Guild Wars 2

I think it’s a good concept. How it works in practice, of course, could be completely different.

It would help people know what Anet is and isn’t aware of. They post in forums, they wonder if you hear or listen. By knowing that you’d heard, that’s have the battle.

You might decide not to do something about it for whatever reason but at least we know you know the problem exists and that maybe it’s on a list somewhere.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I’ll separate out the idea now into a practical application of what this could look like for one existing thread:

Structured PvP Forum Thread

Key Discussion Point: New Game Mode for PvP

High Level Focus Points:

- What kind of game mode(s) would be best in PvP for Gw2 on top of the current conquest game mode type given the games fast past action combat style?

- How should players be able to decide which game mode, or even which map within a game mode to play each round? Can a solution to this also solve issues with bias towards certain existing conquest maps?

- What key moments can a strong game mode have to help make it feel strategic and exciting when a key moment occurs? Can they happen every frequently enough to make each match exciting, and help provide comeback mechanics? Can these key moments provide teams multiple options to ensure different strategies for playing that can stand out and be identified?

- Can viewers clearly see and understand key moments when watching a stream and feel they are exciting without needing to understand the nuance of the combat occurring?

- Matches should be short, compelling, and easy to jump in and out of to keep the game approachable – but have layers of depth and strategy that experienced players can master.

Last Update:

- Demo versions of some potential new PvP game modes were given on an episode of Ready Up. [link goes here]

Edited or better formatting!

I wanted to reply to you directly Colin, because I think there is already solution to this very problem, and it works rather well.
They go by the name of Amplitude Studios, they are small company but they are working together with the community in a way that I have never seen before. You might get some good ideas from them.
Here’s the link:
http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/G2G-Votes2

Community can vote on anything they put be it feature, art, content, choice is entirely theirs, BUT the community decides what goes in the game.
Hope it will give you some good ideas and keep up the good work

I feel like this could backfire unless its kept up to date and communication stays open and frequent. I’ve seen other companies try similar things on their forums and if it is just left there to stagnate, it gives players an impression that those issues have been forgotten and nothing will be done.

For the game RuneScape this thread is a perfect example. It was a good idea that turned into a disaster. The thread is still pinned at the top of the forums despite being dead and not updates in years, and many of the issues are still being “considered/Is being implemented”.

We don’t need something like that, and unless you’re willing to truly maintain the thread and your communication in general, your brainstorming thread will share a similar fate. We can’t have things happen like long recent silence or for you to post that you are looking into something only for it to remain untouched for long periods without further comment on the status of the issue or if you are even still aware of it (soulbound dungeon runes anyone?!).

I guess the Atlas experience gives me the impression how things can turn out pretty bad when left unchanged.

I have to say i wasn’t expecting a thread like this specially with this level of communication…aka not robot answers but actual human text.

Those are great ideas overall but here is my opinion on the matter. It’s not ONLY about how much we talk and how much u take in consideration..because i am perfectly aware that even if an idea we put on the forums is so good u can’t sleep at night thinking about it, that doesn’t mean it will be implemented any time soon because of very understandable (from my POV) order of priorities, funds and so on.

What i am very interested in is, AT LEAST 1 time/year to have a nice page created with ALL u intend and very important WILL do in the future. What things have u decided by yourselves or together with the community to 100% implement and ETA!!!!
=

I mean yea..having a dev answer and keep track in every thread is definitely awesome and shows that u guys care and take notice of the things we say….but the most lack of transparency the community feels is the lack of information about the future.

Too much “soon™” which equals nothing and honestly a big slap to the face for players, and too less “we will do this, in this amount of time u will 100% have it”.

This is my own personal opinion at least.

Ex:
When will we get precursor quests/craft (fact not fiction).
When will we see Cantha (to this date the most commented/viewed thread has not gotten an answer…even if “yea we will do it but not sure when”)
Will we get a proper (payed or not) expansion separate to the LS? If yes …before GW3?

