Guild Wars 2

Thanks for writing this, I don’t usually criticize or make any posts about my feelings about the game because I am generally happy with it. But in light of everyone else giving feedback, here is my feedback.

A) Living story, I love the constant updates but there needs to be more lore inside the game instead of on a blog post, maybe a little dialogue with whoever to get the full scope of what is happening and what to do next. I find all the activities really fun and I like how you guys included the daily into the LS too.

B) Something that extremely important to me (and other GW1 vets) is GW1 connections, and I think there should be a lot namely, Cantha and Elona. I also love little tidbits like Carlotta as a mini pet this Halloween. I really love Elona, oh my god if you made an expansion you know how amazing that would be? I used to leave my client up for HOURS just listening to the sound track. I wish that we could still have that abbadon fractal…I was really upset when Evon lost because I would never be able to play one of my favorite parts of GW

C) Account bound/RNG rewards, although I do like having more unique rewards, I think there should be a little more focus on things like precursors. Many people are obsessed (including me) about precursors and the lack there of. I feel the more rewards you put into the game with each living story up date the less chance I’m getting my precursor because I want that limited time item (examples: BLC weapons, TA weapons) but I also want to thank you for putting the TA weapons obtainable outside of the gem store.

Charak.9761:

You want feedback to fixing your game?

1.) Extrinsic rewards need to be provided away from RNG/Gold. Your skinner box is really poorly designed, to many players are smashing that button down and getting nothing out, while only a couple are getting 800g precursors on the first push. This is ultimately frustrating, there is no way to work towards any cosmetic item in a ‘fun’ matter that doesn’t involve champ train or TP flipping.

2.) Precursor crafting should be pushed to highest priority, not last item on the list

3.) Real Quality of life changes: Dual Specialization, LFG Tool takes you to dungeon (no porting to map), WvW map viewable before going inside, Glory tradable for PvE items, UI for Mini (separate from bank), Achievement Meta rewards placed in the achievement item panel (why are players left with the ever increasing amounts of backitems they may be to scared to use because they only got 1), and account-bound WvW rank and FOTM levels.

4.) Fotm rewards are lacking after a player receives their back-item and rings.

5.) Reward vs. Time vs. Skill Charts, this is really lop sided, why is farming champs or TP flipping more rewarding than say arah p4, or 8 orb Liadari, or even fotm (your ‘end-game’ dungeon).

6.) Heading back to GW lore, the LS has gone way off base and most people can’t seem to follow the story as to what is happening. I’m pretty sure a lot of us still don’t understand who Scarlet is and why she does what she does.

Listen to this man!

Now to respond to the Devs.

Your issue is we started out calm and kind, but we were met with an attitude of “this is our game, and we will do what we want with it”. To make matters worse we were given lengthy posts and articles similar to this promising us the world and everything we wanted. However in implementation we were given things that didnt work quite right, things taken to extremes (RNG weapons for events) or just simply told ‘soon’. And slowly that minotrity of immature players turned into the majority as players opinions seemingly were ignored.

Now we stand here, with another piece of rhetoric that we are asked to accept at face value. I ask this… why should we? Why should the community believe anything that is said by a Developer here when so many times we are given words without actions? We’ve already heard the story – a promise to be more vocally active – and yet here we are again needing a Dev to tell us it will all be ok.

So, Im sorry, but I dont believe really anything in that Dev post.

So many misplaced commas…Thanks for sharing your point about criticism being listened to better if it’s done in a constructive way, but that was pretty hard to read.

Also, this really sounds like a dev crosspost from a thread a month ago. On further investigation that thread is now deleted? Wonder why.

I think there is a large amount of excellent, well-written and constructively presented ideas, feedback, and concerns on the forums. The problem is that many of those posts often get one or two responses, a few hundred views, and then fall dead into the wayside because they didn’t incite some controversy (nor garnered any official responses or explanations of why things were done a certain way).

If the development team switched their resources to reply (even very briefly) to more of these constructive threads, I think you’d see a notable improvement in the community. Sometimes people just want to know what’s left and right. ArenaNet do not directly serve the forum community nor do they need their approval, but that doesn’t mean it is bad to explain why unpopular (on the forums) features are implemented, or why good suggestions can’t be implemented.

After all, metrics only tell you so much and you have to be careful what you derive from it.

I think many people are difficult to please, and I think many passionate people are very difficult to please. I also think sometimes people mistake passionate people for unreasonable ones; we have to be careful to make a distinction between whining and someone seeing a great potential in something that can nevertheless be improved.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Theftwind.8976:

Respect has to go both ways. Just saying.

Hate to be the one to post one of these types of posts, but here we go.

^This.

Just have one thing to say. You have to give respect, to earn respect. And with the way things are going and have been going on these forums, don’t expect to receive any respect.

There is so many things that you’ve tried to “sweep under the rug” and completely ignore. That is completely disrespectful. And then you make this post telling us all to be respectful to you after you have disrespected us so many times?

Yeah, no. I get it. It’s your way or the highway type deal here. But until you can admit fault and show respect to us as a community and not ignore us over serious issues and concerns, then don’t expect us to treat you any differently than you treat us.

SpyderArachnid hits the nail on the head 100% on all points, great job

edit: same for Parisalchuk great post

It’s shame that a thread like this has to happen and it’s mostly the people who can’t be named fault since allot of the things put forward to the community went complete 180 degree turn. Account bound dyes that went per toon to rng dyes. (The list goes on)

Lamir.6702:

So many misplaced commas…Thanks for sharing your point about criticism being listened to better if it’s done in a constructive way, but that was pretty hard to read.

Also, this really sounds like a dev crosspost from a thread a month ago. On further investigation that thread is now deleted? Wonder why.

Rofl, so true. A bunch of the paragraphs in this post are repeated in another post in:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-A-Dev-Think-About-The-Official-Forums

Why is a developer giving us rehashed developer posts. This is honestly getting a bit excessive now, and if you think your playerbase is too stupid to catch on to how part of this post was copy paste, then you severely underestimate us, and yet another dev post to calm people down, only infuriates me further.

We wouldnt be here if you had listened to us a long time ago, when we were right and you were wrong.

Erick Alastor.3917:

inb4 “Excalibur”

YOU FOOL! My legend dates back to the 12th century, you know.

Anyway though, alright, alright, I understand what Chris is getting at. Yeah, I’ve been a bit abrasive and sour over various directions the game has taken, and the whole “collaborative development” thing obviously hasn’t shown any fruits yet because for Gods’ sakes a lot of this first year had to have been pre-planned, and most lore fumbles, Scarlet’s initial one aside (I still don’t get how the writers thought it was good idea to invent a Sylvari who graduated from all three Asuran Colleges) really can be chalked up to most of us being incredibly anal about MUH GEEDUBYAWUN!, and let’s face it, Guild Wars 1 lore was not the most consistent thing either.

