Guild Wars 2

Ronah.2869:

This ^ is probably the only comment in this thread that actually gives A-Net an idea of how to expand the game. The majority just argues if the OP statements are true or false, believable or not.

You probably forgot to read the 1st Page on this thread:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

This thread is about discussing the post from Chris Whiteside, not the moderation on this forum. Please focus on the topic at hand. Any further posts discussing things not related to the original post will be removed.

OP have good intention, but truth be told, it’s false, specially when taking into consideration the WvW and sPvP development! Feedback from the community isn’t really addressed and explanations aren’t given when deserved!

My question is to which community are they really listening? This one?

Would be nice to have WvW rank account wide.

Well that was a nice post full of PR speak. Chris, if you read other game forums you’ll realize that this is far, FAR from the worst the internet has to offer. EVERY game forum is full of trolls and angry people in my experience, except maybe Egosoft but I haven’t been on theirs since like a year and a half after X3 dropped so that may have even changed. Remember it’s the internet and 90% of people are jerks.

That said, I do think the communication from your end is lacking. I see things, such as guild events for smaller guilds, being added due to feedback from the forums. I also, however, see bugs go for months and months without even simple acknowledgement. In addition, slapping Josh on the wrist for actually communicating with the community was a REALLY bad thing to do. He should be the example for the rest of your employees to follow, not a warning to them. If your employees don’t have time to engage with the community even though you say it’s important to you, then you need to have better time management going on.

I honestly see it as a management problem. Your management is not prioritizing the fixing of obvious bugs, they pay lip service to community communications but then reprimand devs who actually communicate with the community. These problems are totally on management, which is not surprising since management is usually the weakest link in ANY company.

tl/dr: If you actually want to communicate with the community then you have to do it rather than just releasing a forum post full of PR speak.

Hello Chris,

I applaud you for representing Arena.net mindfulness, thoughtfulness and reasonings to their game, community and its players.

But!….

Yes there is a but..

there is 1 thing that is missing in Marrying and Uniting these 2….

Action

13+ months and going strong…

Supporting and Justifying Favoritism of classes; thief, alongside side-kick> warrior
Suporting and Justifying Tyranny and Elitism mechanics; Thief stealth, backstab, heartseeker, s/d thief, Perma-stealth, Perma-stun, Perma-evade, Perma-Teleport, Perma-Evasion, Outrageous single damage attacks……
Supporting and Justifying of Imbalance mechanics stripping the Fun factor in the game
Apposing and Punishing anyone who Dare question Injustice and Abusive actions and behaviors.
Apposing and Punishing anyone who Dare questions your reasonings in rewarding Elite and Favorite classes with Undeserving Rewards while Punishing the less Advantage ones..
Allowing and Supporting Outrageous Laggs, Crashes, Freezes and Disconnections to contine for so long.
(these are the few i can think of now)
Oh! wait!!
Empty Promises!
Empty Words!

So once more Chris,

Where is Arena.net Actions in dealing with these?

Oh! I have the answer..

With 13+ months later,

None Whatsoever

(Just for your information/ FYI)

Your Community Players are Immuned to Words

Since 13+ months ago.

Not sure if this thread is a joke…

Why? Heres an example:

Fractal Weapons. Since the introduction of Fractals, players have been suggesting a fairer and more rewarding way to get a hand on this (Weapon Boxes, Tradeable for Relics, MF recipe, etc. etc.) and rightfully so because this is the most laughable system i have ever seen in a video game. Yet there has never been a single word to all these suggestions, not even “Hey Guys, we like the way these Weapons are currently implemented so we wont make any changes to the system!”, nothing. Not a single word.

Collaborative Development, where? This is just one of the many examples…

Vayne.8563:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Azure.8670:

He’s right honestly. Even if there are things you HATE about this game, and you want it to get better because youre a fan, theres just better ways to say things XIV on and off lately and that game honestly sucks, but the community is SOOO supportive of the game its amazing. SQENIX has been horrrrible to their fans for almost a decade and people still support them. ANET tries really hard to make a lot of fans happy, in a game thats three pronged. just be respectful and remember that this is a work in progress. Things game time and this is a great game whether things about it kitten you off or not.

A video game should not be a work in progress the same way your car shouldnt be a work in progress once its released… In an ideal world the game would have had the foundation for their 2 week release cycles prior to release and the game would have included all the basic features it needed (like leaderboards and custom servers for PvP) right from the start. When you release a half developed game as one of the most anticipated games your gonna have a bad time. Shame on us for expecting a AAA title to actually be AAA in quality.

A driving game shouldn’t be a work in progress. Every MMO ever made is a work in progress…not just at release but through the entire life cycle of the game, as long as it’s viable.

When you buy a driving game, you’re buying a game. When you’re buying an MMO you’re buying access to a world…you’re not paying for the program you’re paying for the account. It’s a completely different thing.

There isn’t one MMO I’ve ever seen, AAA or otherwise, that released as a finished product.

There is a HUGE difference between a game expanding and evolving and a game being a work in progress. GW1 for example expanded its world with updates like Sorrows Embrace and War in Kryta in addition to adding 2 stand alone campaigns and an expansion.

That is far different then releasing a game, changing how you want to release content after release and then doing work to convert the game to a new model in order to meet your new requirements… all while players are trying to play it.

First case is your expansion of a world, second case is poor planning and releasing a game thats not complete. Guess which one we got.

Burnfall.9573:

Hello Chris,

I applaud you for representing Arena.net mindfulness, thoughtfulness and reasonings to their game, community and its players.

But!….

Yes there is a but..

there is 1 thing that is missing in Marrying and Uniting these 2….