These 3 questions are the biggest that we didn’t get an answer so far….regardless of how many hundreds of threads/posts we make. This mmo is 2 years old now. Even if u like it or not, it NEEDS a proper hugeass expansion.

These are the kind of questions that get unanswered or “soon™” that literally pisoff the community so much and make it feel like there’s no transparency.
=
Indicating u are listening to us doesn’t mean indicating u will do it and the ETA that’s the problem. We need valid indication things we ask for are priority and are getting done with an established ETA…and smaller things are either did in parallel or ignored till we get the big stuff we ask for for months/years now.

I like the concept. That said, I think Matipzieu KyA summed up the player’s side of this beautifully.

This is a good first step but it can’t be the only step.

- Reward system revamp, in combo with making hardmode.
- Class balance, make support viable in PvE
-Discussion about essential features of a contemporary MMO (housing and other sandbox stuff)

ColinJohanson.2394:

What if every major thread offered a dev sticky at the top that summarized the key discussion points around that area we’re aware of as a dev team? We’d track the last major update(s) to those areas that shipped live in the sticky thread, and each time a new update is made update that thread accordingly.

That sounds better than nothing, but could mean a lot of different things.

Could you please give an example: i.e. what would stand in such a “summarized” posting according to megaservers?

Would there stand in detail “megaservers have the problems a,b,c,d and we think issues e,f,g and h are not a problem but are working as intended”?

Or do you mean something completely different?

ColinJohanson.2394:

• Per company policy (see Mike O’Brien’s post for his summary of ArenaNet’s dev communcation policy) we wouldn’t be able to discuss what is currently in development, or what progress we’re making on it. It would purely be a list of core high level topics we are aware of and think are important in Gw2.

So (to stay with the example) you could not tell wether you are working on some of the problems and what work you prioritize and what not and when you HOPE (not promise) to solve these problems.

Do I understand this I right?

ColinJohanson.2394:

Please keep discussion points around the policies of communication over in Mo’s “communicating with you” thread. This thread is purely for discussing the concept of these key topic point stickies.

It is all connected. Whoever implemented this policy should really think about what bad this did to the company and to the customers (us) and how this policy could ne changed ASAP.

Greetings.

As a threshold matter, (a) thank you for trying to address the communication issues and (b) you have my sympathy for dealing with the people who lack reading comprehension.

I like this idea, but I think you would have to have someone responsible for making sure it stays current. Are you willing to dedicate the resources to that?

Also, have you considered doing something similar on the official wiki instead? That seems like a better format than the forums, given that this is a one-way flow of information and would not be a thread for discussion. For example, instead of the upcoming changes page on the wiki, have a locked entry regarding “development priorities” or whatever you decide to call it.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

seriously frustrated wvwer, this is not a bug-list, start reading the actual topic

You should try reading my post in its very short entirety, as it’s very clearly not a bug report, but an example of why I don’t find Colin’s suggestion helpful, which is exactly what this thread is about.

Yes. Just yes. Please do this.

@Colin you seems not to understand what the player base likes here we wanna know what the future of gw 2 is what kind of content is going to come so you still gona HIDE it ? Why blizzard gonna steal it from you ? They gonna do that anyway once is live i wanna know in what im investing time and money pls tell us what u working on that was the entire point on the rage that start plss Colin i can’t spend more money on this game if i don’t see some bright future for her cuz the dress up game is not for me anymore
Whit respect loyal player since gw 1 2006

Honestly, I think ANet needs to create some semblance of transparency if they want to improve relations with the community.

It’s simply not fair that you constantly string everyone along and refuse to give any details whatsoever as to what you’re actually working on. I understand that people don’t react well to missed deadlines, but I think the real issue is that you refuse to actually commit to things you’ve teased in the past and you’re afraid of accountability in general.