Now that, as mentioned, we have had our wrists slapped and I have conceded my own faults, let us look forward to working together as playerbase and developers in the future, and hope that the personal storyline might be revisited and touched up a bit so Sylvari players who did Tegwen and Carys’ story do not need an unnecessary reintroduction to Treahearn, or certain plothooks or plotpoints which cemented themselves earlier in the personal story do end up being meaningful in the long run. (Like the fathers of charr characters.)

While truly pie-in-the-sky, I would also love to see expanded options per-race, to submit one such idea for Arenanet’s approval, I had an idea for a Charr personal story arc relating to the player characters father that went as followed:

Rancher “My father was not a soldier per-say, but his work keeps the Legions fed. That’s something… I guess.”

The basic outline is that upon being promoted to legionnaire, your sire contacts you and wants to congratulate you. He’s an incredibly awkward and embarrassing sort of parent and is quick to avoid questions about himself.
Not long afterwards, you find your father’s ranch was raided and rather than call for help, he instead is trying to take matters into his own hands, and you must try to find out what the Flame Legion want a bunch of cows for and keep your father from getting killed in his misadventures.
At the end of things, you confront your father about why he’s been such a foolhardy idiot, and he admits he wanted YOU to be proud of him. He isn’t the great soldier of a father he feels you deserve, and the player has the choice to tell him off for his idiocy, or tell him that you always have been proud to have a father who dedicates himself to any work the legions need him for so earnestly.

Jackie.1829:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-A-Dev-Think-About-The-Official-Forums

Here’s a mirror: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/topic/268673-what-a-dev-think-about-the-official-forums/

I just don’t get this always stay positive philosophy anet has. For example if someone punches you in the face you don’t just go " oh please don’t do that again have a nice day" you tell the off or run. In reality every decision you make is going to have positive and negative consequences. Ignoring the problems is only going to fuel the fire.

Building a game together you say? Well.. some guys on your team consider that “Violating my game mode”

Luiz Swordbreaker.6547:

Building a game together you say? Well.. some guys on your team consider that “Violating my game mode”

Yes that did say rather a lot about certain developers.

I actually have some decent advice for the dev’s… the only way to control an internet community is through mass bannings and fear. Using phrases like, “shut up, that’s why”… would be a good start. It would save time too….. using all those pretty words and corporate-speak must have taken a good amount of time!

Tagus Eleuthera.7305:

I actually have some decent advice for the dev’s… the only way to control an internet community is through mass bannings and fear. Using phrases like, “shut up, that’s why”… would be a good start. It would save time too….. using all those pretty words and corporate-speak must have taken a good amount of time!

This would only fuel the rage. Which might make for some interesting threads. And mass exodus out of GW2.

TheDraco.3965:

I just don’t get this always stay positive philosophy anet has. For example if someone punches you in the face you don’t just go " oh please don’t do that again have a nice day" you tell the off or run. In reality every decision you make is going to have positive and negative consequences. Ignoring the problems is only going to fuel the fire.

I don’t think Anet is trying to ignore the problems or saying that they can do no wrong. It’s been said already but they can’t encourage people to believe that shouting or using incendiary/divisive arguments are the way to effect change in the game. It’s just that some people get it into their heads that because controversy can force a company to respond to them, that becomes the de facto method of getting their attention. Also, some people expect companies to comment on internal information or politics. When Chris basically said “some things take longer than you think.”, it’s highly unlikely that any of us knows exactly why that is as it pertains to Anet. That is not to say that you can not or should not be dissatisfied with how long things actually take for them to work on. They are asking for our understanding, but it is a leap of faith. It’s not unreasonable for Chris to say that you are welcome to take that leap if you believe in what is to come or jump ship. It’s probably not good PR for some companies to put customer retention in that light but that is what a lot of companies think internally, so there ya go.

I respected GW2’s developers from the get-go, as I do most people, they lost my respect through a solid year of steady mistreatment of the playerbase.

If they want my (and most players) respect again, they’ll have to earn it.

And so long as you refute verifiable fact, truth, and honestly stated opinion; because it isn’t said as ‘prettily’ as you’d like it, you don’t deserve anyone’s respect.

You are a service to us, not us to you. Improve your actions until we respect you again, then you can have all the kindly stated critique on your work you like. Until then, be happy we still care enough and have stuck around to give any. It’s more than you deserve.

It’s worth noting that almost everyone that started playing this game was supporting everything they were doing at the beginning. That’s why people bought the game to begin with.

We all had expectations that weren’t fufilled over the course of a year. People didn’t start getting angry overnight. It was because of the actions the devs took that caused it. Over a year of short comings and other nonsense is what sparked all of this.

This whole post by Chris is really just adding fuel to the fire by basically saying “we don’t appreciate negative post about the game and we overlook it, but we welcome positive post with open arms” in so many words.

I would like to second the sentiment of the poster who pointed out that respect needs to go both ways.

Also a collaborative relationship is limited when one side restricts information, or spreads misinformation, to the degree seen from ANet.

Respectful collaboration and communication is also limited when comments on elements affecting that communication are deleted, not for being abusive but rather for pointing out the impact of throttling discussion of a topic of relevance.

When the original post turns out to be, either in its entirety or at least in significant part, a cut and paste quote of an earlier post, without indication of such, the tone of the entirety is altered in a negative manner.

Skan.5301:

It’s worth noting that almost everyone that started playing this game was supporting everything they were doing at the beginning. That’s why people bought the game to begin with.

We all had expectations that weren’t fufilled over the course of a year. People didn’t start getting angry overnight. It was because of the actions the devs took that caused it. Over a year of short comings and other nonsense is what sparked all of this.

Spot on I was an ardent defender up to last November but that started everything changing.

2013 gaming, serious business.

Zackie.8923:

2013 gaming, serious business.

Yup.

Millions of dollars, peoples’ livelihoods-ability to put food on the table, etc. Business upon which people depend for their daily bread is kind of serious.

tnx for the post. now if only:
a) Anet will improve forum, do a search and see how poor it is. If members have a hard time tracking stuff, I’m pretty sure devs will have a hard time doing a meaningful search as well. I know, there’s dev tracker sub forum, but devs could have gotten more ideas if search functions much better.
b) Moderators aren’t as bad. They censor and delete a lot of threads, even if those contained meaningful discussions. Proof? Oh it’s gone and can’t be found. Search? too bad, search is broken and unreliable. While I understand Chris’ post is not about moderation, unfortunately, moderators impact how we use the forums, and how devs can sometimes miss important details because: mods just deleted the threads.

