Guild Wars 2

Is Arenanet playing corrupt-a-wish with us? I’m noticing a trend here where the community asks for game changes, and they deliver….but by attaching horrible side-effects to them.

First it was the issue with trait points, we asked for a respec at any time system, and maybe add ADDITIONAL traits to be unlocked, and what did they do? they actually made leveling the most boring and linear thing ever. But we got free trait respec now so yay?

Then the community asked for colored commander tags to better organize ourselves, and now they are gonna grant that wish…but it’s gonna cost 300 gold per colored command tag! ouch!

All in all, maybe we should be careful what we wish for, lest we regret it later!

“The commander tag is too cheap!”
“The commander tag is too expensive!”
“The commander tag is fine as it is now, functionality-wise.”
“The commander tag needs more functionality”
“sPvP needs its own unique rewards!”
“Why does sPvP get all its own unique rewards I want PvE rewards too!”
“WvW is a stagnant gamemode”
“Im having so much fun in WvW right now!”
“Weapons are too big!”
“Skill animations are too small and I can’t read them in sPvP!”
“Stop with the LS, We desperately need an expansion!”
“I cant wait for the next LS update and feature pack!”

I don’t envy the people that have to read the forums and get an actual bearing on community opinion and wants and needs :P

Said it myself in the April 15th feedback thread.

Monkey’s Paw, I said.

Yep.

That’s why most successful companies use surveys, polls, and metrics, so they can get a pulse of what the community wants or needs. Ultimately, if the company doesn’t know it’s dedicated playerbase, they will never know how to improve the game for them.

I can believe that many things in this game were done out of spite.

This thread reminds me of those old gory Wishmaster movies.

We have too many silk… That’s what people complain about… See what happened now.

There was a time when there was too much silk? I joined after ascended crafting was introduced and my only impression of crafting is that silk and light armors don’t drop nearly often enough and it’s stupid that damask needs twice the amount of silk that other ascended mats require.

I’m still puzzled why soft wood requires four logs instead of the three that everything else uses.

I used to sell stacks of silk to the merchant because selling it on the TP was at a loss.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I used to sell stacks of silk to the merchant because selling it on the TP was at a loss.

~sits down in his old man rocking chair~

Oh… Those were the days.

I like how this thread was posted in the same patch we got a Little Shop of Horrors reference item.

Noobix.3958:

“The commander tag is too cheap!”
“The commander tag is too expensive!”
“The commander tag is fine as it is now, functionality-wise.”
“The commander tag needs more functionality”
“sPvP needs its own unique rewards!”
“Why does sPvP get all its own unique rewards I want PvE rewards too!”
“WvW is a stagnant gamemode”
“Im having so much fun in WvW right now!”
“Weapons are too big!”
“Skill animations are too small and I can’t read them in sPvP!”
“Stop with the LS, We desperately need an expansion!”
“I cant wait for the next LS update and feature pack!”

I don’t envy the people that have to read the forums and get an actual bearing on community opinion and wants and needs :P

Of course anyone who looks at it in such a simple way is going to have trouble. You can’t just bunch everything together; the game is made up of many communities, each of which has different needs and desires. You also have to understand the spirit of what players are saying, not just the words.

I’m not going to go over you entire post, but I think just going over the commander tag can make my point.

For the commander tag the complaint about it being “too cheap” is saying that anyone with 100 gold can get commander status, not those who are experienced enough to lead. The complaints about it being “too expensive” are about how those who are experienced and want to lead, having to pay large sums in order to outfit all their characters with it, or pay massive amounts for the new color functionality.

While “too cheap” and “too expensive” may look conflicting, they actually aren’t when you get down to what the players really want done. You could solve both these complaints at the same time if you just understood what the players are really trying to get at, which has to do with them being obtained with gold, not unlocked by things which show experience like WvW rank.

It is the same for many of the complaints in these forums. If you simplify it, it may look like there’s a conflict in the community, but most of the time there isn’t, and when there is its not that hard finding a solution that both sides can agree on.

Too many suggestions on the forums are by people who simply dream up a vague concept they find appealing, and don’t spend a second even trying to reason why it belongs in GW2 specifically or its implications on the game’s direction and mechanics. The strong impression I get on the forums is that a ton of these people don’t even know what they want.

There is no such thing as a consensus on any issue, among GW2 players. I disagree with some of the choices ArenaNet has made regarding certain features, but if you think they took some universally agreed-upon desire from the community and then got it wrong, you are fooling yourself.

Regular in-game surveys, with some small incentive for filling them out, might be a step toward getting as much player feedback as possible. But even then, it can be tricky. Like, if you ask people if they want more content for PvP, a lot of people may say yes — but some of them think this means more sPvP arenas, some think it means GvG, some think open-world PvP or duels. And then when any one player’s personal wish is not fulfilled as they imagined it, they’ll take to the forums with “You did not listen to the fans AT ALL!!!”