The game has just become so stagnant because nothing that adds actual depth to gameplay has been implemented.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hybarf Tics.2048:

You know Colin there is such a thing as giving people hope, without giving any specifics or dates or talk of new continents, that thing is called a pic.
You devs used to do this very thing a lot before launch. Artist like Daniel Dociu for example who has been missing in action since March 11th 2011.
Simply post future in game pics from time to time and let the player base speculate on it. It can even be a painting that has been included in the future development of the game which would give us only a vague look into the future. Don’t do it so much for me but for the rest of the player base since the silence treatment has already killed the game for me. The last L.S chapter I did Divinity’s Reach and didn’t bother finishing the rest. Since then all I do is only daily then I log out. I got all professions at 80 and all fully mapped but now the motivation to stay online is all but gone. Even for me pics would give me something to look forward to besides the usual rumor of a 2015 expansion which I simply do not believe in anymore.
Best regards an ex full time player and supporter who’s already contributed to more than 10 expansions which we have yet to hear about. I don’t regret my gems contribution they added to my enjoyment, but it’s all water under the bridge.
Make no mistake about this silence can also kill a game it has for me.

Just wanted to take a moment and say thank you for supporting Guild Wars for so long. Hopefully someday we’ll be able to tell you about things that re-ignite that excitement for you! Pictures say a thousand words, certainly an interesting idea indeed.

No that would be terrible.
Tiny ambiguous tidbits followed by wild player speculations is part of what got us into this mess. Be as clear and precise as possible(without violating policy of course) so people can actually have a reasonable expectation of what they will be getting. Leave no room for guesswork because people will let their imaginations run wild and then they will be expecting all those things they imagined sooner rather than later.

I have been a huge fan of GW1 and hugely dissapointed in GW2.
Been playing shortly before Factions released and played nearly everyday, even these days.

I LOVED the PvP, especially GvG.
But it really hurts that you completely abandoned people like me.
There is nothing that shows any sign of support in this ’’sequel’’.

To be honest I only check out the forums for a glimmer of hope but honestly I believe I should just give up and leave GW behind me.

To be honest, I don’t see the point.

Nothing in these stickied threads seems like anything that wouldn’t go in a pertinent CDI thread at least. And those really don’t need the attention split between them and some nebulous topic sticky.

I mean, what bearing would these have to the game content?

DonRobeez.3560:

I have been a huge fan of GW1 -snip-

Posts like these (bla… I quit!!) are in no way helpful and contribute nothing in this forum to make GW2 a better game. Making the game more similar to GW1 is a very vague statement (it’s not as simple as we’ve seen with the trait-revamp) and adding a mode from a game with a healer-system into GW2 isn’t as simple as you’d like it to be.

Anet stated more than once that they are testing different gamemodes and don’t find that these live up to their standards, so it’s their right to not implement it if it doesn’t work as you might think.

That’s one of the problems, people in the community aren’t listening when Anet explains why they haven’t done anything specific. You just ignore it and state: GW1 had it —> GW2 must have it or I quit.

Colins sticky would certainly remind people like you what Anet stated in the past (in case you might have missed their arguments). I’m sure most of the info “won’t be read” by some of the players who WANT certain things.

I have to agree with a bunch of other people; the company policy feels really really restrictive. I can understand having that to some degree, but I think that it’s too restrictive.

Hello

I like the idea, I would describe it as conscientious path-finding.
What comes to me at first glance:

1, This idea is not the equivalent of “The buck stops here” but rather “We know what bucks look like”. I would consider a new dev sticky type without specific names of devs, perhaps a team name instead.

2, This idea could make the CDI effectively useless. As the master sticky of known issues grows, players will discuss those issues at a much faster velocity than the CDI could match.

I think this is a case of “is this the right tool for the right job?”

