Guild Wars 2

Well, that was an interesting read.

Or at least, it was after my monitor stopped rotating from the volume of spin applied.

Glad to see the positives but that was far too net positive and gloss-over for my liking. The utter lack of technical fidelity applied in Arena Net’s work in the past 3 months needed better acknowledgement than provided in the very euphemistic language used therein.

Shaileya.7063:

So please.. do not tell us we enjoyed the event you gave us when we clearly did not.

Please, don’t assume your opinions are shared by everyone else, when there’s clearly people who did enjoy the event. Thank you!

Shaileya,
You bring up some very, very good points. It is my hope that even if they didn’t have the courage to express those thoughts in the blog (showing some humility at how very badly a lot of the event went), that they realize and have taken to heart that they have much to address and correct in terms of how they communicate and the perception that they have abandoned their own manifesto.

A lot of players really enjoyed the trailblazing aspect of unveiling the new Southsun Cove map, specifically the feeling of discovery and being part of the land grab.

I call bs bingo on this one, but ok. I’m missing skill bugfixes on the todo list. But to say something positive: it’s good to see that event scaling is actually on the list after so many months. It’s broken for both too few players (too many mobs) as well as too many players (too few and especially way too weak mobs).

Hey. Mr. Whiteside.

We didn’t forget what you said about the folks that got screwed out the Ancient Karka reward.

Just a reminder.

We’re still here.

I’m happy to hear many nice things are coming.

However I have just one problem with that article.

“We’re very excited about the new content, and from the reactions we have seen, so are many of you”?

Honestly? Have you been reading the forums lately? :/ It’s a bit insulting, but whatever

Words that give me hope:

After the holiday we’ll be doing a number of community Q&As and live community conferences where you can ask us questions and get the down-low on how we are evolving the world of Tyria."

Yes, ArenaNet, this is what you need. There needs to be a strong line of communication between you and the fans. You need to talk to us, open up, and tell us exactly what your intentions are behind the veil. We ought to be included in the design process of the game, it’s as much our game as it is yours.

Here’s a general rundown of what we are working towards over the upcoming months:

Revamping all of our existing dungeons (Story and Explorable versions) through rebalance and overhauled encounters.
Adding new dungeons to the Fractal of the Mists.
Adding more variation to creatures, enhancing our open world scaling system, as well as evolving many events and experiences across Tyria.
Fixing and improving existing content throughout the game, and better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2.
Building on the Southsun Cove’s persistent content.
Adding new Guild content and Guild progression features.
Continuing to build upon the story and adventures of Guild Wars 2.

You guys. I couldn’t have asked for more. After the emotionally abusive weekend that you’ve put behind us, leaving me all alone at the party with all your dc’s and lag, and making me feel unwanted and unloved with FotM spamming that my level 1 just isn’t good enough.

Now you come out with this. How can I possibly be mad at you when you go and do something as thoughtful as this.

Shaileya.7063:

A better business move would have been to at least be a little humble about the whole experience. Admiting the event didn’t really work out like was planned would have at least given us a sense of striving to do better, because we all sure hope this wasn’t ANet’s vision for this. But to read this, you’d think it all went to plan and we just loved every buggy second of it. It displays no intention to learn from the mistakes that were made, when the company is outright pretending that customers are happy with what transpired.

Yeah, the opening made me laugh quite a bit, it read like a letter of denial, but at least he admitted that things could have gone better. It’s a minor concession, no apologies though, or pointing out where the problems lie, but at least it’s a minor display of taking fault.

From there on the topic got a lot better though.

I really like their outlook on what comes ahead for the game, and I really hope the social aspect this game was advertised for we will see soon rather than later. I didn’t see a notion on guesting becoming available in the bullet point list, but this is very needed in my opinion.

Maybe I should write a book. Lol. Had to rewrite so I didn’t hit the 5000 character limit.

Some of the things on that list of bullet points are just much too vague, but I’m glad to see that the team is hosting Q&A in the future which may allow us a chance to get our complaints addressed by someone in charge.