I know members have always bad temper, and I always try to help and post in positive reply. But members have loved this game, and because their passion is so high, that they don’t like where the game is heading.

For example, I love LS but many in this forum hated it too. Both those in favor and against LS loves the game, but they see it differently. Anet needs to decide on their own on how to better approach both parties.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

There is so many things that you’ve tried to “sweep under the rug” and completely ignore. That is completely disrespectful.

I think this is extremely relevant and I agree 100%. Chris and team, here is some constructive advice from one random customer of yours:

• Sweeping issues under a rug, doesn’t make it go away. Ignoring the issue only magnifies it. We have seen a couple instances of that on these very forums.

• Please be open and honest with us, speak to us as people. I can assure you most of us would appreciate that more than excessive PR speak. Some ANet developers use way too much PR speak when talking to their customers.

• You have a great community team, please use them more. We don’t expect developers to be on the forums or answer questions. But there needs to be more communication between ANet and the community. It is severely lacking.

• This goes with the previous point. More interaction less moderation.

Thanks.

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tl;dr – for anyone crunched for time, you may just want to jump to part 3 after reading the preface here. On part 3 the bold and summary are the most important parts.

Preface

Hi,

I’ve been on hiatus, and have recently been looking into what’s been going on with the game when I came across this thread. My response it lengthy, so I’ll have to break it up between multiple posts.

I’d like to pull out some of the fluff from Chris’ post, and highlight some of the more important parts of the post. The purpose of looking beyond the fluff is to get past the public relations portion, and into the more meaningful portions. It’s important to remember that there is PR fluff though, because it shows ANet doesn’t deliberately want to upset people.

I am someone who feels fairly passionately about this game/lore/company due to my experiences from the original Guild Wars. I haven’t played the game in a couple of months, and am currently on my second long hiatus, my previous one of which was over 6 months, post Lost Shores.

I’ll be breaking the post down fairly granularly, but keep in mind the post can’t only be read as individual portions, and should be viewed as a whole as well. End Preface

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The reality is we do read our forums, and others, every single day. If you look over the last year, and cross reference with community feedback you will see many ideas actioned and many more not.

It’s incredibly exciting that ANet does listen to forum goers. It’s important to understand as well that ANet will not act on some feedback, because it is in conflict with the game’s direction or because they simply don’t have the time/money/resources to have acted already on some feedback.

The communication pipeline in most part lacks one very important component. Specifically, ArenaNet having more time to feedback on your ideas, concerns and our own plans.

Again it takes time and effort to provide feedback, they must have an understanding about how much of the community feedback applies to in order to understand if it’s worth their time to even give a response. They can’t respond to each individuals feedback, because it’s not feasible for them to do and still accomplish progress with the game.

Additionally, they clearly understand that the community would like more feedback from them, but again time is an issue for them. Once they weigh the communities ideas or concerns against their own plans and direction, and the feedback goes through the PR people on the team, and it all takes time.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

ArenaNet has been extremely busy of late listening to you all

The community generates a lot of suggestions and concerns, and it takes a lot of time and effort to sort through it. The great thing is that they are putting in effort to listen to some of it.

We have, with your support, created a truly unique platform. One which is in its infancy, and one we build with the continued support, and collaboration of the community.

Again, it’s very exciting that ANet does listen to some of the feedback and implement suggestions from the community that align with their goals for the game.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We do need to build out more time to be in dialog with you, specifically, following up on our own investigations of your suggestions and concerns.
We will work harder to achieves this.

Again time is an issue, but they understand for their partnership with the community to work that they must make time to have dialog with the community. It’s awesome that they see this and want to improve upon it.

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We are also trying to forge a truly ‘Living World’. Therefore with your continued support, and patience we can continue to break new ground.

This is pretty obvious, but it’s important to remember their direction includes the idea of a living world. Keep in mind that potential development efforts which would time away from the directions the ANet team is moving are likely to be low priority.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

…we pay little, to no, attention to posts that are disrespectful to other members of our community or our development team… Likewise, the constructive members of our community work hard to provide our development team with feedback that abides with our collaborative standards and overall community philosophy of having a productive, welcoming, and friendly culture.

This is another portion with obvious meaning. Effectively they’re saying, they will avoid comments that they feel are somehow attacking people. Basically they will avoid negativity and respond to positivity, but it’s a little more complex than just that.

The important thing to take away from this, is that they are FAR more likely to be responsive to feedback when it’s not people’s raw feelings, and it has been filtered in a way that removes negative emotion from responses. Feel free to leave positive emotion in your feedback though.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Our goal with Guild Wars 2 is to drive the creation of online worlds forward, thereby creating original, ‘stand-out’ content that pushes the boundaries of what it means to journey through a Living World. Any endeavor on this scale is going to have its challenges, and therefore as a team, we are fully prepared to make mistakes, learn from them, and make even better experiences as we move forward. We see problems not as failures but as opportunities, essentially a necessary part of Tyria’s and our Team’s evolution. It is with this understanding that we work with our community…

This section is important. ANet is willing to fail, their actions show this. This is very important, because this is what results in something new and groundbreaking being developed. When they do fail, they ask questions like, “Why didn’t that work?”, “What do people like about this?” and “What can we do to improve this?” This is a big reason working with the community is important, because they can get answers to those question by doing so.

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One key to understanding our philosophy to building worlds is that we don’t give more attention to feedback simply because it is the noisiest, most aggressive, or delivered in the most inflammatory way. We take on board all constructive feedback and actively discuss it, and then make a decision to backlog the item or move forward with it (the development of which can sometimes take longer than some give it credit for). Therefore do not expect feedback to be implemented just because it is something you feel very strongly about. We just don’t develop like that. We instead work with our community to help us navigate these uncharted waters, taking on board all advice and measuring them against the pillars of the Guild Wars 2 and the direction we ultimately want to move in as a whole.

Some of this stuff is repeat again, but important to note is that they haven’t put more time into feedback as being part of their philosophy, because of how unrefined most of it actually is. Again a lot of it is raw emotion with a lot of negativity, which most people would prefer not to filter through, because people don’t like negativity (even companies are made up of people).

Most importantly of note here, is that ANet measures feedback against the pillars of Guild Wars 2 and the direction they want to move. This is crucial. This means that regardless of player feedback, ultimately ANet is in control and driving this game. This is possibly one of the most important things to keep in mind when understanding how/why the game is going in the direction that it is.

Therefore you have to ask yourself: Is this a journey you want to take?

