Guild Wars 2

Saying things goes a long way. Here’s one:

“Hi all,
We have no plans on including mounts in the game. We know it’s a requested feature, but it really doesn’t fit in our scope for x.y.z reason”

Sticky that.

Second, get some bandwidth. All i hear is we don’t have the bandwidth to do (whatever thing). Don’t let community managers or w/e post on forums voluntarily. It’s there job to talk to the community, period. I hate to say it but GW had Gaile that would hop (maybe even bunny) back to the devs to get questions answered. Do more of that. I know GW2 is a much larger game, but still.

Also, put like 3-4 days into improving these forums, it will greatly help both you guys and the community at large if you put some time into sorting (popular, most recent, trending, etc,) and the basic ability to tag posts and fix the search function, maybe even add a q&a section once a month. This really is your public face, even if people just come here for patch notes, and it’s second rate. Buy into a canned engine if you need to. IPB works well.

I know for an absolute fact, you not having personnel to talk to us, the players, is hurting everyone, especially going silent for what now? Almost 4 months? You need to institute that part of peoples time be set aside to answer even some of the most basic question, if those actually get answered, people would certainly spend far less time reading negative feedback or answering the millionth post on the same ole thing. Have someone sort these things out, make it their job. A good resource to refer to would be John Smith on the economy (as vague and aloof as he can be sometimes).

Lastly, i get it, you’re working on the game, you have to translate into however many languages, etc. But really, you guys need the staff to be your forward face and until that happens it’s going to be more of the same. Rage, sprinkled with praise here and there. I’m glad you made time to make this post, but geeze, is that the best you got?

Imo, what people want is someone to talk to. Posting here is like posting on a faceless wall, hoping that someone on ANet’s side is there.

Imo, what people want is a person whose job it is, is to talk to us. A forum Liason for example. By that I mean someone who drops in to the forum and simply chats and answers questions. Not on a daily basis. There would be too much burnout for that. But maybe on a weekly or monthly basis. A lot of overexcited anger and speculation could be put aside if people know that in X more days, they can ask someone directly about the issues concerning them.

A forum Liason can handle the perennial questions that come up, such as the precursor scavenger hunt. Even just saying, we tried to do it but it didn’t work out would help. Even better if s/he was empowered to say why.

Granted, such a person would have to have a thick skin but i think it’s worth it.

Mike O Brien.4613:

snip
See you in-game,
Mike O’Brien

Thanks Mike. I think it’s important to know that many of us know exactly why you don’t respond. Do I know why you’re not planning SAB & such? Yeah. Am I disappointed? Yeah.

While I appreciate the attempt, the bottom line is that your current company policy is unacceptable to me and many other players.

If you want to keep players interested in the game then we need to know what your long term goals are. The roadmap was a great idea with some small flaws. I would stronly suggest you go back to the roadmap approach and modify it to use less strong language. Instead of: “You WILL see precursor crafting and new legendary weapons in 2013” try: “We are working on precursor crafting and new legendaries and will update you with more information as we get closer”.

Then when you do get closer LET US KNOW. SHARE with us some concept art for new weapons, get players feedback BEFORE you release them.

Any player in the game could have told you that 300g per commander tag was unacceptable, but your lack of communication with the player base left you scrambling at the last minute and working weekends for something that could have been avoided by talking to the community for 30 seconds.

Mighty Favazz.1546:

Before we get too mushy here, folks, lets be clear about what Mike just said. He basically just reiterated what thier policy on communicating with their customer base. If that’s all you need, then good for you. But what I really want is a broad understanding of their current and long term goals.
Lack of communication only leaves for speculation. Speculation mostly leads to built up hopes, which cannot be achieved.
Everyone loses with their current policy. The only reason they have it is to have something to fall back on and avoid blame if they can’t meet their goals, which to me, is a cowardly way to run a company.
It certainly isn’t innovative

This right here says it best.

Hey Mike, great to see you post here. It’s good to see that our concern with the lack of communication has been noted.

Though it is understandable you don’t want to promise something that may be changed later in development, I think you are erring too much on the side of caution. In fact, I think ANet has taken events from last year, and interpreted them incorrectly.

Let’s take the biggest example from last year: Precursor Crafting. It was mentioned as in-development in the summer 2013 six-month roadmap and some very vocal players freaked out when it didn’t make it in during that time, or even the six months after that. And it’s true those players were VERY vocal indeed.

An understandable position to take for you is to not tell us anything “until is is ready to be released”.

I would argue the problem was instead not communicating MORE. The Precursor Crafting was announced in a blog post that was announced on blogs all over the internet and was announced in GW2’s own game launcher. Anyone paying attention at all would have read that blog post. In contrast the announcement that Precursor Crafting was pushed back was revealed in some out-of-the-way social media or interview somewhere (I can’t remember offhand at the moment) and only the most dedicated of GW2’s fans would have seen it. And that information was given with almost no context of why.