The one that gives me lots of hope is this one, though:

Revamping all of our existing dungeons (Story and Explorable versions) through rebalance and overhauled encounters.

This is something that I’ve been saying for days now: a lot of the complaints against the new content would fade completely away if you just go back and fix the old content. Allow us to obtain some new shiny ascended stuff from the other dungeons, too. So that it’s not almost exclusively in one place.

Now if only you make sure that you revamp some of the large global events, like Claw of Jormag or the Temple runs, so that their rewards are a closer approximation to those provided by the Ancient Karka, then….

Fixing and improving existing content throughout the game, and better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2.

….wow, you’re good.

Please, please make sure that you improve the standards of rewards in all of these high-level areas. It will significantly cut down on people being upset about missing these big events if there are ALWAYS big events (with similarly big rewards) available for them to run on any given day, either in Orr and elsewhere.

And please, PLEASE cut down on the existing grind, don’t keep adding to it! Legendaries are tough enough to get to, don’t make me grind for every single item in my inventory. I’m perfectly happy playing the game even after I’ve maxed out my character’s efficiency, without that vertical progression garbage. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. I know you can’t get rid of Ascended gear at this point, but you CAN avoid creating another tier after that. Stick to the system we now have, don’t keep adding tiers every few months or even I won’t be able to defend you.

I have a suggestion.

Make an in-game survey. An honest survey asking about the new gear tier. Like the ones you made in the beta about personal story. That would help immensely. It will give you a clearer picture of how players feel about it.

Then you can start with questions and answers. But this time, please do not avoid vital questions because it will hurt your name and reputation even more.

I’m really disappointed. Why not build a survey on the launcher? Why not discuss things with the fans? I don’t expect to be consulted on most things, but there is no measurable feedback the community can provide to them right now.

I appreciate the general outline of future plans and the mention of ongoing issues in the bullet points. However, while new, ongoing content is important and welcome, I think that too many existing issues have been able to slide far too long due to improper allocation of development resources.

There are still a lot of broken DEs that have been broken pretty much since launch. The professions are still not up to par with levels they should have attained prior to launch. “Invulnerable” and related bugs are out of control, to the point that turning the entire system off and allowing the occasional “kill by terrain exploit” would be far preferable to the major amount of frustrations these bugs are causing the community.

Load times seems to increase with every passing week. Performance issues remain, with some players seeing performance decreasing with many patches, rather than an evolution on the issue.

As I said, new content/features are important, but there are enough ongoing issues that seem to see very little progress that I think priorities and resource deployment really need to be reconsidered.

I also think better dialogue on highly debated issues among the community of all kinds need to be better addressed all around. A lot of us have a great love for the game and a great respect for everyone over at Arenanet, but the general lack of communication just alienates fans who really want to feel engaged and appreciated as partners in the ongoing evolution of the game. Engage the player base and you will find people will be a lot more patient all around and the overall energy surrounding the game will improve.

Columba.9730:

More dungeons. I hate dungeons. It would have nice to acknowledge the near universal disgust at the gear grind.

“Near univseral”? So you managed to ask every single player in the game how they feel about it?

Do you realize the people posting on the forums represent not even 10% of the people who are playing the game?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Thanks for your feedback we really appreciate it. I would like to take the opportunity to answer your questions in an AMA on Reddit on Monday 26th (12pm PST- More details to follow) to talk about recent updates to the game and our philosophy for Guild Wars 2 moving forward.

Please keep in mind that there we are about to begin the Thanksgiving holiday in the US and are out of the office (and likely in game) until Monday. Happy Holidays everyone!

Chris

Oh cool, I love when you guys do AMAs. I’ll be there with bells on, and I hope you all have a great holiday!

Rich.9503:

I think that many forum readers over the last few days would find that announcement insulting. It has PR written all over it, with no reference to the controversy that the patch has introduced, so i think its clear that Ascended gear is here to stay and this obsession with their new fractals dungeon. There is nothing in that announcement to give me hope, and a lot to fill me with dread.