Action

13+ month and going,

Supporting and Justifying Favoritism of classes; thief, alongside side-kick> warrior
Suporting and Justifying Tyranny and Elitism mechanics; Thief stealth, backstab, heartseeker, s/d thief, Perma-stealth, Perma-stun, Perma-evade, Perma-Teleport, Perma-Evasion, Outrageous single damage attacks……
Supporting and Justifying of Imbalance mechanics stripping the Fun factor in the game
Apposing and Punishing anyone who Dare question Injustice and Abusive actions and behaviors.
Apposing and Punishing anyone who Dare questions your reasonings in rewarding Elite and Favorite classes with Undeserving Rewards while Punishing the less Advantage ones..
Allowing and Supporting Outrageous Laggs, Crashes, Freezes and Disconnections to contine for so long.
(these are the few i can think of now)
Oh! wait!!
Empty Promises!

So once more Chris,

Where is Arena.net Actions in dealing with these?

Oh! I have the answer..

With 13+ months later,

None Whatsoever

(Just for your information/ FYI)

Your Community Players are Immuned to Words

Since 13+ months ago.

ahahahahahaha …

Burnfall, baby, I love your posts! — But you really need to work on being less passive and not understating your arguments.

;-)

PS: If Burnfall ever learns how to kill thieves in WvW we will never hear from him again; so I hope Anet does nothing to change thieves – cause I would miss him!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding our process in terms of forum usage as a development tool:

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.

Then why do developers say you don’t? Why would anyone be interested in providing good feedback when you have developers saying forum posters are just a vocal minority? Furthermore I don’t understand that analogy either. Isn’t ArenaNet a minority when it comes to making design decisions. While you are 100% entitled to it, believing that you are the only minority suited for suggesting design directions is a bit naive, don’t you think? The entire wealth of creativity in the world isn’t confined to your design studio. Discarding suggestions simply because they are made by a “vocal minority” is a dangerous path to tread, and an excuse which ArenaNet seems slightly too eager to wield.

living world

The most pressing demand from the community in regards to the living world is that it doesn’t feel tied together with the rest of the game world. You have tried to remedy this, for example through the new TA path. However, you seem to completely miss the point. For the first 100 hours, people battle the DRAGONS. The elder DRAGONS are the major antagonist in GW2. They and their minions appear everywhere. And then suddenly, after you kill(?) one of them, you are done. No more talk of DRAGONS. Nowhere.

Rather, you are fighting some kind of sky-pirates which you have never seen in any part of the game before. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that Aetherblades are cool and that the Bazaar for example was a really solid update, but when the only new content you deliver isn’t tied in any way to the rest of the world you will never make players feel that connection.

angry forum posters

Again, I can’t dictate Arena Net forum policy. But saying you outright disregard stuff like this is too easily applied on too many cases for an easy way out.

stand out content

This part of your post shocked me a lot. While switch and bait(I guess you can qualify my post as one of those you can just ignore now) has been the case several times with GW2, it will only work so many times. You can’t say that you are creating an MMO that is different from every other MMO, and then instead make it into the same MMO. I’m talking time gated gear grind and massive power creep in WvW. Things like this doesn’t rhyme well with what you say here.

Tagus Eleuthera.7305:

I think its difficult sometimes to be a player of this game. Its so close to everything you ever wanted, but that connection skips a beat sometimes and its a little tough to accept. Some people definitely handle it better than others though.

+1

It’s sooooo close to everything I’ve ever wanted in an MMO. The manifesto succinctly iterated what I want in an MMO — to the point where I get giddy just listening to it.

Honestly as soon as another MMO comes along that more closely follows the manifesto, that’s probably where I’ll be.

juno.1840:

Tagus Eleuthera.7305:

I think its difficult sometimes to be a player of this game. Its so close to everything you ever wanted, but that connection skips a beat sometimes and its a little tough to accept. Some people definitely handle it better than others though.

+1

It’s sooooo close to everything I’ve ever wanted in an MMO. The manifesto succinctly iterated what I want in an MMO — to the point where I get giddy just listening to it.

Honestly as soon as another MMO comes along that more closely follows the manifesto, that’s probably where I’ll be.

Good luck with that.

Parisalchuk.9230:

Vayne.8563:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Azure.8670:

He’s right honestly. Even if there are things you HATE about this game, and you want it to get better because youre a fan, theres just better ways to say things XIV on and off lately and that game honestly sucks, but the community is SOOO supportive of the game its amazing. SQENIX has been horrrrible to their fans for almost a decade and people still support them. ANET tries really hard to make a lot of fans happy, in a game thats three pronged. just be respectful and remember that this is a work in progress. Things game time and this is a great game whether things about it kitten you off or not.

A video game should not be a work in progress the same way your car shouldnt be a work in progress once its released… In an ideal world the game would have had the foundation for their 2 week release cycles prior to release and the game would have included all the basic features it needed (like leaderboards and custom servers for PvP) right from the start. When you release a half developed game as one of the most anticipated games your gonna have a bad time. Shame on us for expecting a AAA title to actually be AAA in quality.

A driving game shouldn’t be a work in progress. Every MMO ever made is a work in progress…not just at release but through the entire life cycle of the game, as long as it’s viable.

When you buy a driving game, you’re buying a game. When you’re buying an MMO you’re buying access to a world…you’re not paying for the program you’re paying for the account. It’s a completely different thing.

There isn’t one MMO I’ve ever seen, AAA or otherwise, that released as a finished product.

There is a HUGE difference between a game expanding and evolving and a game being a work in progress. GW1 for example expanded its world with updates like Sorrows Embrace and War in Kryta in addition to adding 2 stand alone campaigns and an expansion.

That is far different then releasing a game, changing how you want to release content after release and then doing work to convert the game to a new model in order to meet your new requirements… all while players are trying to play it.

First case is your expansion of a world, second case is poor planning and releasing a game thats not complete. Guess which one we got.

The only credit I’ll give you is that Guild Wars 1 was a pretty tidy, but restrictive in game in concept. You HAD to group to be effective mechanically, 8 skills, etc. Expansions (until Nightfall) didn’t add much, just new skills, and new story, which weren’t their prime focus anyway (nonetheless interesting).

