stilled be view properaly through here. As you can see, Anet has gone to great lengths to censor this issue, rather than deal with it. Approaching the issue in this manor is rather suspicious on their part for the lengths they have gone so far.

Saying they forced TT to close the issue is clearly an assumption.

Ticky.5831:

Because, like you said, it takes much, much less storage.

Maybe the location tamed is an artifact of a time when they didn’t have nearly as many useable pets, and it was simply easier not to remove the feature.

That little space is not really a problem when i think about what they all save
on accountbount stuff. For example they have to save for each available map
and ervy actual IP of the map which node you have harvest at what time.

And then the constant database query that run each step you makr to check
those data to show you the correct version of the node on the mini-map.

Ok, the last was offtopic, but that little bit data will surely not really be a
problem. Its really just that somebody needs the time and will to sit down
and redesign how it works and someone else has to redesign some fields
in the database.

Ticky.5831:

Saying they forced TT to close the issue is clearly an assumption.

No one else would benefit from trying to keep a post regarding their questionable ways of handling Ranger other than Anet. The events of Anet locking the thread, the spin off-thread from a seperate user ended up being deleted entirely, and then the missing post of TTH with the cached page still viewable, if you can think of any one else but Anet, please give me another answer.

Someone else already brought it up. Maybe the author changed their mind, or maybe they deleted it because they didn’t get the facts straight.

Or maybe the person’s boss made them delete it because it was inflammatory and based on false information, which is essentially libel. Or maybe they deleted it because they realized that they in fact, do not have time to engage the community during dev “crunch time”(when the developers are pushing 16+ hour work days to get the product out the door in time).

Beldin.5498:

Ticky.5831:

Because, like you said, it takes much, much less storage.

Maybe the location tamed is an artifact of a time when they didn’t have nearly as many useable pets, and it was simply easier not to remove the feature.

That little space is not really a problem when i think about what they all save
on accountbount stuff. For example they have to save for each available map
and ervy actual IP of the map which node you have harvest at what time.

And then the constant database query that run each step you makr to check
those data to show you the correct version of the node on the mini-map.

Ok, the last was offtopic, but that little bit data will surely not really be a
problem. Its really just that somebody needs the time and will to sit down
and redesign how it works and someone else has to redesign some fields
in the database.

You realize though, that the instanced nodes is a HUGE departure departure from other MMOs, and that they did it because it was fundamental to their design philosophy of PvE cooperation; whereas having a bunch of names for pets is simply a QoL improvement that doesn’t affect gameplay in any way?

Ticky.5831:

Someone else already brought it up. Maybe the author changed their mind, or maybe they deleted it because they didn’t get the facts straight. Or maybe the person’s boss made them delete it because it was inflammatory and based on false information, which is essentially libel.

Would like to believe that was the reason. Although, Anet has a record of minor censoring by moving posts regarding problems, suggestions, or feedback on Ranger by moving the posts into to the Ranger sub-forum. These posts were meant to be somewhere else it would gain more views, rather than disposed into a Profession sub-forum where it wouldn’t gain the views the poster desired. Any of these posts that were moved into sub-forum were also assumed to ignored, due to the lack of feedback Anet never gave. Having an entire post from a seperate website affiliated with Anet end up deleted to try and forget this issue before it becomes a thing seems too much related to the post it was discussing about that ended up getting locked by Anet.

Yes, the post itself is from TTH was questioning Anet’s approach towards the Ranger issues; however, anyone on the Ranger forum who reguarly posts these problems, suggestions, and feedback will all tell you as well that the lack of interaction between the Rangers and Anet is there.

Ticky.5831:

That’s a whole lot of assumptions Doogy.

Varonth.5830:

Ticky.5831:

Frankly, I don’t know anything technical about databases, so you can take what I say at face value.

Ok to give you an idea. PostgreSQL is a well known, open-source database management system.

Ok, all I’m saying is that perhaps relying on another program to access a database brings up more potential problems than it’s worth when there’s an internal solution present that, albeit less popular, is more practical.