Oh please, like any company with half an ounce of sense would put out a survey that stated:

“Welp our last attempt at putting out content was an unmitigated failure, it lacked substance, was riddled with bugs to the point of unplayability and was unintentionally designed to alienate large swaths of the player base. Furthermore we failed to address major issues with nearly every aspect of the game in favour of making this half-baked waste of kilobytes.”

I mean, I would applaud their honesty if they did it.

I think that they are going down the wrong road with these changes. Half baked CCP style development that introduced new shiny content with the promise that it will be added to over time. A promise which is instantly dropped for the introduction of new shiny content to be introduced half baked again and again and again.

The Grind has also been scaling up slowly since launch. I could sort of accept it from the cultural tier armours and karma gear, but the grind to get ascended gear is too much for me. 12g in ecto alone for a back item? GW1 did have its grind I know, It was one of the reasons I quit it and played WoW for so long. Yes, it had a horrible RNG grind as well, but it was different grinding with 39 other people in MC than in GW1.

Maybe after a few months of continued population decline Anet will be forced to make some drastic changes. But I have to say, every day I log in to play, I see at least one or two bugs, broken events, unfinished content, poorly balanced skills, and many other things that make me think; “I wonder what it would be like to play a panda”

I would also like to add that fixing current content is way more important then introducing new content. I think you guys should be focusing on what players have been addressing since launch before you focus too much attention on adding new DE’s, dungeons, areas etc. The cake may appear nice on the outside with new layers added, but if it’s rotten from the inside it will still leave a foul taste in the mouth

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Two things from me:
- We will talk in more detail about the things Chris outlined when we get closer to releasing them.
- If this thread becomes another one where people bicker back and forth about Ascended gear, I will close it down. Please continue discussion about Ascended gear in the existing threads on that topic and do not derail every thread that pops up.

Thank you.

sound a little tense,

happy turkey day to you and arena net all the same,

we look forward to all the details.

As the initial response had passed and then the same people were just cycling arguments over and over and over and over. Then yes that was bickering. The initial response stands very clear I think. And, while most people are cynical and sceptical about it, I do feel that message was passed on very clearly.

I do think the wording was a bit wrong there on Martin’s behalf. One need to be careful to label anything, because people will twist it (intended or unintended) to what they expect to hear. Sad but true. Same happened with what Chris had to say to us about the issue, and it simply was disregarded as PR talk, while to me it felt more like some hasted piece trying to explain that it’s not as bad as it looks, which generally doesn’t work psychologically. =P

Does “Revamping and rebalancing the existing dungeons” mean they’re going to make them harder?
You know, Arah on the shortest path already takes more than an hour and half to complete., and that’s already a bit too much.

Anet pre-sold well over 2 million copies of GW2 (that doesn’t count all the copies they’ve sold since then). Assuming exactly 2 million pre sales if only 1 out of 20 players still play that’s 100000 people still playing the game. But that’s being quite generous on the player decay rate. I’m sure there are still many more people playing than that otherwise we’d be having server mergers ala Aion. Which sold less than 1 million pre order and still had 150k active players after 6 months.

So yeah, if every single post in that big thread was unique, which they weren’t, it would have represented less than 10% of the active players in the game. This is all just guess work on my part though and the only factual number I have to back that up is their pre sales numbers and the fact that my friends list still has 15+ people on it out of about 60 on it at any given time.

P.S. If GW2 only retained 1 in 20 players after 3 months and after selling well over 2 million copies of the game world wide you can be sure that would be all over gaming news websites. That would be an absolutely unheard of decay rate for a top tier tripple A mmo like GW2, especially after only 3 months.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Just in case some of you have missed it (it is a bit up in this thread):

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Chris-Whiteside-on-the-Lost-Shores-and-Beyond/page/2#post827333

Fixed the link.

(Post is pushed to page/2 due to deletions.)

MilkInBags.5136:

Columba.9730:

More dungeons. I hate dungeons. It would have nice to acknowledge the near universal disgust at the gear grind.

You don’t have to run dungeons for the gear. You can run it for you know, actually see all the content

I’m looking forward for the changes in WvW as it got pretty boring lately.

Edit: What’s the “Ascended gear fiasco”? Anyone care to explain?