And really, what changed in how Anet decided to update content, for Guild Wars 2? GW2 isn’t a skill-focused game as GW1 was, so you don’t see as many skill updates (wish I did, though). They also mentioned years ago that they did not want to do the same expansion system to provide large-scale updates. They want more story, and have an engine that lets them try new things. Though I won’t totally dismiss you; I think what you’re looking for, as well as myself and many others is a larger-scale update, both story and skill mechanics, than the type we’re getting, or ever got before. I’m happy that work continues on the game, but there is a ton of potential to tap.

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

People are angry for a reason.
People hate temporary content for a reason.
People hate ascended gear for a reason.
People hate class imbalance for a reason.
People hate server imbalance for a reason.
People hate constant buggy content for a reason.
People hate watching you making the same mistakes over and over for a reason.

Agree here.

Outside of the blatant copy/paste from September, you once again claim you want constructive feedback.

Based on observations of the Extremely Overzealous Moderation staff you have, you seem to only want feedback on how positive your game is, rather than bluntly pointing out the flaws.

Feedback:
Living Story: Good Concept; Horrid Implementation. Achievement grind fest for the masses. Majority of LS is temporary. Nothing to continue/tie into existing personal story (a.k.a. the story of Trahearne).

Ascended Gear: Too Lazy to lookup quotes. May be by same person.
Person A: We want players to have max gear by the time they reach 80…
Person B (later date): Players got max gear too fast.
Also, mentioning that ascended is to be an in-between exotic/legendary gap, but make it require materials used for legendaries. Now it is even more of a hindrance for Legendary items.

PvP/WvW: Too many problems to list.

Elite vs. Easy Content: Everything that comes out is either intended for people with Incredible dance dance revolutions button skills, or press 1 for loot content. It doesn’t have to be either/or. Think about having dungeons with multiple/various completion options. The hard way can shorten the run; while those with less coordination can complete the content with a longer/mob filled path.

Simply put, why should the community believe they truly make a difference. You promise us something now, but 6 months from now, deny having said it, or say “the community mis-interpreted our statements”
Examples:
1. Manifesto – Biggest bait and switch of the game.
2. Ascended Gear – Like mentioned above. “we want people to have max gear by the time they reach 80” vs. “People obtained max gear too quick”
3. LFG Tool – The sheer arrogance/denial of the need/work for this tool was amazing. For the longest time, you scream “why do the work when a 3rd party solution works”. Then after almost a year of listening to “we want this feedback”, It is finally released, being used as a poster child for community feedback? Imagine if an automaker released a new model sedan without cup holders, and then used the defense that automobiles didn’t even have cup holders for years. Doesn’t matter how long it took them to appear, but what is considered standard now.
4. PvP/WvW – “We are aware of the problem.” a.k.a. Please stop posting. We might fix this, but will probably just release something no one wanted instead (ruins? skyhamer farming?).
5. Moderation – Extremely selective enforcement. Trolling is obviously allowed when you defend the game/devs, as evidenced by multiple users accounts.

Yes. When you make promises/statements, the community WILL hold you accountable for your actions/inaction.

Arenanet please don’t forget these words by Mike O’Brien and about about your company and feedback back in 2010:

http://youtu.be/9GwKGbNKQHE?t=7m47s

Ipsen.7486:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Vayne.8563:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Azure.8670:

He’s right honestly. Even if there are things you HATE about this game, and you want it to get better because youre a fan, theres just better ways to say things XIV on and off lately and that game honestly sucks, but the community is SOOO supportive of the game its amazing. SQENIX has been horrrrible to their fans for almost a decade and people still support them. ANET tries really hard to make a lot of fans happy, in a game thats three pronged. just be respectful and remember that this is a work in progress. Things game time and this is a great game whether things about it kitten you off or not.

A video game should not be a work in progress the same way your car shouldnt be a work in progress once its released… In an ideal world the game would have had the foundation for their 2 week release cycles prior to release and the game would have included all the basic features it needed (like leaderboards and custom servers for PvP) right from the start. When you release a half developed game as one of the most anticipated games your gonna have a bad time. Shame on us for expecting a AAA title to actually be AAA in quality.

A driving game shouldn’t be a work in progress. Every MMO ever made is a work in progress…not just at release but through the entire life cycle of the game, as long as it’s viable.

When you buy a driving game, you’re buying a game. When you’re buying an MMO you’re buying access to a world…you’re not paying for the program you’re paying for the account. It’s a completely different thing.

There isn’t one MMO I’ve ever seen, AAA or otherwise, that released as a finished product.

There is a HUGE difference between a game expanding and evolving and a game being a work in progress. GW1 for example expanded its world with updates like Sorrows Embrace and War in Kryta in addition to adding 2 stand alone campaigns and an expansion.

That is far different then releasing a game, changing how you want to release content after release and then doing work to convert the game to a new model in order to meet your new requirements… all while players are trying to play it.

First case is your expansion of a world, second case is poor planning and releasing a game thats not complete. Guess which one we got.

The only credit I’ll give you is that Guild Wars 1 was a pretty tidy, but restrictive in game in concept. You HAD to group to be effective mechanically, 8 skills, etc. Expansions (until Nightfall) didn’t add much, just new skills, and new story, which weren’t their prime focus anyway (nonetheless interesting).

And really, what changed in how Anet decided to update content, for Guild Wars 2? GW2 isn’t a skill-focused game as GW1 was, so you don’t see as many skill updates (wish I did, though). They also mentioned years ago that they did not want to do the same expansion system to provide large-scale updates. They want more story, and have an engine that lets them try new things. Though I won’t totally dismiss you; I think what you’re looking for, as well as myself and many others is a larger-scale update, both story and skill mechanics, than the type we’re getting, or ever got before. I’m happy that work continues on the game, but there is a ton of potential to tap.