People really should step back and look at the direction of the game and ask yourself this, and take the appropriate action.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I ask that you remain respectful to your fellow man/woman, and be constructive in your approach to the development of the game, and understand Tyria is made up of communities and not individuals.

It’s wonderful that ANet wants to be respectful and have a respectful community. This is something people should do in general.

There is something very telling about this portion of the post. Obviously communities are made up of individuals, but the statement that Tyria is made up of communities and not individuals tells us that ANet is less concerned with metrics for individual players, but that they are concerned with metrics in regard to player communities. So again, that statement is obviously not true, but it shows they’re looking at communities because paying attention to each individual is not feasible.

… Summary

This is a good game, and ANet wants to make it even better. It’d be great to have the pillars of Guild Wars 2 defined by ANet, so the community can keep them honest. It’s probably a good way for the community to check and see if their feedback is in alignment with ANet’s direction, and may help reduce some of the “noise” seen in feedback.

In my experience with the forums there are many people, myself included, that disagree with the “pillars” of Guild Wars 2 (whatever they may be, but the direction of the game is apparant), and the only way to get these changed is for the community to send a strong united message to ANet. Actions speak louder than words, so for people who do want change, your best bet is getting together and impacting metrics such as “time in game per player”, “total players in game per month”, “total $$$ per month”.

As we now explicitly know, ANet is less concerned about a small number of individuals and more concerned about player communities. So if you want change in this game you’ll need to influence your respective communities to impact NC Soft’s bottom line or player time in game or both.

Chris asked if this was a journey people wanted to take. There are people, who don’t want to take the journey with the game’s direction, but do so anyways. So for those who really do want the destination of the journey to change, something has to change in the player base.

Thanks for your post. I really enjoy most of the new content in PvE with the exception of Tequatl that has now become a barren wasteland. Most of the PvE content has been widely enjoyable and thank you very much for the content. I particularly loved the Super Adventure Box (after the bug fixes) and the TA path.

Some of the things that I do not like with PvE are the fact that warriors get constant buffs that make them superior in so many ways to other classes. The meta has also not changed since zerker gear is pretty much the best way to do anything (if its an experienced group). What makes this bad is that since this is being preached all the time, we have a lot of terrible players that die ALL the time because they explore new content with only the zerker armor since they don’t bother or don’t have the inventory space to get any other armor. These players also do not know how to dodge out of a big red circle which is baffling when they are true 80s with exotic gear.

With the harder new content the pure zerker is troublesome. In a good and experienced party this is great, but when players rage quit NEW cotnent because they refuse to learn new instances or claim it is too difficult because they can’t make it through with their zerker only armor it is troublesome. Players no longer go through the game experimenting or trying new things because they believe that zerkers is the only way or the best way to do new content that they haven’t learned the mechanics of. This problem is exacerbated with players trying to attain achievements that require DPS fests – it only reinforces zerk only builds.

Things that I do have issues about is the other parts of the game such as WvW. I have a lot of friends that play WvW who have now moved on to other games due to the changes to WvW that make it terrible for newer players and those with multiple alts.

The buffs (Guard buffs), character bound ability points, and the more troubling Bloodlust buff have turned off a lot of players – new and old alike. I know they wanted to reward players with “abilities” that provide different skills and advantages to said players but the guard buffs and the bloodlust buffs just provide too much of an advantage that is useful throughout WvW and are not situational like the other masteries that require specific siege or supplies that are stationary on the floor. It’s like fighting 1.5 enemies instead of 1 enemy. It is not fun to be outnumbered, but to be at such a statistical disadvantage makes it unenjoyable and a lot of times leaves such a bitter taste in your mouth figuratively. It makes the hill so much more difficult to climb that it feels like the developers in WvW are constantly pushing you down to the bottom of the hill when you’re nearly at the top.

We all know WvW is all about numbers, but the recent changes have made a lot of new and old players not want to venture into WvW, particularly since they are outmanned, have way lower stats compared to the buffed players, and results in people quitting or swearing off WvW because they don’t have a remote chance of having a fair fight due to the guard buffs. The ability lines are great (mortar, supply, treb) with the exception of the guard buff lines due to their significant advantages not only individual fights, but group fights, it is a no-brainer that 90%+ of the WvW playerbase grabs the guard lines first because it is provides such a significant advantage.

I do hope that in the future that statistical buffs are removed and that only traitlines that are situational (mortars, acs, trebs, flame rams, oil) are in play with the supply lines and defense/offense limited to guards/npcs only. Fights were much more interesting and close when these buffs weren’t here.

Sorry for the wall of text. But I do appreciate almost all the new content in the PvE environment. The WvW content has been pretty much a disaster for me for awhile now with the bloodlust buff being the worst offender.

More attention and resources to spvp and we’ll be fine.

THANK YOU!

Thank you for taking the time to let us know that you hear us and are paying attention to the community. Just the occasional acknowledgement goes a long way toward alleviating my anxiety over the game issues that matter to me.

When I see feedback like this I think, “Okay, they’re aware and they’re on it. We all care about the same thing.” Then I relax and go back to enjoying the game.

I know I can get snarky sometimes with my comments. I’ll try to watch that in future. It really is just frustration leaking out, but I know it must get tiresome to read all the snarky and sarcastic comments in these forums.

I DO respect the nerve that the development teams must have to pursue gw2’s VERY ambitious mission. I try to say that from time to time as well. Maybe not often enough.

So yeah. Thank you for taking the time to give US some feedback!

Parisalchuk.9230:

Charak.9761:

You want feedback to fixing your game?

1.) Extrinsic rewards need to be provided away from RNG/Gold. Your skinner box is really poorly designed, to many players are smashing that button down and getting nothing out, while only a couple are getting 800g precursors on the first push. This is ultimately frustrating, there is no way to work towards any cosmetic item in a ‘fun’ matter that doesn’t involve champ train or TP flipping.

2.) Precursor crafting should be pushed to highest priority, not last item on the list

3.) Real Quality of life changes: Dual Specialization, LFG Tool takes you to dungeon (no porting to map), WvW map viewable before going inside, Glory tradable for PvE items, UI for Mini (separate from bank), Achievement Meta rewards placed in the achievement item panel (why are players left with the ever increasing amounts of backitems they may be to scared to use because they only got 1), and account-bound WvW rank and FOTM levels.

4.) Fotm rewards are lacking after a player receives their back-item and rings.

5.) Reward vs. Time vs. Skill Charts, this is really lop sided, why is farming champs or TP flipping more rewarding than say arah p4, or 8 orb Liadari, or even fotm (your ‘end-game’ dungeon).

6.) Heading back to GW lore, the LS has gone way off base and most people can’t seem to follow the story as to what is happening. I’m pretty sure a lot of us still don’t understand who Scarlet is and why she does what she does.