The fiasco is that ArenaNet marketed GW2 on continuing their design philosophy from GW into GW2. Three months after GW2’s release, they go back on that.

They added ascended gear above exotics, so now ascended is the best gear in the game. This is power creep and vertical progression. This goes against their design philosophy.

Eh, I’d like to get some real answers too, but now they want me to wait another 5 days before they say anything lol. This is just getting strung out longer and longer…

fellyn.5083:

P.S. If GW2 only retained 1 in 20 players after 3 months and after selling well over 2 million copies of the game world wide you can be sure that would be all over gaming news websites. That would be an absolutely unheard of decay rate for a top tier tripple A mmo like GW2, especially after only 3 months.

Why would it be? Its not like Anet puts out weekly updates on consecutive logins. The empirical evidence is actually quite convincing. The facts are that only a fraction of the September purchasers have kept playing, what fraction it is for Anet and NCsoft to know and us to speculate about.

Besides nearly every online game loses 1/2 to 3/4 of its population in the first six months. World of Warcraft was a freak aberration. After that some, like Eve online continue to very slowly grow over the years, while others die out.

Kiviar.7063:

fellyn.5083:

P.S. If GW2 only retained 1 in 20 players after 3 months and after selling well over 2 million copies of the game world wide you can be sure that would be all over gaming news websites. That would be an absolutely unheard of decay rate for a top tier tripple A mmo like GW2, especially after only 3 months.

Why would it be? Its not like Anet puts out weekly updates on consecutive logins. The empirical evidence is actually quite convincing. The facts are that only a fraction of the September purchasers have kept playing, what fraction it is for Anet and NCsoft to know and us to speculate about.

Besides nearly every online game loses 1/2 to 3/4 of its population in the first six months. World of Warcraft was a freak aberration. After that some, like Eve online continue to very slowly grow over the years, while others die out.

Yeah but, 1 in 20? That’s more than half. That’s more than 3/4. And inside of 3 months? You’re saying more than 95% of the people who bought the game 3 months ago already quit. That’s absolutely unheard of. That’s the amount of people that would need to have stopped playing the game entirely for the claim that the mega thread represents how the entire player base feels about ascended gear to be true.

Not even that Final Fantasy mmo had that kind of decay rate and that game was pretty much unplayable from what I remember reading about it.

Thanks for the update Chris, and glad Anet seen the Weak points.

MilkInBags.5136:

Edit: What’s the “Ascended gear fiasco”? Anyone care to explain?

It’s only a fiasco to some players who intend to over-dramatise their contempt with any form of vertical progression.

Also: This blogpost is about UPCOMING ADDITIONS. Not about reiterating past changes. This does not automatically mean they are keeping things quiet, this means the focus of the blogpost (and to an extend so is this thread) is about future additions

They are not covering things up, and they are aware, and they thank us for a patience (Which some of us have more than others obviously):
Chris: “Having said that, we’re also aware that there were certain aspects of the event that could have worked better than they did, and thanks to your excellent feedback we’ll be working toward strengthening this type of content moving forward.”

So please, please, cool down, and have patience, or maybe even try the content they provided. =/

fellyn.5083:

Kiviar.7063:

fellyn.5083:

P.S. If GW2 only retained 1 in 20 players after 3 months and after selling well over 2 million copies of the game world wide you can be sure that would be all over gaming news websites. That would be an absolutely unheard of decay rate for a top tier tripple A mmo like GW2, especially after only 3 months.

Why would it be? Its not like Anet puts out weekly updates on consecutive logins. The empirical evidence is actually quite convincing. The facts are that only a fraction of the September purchasers have kept playing, what fraction it is for Anet and NCsoft to know and us to speculate about.

Besides nearly every online game loses 1/2 to 3/4 of its population in the first six months. World of Warcraft was a freak aberration. After that some, like Eve online continue to very slowly grow over the years, while others die out.

Yeah but, 1 in 20? That’s more than half. That’s more than 3/4. And inside of 3 months? You’re saying more than 95% of the people who bought the game 3 months ago already quit. That’s absolutely unheard of.

