Guild Wars 2

Hey,

So recently more and more of the online community (which I know is a small % of the overall community) has been complaining. It hasn’t been good for the games online press with none players. While I don’t see the game dieing anytime soon, I do advise taking action.

Right now I think most players online have built up frustration from the content. I think a lot of people are looking for these free content updates to add things that change the way they play the game. Season 2 has been good so far, but it feels like things we’ve seen before. We’re essentially doing the same thing, just in different situations.

This combined with the break, many players are wondering “what is Anet doing?”. All this stuff has lead to these PR problems you’ve been having the last part of this year. With every small change you make that can be percieved as negative, it blows up. Overshadows any positives in online reporting/discussions.

My recommendation is to release some kind of trailer/preview thing for these background projects It will help give you an idea on how the feedback will be and online reactions. Give you a chance to make some last minute changes. I’m afraid you’re going to release these things and people are going to dislike them and the PR effect will be negative. It can also help tell the community that hey, we’re working on stuff. We care.

Some ideas on things that may have big positive effects in the online community and offer a change the way you play content are

New skills/weapons, New AI mechanics (not avoid this area or avoid this attack), multiple new areas release in quick secession or at once, and finally WvW/sPvP meta changers (new siege, new game mode will be doing this too, gambits, etc).

It really pains me to see this negative stuff happen and it just turn into a hate train of mis informed accusations about how the game is horrific, dead, dieing, and other nonsense. I usually argue with the about this stuff and debate it, but more proof would make it a lot easier to refute.

And that goes against A.net’s stated policy of not talking about anything until it’s ready for release, per Mike O’Brien. You can offer the suggestion, but don’t get your hopes up of ever seeing anything like this.

Zaklex.6308:

And that goes against A.net’s stated policy of not talking about anything until it’s ready for release, per Mike O’Brien. You can offer the suggestion, but don’t get your hopes up of ever seeing anything like this.

And that’s the problem, that policy. The policy needs to change. This method isn’t working at all.

It first happened with the trait redux. I believe there was a cdi on it, but what was talked there didn’t seem to translate properly into game. If we had know sooner of the process, we could’ve given feedback that this isn’t what players wanted, and save time and resources on something that has to be changed again.

The second one I remember is the wvw tag colors costing additional gold. I never saw anywhere in the suggestions or pleas for this tool on making colors cost extra on top of unlocking. Its great they reverted it, but I also feel bad they had to call in programmers to change it on such short notice. Again, something that could’ve been avoided.

Next came the npe change, something that, let’s face it, would need a larger player testing that just the hire ons at anet. There are some good changes, and some that make no sense. And now, once again, time and resources have to be divided to fix those errors (skill unlocks, etc).

Now we have the gem exchange, which once again was unexpected and almost unnecessary. I can see how it can get confusing, but anet only looked at one end of the community, and not the other. They didn’t seem to ask how the change would effect the vets, how they would like the graph removed and the same implementation that RIOT uses, which also annoys THEIR base. This new system sadly thought only on the new players, and not concurrent. Hence why I’m OK with leaving what’s in already there, but they shouldn’t have removed the old way. They should have kept both. Again, this is something that COULD HAVE been avoided if we’ve known sooner.

Look, I get it. Collins did the blogs before saying new stuff was coming, legendaries, scavenger, etc, and they got backburnered or fell through, and the community threw a fit. In part, I blame the community for this because we took it too far, and should’ve been understanding that things as backburnering happens (though, with the loot hug and ascended gear, can you blame us?)

And then there was the wvw guild inv for the new map, something tested by wvw players to be used for wvw and expand the gameplay, and if turned into a pve karma train.

So I can’t fully blame anet for everything, as we as players need to admit that we’ve done wrong or failed on our parts when given the chance. If anything, there needs to be a reset, bygones be bygones.

Anet changes its policy to give more heads up on features planned so we can give feedback (MAYBE even testing again like with the wvw map), and we, as a community, assist in policing ourselves (like in the guilds cdi) and being more respectful, and not going off the hinges like we have before.

I think with the guilds CDI we’ve shown we can do our part, so anet has to take the next step. The communication is fine for what we’ve been getting, but that policy HAS TO CHANGE. Or the cycle of ‘implement then rage’ will never end.

Tldr: scroll up and read