Listen to this man!

Now to respond to the Devs.

Your issue is we started out calm and kind, but we were met with an attitude of “this is our game, and we will do what we want with it”. To make matters worse we were given lengthy posts and articles similar to this promising us the world and everything we wanted. However in implementation we were given things that didnt work quite right, things taken to extremes (RNG weapons for events) or just simply told ‘soon’. And slowly that minotrity of immature players turned into the majority as players opinions seemingly were ignored.

Now we stand here, with another piece of rhetoric that we are asked to accept at face value. I ask this… why should we? Why should the community believe anything that is said by a Developer here when so many times we are given words without actions? We’ve already heard the story – a promise to be more vocally active – and yet here we are again needing a Dev to tell us it will all be ok.

So, Im sorry, but I dont believe really anything in that Dev post.

See, the problem is that you have different people with different and often contradicting opinions. Meeting the demands of one person may in fact upset another. You have mixed opinions about gear progression, mixed opinions on itemization, mixed opinions on types of content to be released, and most importantly mixed opinions on the direction the game should move in. It would be impossible to meet everyone’s demands not due to lack of resources but simply because they are conflicting.

There are of course instances where the community agrees on certain things. Often times, incorporating feedback might not result in something positive even if initially it seemed like it would. In the past before there was the Internet, game developers did have the “this is our game and we will do what we want with it” attitude and many of those games turned out to be great. There were all the old Mario games, Sonic games, the old Fallout series, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, Oblivion, Final Fantasy, etc.

zeromius.1604:

There were all the old Mario games, Sonic games, the old Fallout series, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, Oblivion, Final Fantasy, etc.

You forgot one: Guild Wars

I stated earlier that respect has to go both ways. Let me illustrate.

When a person is in WvW which is as we are all aware of, quite well populated with “hacks” they naturally come to the boards to voice their frustrations. The post will be deleted by the moderators and the OP will get an infraction BUT their concerns are NEVER addressed by a developer! Instead we are told to submit a report but we are never told if it was truly a hack or not. Left in the dark like a mushroom as someone has stated.

Not to mention that there is no valid choice to report a game hack or possible exploit in WvW, the population has to jump through hoops and log it as something totally different. This problem and others have been reported time and time again, the threads are invariably closed and nothing is heard from the developers.

Now I understand fully about having a priority list. Twenty years as a senior planner with a major corporation taught me the value about having such a list. However, there is one thing that ANET is remiss in doing and that is they are NOT telling their customers exactly what the priorities are. We get soon, or a list of things going to be looked at before the end of the year BUT it is a list that does not address all those little irritants such as the aforementioned hacking or the lack of a proper reporting tool.

Take all those concerns that you STATE you read diligently, place them into a list, even if it is 3 pages long, and simply state what the priority is to action those items or even if they will be acted on or not. Do not simply have the moderators close a thread and impose infractions on the poster. That poster posted for a reason, try to understand that reason first and then tell that person you understand.

Or in simple words “respect breeds respect”. Respect given will be returned in a far greater quantity.

Theftwind.8976:

I stated earlier that respect has to go both ways. Let me illustrate.

When a person is in WvW which is as we are all aware of, quite well populated with “hacks” they naturally come to the boards to voice their frustrations. The post will be deleted by the moderators and the OP will get an infraction BUT their concerns are NEVER addressed by a developer! Instead we are told to submit a report but we are never told if it was truly a hack or not. Left in the dark like a mushroom as someone has stated.

Not to mention that there is no valid choice to report a game hack or possible exploit in WvW, the population has to jump through hoops and log it as something totally different. This problem and others have been reported time and time again, the threads are invariably closed and nothing is heard from the developers.

Now I understand fully about having a priority list. Twenty years as a senior planner with a major corporation taught me the value about having such a list. However, there is one thing that ANET is remiss in doing and that is they are NOT telling their customers exactly what the priorities are. We get soon, or a list of things going to be looked at before the end of the year BUT it is a list that does not address all those little irritants such as the aforementioned hacking or the lack of a proper reporting tool.

Take all those concerns that you STATE you read diligently, place them into a list, even if it is 3 pages long, and simply state what the priority is to action those items or even if they will be acted on or not. Do not simply have the moderators close a thread and impose infractions on the poster. That poster posted for a reason, try to understand that reason first and then tell that person you understand.

Or in simple words “respect breeds respect”. Respect given will be returned in a far greater quantity.

It really depends on the manner in which this individual made his/her post. As you have said yourself, respect has to go both ways. If you post a complaint and you word it in the most abusive way you could think of, do you expect to be listened to? Do you think that the post would have been deleted if it was worded in such a way that it didn’t seem hostile?

If say you ordered some food at your local fast food chain and they forgot to give you ketchup. Even if you are clearly in the right and they are clearly in the wrong, do you think that the staff would be more likely to help you if you were being rude to them or do you think they would be more likely to help you if you were being polite? What do you think?

You should introduce something like Roadmap that SOE is using for Planetside 2 and EverQuest Next.
Instead of listening to 893264 posts of forums which most of it are random and plain stupid ideas that simply doesn’t fit the game, you should just post idea of Roadmap (by that I mean you guys in AN), and let community vote for feature they want to see first.
Based on roadmap, you can prioritize which features should be added.

I’m 100% sure that more people will be willing to participate in such community driver polling system, especially if you could manage to add it inside game.
At this point I say. Screw integrity or immersion. Just add new UI element. Let’s call it “Community Voting”, where there will ideas posted by developers, and users can vote for them.

How you gather and create new ideas is your own thing. But I can safly say that assuming which things to prioritize based on forum noise in which probably less than 5% of entire player base participate, is simply not going to work.
As introduction of ascended items showed.

zeromius.1604:

See, the problem is that you have different people with different and often contradicting opinions. Meeting the demands of one person may in fact upset another. You have mixed opinions about gear progression, mixed opinions on itemization, mixed opinions on types of content to be released, and most importantly mixed opinions on the direction the game should move in. It would be impossible to meet everyone’s demands not due to lack of resources but simply because they are conflicting.

There are of course instances where the community agrees on certain things. Often times, incorporating feedback might not result in something positive even if initially it seemed like it would. In the past before there was the Internet, game developers did have the “this is our game and we will do what we want with it” attitude and many of those games turned out to be great. There were all the old Mario games, Sonic games, the old Fallout series, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, Oblivion, Final Fantasy, etc.

I agree, there are many things where the community is split like how LS is updated or should we get new maps or update current maps, however there are still numerous instances where the seeming majority of a populations (ie PvE, PvP, WvW) has been against an addition or subtraction and yet it was done anyway.