Not even that Final Fantasy mmo had that kind of decay rate and that game was pretty much unplayable from what I remember reading about it.

Oh, I agree that 1 in 20 is probably nonsense. Internet forums are a hive of hyperbole, don’t let its liberal use detract from the core content of the message. You can not deny that a lot of people who played this game even just last month have quit.

FrizzFreston.5290:

MilkInBags.5136:

Edit: What’s the “Ascended gear fiasco”? Anyone care to explain?

It’s only a fiasco to some players who intend to over-dramatise their contempt with any form of vertical progression.

Also: This blogpost is about UPCOMING ADDITIONS. Not about reiterating past changes. This does not automatically mean they are keeping things quiet, this means the focus of the blogpost (and to an extend so is this thread) is about future additions

They are not covering things up, and they are aware, and they thank us for a patience (Which some of us have more than others obviously):
Chris: “Having said that, we’re also aware that there were certain aspects of the event that could have worked better than they did, and thanks to your excellent feedback we’ll be working toward strengthening this type of content moving forward.”

So please, please, cool down, and have patience, or maybe even try the content they provided. =/

Agree. Please be patient, they’re not abandoning other aspects of the game because of the fractals, these new dungeons are an addition, not a replacement, and if it becomes so they’ll figure out a way to make “old” dungeons more attractive.

Twomix.5384:

If I may suggest, how about a solo mode for the storyline dungeon ? Often I play during odd hours due to work and often it’s impossible to find anyone to do the dungeons with. I love the storyline and I’m a lore junkie and would love it if I can experience the storyline.

Yes! Scale the dungeons, particularly fractals, so that we can solo it. I, too, have a schedule that makes it difficult to find groups; I’m on-call at times, meaning that I may have to get out of game quickly — and a solo mode would let me do that without hurting other people.

Also, I sometimes play with family — say, my wife, or my two gamer-daughters. It would be great if I could jump into fractals with a daughter at 2AM…

Please, ANet: Scale the dungeons, just like you scale the rest of Tyria. That would eliminate almost all of my complaints about gear progression.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Thanks for your feedback we really appreciate it. I would like to take the opportunity to answer your questions in an AMA on Reddit on Monday 26th (12pm PST- More details to follow) to talk about recent updates to the game and our philosophy for Guild Wars 2 moving forward.

Please keep in mind that there we are about to begin the Thanksgiving holiday in the US and are out of the office (and likely in game) until Monday. Happy Holidays everyone!

Chris

I’ll be there.

Thank you, sincerely, for trying to open up and listen. I will be asked about group-size scaling: Letting dungeons scale like explorables, such that I can play solo or with a couple friends/family.

Also, I’ll be asking if ANet plans on a continuous gear grind, or if they are finally settled, and will be giving us parallel ways of getting Ascended armor. In particular, will we be able to craft it? If so, I would be much happier.

Thanks you, again, for being open to the community. We wouldn’t be cranky if we didn’t love the game.

GOSU.9574:

Did anyone miss this on the WvW portion?

“new reward progression”

That’s right, new reward PROGRESSION in WvW. More tread mill please.

Also changing up PvP, I bet with MORE Progression. Can’t get enough tread mill in this non-tediouis, no tread mill game.

Will they ever face the fact no matter how much they try, how much pressure is put on them to do so, they will NEVER take WoW gear tread mill enthuasiasts away from WoW?

In the last write up they said ascended gear would be available thru wvw this is most likely the progression he is talking about.

Also maybe it’s just me but a horizontal progression system for wvw would be kick kitten And may e get people out to fight even when there server is losing.

Jeremy Winston.2165:

Yes.. it was nice. I was disturbed that it didn’t mention any of the controversy over the new gear. But, I’m hoping that’s just PR-spin and not necessarily ANET ignoring the issue.

Considering that is all they have done to address the problem so far, I wouldn’t be holding your breath in anticipation.