Im not saying Im looking for anything. I am saying literally that system you said GW2 was designed on was rewritten after the game was released. They even wrote about it – transitioning from monthly time frame updates to their 2 week system which included backend changes to allow it a full organization shift to those smaller teams. If you need to change THAT much then you released your game incomplete.

Look at PvP for another example – they had to fully remove their tournament system and repurpose it to a single round system. They had to ADD leaderboards and custom arenas and observer mode because they were not complete for release. Why… because the game was released incomplete.

So again, Im not questioning why GW2 was made and the philosophies behind it. I am proving to you that this game was released and required substantial changes to it AFTER release because it wasnt done correctly – yet was still given to the customer in that state.

Forum?
Its not a good place to feedback.

Tiger.7506:

Forum?
Its not a good place to feedback.

Yet petitions and polls arent allowed – so how exactly do you expect any feedback if not for forum discussion?

Parisalchuk.9230:

Yet petitions and polls arent allowed – so how exactly do you expect any feedback if not for forum discussion?

I’ll say it again, the primary feedback with which ArenaNet concerns itself is daily log-ins and cash shop revenue.

darkace.8925:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Yet petitions and polls arent allowed – so how exactly do you expect any feedback if not for forum discussion?

I’ll say it again, the primary feedback with which ArenaNet concerns itself is daily log-ins and cash shop revenue.

Faceless metric feedback ftw!

On a serious note:
I’d really like to see a dev chime in on this thread, sooner rather than later. Probably the most relevant thread to reply to or comment on, and we’ve not heard anything. CC guys and community managers may as well chime in too since they could be considered as part of the “problem” of lack of communication between devs and players.

Come on guys…this is your one moment to get involved. Don’t leave it until this thread gets to page 32, where I fear, you’ll give a one sentence reply.

Read this again…
I almost cried .__.

That’s a really nice comfy message you have there.

Now stop talking and back it up with action.

In fact, I think you guys should drop whatever it is you’re working on and do exactly what you say: Listen to the community for a while and develop a patch around what we’ve been clamoring about since the game came out.

You’ll never hear the crickets if you won’t stop talking about not hearing the crickets.

nethykins.7986:

Come on guys…this is your one moment to get involved. Don’t leave it until this thread gets to page 32, where I fear, you’ll give a one sentence reply.

I find it incredibly hilarious that their “dev outreach” and “we’re listening” and “communication!” thread has zero dev replies outside of the OP.

A total joke.

I recommend Chris and anyone else here interested in the Living Story go contribute to the thread I made. Post your own recommendations or just read up to get an idea. Let’s try to pool all recommandation into one place for easy reading.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/How-would-you-make-LS-better

Aside from this, yes WvW needs more love. And first and foremost, the wvw population imbalance problem, specially in lower tiers.

I just want to know what’s going on.
What is the direction of the game?
Right now it just feels reactionary.

I’ll just quote myself from another thread instead of copy pasting:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/My-thoughts-on-Ascended-Direction-of-game/2810623

Xar.6185:

Ascended is just not enough for the gear grind crowd and too much for the horizontal progression crowd. Leaving no one truly happy in the long term.

People are saying all the time that gear isn’t needed. That you can do naked runs of dungeons. So why add higher stats at all then?

Yet we needed to have magic find by account. Those MF leechers weren’t bringing their ‘A’ game and contributing enough so we changed MF. But its so easy you can do it naked, but don’t dare wear MF gear…

Some people keep saying the game is ‘too easy’, and that there is no PvE ‘challenge’. Ascended will only make things easier for them. If they rebalance for ascended, due to the time gating nature of it compared to exotics, those without it will be overly challenged and discouraged with thier inequal contributions to the group. Or just get wrecked solo.

What happens when the people who asked for a new gear tier are done collecting ascended? Add another tier or upset them by not adding one?

Aside from the things I mentioned in that other thread there are plenty of other contradicting things going on in this game at the moment. Examples are the wallet being alt friendly but time gating soulbound stuff is anti alt, having legendary weapon ingredients overlap with ascended weapon ingredients doesn’t solve the supposed ‘time-gap’ it exacerbates it. There are more but this post is already long enough.

What is going to happen? Is there a plan in place for all of these contridicting opinions? Or will it just be reactive change after reactive change until the whole things spins wildly out of control?

You mentioned being black and white. Well, choose one, tell us which one, and then stand by it.

The only part I have a problem with is where Chris said they don’t give more attention to the noisiest/most aggressive groups, which is flat out lies. I remember listening to a dev in a stream clearly say they were reverting stealth from 4 back to 3 seconds in pve because thieves were whining so much about it.

Edit: Otherwise its a pretty good message

Erick Alastor.3917:

Read this again…
I almost cried .__.

He’s not talking about Gw2 in this interview, isn’t he? If he is, he seems to be working/playing a totally different Gw2 than the one I bought.

Time Glitch.2460:

I find it incredibly hilarious that their “dev outreach” and “we’re listening” and “communication!” thread has zero dev replies outside of the OP.

A total joke.

The OP was posted a bit over 21 hours ago — near the end of the work day, barring OT. Hopefully, ANet personnel had a good 14-16 hours of downtime to eat, sleep, be with family, and enjoy themselves. That leaves just this morning and early afternoon to digest poster comments. They probably haven’t even met yet to discuss any response.

I’m going to cut them some slack on this one.

As a PvP/WvW hardcoresque player all I have to say is a couple of things:

a) As soon as there is another viable MMORPG option I’ll quit GW2. Unfortunately there is none nowadays and that keeps A LOT of people playing it, specially the most hardcore and dedicated ones . But that will not last forever. A ton of old betatesters refusing to test future GW2 content should be a moar than obvious hint on where all this is going.

b) I will never buy an Anet product again and I’ll disrecommend them to all of my MMO-thirsty friends. Too many promises broken and too many disappointments in a row to trust any single word from devs.