They already have a DBMS running. They don’t have to rely on another program. That thing is already running regardless. Which one they use, I don’t know. Probably some sort of enterprise solution from Oracle or Microsoft but those have similar or better statistics when it comes to the underlying database (why would someone pay a company lots of money for a product inferior to free open source software?).

Does it require some coding time? Yes, as you have to alter some tables within the database aswell as having the client and server be able to handle the new data. But any QoL feature needs work, and unless they have a really convoluted way to accessing database data, it should not require significantly more time to implment than any other QoL feature.

Ok, but do you folks realize that since these are the weeks preparing specialization reveal, followed closely by a beta weekend, and then closely by the release of the expansion; it’s probably the busiest time during the lifespan and development of the game for the people working on ranger, and therefore the least likely to get communication from them?

Ticky.5831:

Ok, but do you folks realize that since these are the weeks preparing specialization reveal, followed closely by a beta weekend, and then closely by the release of the expansion; it’s probably the busiest time during the lifespan and development of the game for the people working on ranger, and therefore the least likely to get communication from the devs?

What communication? We have been ignored for 3 years. The only way we were able to get their attention was with this post regarding the issues that we have had to deal with, for 3 years. This is the only way we can really expect meaningful change for Ranger due to the neglect they’ve shown us, and they’ve continue to show it again. Only this time, it has gain more awareness than they wished. Since there is only 1 BWE left, both Druid and Forge will have less time worked on them so we can already expect a ton of bugs once the game releases due to the lack of time to give proper feedback. At least this way, we could of had the already exisiting issues to be at least somewhat cleared without having to worry for all of the new issues we will encounter for Druid. Having just 1 BWE isn’t gonna be enough to solve every issue for both of these specializations.

This isn’t just a ranger issue, unfortunately. Until the Reaper changes (whom they had to hire some completely new person just to look at), necromancers were in the same boat for just as long. The devs in GW2 have a LOOOONG history of this with multiple classes.

phys.7689:

But, the thing is, anet is always busy, working hard

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/13268205?t=42m00s

Girl: I think you have stuff to do, you should probably get back to your desk.
Dev – ^Runs around the battle field spamming Daredevil Elite skill^

THIS is busy, THIS is working hard.

Meanwhile, take a good guess on who is responsible for Dragonhunter and Tempest.

Ticky.5831:

Ok, but do you folks realize that since these are the weeks preparing specialization reveal, followed closely by a beta weekend, and then closely by the release of the expansion; it’s probably the busiest time during the lifespan and development of the game for the people working on ranger, and therefore the least likely to get communication from them?

As always we can look back at how they handled Guild Wars.

These are the updates for Guild Wars in march 2006: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Game_updates:March_2006

In april 2006 (28th) they released Guild Wars: Factions. That game included 240 new skills with 2 completely new classes which used new mechanics like hold spells, weapon spells and the, assassin combo system.

The thing is, Guild Wars 1 got more balancing update in the months leading up to major standalone expansions than Gw2 gets in years of development time.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Too bad it has misinformation, such as the Ranger Pet Names issue.

I doubt any Devs will respond here; though, of course, one never knows for sure.

Good luck.

This is only partially wrong. Pet names are wiped when you change your pets out for different pets, not when you use the pet swap mechanic. It is an actual thing, and has been since before the release of the game. There is no indication that it will ever be fixed.

Sorry to digress for a nitpick, but that isn’t a bug — it’s the intended design. So, it might be an “actual thing” but it’s not an actual bug and so doesn’t need to be fixed. (It’s certainly annoying and I wish they would change it; it’s just not a cheap change.)

The question of whether or not pet name wipes is intentional design or a bug can only be answered by Arenanet and they have yet to communicate their intentions or rationale on the subject. Personally, I think it is ridiculous to assume pet name wipes are intentional design. Only Mr. Bean would design a pet naming system that allows players to name their pets but not save the names.

Varonth.5830:

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The thing is, Guild Wars 1 got more balancing update in the months leading up to major standalone expansions than Gw2 gets in years of development time.