• CDI takes care of actual discussions and feedback. Won’t be enough for a lot of us; we’ll always want more than you have time for.
• Blogs are ideal for capturing the “in the moment” ideas. Instead of trying to navigate the entire forum folder structure, folks would just have to go to one place and see all the recent (and aged) posts.
• Forums are good for player-to-player discussion. I would welcome you guys starting — and stickying — threads to direct our conversations towards certain ideas. For example,
  • “what are the biggest gripes about playing a mesmer? discuss (politely) to help us prioritize the next set of balancing changes” or
  • “what are the most fun (and most horrible) parts of leveling a new character? discuss (politely) to help us prioritize the next changes to trait hierarchy, weapon upgrades, etc”

I actually suggested to Chris in his thread that we have an in game sort of report tool for the suggestions from the players. You could put a character limit on it and even implement the ability to upload an image. It could have a popdown menu for categories (which would change a bit after launch) but it would also allow you to collect the data in a more efficient what WHILE people are playing the game. You could then parse the data by category see which ones received the most requests pick out those as the most prioritized and then submit those to the very stickies you were mentioning in this thread.

I also feel very strongly maybe a monthly poll or something not to excessive should be implemented to get the opinion of all of the GW2 community not everyone jumps on the forums I myself was not a very avid forum poster till recently.

Sorry if it is a bit out of topic for this post.

Hey there Colin,

Thanks for taking the time to think this through. To be honest my first thought was “if it’s going to follow the same old non-disclosure rules, it’s pointless”.

However, after thinking about it, I think you’re on to something here. It would be really amazing to have a roadmap, as long as it was updated on a somewhat consistent basis. There are alot of really dedicated players out there who would ultimately just like to know where the game is headed. I know I personally would check it daily for updates, and it would be sooo nice to get consistent news of what’s coming in the future.

If this is the way we can make that happen, I’m personally all for it! Cheers, and good luck with your endeavors. If you ever find yourself upset with the community, just keep in mind that we all have the same goal… a great GW2 experience.

Well… you know. Except for the trolls.

I dont’ see how it matters. how many of last cdi issue were even addressed.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Very much appreciate the feedback, suggestions and ideas from those who are staying on topic. I’ll continue to monitor this thread and discuss options and your feedback with the community team.

Keep it up!

I don’t mean to be crude or blunt with this Colin, but when you do, can we hear some feedback from the team themselves? I don’t know if this would go against the policy, but just something like:

“Well, insert idea could work but….”

so we can help to work around the problem?

I love the effort being made and I think something like this could be invaluable. But I worry that if company policy still defines the statements “we will address/fix this” or “we won’t have time to get to this for a good while” as being announcements, they’ll ultimately not solve the communication problems.

There’s no real way to get around the lack of communication without relaxing that policy directly or indirectly. The way that policy has been implemented is directly responsible for the communication problem that made people upset. All we need are four options for a status to be included: “Has been addressed to our satisfaction”, “We’re working on this”, “We will be doing this sometime in the future”, “Not confident we can do this at the moment”. Ultra vague statements that tell us whether we should just stop asking for something, either because it’s being done or it’s not going to be done.

I know you’ve been very clear the line you have to tread and I feel really bad if this is a comment that is not productive. But I can’t see how you can really address suggestions without being able to acknowledge that action is being taken.

Assuming the policy can’t be changed, what if you discussed the problems that are currently being addressed rather than solutions you are trying as possible fixes?

An example of this is has already been done for sPvP. It has been mentioned that that problem of “having conquest as the only sPvP format” is being addressed.

What about some sort of teaser display about features? IE:

Mystery feature 1: This feature will give you Samuel Jackson levels of kittenery. 10% complete.
Mystery feature 2: Shiny! 95% complete.
Mystery feature 3: Ohh, Ahh, OMG, you did what to that omnomberry? 50% complete.
Mystery feature 4: Queen Jennahs fabulous shoes. 70% complete.

You give us a status of a feature, some humorous and possibly irrelevant statement about it, and let us try to puzzle out what you mean. And if you’re really evil you can even post in the guessing threads with Hot and Cold.

You follow company guidelines about not telling us what’s in development, show us things are being worked on, and make things a little fun at the same time. Update it on patch day or every month or something.

laokoko.7403:

I dont’ see how it matters. how many of last cdi issue were even addressed.

I can only talk about the horizontal progression CDI: tons of it. DryTop looks like a direct result from those thread. Also that they have made the living story repeatable, the permanent missions etc. People who participated in that thread and play the game certainly know.

btw. this suggested sticky-idea is no discussion like the CDIs. It’s a post in each sub which tells us what thoughts Anet has on high priority stuff they’re working on, which gets updated with each new step in that direction which makes it into the game.