I know there’s a ton of people who would disagree and do enjoy they content. No problem with them. But believe me, no single game has hyped me so much just to disappoint me so hard. It’s like watching your hero becoming more and more evil, little by little.

They most definitely read the forums. They just don’t like posting. I wouldn’t post either if I kept doing full 180’s on every design philosophy.

rainmakercano.3152:

It’s like watching your hero becoming more and more evil, little by little.

Yeah I know what You mean too much. Guild Wars was waaay better, why? Less microtransactions, more passion. Guild Wars 2 should be renamed to Gem Wars. After a year we will get one armor set for each class (ascended armors) and a ton of skins only available in BTC… And “gold to gem” trade is still increasing.

Gonna cut you some slack on this. The only reason I bemoan the game so is due to the fact that I see in it so much wasted potential. If you are in fact ready to start listening to your customers more than the balance pass is one way of showing us you listen.

I cannot speak for other classes as I do not play them on a regular basis, BUT it has become quite clear that you don’t listen to what the necromancer community has been saying since launch. We want/wanted cleave on a weapon, we got fire (not fitting the lore btw)?!?. We wanted the ability to disengage and you gave us a ds nerf!?! To be fair you also improved our DS pool, but you took away our only major form of mitigation making us useless in most PvE settings. You stated quite the while ago that you wanted to make us the “true” attrition class, but you make us into condi-mancers instead!?! Please figure out what our true role is to be because this flip flopping has forced me to craft celestial armor with divinity runes for no other reason that to “suit” whatever may come next.

/rant… just please be more forthright from this point on

edit: clarity

I thought this game would be funded entirely by gems and expansions. If gems are sufficient to fund the whole game; I can understand why the quality of the content is low. It is my opinion that low quality content at high prices may be a better business strategy.

Wow, so may people here just don’t get it.

So assuming this post doesn’t also get removed by the OMS (Overzealous Mod Staff) for supposedly being too contentious and rude (which is a laugh, given the last five pages I’ve read) can I ask a few simple questions?

Why is it, over a year after release, that the foundation of the game is still so shaky? Why are skills that don’t work properly “working as intended” until the outcry is so loud that ANet has to pay attention? Why are traits and skills still misleading or opaque in their descriptions, with many still outright bugged? Why are professions still almost hilariously imbalanced, in a game designed with Tournament PvP in mind?

The game is nice, especially if played in a Role Playing manner, where the player doesn’t worry too much about stats and just plays. But with the release of Ascended gear, and the inevitable gear treadmill that is on the horizon, AND the competitiveness of players, and the desire to get the most out of your playtime, it seems that the vast majority of players are going to be forced into playing GW2 as a solo adventure RPG, as the time investment to get top end gear and remain competitive with other players (either in a PvP format or so as not to “be a burden” in PvE content) is ridiculous. This doesn’t even cover the massive difficulty ramp up of content like Tequatl or SAB.

But I stand by my opinion that the whole ANet team needs to pause the Living Story, pause brainstorming new gem store junk, pretty much put on hold anything that doesn’t deal with these following items until they are completely fixed:

1. Make skill and trait descriptions verbose, players need to know what these things do, as they form the basis of our interaction with the environment. Players should not have to delve into a Wiki to learn what stuff does, that is what the UI is for in the first place.

2. Fix traits and skills that are bugged, so that they aren’t anymore. Actually this should have been priority #1 from Day 1. Its shameful that stuff STILL doesn’t work a year after release.

3. Balance the professions so that they all offer something and do what they’re intended to do. Elementalists should primarily be long range AoE nukers, as they are in every game, not CC-support bots as they are now. Warriors should be damage soakers (not necessarily tanks, but better able to survive aggro) and 1v1 powerhouses, not the kings of AoE both at close and long range. And the ability to do damage should be inversely proportional to how much inherent defense a profession has. Squishies like the Ele should have high mobility and high damage, to compensate the extremely low class survival design. Professions with higher defense like Rangers (pets) and Necromancers (DS and/or minions) should have less DPS output to compensate for their inherent higher survivability. A corollary to this is that classes also need to be balanced based on their capabilities, not developer ideology. The Thief should not be the most mobile profession just because some dev wants it to be, it should have mobility commensurate with its actual capabilities, which include stealth, lots of dodging and endurance and other abilities.

Whatever, I don’t want this to turn into Balance 101, since most of this is both obvious while at the same time extremely unlikely to be read and taken as advice by a design team or ANet in general. Why we, the players even bother is something I question on a Daily basis, perhaps that should be made an Achievement category?

As a PvE Engineer, and a person who barely read/writes on forums, I have a few things to input regardless if this is the place to do so. This is my opinion and what I say may not be possible and someone may point out the faults of my ideals but I’ll understand it regardless of the angle you take this is.

a) I’d like to see long endgame content. I want to be able to enter a long dungeon with multiple bosses with a self RP availability. What I mean by this is that I dont want to walk into a dungeon and have an NPC ask what I want to do. I want there to be a large chasm or the ruins of some Grand Castle that I can go down a certain path to defeat a boss, then backtrack to go maybe through the upper levels to defeat different bosses half way through; consuming maybe 2 or 3 hours of my time for a singular path’s duration. Regardless of loot I want the beautiful art reward of completing a dungeon to defeat a demon in a chapel to where once completed the room fills with light and you just see all the artwork and time put into this by Developers and (Whoever makes it, I’m not good with titles.) And this doesn’t mean dont put in like a good chest at the end.

b) As a leather user I want access to more diverse armor styles. Maybe I dont want a trench coat all the time, I think they’re nice. But sometimes maybe I want a leather chest piece with maybe a cool looking ornate metal plate overlapping the armor to protect vital points of my body, like the heart or something. And the Soldier classes could maybe have like a coat overlapping the chest so they get some diversity, or a coat under, leaving a cool tassel at the end of your armor, maybe even a tabard. And the Scholars could use a full robe or two.