Some Examples:
-Player base has spoken out against temporary content since the start – we were given temp content for months
-Player base wants a way to aquire weapons from special events without RNG – we are given a ticket system that is based on RNG from some of the most useless items in the game (BLTC)
-Player base has asked for the game to be more rewarding – we have recieved updates to dungeons in order to bring all dungeon paths in line while nerfing profitable methods of game play to ensure “no style is more profitable then another” (unless of course you play the TP)
-WvWers have been outspoken against bloodlust or any buff that causes snowball effect – those such mechanics were defiently added
-PvPers wanted skill balance since summer – we were put on hold so 10 total players would not be forced to think of new strategies even though… as top players in the world… that should not have been an issue
-PvPers want increased rewards and rank to mean something… no increases besides PvE skins has ever been added and rank is even more easily farmed

And many things could be added to this list.

What is extremely funny is the community really yearns for more information. Anet refuses to say anything till its basically already been added to a release. If only they would take some features – precursor crafting for intance – and wrote blogs about how its being designed, what work needs to go into the project, how coding is coming along, ect… I think you would find people much happier. Its win win too as the player base will then become pretty aware that updates wont and cant happen over night. However this would be a pretty substantial culture shift for Anet.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

style.6173:

Actually I think ANET for the most part does listen when it comes to PvE. The problem is that the PvP team is stubborn and won’t increase game modes (hello team deathmatch) and the WvW team is completely out of touch. The WvW team in particular is a problem.

This is just disrespectful towards the PvP devs, the teams have clearly stated why they don’t want too many modes. They also mentioned that they are testing a lot of other modes as well. I’m happy that they don’t listen to knee-jerk reactions, maybe it would help to watch a few of the older released PvP-state of the game videos to get a bit of insight. It’s quite complicated.

WvW team out of touch? Because they don’t open WvW to the GvG-crowd which isn’t playing the mode as intended? You don’t play basketball in the last minutes of a soccermatch which is already decided, because soccer fans would hate this. I love the implementation of the new map-centres of the borderland maps. I’ve played quite a bit WvW since the implementation of the buff and it is half as bad because of the nature of it’s implementation: it changes quite fast and often.

Personally I would have gone with something different than a statistical boon, but it’s not easy to come up with something which gives people reason enough to capture these points. I would have enjoyed more breakout events / npcs who bring along siege when 3 of 5 points are capped instead of the buff, but I guess the crowd which is stubbornly against any npc-interaction in WvW would have been against such a thing.

You think adding a team deathmatch mode is difficult? I bet it would be more popular out of the gate than conquest. Thanks though you did make my point for me. The PvP team is stubborn around the game modes.

As for the WvW team, there is a lot bigger issues than GvG. Ranks, siege, failed bloodlust model, an upcoming fail league model, glitch bugs that have been open for months, zoom hacks, bad matchups, no new maps, a broken commander system…. Do I need to go on? They are out of touch. Instead if implementing valuable features we get new siege mastery skills.

After reading the responses I just need to say keep ignoring the sensationalists (on both sides). Get rid of the extremes and you can get in combination with metrics a really nice view of what is going on.
I have had a great ride, if I no longer enjoy this game in a year or so I will have absolutely no regrets and will always appreciate the work done by the team.

ASB.4295:

Jackie.1829:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-A-Dev-Think-About-The-Official-Forums

Here’s a mirror: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/topic/268673-what-a-dev-think-about-the-official-forums/

That is pretty amusing.

Had to double check the dates for a second.

I feel like this is partly a response to the “no crafting precursors this year” comment made by Colin recently.

I believe we can all agree with what you have said Chris, less rage, more maturity and more collaboration.

However like the majority of other people posting i could not help but roll my eyes and chuckle while reading your post. Respect go’s both ways and sadly the community at large feels like the entire ArenaNet team dose not respect its players, you say you’re listening to us yet it dose not show in game or even here on these forums.

I would love for the community and the ArenaNet team to collaborate like it use to back in Alpha and Beta, but after an entire year of broken promises, lies, content being removed, bugs, class imbalance how are we meant to take your post seriously?

It is up to you ArenaNet to win us back, dont through all the blame on us, sadly i think your post has just made things worse.

The hardest part about being civil is that I don’t want to be civil toward a monster. As much as it pains any company to hear this, the fact is that there are customers for every company that make things worse. For the community, and for the company themselves. I’ve seen it happen in many customer bases and videogame communities, and this one is no different.

Consider this: there exists players in the game who’s desires and activities are destructive to the game itself. There are players who are insufferable socially, who take every opportunity to be inflammatory, discriminatory, and hostile. The player who is not happy unless someone else isn’t. There are players who scam, attempting to rob everyone else of their work, their fun, and their peace of mind. There are gold farmers who exist solely to make a profit by selling in-game currency, using stolen credit cards to do so. There are players who do nothing but attempt to hack the game, create bots to let players easy mode their way to wealth, then sells these bots for real world money. There are players who seek only to find every profitable exploit possible, and never intended to play the game the way it is designed to be played.

Those are easy to spot, but what of the ones who aren’t? There are players in this game who, merely through suggestion and propaganda, want to destroy the identity of this game. They want endless grinding, and superiority in performance from that grinding. Players that want to abandon the combat system, replacing it with a generic trinity system with inflexible class makeup. Then there are players who discriminate as a form of personal duty, seeing other players only as tools to their own gain, and are hostile to anyone who doesn’t cave and conform to their demands. Players so entitled and selfish that they are proud of their own intolerance, and refuse to do anything but troll and insult others who don’t agree with them. There are players who seek to manipulate the competitive environment only to make their favorite class or tactic reign supreme, with no motivation for a balanced PVP game.

So take any good community, and ask them what they are supposed to do with their poisonous elements when they have no direct tools to stop it themselves? When any good community is ultimately helpless and at the mercy of those who wish to destroy that community? When the only other inevitable outcome is that the poison eventually takes full effect? Simple: you aren’t civil with them. They don’t want to reason, and they don’t want what is good for everyone. The only way to deal with those elements is to make sure they are uncomfortable, unwelcome, and not tolerated. Then, eventually when it becomes clear to them that they will not get what they want and they will not have fun doing what they do, then their only course of action is to change or leave.

I pretty much thank you for the kind words and the good manner.

I’m all right with everything you said, so bring it on, let us see you guys listen(perhaps improve spvp in the meanwhile xD).