Oh dear guys, deleting and infracting post for stating valid concerns in a constructive manner is only going to bite you.
Please, I beg you, I am sure many of you at Anet have played and followed CCP (Eve online) and know how they messed up but put things right in the end.
Censoring is bad (unless it blatantly goes against the EULA) Let people talk.

There is a (very) fine line between honest communication with players and PR disasters. I think the post by Chris treaded the line carefully, and with good reason. In the past, careless wording caused a storm in the forums, so I can’t blame them for being vague or avoiding some issues altogether. Some people wouldn’t be content unless they specifically said they would nerf the requirements of Ascended Gear or remove it altogether, for instance – I would avoid mentioning plans for that, too. People are already twisting every single instance of the word “progression” as a sure sign of the introduction of treadmills, for one.

That said I can understand why they don’t talk about things until they’re close to release. Game design isn’t a linear process – there are lots of ideas and things that get discarded, and lots of things which are half finished or even near finished which are also discarded. Talking about things before they are absolutely ready to be implemented poses the risk of talking about something that won’t be implemented, thus causing unnecessary drama and potentially becoming another PR nightmare. It is the most sensible option to stay quiet about things until they’re ready; that way, if the idea dies down, nobody needs to be disappointed (if it was a good idea) or will have raged needlessly (if it was a bad one).

Overall I appreciate these planned changes. They are quite right in saying a big chunk of the playerbase has embraced Fractals (have you been to Lion’s Arch recently?), too, and I am part of the crowd that liked the last event for the opportunity of the being there as the world is shaped. I’m guessing they used survey data for those statements.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Thanks for your feedback we really appreciate it. I would like to take the opportunity to answer your questions in an AMA on Reddit on Monday 26th (12pm PST- More details to follow) to talk about recent updates to the game and our philosophy for Guild Wars 2 moving forward.

Please keep in mind that there we are about to begin the Thanksgiving holiday in the US and are out of the office (and likely in game) until Monday. Happy Holidays everyone!

Chris

Nice

Are there other developers answering our questions too, or only you? I’d love to see Colin in one of those AMAs ^^

“Fixing and improving existing content throughout the game, and better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2.”

Sounds like they’re going to make gear grinding even worse, somehow. “Progression” seems to be their new code word for “NCSoft is now dominating our professional careers; please, help us.”

Which makes this funny: “Adding new Guild content and Guild progression features.” plus “Adding brand new content to World vs. World as well as adding new reward progression.” If they were just adding in new items, they’d just say “adding new item rewards.”

Remember, kids. ANet progress is bad progress. It’s actually taking steps backwards. Not forwards.

biggest bs always comes from PR

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I would like to take the opportunity to answer your questions in an AMA on Reddit on Monday 26th (12pm PST

What’s an “AMA”? Sorry, as I posted before – abbreviation deciphering is not my forte.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Thanks for your feedback we really appreciate it. I would like to take the opportunity to answer your questions in an AMA on Reddit on Monday 26th (12pm PST- More details to follow) to talk about recent updates to the game and our philosophy for Guild Wars 2 moving forward.

Please keep in mind that there we are about to begin the Thanksgiving holiday in the US and are out of the office (and likely in game) until Monday. Happy Holidays everyone!

Chris

Good, I’ll simply wait and see.

However, please keep in mind that sometimes the more important things are how players feel, not what you think which are better for players.

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I would like to take the opportunity to answer your questions in an AMA on Reddit on Monday 26th (12pm PST

What’s an “AMA”? Sorry, as I posted before – abbreviation deciphering is not my forte.

AMA is short for “Ask Me Anything.”

Now who wants to bet that any questions about the manifesto will be conveniently glossed over?

This is your chance, guys. Please – I want to be proved wrong.

Can we please have some focus on the PvP aspect of the game now? PvE’ers have gotten one update after another shoved at them, and no matter how many you’ll release, the PvE segment will burn through your content faster than you can produce it.

Part of why PvE is currently succesful is because PvP is sorely underdeveloped.