c) PvP armory update? (I’m big about making people look individual.) Theres a handful of weapon models I’ve seen in PvE that haven’t made it to the Mists yet… Ahhem Cough cough The Fixit Mace Wrench Cough cough lolz srry bout dat, frog n mah throt.

d) (More armor ideas cause I’m a loot fanatic. This could’ve gone with point B but w/e) Profession Specific armors. I’d like to have a piece or two in my armor set so at a glance people could be like, Cool watchwork Cogs he must be an engineer; or, Nice brutal shoulderpads he must be an awesome warrior. And not only that, but maybe something for our tradeskills too. Ohh nice fedora, you must be a max level tailor. Nice gloves, you must be a leatherworker!

e) Realistic ideas. Some of these weapons have a great look but their counterpart to the other weapon types are ridiculous. Like you’ll have a great flame sword and then a pistol oozing lava. Its a nice gesture but I dont think I’ve even seen some people use certain weapons cause they are off the wall. They dont have to ALL look EXACTLY alike. They can just be similar through details. One could have tentacles, the other could have an engraving of a tentacle, one could have a glamour effect that looks like a tentacle, and one could even be a tentacle. Side note, tentacles were an analogy for what I’m trying to get across, dont actually make tentacles. I’ve seen where those things can go wrong.

f) Dragons! I’ve got cool dragons. I want them to have slightly a stronger role. I dident see much besides Zytan in my Human storyline. Maybe theres a guy who’s got this different fighting style thats no ones seens yets ands maybes wes gets tos helps hims fights tehs dwragons? Maybe like a cliche one that breathes fire. Maybe the dragon has a monologue. I dont know.

g) Feedback. I know I’ve never posted much on forums because I dont feel like my voice has ever been taken into account. Maybe you could send me a 2 sentence non-automated message on a valid post saying ‘Hey my names Ted, we’re reading your stuff and your voice has been heard. Maybe we’ll contact you later.’ Or something of the sort. I dont have much going for me and even for those who do, hearing the little things like that go a long way.

As a mostly WvW player i feel incredibly let down by the communication and the way the WvW devs handle the whole updates. The communication problem is on your end anet, not on the forum’s.

As some other poster stated, AS SOON AS there is another option available for WvW type gameplay in a mmorpg, i’m off. The state of WvW is such a mess that i don’t see how you could save it. And your PvE isn’t good enough (terrible story telling, incredibly bland “living world”, grind grind grind etc…)

As many players, i wanted to love this game so much and i wanted to believe in your lies.

Back on the topic of communication, i will never insult another player/dev, these are real persons behind their computers, but clearly we are all waited for YOU to improve anet, You’re the reason why the forum has turn into such a negative place, for dozens of reasons stated by most of the above posters.

Thanks for reading,

a customer.

Collaboration is a good thing, but there has to be some mutual understanding. I personally feel that the devs understand (more or less) what the players want, but sometimes development just seem to go off on a tangent. Rather than going into complex issues like class balance and gear grinds, here’s something simple I don’t understand, and I’d love some insight:

As the game tries move forward at a rapid pace, there are so many core issues that linger in and outside of the game. When the temporary story content started to roll in a few months ago, I just thought to myself … “dang, if only they can spare a few folks to really try and fix some of the fundamental issues that’s been plaguing the game and forums for more than a year now” …

… Spazzy camera? Will we ever see a fix on that? Will we ever actually see a properly working forum search function? How about real quality of life improvements involving the ability to adjust simple things, like mouse smoothing, FoV and camera height adjustments to aid visibility for very small and very large characters?

Perhaps the basic stuff are the hardest to fix … who knows? Why not tell us why? Collaboration is a two-way street. Below in my sig, is a wonderful, constructive (and year old) thread about some fundamental issues with the game camera and some solid suggestions from the players. We’ve taken that step, now the ball is in your court ArenaNet.

Show us you’re really serious about the kind of collaboration Chris Whiteside mentioned in his post … and for the love of all that’s good in this world, keep the communication channels open. We love to interact with you!

A fellow dev posts to keep players of GW 2 engaged and to re-assure that they are consistently working to improve gameplay, and the first few replies itself reflects pessimism, skepticism and extreme cynicism. The least you guys could do in a topic of goodwill like this is to PROMOTE goodwill. There will be heaps of other threads where you can address things you’re unhappy about, just not here.

To Mr. Whiteside,

Thank you kindly for letting us know that ANet and its team continue to work tirelessly to bring us more enjoyable content and to attempt to mould Tyria into a more fleshed out, living, breathing world. We, as players that truly enjoy the world, lore and it’s community, continue to look forward to more that your team will come up with in the near future. We, too, on our part will provide feedback where possible to help your team realize that ambition.

“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.”

Might I suggest that in the spirit of collaboration that you take a look at the long list of long lists of suggestions in the suggestions forum that were posted just after launch as well as 4 months after launch by myself and many others who saw large holes missing in your UI for this game particularly in the areas of basic features every game should have by now as standard and in the guild interface.

I’d also like to mirror the concerns of the community when we say in this thread that we don’t believe collaboration will occur because many of us have for over a year posted well thought out descriptive and calm suggestions/fixes for the numerous challenges this title has faced prior the 1 year anniversary. So while it’s welcome, and we’d love to see it happen, at this point we really don’t have much faith that the most important issues talked about frequently will ever be addressed without some form of gesture from the development team.

One of the major items to look into I would suggest and not because it is mine, is here . Many people including people who I usually disagree with continously generally like this list as a comprehensive first step in making this game more accessible to the players.

There are other such lists in the suggestions forums as well as in the class forums on simple ways of correcting the problems with combat, pet AI, pet weakness on all three scales (turrets/ranger pets/summons) and the serious lack of diversity in builds in PVE.

We’ll be watching in earnest to see if this collaboration comes to pass, thanks for speaking with us.