Shockwave.1230:

3 of 3

One key to understanding our philosophy to building worlds is that we don’t give more attention to feedback simply because it is the noisiest, most aggressive, or delivered in the most inflammatory way. We take on board all constructive feedback and actively discuss it, and then make a decision to backlog the item or move forward with it (the development of which can sometimes take longer than some give it credit for). Therefore do not expect feedback to be implemented just because it is something you feel very strongly about. We just don’t develop like that. We instead work with our community to help us navigate these uncharted waters, taking on board all advice and measuring them against the pillars of the Guild Wars 2 and the direction we ultimately want to move in as a whole.

Some of this stuff is repeat again, but important to note is that they haven’t put more time into feedback as being part of their philosophy, because of how unrefined most of it actually is. Again a lot of it is raw emotion with a lot of negativity, which most people would prefer not to filter through, because people don’t like negativity (even companies are made up of people).

Most importantly of note here, is that ANet measures feedback against the pillars of Guild Wars 2 and the direction they want to move. This is crucial. This means that regardless of player feedback, ultimately ANet is in control and driving this game. This is possibly one of the most important things to keep in mind when understanding how/why the game is going in the direction that it is.

But what are the pillars NOW? Because they have definitely changed over the life of the game and one of the big issues is that anet haven’t communicated enough about why and what they are doing.

Shockwave.1230:

It’s incredibly exciting that ANet does listen to forum goers. It’s important to understand as well that ANet will not act on some feedback, because it is in conflict with the game’s direction or because they simply don’t have the time/money/resources to have acted already on some feedback.

ascended gear says hello

i dont think Anet really cares about feedback at this point, its all about what will benefit game/ gem sales the most positively, and damage control/ spin, the Anet brand is already severely compromised at this point.

if they did care they would give us something like 3 months notice of major game changes rather than 3 days, you know enough time for feedback to be given, considered and acted upon.

but if you want collaborative development consider implementing some of the following

Test servers -since you seem to having problems fully testing releases also faster feedback
Non ascended servers – at least half the population would probably move to these
Fix Jewel crafting – its currently obsolete (will probably craft infusions in a year)
remove DR and diminish RNG – reward players for effort not luck
Less gold based content – end game is basically farm gold to bypass RNG
Better communication- actually communicating without PR spin and pointless embellishments

zeromius.1604:

See, the problem is that you have different people with different and often contradicting opinions. Meeting the demands of one person may in fact upset another. You have mixed opinions about gear progression, mixed opinions on itemization, mixed opinions on types of content to be released, and most importantly mixed opinions on the direction the game should move in. It would be impossible to meet everyone’s demands not due to lack of resources but simply because they are conflicting.

As I said in my post earlier in this thread, I feel that this is something of an excuse. With an MMO, especially one with the size and scale of GW2, you’re always going to have a very large player base that you have to cater to in specific ways. It’s absolutely important to respect all of the players you want to keep in your community but you can’t let indecision and fear of offending some of those players force you to sit on your hands and remain quiet. All that causes is infighting amongst the player base and arguments over what the development house and/or parent company intends for the game.

When no one is “right” it means that everyone is wrong and no one has any true idea of what the development house is really intending for the game and what their plans are. Sure, some decisions are going to annoy people or potentially cause them to leave the game. If, however, those decisions are rational, discussable and explainable, it goes a long way to at least confirm that the development house has a well considered plan. When the only communication on repeat obvious contentious issues is something like “we see you’re talking about this” as in the case of Ascended Gear or “we haven’t decided yet” in the case of Expansions then you’re just asking for animosity. Develop a plan you can stick to and defend if necessary, then at least be honest with the players about what your intentions and thoughts are. As some others have posted, a published roadmap could be a decent first step in this process.

Parisalchuk.9230:

I agree, there are many things where the community is split like how LS is updated or should we get new maps or update current maps, however there are still numerous instances where the seeming majority of a populations (ie PvE, PvP, WvW) has been against an addition or subtraction and yet it was done anyway.

Some Examples:
-Player base has spoken out against temporary content since the start – we were given temp content for months
-Player base wants a way to aquire weapons from special events without RNG – we are given a ticket system that is based on RNG from some of the most useless items in the game (BLTC)
-Player base has asked for the game to be more rewarding – we have recieved updates to dungeons in order to bring all dungeon paths in line while nerfing profitable methods of game play to ensure “no style is more profitable then another” (unless of course you play the TP)
-WvWers have been outspoken against bloodlust or any buff that causes snowball effect – those such mechanics were defiently added
-PvPers wanted skill balance since summer – we were put on hold so 10 total players would not be forced to think of new strategies even though… as top players in the world… that should not have been an issue
-PvPers want increased rewards and rank to mean something… no increases besides PvE skins has ever been added and rank is even more easily farmed

And many things could be added to this list.

I’m not condoning their decisions but I can try to at least explain the reason for them.

• Colin said that they needed to lay the groundwork for all the festivals in the first year before they could move onto more permanent content. A lot of this temporary content is actually permanent recurring content. The expectation for a living world is that events only happen once and never again. It’s not a new concept but it hasn’t been practiced to this extent so there are going to be growing pains.
• RNG has been a staple of MMORPGs for a long time. While people have spoken out against BLTC chests and said they would much rather buy the skins outright, the gem sales say otherwise. If ArenaNet made more money from skins that can be bought directly rather than through a lottery system they would go with direct sales. Seeing as they haven’t done so probably means this isn’t the case. People need to do more talking with their wallets. Buy more skins and less chests if you want ArenaNet to change their practices.
• Since launch ArenaNet has made it so that no one content type is more rewarding than another. You were able to get exotics with either karma or through crafting. There was no real reason to run dungeons other than for the prestige items. They applied this rule to gold gains as well. While it is flawed when you look at it from a logical standpoint it is socialism in practice. The elite players don’t get to have an edge over the non-elite players.
• As for WvW and PvP, it’s a tough balancing act. How do you bring back the benefits of the orbs without actually bringing back the orbs themselves? What is profession balance? You’re always going to have players complaining about how their profession is underpowered and some other profession is overpowered. You see that in big eSports games like Starcraft II. Blizzard’s assumes that when the complaints across all three races is equivalent then the game is balanced. Maybe ArenaNet is using the same method but they have eight professions to deal with.

What is extremely funny is the community really yearns for more information. Anet refuses to say anything till its basically already been added to a release. If only they would take some features – precursor crafting for intance – and wrote blogs about how its being designed, what work needs to go into the project, how coding is coming along, ect… I think you would find people much happier. Its win win too as the player base will then become pretty aware that updates wont and cant happen over night. However this would be a pretty substantial culture shift for Anet.