Why would this be good? Because we’d know that they have stuff xy in high priority and are working on it.

I’d be happy to see a test-run though, before doing it for every sub. I’m not 100% sure how it will look like.

Going back and reading through all of this, especially your later refinements to the idea and suggested topics, I have totally lost the feeling that this is something I want. The CDI and dev feedback stuff at least gets into tangible fixes that go into the game. But how in the world can we have a conversation about what keeps me logging in without talking about things you might try to keep me logging in? This comes very close so solving the problem, but the place it would go best is in a forum like “we want more X type of content”, and at that point you just don’t have anything you can say at all. I really appreciate the effort, but frankly, I think as described with the caveats you listed, this wouldn’t be helpful to me at all. And if this became considered one of the key solutions to the current crisis that launched all of this, it would make me angry.

I just think this is useless without changing your policy, I’m really sorry, and I hope that comes across as sincerely as it is intended. I beg you to stop thinking of rough outlines of what’s coming up as a deal-breaker sooner rather than later because you seriously will make people just increasingly upset if you don’t change that. I can’t see any scenario in which six months from now you still won’t announce anything regarding the future of the game, by that point too many people will have fallen off the vine (no Sylvari pun intended).

As always, I’m fully open to alternatives that you would feel more comfortable with, but I’m being honest, having everyone’s concerns about this part dismissed outright or ignored because it doesn’t fit arbitrary rules that the company created not that long ago is starting to make me feel like there’s no chance of anything improving and it makes me sad.

ColinJohanson.2394:

This post would be in an effort to help drive, and help create discussion.

So there is no discussion in that sticky but you expect discussion about the raised questions in new threads.

I would suggest to add a direct link to a new thread to each issue (created by a dev) which adresses those questions. Otherwise people would probably create a single thread about the sticky and discussion would be hard to follow (see CDI).

People would post their ideas/thoughts about those specific questions when they know that devs would focus on these threads first.

I like it.

Make it so.

There are some really strong ideas here, and some very passionate feedback.
I’ve only been playing for a less than a year, and this is my first post on these forums.
I have played other MMOs, and I feel like this issue facing Anet right now, is a common issue in the lifespan of all MMOs. How does a development company balance the trolls and the white knights, and end up with a better product, and a happier community with increased longevity in the market? I’ve played other games, which faced these types of growing pains.
To the OP-
The Dev Tracker should be what we visit to see what a Dev is saying about any given issue in the game. Perhaps it could be reconfigured to sort by topic or chronologically, and have links to pertinent discussions going on in the other subforums (which I feel there are too many of already.) If the intent is more for user reference and cataloging, not discussion of the issues/suggestions, I think you have what you need already.
To address all the issues of players wanting to know whether there will be expac someday, or new this or new that, a 6 month road map doesn’t really take too much imagination to be vague yet enticing enough to not spill any beans, but you still need to give players what they want, not what you want. Or they will go play other games, and not look back. A new MMO is a blank slate for us all.
I think it would be smart to do a forum poll of some sort, asking players what they want developer time to focus on in 2015. Pick the top 3 or whatever, and then show us how you are going to give it to us. It would go a long way to repairing the damage of non-communication.
This isn’t about keeping or not keeping any single development promise, it’s about Anet’s integrity.
- there’s my 2 cents.

polls (as I mentioned here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Communicating-with-you/page/19#post4334333) would be a bad idea imho.

• you only get the results of the forum-goers (a minority)
• you can’t be sure someone isn’t making scripts in order to manipulate the votes
• people would rage about each others votes (see: Evon vs. Kiel)
• as Colin said: priority may shift because of many factors, like illness of a dev, unpredictable bugs, etc.
• we don’t know which features we have to sacrifice in order to bring the developer to the feature we want (e.g. development on SAB —> no new maps in the near future) as long as we have no insight in what everybody is working on.