Orion Templar.4589:

While discussions like that are valuable and demonstrate how the dev team and the player community can have valuable discussion, I’ve also seen many other issues that apparently are ignored. I’m sure they aren’t being really ignored, but the silence gives that impression. An example of that might be the dozens and dozens of threads in the Ranger forum about the need for multiple improvements in the Pet mechanic. Maybe there have been constructive dev interactions on the forums about ways to improve Pets, but if there are I apologize I’ve overlooked them.

The “devs” have interacted there. And I don’t mean the CC / CM people either … we’re talking about heads of the skill functionality team here … Sharp & Peters. And the entirety of their interaction all year long, has been to tell us that we’re fine overall b/c the perception is that we’ve been almost too strong in sPvP. Everything else that we have a problem with, report as bugged or bad design…. is just a non-priority for them. ….Basically… the entirety of end-game PvE, and WvW, is a non-priority…for them. This is not exaggerating & paraphrasing just to attack their character. No this is exactly what they have implied and re-asserted again and again with regards to our role in these game modes. Even our arguments that we have to “Play the UI” more than we actually “play the game” are brushed aside. They’re not interested in changing that. They’re focused on bigger things like trying to make Conquest mode “LoL-popular” eSport tier addictive etc etc.

They have written/collaborated probably, FIVE TIMES as much explanation on this issue of priority (than Whiteside has here), over in the sPvP forum with little side jabs sometimes on the ranger forum. Maybe they’re not as well received as Colin’s posts typically are, but they’ve interacted, and MADE THEIR POINT. They are not budging on this issue. It does not matter one bit what our suggestions are. It does not matter how much we try to refine our reports and work-arounds to solve this problem for them. They simply do not consider it a problem that deserves priority. It doesn’t even matter that a good number of their Ranger players are now on a trend of failing major portions of the living story content being added. That’s not their department. Even us ranger players are split on that argument of whether it’s the content-builders who screwed up or the balancing/skill team.

.

Regardless of what we could ever say on the topic, they have plausible deniability here, and they will use it to its full extent for years into the future. Not only that, they will get away with it too because they got away with it in Gw1 where Ranger and Paragon are still broken/1-dimensional classes in most game modes simply because the need to address it with a very jaded and possibly hostile community …. is such a low-priority.

Tree.3916:

A concern I have is the majority of “content” that has been added is temporary. I’m sure others would agree with me that I want to consume content at my own pace, not be forced to play the flavor of the week living story events…

The newest concern for this content is that it’s turned into a five man dungeon fest when the living story was supposed to bring people back to all of the open world, at beast all it’s done is bring people to one area at a time, only ascended weapon grinding has brought people back to the open world temporarily to gather materials for their newest gear.

LS isn’t up to the standards. Just this month almost ALL of the achievements are in a dungeon, if I wanted to play in dungeons I would have bought another game.

That’s one of the major concerns that I don’t think they are hearing us on, many of us bought to game for the promise of open world events in which we’d never have to use a LFG of any kind ever again for the content and that’s what we were originally promised, here it is a year later and it’s still not delivered not even with the LS content!

It’s obvious from this thread that the devs haven’t done so much as one thing that this forum has asked for.

ilr.9675:

Maybe they’re not as well received as Colin’s posts typically are, but they’ve interacted, and MADE THEIR POINT. They are not budging on this issue. It does not matter one bit what our suggestions are.

Thank you, ilr – I hadn’t seen those discussions. Admittedly I don’t spend time in the PvP forums so that likely explains it.

But to the issue at hand in this thread, my example of the Pet mechanic was just one example where many exist. You made a great point though that at least for this particular example, the “discussion” has been very unidirectional. It hasn’t been the collaborative effort in direction-setting that the OP is hoping we can achieve.

Orion Templar.4589:

ilr.9675:

Maybe they’re not as well received as Colin’s posts typically are, but they’ve interacted, and MADE THEIR POINT. They are not budging on this issue. It does not matter one bit what our suggestions are.

Thank you, ilr – I hadn’t seen those discussions. Admittedly I don’t spend time in the PvP forums so that likely explains it.

But to the issue at hand in this thread, my example of the Pet mechanic was just one example where many exist. You made a great point though that at least for this particular example, the “discussion” has been very unidirectional. It hasn’t been the collaborative effort in direction-setting that the OP is hoping we can achieve.

The thing that bothers me the most is that the devs in dealing with the public haven’t used any of the viable solutions for PVE that have existed in other titles for a long long time, long before they started working on GW2. It’s like they are all ingenue I would have expected a few mistakes here and there that’s common however to ignore the entire history of mmo development for pride is unacceptable imo and that’s how I’ve perceived their lack of concern for some of the simpler items. Like improving damage for pets in PVE, making them immune to AOEs by 85% 90% so they don’t die instantly, making them smart so they don’t accidently run over some left over AOE zone and die, make them all mobile even if it’s solely via traits that this happens (IE engineer turrets).

The pet classes would improve immediately if these things were done. Every mmo has the same concepts but different numbers when it comes to combat, they have the same problems, they all have to adjust and I’m just not seeing them taking the pet classes seriously enough to make them viable in PVE and WvW.

I think in any MMO, the community has a better idea about the direction the game should be going in than the developers themselves. Typically, MMO developers are arrogant and talk about how the vocal community members are confused, loud-mouthed idiots who have no idea what they really want – that all the detailed, constructive posts they make are just delusional fantasies that would send them running if it was ever really implemented. This is obviously a load of you-know-what, demonstrated in how when games fail to deliver what the community asks for, their population decreases drastically.