It would be a substantial culture shift for most companies. Game companies are project-based companies that follow traditional project management practices. I won’t go into too much detail about this. You define what the project is and you give it a scope. For the scope you have to decide what has to be included and what needs to be excluded given that you don’t have infinite time and resources. You then create a work breakdown structure represented by something like a Gantt chart. It’s basically a schedule for all the individual tasks that need to be completed.

If ArenaNet were to let the client, the players, know ahead of time what the deliverables of the project were then it would create an expectation that some of these deliverables could be changed, removed, or have new deliverables added. Corporate clients understand that changing a scope would require adding more resources or more time. The vast majority of players don’t understand this. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem but remember that ArenaNet set 4 week windows between content releases and they are committed to this schedule.

Basically, they don’t have any flexibility to make changes to their scope so even if they released information on what they’re doing ahead of time it won’t mean much because they can’t make changes that players are requesting. At least they won’t be able to make major ones. What they can do is incorporate feedback into their future releases.

TheDraco.3965:

I just don’t get this always stay positive philosophy anet has. For example if someone punches you in the face you don’t just go " oh please don’t do that again have a nice day" you tell the off or run. In reality every decision you make is going to have positive and negative consequences. Ignoring the problems is only going to fuel the fire.

Terrible analogy…just terrible.

If someone offers me pancakes and I don’t like pancakes, that’s not a slap in the face. In fact, that’s not even illegal. Anet didn’t assault anyone. Anet made content that some people liked, and some people didn’t like. Saying that it’s a slap in the face is a figure of speech and trying to use it as an analogy for anything else is just wrong.

Where the hell is Vayne when you need him?!

I’m all for decency, civility and respect. However, one thing about the OP concerns me. The post creates the impression that the only feedback that will be listened to is that which would move the game in the direction it’s already going. For example (not making a statement about Teq, here, just using it as an example), saying, “I like the Teq event, and it could use these few tweaks.” would be listened to, while saying, “I dislike the Teq event, and wish it were gone from the game for these reasons.” would be ignored.

I hope I’m wrong. Negativity in and of itself is neither rude nor uncivil. The way it’s expressed is the indicator of that. Some posters may not have any ideas on how to fix what bothers them, but their comments, if posed respectfully, should also be looked at. Knowing what someone doesn’t like is important feedback.

Jackie.1829:

Lamir.6702:

So many misplaced commas…Thanks for sharing your point about criticism being listened to better if it’s done in a constructive way, but that was pretty hard to read.

Also, this really sounds like a dev crosspost from a thread a month ago. On further investigation that thread is now deleted? Wonder why.

Rofl, so true. A bunch of the paragraphs in this post are repeated in another post in:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-A-Dev-Think-About-The-Official-Forums

Why is a developer giving us rehashed developer posts. This is honestly getting a bit excessive now, and if you think your playerbase is too stupid to catch on to how part of this post was copy paste, then you severely underestimate us, and yet another dev post to calm people down, only infuriates me further.

We wouldnt be here if you had listened to us a long time ago, when we were right and you were wrong.

Considering the number of posters who only read the first post then reply with high praises, it looks like you overestimate the player base :P

I realize the large additional resources that would have to be devoted to it to implement it, but I think the most effective way to get better feedback and to make the community feel more listened to would be to have test servers open to regular players for most patches.

For one, it should reduce the number of bugs that make it to live in new content.

But on this topic, the most relevant piece is that with a test server open to players, players can try out changes, discuss, and give feedback on such changes before they go to live servers. Then because a patch on test is not set in stone, the devs can potentially make changes to the patch before it goes live. And in those changes between test and live, players can get a satisfying form of feedback in a short amount of time.

If players are discussing how something on test is under-powered and by the time it goes live it is slightly buffed, they can know that their voices were not unheard or ignored. It does not necessarily require lengthy forum posts of explanation. And it would of course also ensure that content gets far more testing and goes live with far fewer bugs.

Another thing I feel would be highly appreciated feedback is if most patch note line item changes included even brief or summary explanations of the rationale behind them. I understand that with the upcoming Oct 15 balance changes you guys have previewed some general outline of some changes, but very often changes seem inexplicable. It could be as general as “we felt the warrior didn’t have enough support options” or as specific as “in our combat simulations, thieves were doing 10% more damage than everyone else, so here’s some direct nerfs”. But so far we’ve had some really strange changes that basically no one asked for that you guys gave no explanation for like cluster bomb having its range reduced from 1200 to 900 making thieves officially the only class with zero access to weapon skills of 1200 range or more.

Another thing you could also try is modifying how your forum works. Instead of just having a ( + 1 ) rating button that basically does nothing, allow posts that receive enough ( + 1 )’s to be colored differently or highlighted in some way and make a (-1) button that if a post gets a low enough rating it is hidden so that unhelpful or borderline troll posts do not take over the conversation.

I hate to say it, but look at how Blizzard handles patches, forums, and forum feedback with regard to at least balance patches.

Or you could also just hire some people whose entire job is to relay information from devs and interact with users on the forum.

And one thing that would help alleviate some player misgivings is if you refuse to allow 3rd party addons, that you would more often publish exact drop-rates yourselves. Or perhaps allow 3rd party addons that allow drop rate data collection. Or automatically add the actual experimental drop rate data from players to the wiki rather than the theoretic values. There are so many threads spawned about drop rate conspiracies, and we as players do not have any real way to collect data. One thing that was really nice about WoW was that WoWHead existed and had very accurate drop rate data. This was only possible because many thousands of players were always running an addon that collected all their drop data and automatically uploaded it to WoWHead’s servers and in this way the players had access to a large amount of unbiased data. Without this, when some one complains about an apparent nerf to ecto salvage rates, all we can say in response as players is “you’re probably wrong” or hope that some rich player can on the spot go salvage 3000 more rares on the spot.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’m all for decency, civility and respect. However, one thing about the OP concerns me. The post creates the impression that the only feedback that will be listened to is that which would move the game in the direction it’s already going. For example (not making a statement about Teq, here, just using it as an example), saying, “I like the Teq event, and it could use these few tweaks.” would be listened to, while saying, “I dislike the Teq event, and wish it were gone from the game for these reasons.” would be ignored.

I hope I’m wrong. Negativity in and of itself is neither rude nor uncivil. The way it’s expressed is the indicator of that. Some posters may not have any ideas on how to fix what bothers them, but their comments, if posed respectfully, should also be looked at. Knowing what someone doesn’t like is important feedback.

He’s probably saying that they have a plan in place already for developing content and aren’t going to deviate too far from it. It doesn’t mean that they won’t incorporate player feedback into the game that would help improve the game as a whole. You have to at least give them props for sticking to their guns. In the modern age of gaming, too many decisions are being influenced by shareholders, other game companies, and by disgruntled players.