Anet has the numbers what people are doing in the game anyway. I too think that you shouldn’t trust those numbers too much though, for example:

People aren’t in the open world. This could mean that people don’t enjoy the open world. Personally I would enjoy the open world if we could find something of value while exploring.

There are several topics that could be discussed:

WvW game mode imbalance and possible improvements:
- Ways to cut the population imbalance/stack
- Motivations to spread population over all servers or reduce number of servers.
- Structures design and flaws that can trigger bug abuse.
- Improvements (since new map is out of question), it should be discussed what is WvW for, it has much bigger impact than Anet tough it would have, if it worth’s a good amount of patches to refresh the game mode and the possible re-adjustment of WvW to improve further, a possible ground zero area that would grow within new patches.

sorry about my bad english.

I don’t really see how it would matter because you refuse to fix the glaring flaws in the game like terrible optimization, extremely lacking skill system, bad dungeons with boring damage sponge bosses, and many other issues, a lot of which have been plaguing the game since release i.e two YEARS ago now.

Pjwned.3601:

I don’t really see how it would matter because you refuse to fix the glaring flaws in the game like terrible optimization, extremely lacking skill system, bad dungeons with boring damage sponge bosses, and many other issues, a lot of which have been plaguing the game since release i.e two YEARS ago now.

Pretty much, but we have living story.

Going back to Colins post, Im not sure…if this is needed? I mean, I guess Im confused what exactly you are suggesting? A more effective way to summarize key points in CDI threads or something?

Maybe one or two CDI forum moderators who sole jobs are to manage the CDI discussions, responding constantly, and providing summary, etc.

Khisanth.2948:

Assuming the policy can’t be changed, what if you discussed the problems that are currently being addressed rather than solutions you are trying as possible fixes?

An example of this is has already been done for sPvP. It has been mentioned that that problem of “having conquest as the only sPvP format” is being addressed.

Forgot to add this.

The advantage of talking about the problems rather than the solutions is that generally speaking problems do not disappear on their own and they don’t change but the solutions might change drastically from one iteration to another.

It would be even nicer if they can accompanied by reasons why it is something that needs to be dealt with for the game. “Why was X changed? Nobody asked for this.” is a type of comment I’ve seen on more than a few occasions.

Love the idea. It’s better than nothing Colin. Let us know if there are any slight tweaks in your company policy after bringing it to the company’s attention lol xoxo

This is too blur to be of any actual use.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

laokoko.7403:

I dont’ see how it matters. how many of last cdi issue were even addressed.

I can only talk about the horizontal progression CDI: tons of it. DryTop looks like a direct result from those thread. Also that they have made the living story repeatable, the permanent missions etc. People who participated in that thread and play the game certainly know.

btw. this suggested sticky-idea is no discussion like the CDIs. It’s a post in each sub which tells us what thoughts Anet has on high priority stuff they’re working on, which gets updated with each new step in that direction which makes it into the game.

Why would this be good? Because we’d know that they have stuff xy in high priority and are working on it.

I’d be happy to see a test-run though, before doing it for every sub. I’m not 100% sure how it will look like.

My point is do they really need the CDI to know what they should change?

Take the things you listed, those are common things people have been complaining for a very long time.

Or take the dungeon leader kick feature in this feature patch. It is something that have been complained on the forum forever.

This could be really useful.

This is still a carrot on a stick tactic made to sound interesting. Just like all the other “hype” we get! Take note of what it took just to see Red In these threads. I may even consider calling this new Red back-peddling!
I am in no way trying to troll or be a negative Nancy. I have lost interest in playing the game aswell. Right around the break I stopped logging in regularly! I log into get the LS updates incase something good comes. I get more enjoyment reading the threads anymore then in game and it’s sad! I only read the threads hoping I’ll find something to bring me back to the game!
I loved GW I want to so bad have that same feeling about GW2! Please Please give us something to be in awwe of already!

Sounds like a start. So you’re saying that in threads like the new SAB thread, there would be a dev post sticked at the top (of the thread) that would overview the current situation and ANet’s stance on the topic?