Even the biggest of the big WoW isn’t immune to this. When Blizzard started dumbing down content, making most classes totally faceroll, rehashing old content, making ‘prestigious’ rewards trivial to acquire, selling cool looking mounts while offering reskinned existing models in-game etc. the community said “stop that, or I’m leaving”. Blizzard of course didn’t listen, saying “we know best” and continued down that path. As a result, they lost something like 40% of their playerbase. We could argue that its just nostalgia, or that people quit because the game is old or whatever – it’s not. I know plenty of people (including myself) who would re-sub immediately if they returned the game to how it was in the TBC era.

With GW2, I have to say, the only real reason I continue to play is that it has a lot of potential and frankly, there’s no other MMO out there that I feel is worth playing. When you talk about delivering ‘groundbreaking content’ (a quote from the OP), I have to say there is nothing groundbreaking about GW2’s content. I don’t mean that offensively, either. If anything, the vast majority of the post-launch content has been very mundane. There has been an awful, awful, awful lot of “press F 250 times”, “go and slaughter these mobs in this zone event, with no tactics whatsoever”, “log in at this time on this date”, “go and do this bugged mini-game 20 times” etc. That’s not remotely groundbreaking. It’s actually quite poor.

However, there has been a pretty decent amount of high quality content, too. SAB, whether people like it or not, is a well made, creative piece of content. The new TA path is great, too. A little too many conditions from mobs, but other than that it’s nice. Fractals were an excellent addition to the game.

If the developers truly want to ‘collaborate’ with the community, I’ll be the first in line to write long, detailed posts about things I’d like to see in the game. By the same token, if another MMO comes out that ‘gets it right’ in the same way WoW ‘got it right’ back in 2004, I’ll be the first one to leave if the desire to collaborate with the community is merely all talk. Because, let’s be honest, you guys have a lot of idealistic plans that never see the light of day – including stuff that gets blogged about in detail.

Galen Grey.4709:

Astralporing.1957:

There was a number of general “no endgame” complains, that’s true, but among those, the people that asked specifically for new geart tier were a tiny minority. Even most of other complainers didn’t want gear grind. They wanted new content – dungeons, new maps, new cool skins. Some wanted raids. Af all those things, Anet picked one that was the least wanted.

You’re right they asked for a variety of things but did arenanet really just give us ascended gear? Because actually they release a new map on their 2nd update and that is the same update that had the ascended gear and associated fractals. In addition that updated included new dynamic events, new jumping puzzles, new crafting.

Which of those did the majority of the players concentrate on? The new map with the added difficulty that people asked for?

The map was boring. It was (and likely still is, even after revamps) the most boring and uninteresting map we have so far. As far as dynamic events went, it was practically empty – it felt dead. And the difficulty was more hps and stronger damage on mobs. Compared to it, FotM was exactly what lot of the players asked – a hard content with a variety of interesting mechanics. It was just fun.
The choice was very simple. And it didn’t have much to do with ascended gear at all.

LOL is the forum that negative that the studio director need to write such a long post warning the community to be nice?!

I notice Anet recently been advertising like mad for new players . Is all the negativity in the forum jeopardizing Anet’s efforts?

Perhaps people should spending more time playing the game instead of QQing on the forums. Teq is pretty lonely these days maybe all the qq-ers should go and do this event so I can finally finish it

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So back to the matter at hand. Through reading the posts i think it would be really useful for me to start a thread like ‘name one thing you would like to see improved in Guild Wars 2’ and then start riffing with you all on these subjects matters and try to make a more meaningful connection with you all that way by which we can define a process together for Collaborative Development?

I am also going to ask that we build out more time for team members to post and i will follow up with you all on that.

What do you think, does this sound like a good way to move forward?

Chris

It would be interesting at least. I’ll make the prediction right now that at least 20 posts will say something dealing with Cantha or Elona.

I strongly suggest you put these ‘what do you want to see’ type of threads in appropriate forums. Part of the problem in the past has been class forums are completely ignored so players are forced to air class issues in the sPvP forum because that’s the only one you visit.

If you’re going to make threads, make class specific ones in each forum. WvW one in the WvW forum. sPvP in the sPvP. And so forth. Otherwise we’ll all just be fighting amongst ourselves in a single thread. ‘Im not overpowered, you are!’ stuff.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner but i have been taking the time to read through the thread.

I wanted to say thanks for both some great feedback (community members posting what they like and don’t like) and that it has been useful to see some health debate regarding our interaction with you all.

I wanted to clear a few things up first:

Copy Paste Conspiracy!!!
A few weeks ago i posted on a thread regarding how we use forums to collaborate in terms of development. That thread was then deleted before i had time to post the second part of the content. My intention was to then add the whole post to the general discussion forum. I therefore decided to add to the the original post i had written and put it on the general discussion page. Sorry if i offended anyone. The time delay was caused by me being out of the office last week.

We don’t listen to negative feedback.
I just wanted to clarify this is not the case at all. Constructive feedback can be both positive or negative feedback. Un-constructive feedback in my opinion is when the post is muddied by overly emotional context such as being rude, disrespectful or making wild assumptions. Therefore please understand that negative criticism about the game is something we value and is core to collaborative development.

Chris Whiteside has a team of writers/PR people and Marketeers talking through him!
This is not the case. i just happen to write this way. Everything i say comes from the heart and if it helps i can write in a less passionate manner. Note i am English and this may have some effect on the way i write (People in the studio tend to blame a lot of the mistakes i make on being English so you are all in good company there)

So back to the matter at hand. Through reading the posts i think it would be really useful for me to start a thread like ‘name one thing you would like to see improved in Guild Wars 2’ and then start riffing with you all on these subjects matters and try to make a more meaningful connection with you all that way by which we can define a process together for Collaborative Development?

I am also going to ask that we build out more time for team members to post and i will follow up with you all on that.

What do you think, does this sound like a good way to move forward?

Chris

Yes, that would certainly be nice. I do, however, foresee innumerable complaints that will come your way and may at one or some point become quite… overwhelming.

Tigirius has a good thread that’s linked and perhaps a reply to those kinds of threads would be a better start. Please keep up the good work Mr. Whiteside.