- Where’s matchmaking to ensure rank 1’s won’t get paired up against rank 40+?
- Where’s integrated ladders – no, rented arenas will not be a solution since alot of casuals won’t sign up on external sites for rented tournaments – like the ones in, say, StarCraft 2?
- Where’s more in-depth and publicly available stat-mapping such as damage done/healing done/damage evaded/damage reduced through protection in paid tournaments?
- Where is spectator mode?
- Are there any plans to make Warriors and Rangers even remotely viable in competitive? Currently only 1 warrior has really broken through in competitive and that is Fredwz, which, aside from obvious skills, is also because his team puts some effort into making it work; for all other teams it’s universally regarded as more optimal not going with a Warrior.

It would be absolutely great if Guild Wars 2 actually started being a bit, y’know, Guild Wars, and less about World of Guild Wars.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Two things from me:
- We will talk in more detail about the things Chris outlined when we get closer to releasing them.
- If this thread becomes another one where people bicker back and forth about Ascended gear, I will close it down. Please continue discussion about Ascended gear in the existing threads on that topic and do not derail every thread that pops up.

Thank you.

Kinda hard to talk about Ascended Gear and the debacle it created by being added when the largest thread pertaining to it was shut down by you guys and we were told it didn’t matter anyways because only another thread you guys had created was of any importance. This was after the original thread had hit 10k replies. This new post from Chris tells us absolutely nothing but a lot of vague outlines which seems to be his forte at the moment. Many of us would like some actual information regarding the game right now and not tid bits leaked as they are about to be implemented. You blindsided us with the Ascended Armor and recent Lost Shore patch which turned the game into something that many of us had not agreed to in the first place.

Now that we desire answers all you want to do is play holiday hide-n-seek. We have givien you thousands of posts regarding the problems with the direction of the game. Media outlets right at this very moment and over the past few days are expressing the very same astonishment at Anet being so quiet on this move and the reasoning behind the move. The only pearl of enjoyment people seem to agree on is the Fractals (even to the point of Swamp which is annoying), but that joy is just in doing them and not in the fact we have to grind them. With the holiday juke now we have to wait until next week to get any type of possible answer.

I don’t think you will ever get a solid civil discussion on this matter until you slow down the gestapo actions and Anet provides us with some concrete answers on the direction of the game and possible changes to recently implemented game defining materials. I brought a bit over two dozen people into this game when it launched and thanks to recent events I now have 4 of them still playing. That is pretty telling to me.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Thanks for your feedback we really appreciate it. I would like to take the opportunity to answer your questions in an AMA on Reddit on Monday 26th (12pm PST- More details to follow) to talk about recent updates to the game and our philosophy for Guild Wars 2 moving forward.

Please keep in mind that there we are about to begin the Thanksgiving holiday in the US and are out of the office (and likely in game) until Monday. Happy Holidays everyone!

Chris

Hopefully this is weighted with the proper respect that the lack thereof caused the original to be deleted.

With all due respect, but this format is only really good for people who are anonymous. Such as IAMA doctor AMA and in a general discussion forum about medicine. Doctoring, engineering, etc, rarely has enough fans. It is all about imparting information, not public relation spin.

Holding an AMA in the GW2 subreddit will just increase the noise to signal ratio as the hive-mind asks irrelevant questions that have little do with the reasons you have to do the AMA. To smooth over all the issues the November 15th update caused.

The softest ball that passes over that particular plate will be struck, and the hive-mind will consider it a home run and call it caring. This a PR move. And any dissent will be down-voted by the hive-mind mentality that happens on /r/guildwars2, no matter how relevant and poignant the points made.

fellyn.5083:

Columba.9730:

More dungeons. I hate dungeons. It would have nice to acknowledge the near universal disgust at the gear grind.

“Near univseral”? So you managed to ask every single player in the game how they feel about it?

Do you realize the people posting on the forums represent not even 10% of the people who are playing the game?

And you are assuming that only people who are annoyed at the grind are posting in the forums and that the people who don’t come to the forums are care bear happy.

It’s called a representative sample. It’s the same concept as polling for the elections, etc.

Im happy to see they havent forgotten about the players who care about guilds!!!!

FYI those saying they didnt address the ascended gear…it was addressed in a separate stickied topic in the news and announcements forums.