Why all this bs about communication?
Everything that people who love the game want to see happen have hashed and rehashed the same idea a hundred times.
Either do it or dont.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Why all this bs about communication?
Everything that people who love the game want to see happen have hashed and rehashed the same idea a hundred times.
Either do it or dont.

^

The forums are an open book to the players head… if they want to know what we want, they really don’t need to ask. I can hardly think of any other business that have it as easy as they do to understand their customers but still they fail to deliver (i.e. trait unlock in response to skill hunting demand; not what the player base asked, it was a lazy way out).

We see A but don’t see how A affects B, C or D

MMO communication has some particular qualities, IMHO. Developers are not expected to do the game and return home, but to work at a steady pace, doing new stuff/fixing things/developing story. In exchange, is expected that the players base keep growing, or at least that players keep playing and making purchases, cosmetic stuff, in-game items, expansions, etc…

This makes this relationship longer than the company-player relationship that a singleplayer game has, for example, I’m just there is no a crowded forum for Metal Gear Solid 2, or Uncharted. Communication should be in par of that particularity.

The two main intentions for communication here should be (always, IMHO), to gather information from the community, and to give information to this same community.

For the gather part, we can use the “freeform”, old-school, anarchic style of posting in forums (or blogs, reddit, etc), or any other structured way that ANet chooses to use, like the CDI

For the receiving part (as the players receiving info from ANet), we are limited to whatever ANet wants to give. The lasts months we’ve seen a “not to tell anything” policy. It seems weird, and probably it has reasons in favor of it, and also probably there are more groups other than ANet and the Players that actively impulse it (for example, distributor, or investors, or other obscure groups not seen by players).

From the player point of view, it depends mostly of the kind of player. Some people prefer to have information, some prefer to not have it, and some others don’t care. And either group can be divided by the amount and exact type of information we’re talking about.

I, for example, prefer to have some insight from ANet about what they are trying to accomplish, and what direction the game has. I don’t need exact dates, don’t even the exact year. Something like “we’re pointing to release new zones every year, our estimation right now is to deliver a new zone for each Season if Living Story, but it may change”.

More vagueness is acceptable, of course, but at some point, going so far in the vague direction will equal to say nothing.

Some players are adults, or at least growth people. I’m waiting for my first child to be born next month. I can handle that a new zone is not appearing in the vaguely promised time, or a new class, or race or expansion or weapon. And with communication, you can handle that by informing. Every x months (3, 6) just make the teams revise what hot topics were promised or appearing in informations, and check if the announcements need adjustments. “We said a new continent was in the works, is still in the works and it will not appear sooner than LS4, even LS4 is an roughly estimation date because there is some discussion going yet”

It’s far more better than nothing (for me, at least). It may lead to some rage and disappointments, but probably no more than saying nothing during an entire year.

Randall.7306:

MMO communication has some particular qualities, IMHO. Developers are not expected to do the game and return home, but to work at a steady pace, doing new stuff/fixing things/developing story. In exchange, is expected that the players base keep growing, or at least that players keep playing and making purchases, cosmetic stuff, in-game items, expansions, etc…

This makes this relationship longer than the company-player relationship that a singleplayer game has, for example, I’m just there is no a crowded forum for Metal Gear Solid 2, or Uncharted. Communication should be in par of that particularity.

Yes, You do not buy a boxed game software but an online game service .

And this game service changes. And it is normal for customers that they want to now if, how and when this service will change.

Randall.7306:

I’m waiting for my first child to be born next month

Then why are you posting here? In the months after the birth you will not have time to play GW2.

Just kidding.^^ I wish you and your new family the best.

Randall.7306:

“We said a new continent was in the works, is still in the works and it will not appear sooner than LS4, even LS4 is an roughly estimation date because there is some discussion going yet”

It’s far more better than nothing (for me, at least). It may lead to some rage and disappointments, but probably no more than saying nothing during an entire year.

Yes.

Greetings.