So you prefer a game that’s so out of balance, or can quickly become out of balance, that it requires frequent balance updates?

If you’re just comparing raw numbers you should be comparing the file sizes to see how much work is going into the expansion.

Heart of Thorns is almost 3 times the size of Guild wars Factions(sources, GW2 original game case, 25 GB, versus 35 gb Heart of thorns minimum requirements from FAQ, compared to Factions 3.6 gb from Steam store page, being generous because Factions CERTAINLY had a significant amount of assets carried over from prophecies). Now granted, that doesn’t tell the whole story, since of course specifically changes in balance and coding won’t have much of an impact on relative file sizes before and after the changes.

Now, I’m going to be honest, I haven’t played much GW1, I think I had a lvl 14 ranger on one account, which I lost the info for and got the Trilogy bundle which I have a lvl 7 character(so yeah, that’s not a significant amount of time), but just sheer number of skills doesn’t impress me. What is significant is the number of relevant skills, and my inclination is to believe that a significant number of those were no more relevant than the current ranger’s weak spirit skills.

Ticky.5831:

If you’re just comparing raw numbers you should be comparing the file sizes to see how much work is going into the expansion.

Heart of Thorns is almost 3 times the size of Guild wars Factions(sources, GW2 original game case, 25 GB, versus 35 gb Heart of thorns minimum requirements from FAQ, compared to Factions 3.6 gb from Steam store page, being generous because Factions CERTAINLY had a significant amount of assets carried over from prophecies). Now granted, that doesn’t tell the whole story, since of course specifically changes in balance and coding won’t have much of an impact on relative file sizes before and after the changes.

Now, I’m going to be honest, I haven’t played much GW1, I think I had a lvl 14 ranger on one account, which I lost the info for and got the Trilogy bundle which I have a lvl 7 character(so yeah, that’s not a significant amount of time), but just sheer number of skills doesn’t impress me. What is significant is the number of relevant skills, and my inclination is to believe that a significant number of those were no more relevant than the current ranger’s weak spirit skills.

File sizes are misleading, especially when it comes to audio. Audio tends to take more space than anything. If its just a bunch of voice acting confined to one or two additional zones, then thats not much content.

phys.7689:

well the author or ten ton probably changed their mind.

But, the thing is, anet is always busy, working hard, but so much of their work is wasted. They need better management of resources and direction. They have to multi task better.
Heart of thornes is consuming their everything, look at FFXIV, they released a major patch with new story, a whole new game mode woven through out the world, a huge casino with a ton of minigames, like 2 months before releasing their expansion. with s

Meanwhile heart of thornes will release like 9-10 months after thier last content release.
and this is what is always happening. They are always too busy on some project to do anything else. And Even when these projects hit, they feel rushed, buggy, and often in the wrong direction.

I agree all the issues that have come up in the past year or so has been due to management fail. I work in management and while I’m not a high level Exec, it’s obvious when issues are arising/complicating because of the higher ups failing to manage properly as opposed to unforseen occurrences or staffing issues. I’ve seen so much beautiful and interesting content being put out by the developers, so I know their staff isn’t inside their own kittens.

ANet’s management team needs to take some seminars and training on management practices.

Ayrilana.1396:

Varonth.5830:

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The thing is, Guild Wars 1 got more balancing update in the months leading up to major standalone expansions than Gw2 gets in years of development time.

So you prefer a game that’s so out of balance, or can quickly become out of balance, that it requires frequent balance updates?

In all honesty…yes. I really did enjoy the constantly shifting metas that GW1’s constant heavy balance changes introduced, it hurt sometimes but it also meant that there were new things to try even if there wasn’t technically any new content introduced.

Overall GW1 kept it’s basic gameplay fresh through it’s constantly changing imbalance, GW2 on the other hand has plenty of imbalance of its own yet the basic gameplay has become incredibly stagnant because Anet haven’t done the same sort of aggressive balance passes this time around.

The revenant and eltie specs are so freaking exciting for me because it’s the first time in three years we’re seeing any sort of major shake up of GW2’s basic gameplay.