If there had just been an official blog post last December that said: “We’re pushing back Precursor Crafting until we complete the full Precursor Scavenger Hunt, because during development we realized that made the most sense to do. We are sorry for the delay but we promise it will be so much better when we do release it” then I think a lot of the backlash would have been eliminated.

But more importantly than disappointment over this or that feature being pushed back, the player base as a whole no longer understands what ANet’s mid-term vision for the game is. We’re not sure where you’re taking us, not just in specific particulars, but even in the most broad strokes. It’s creating a lot of uncertainty among players I feel. Even among your most devoted fans.

You certainly do not owe us more communication. But I think it benefits both ANet and your fans if you do so.

ANet is obviously filled with creative and passionate devs who are truly invested in GW2. That’s a real strength of the company and the environment that is fostered within it. Don’t hide it away. Embrace it. And don’t be afraid of your fans. Just be open, transparent, and explain why you do things. Your fans will love the game and the developers behind it all the more, even if sometimes they don’t like this or that development.

Having said all that, I did love Feature Pack 1, the first half to Season 2 Living Story, and the Story Journal. So keep up the good work guys!

We can’t talk until is ready…

I dont know why ppl thank for this topic. We didn’t get anything what we didn’t know…
It has pass 2 years still no news about EXP no news about anything…
LW is fun but its not that long to last more then few hours. Gemstore become main thing in this game, only cool items are in gemstore…

Cmon ANet give us real thing!

Keysha.2815:

Whilst I appreciate you saying this, it is more a matter of putting your money where your mouth is. The biggest thread right now is the Trait system. And you, as a company, are conspicuously absent from it. Many other very controversial subjects, you, as a company, are very conspicuously absent from. If you want us to believe you, you need to consistently and fairly do this.

Even if you feel you cannot comment on the content of a thread, a comment stating you are reading and discussing it with others on the team, or saying an occasional ‘good point’, or ‘no, that won’t work, because’ would show interaction, that you are reading, that you are processing, and that you care. But to have a long dry spell, with little to no interaction except in a few select threads, and then post something like this, is almost condescending.

Your player base is not stupid. We know what we see, and it is diametrically opposite what you are saying. We are not children, to get a pat on the head and be told ‘everything is fine, we are doing what we should, now go play and let the adults do what they are doing.’ Yet it sounds like that.

Please, either be consistent in paying attention to us, or don’t. But do us the favor of not thinking we are stupid enough to let your words override what we see and experience. It doesn’t work that way.

Well said. If stringing us along for 2 years over other means of gaining a precursor isn’t “stringing us along” then I don’t know what is.

I hate to say this but you’re right; talk is cheap, even if it’s from the current CEO of anet.

This is the new Corporate Software House nowadays, release a product then no feedback period, EA are the same, Blizzard just as bad unless its there ’ This is how you will play the game" Bioware starting to go the same way . DICE defiantely only use Twitter.

Now Anet going the same way, zero communication, seems only Bethesda are the only one left that actually communicates and their " Community team" actually do what they say they do ……..

To be blunt, the volume of communication does not matter, while the content of communication remains the same. You have no one on staff who I trust or respect. I do not believe your statements, I do not value your perspectives. You could never post again. You could post a thousand times a day. You could post nothing but vines of yourself making rude gestures and cursing unintelligibly into a megaphone. It’s all the same.

I have one more thing to say. I used to be admin on a few message forums, similar to this. We had admins (4), and mods (about 7). Their JOB was to watch the board, delete or stop toxic posts, police the place, and interact with members, so the members felt valued, welcomed, and appreciated. Anet is falling down badly on this.

If you cannot, as a team, interact with us on a fairly regular basis, and cannot afford to hire a small team to do so, then why have a forum? For members to post to each other, foster ill-will, complain where we are all certain the Anet team does not listen, or even look, or vent our frustration just to hear others do the same? We can do that elsewhere, and you don’t have to pay to have ANYONE take care of this site. We are feeling, more and more, like none of you care.

So why not, if nothing else, get a group of trusted players to be ‘community mods’, and police the place, deleting all bad posts, shutting down all negativity, and generally acting like so many other game forums where the company locks down the forum in hopes no one knows how bad things are? That is usually the first step before the company decides to stop putting money into the game, and starts developing a new one, to get the money from those in search of the ‘next big thing’.

While I realize that GW2 is not on the decline, and that you, Anet, as a company are not at the point of withdrawing support, your forums, more and more, make it feel like you are.

EFWinters.5421:

Don’t worry Mike, we hear you loud and clear already. Every week when we see more gem store items being churned out from the ArenaNet HQ instead of the bug fixes and improvements to the game that we have desperately been asking for since release.

Are you just ignoring the fact that there is an established release date for the 2014 September update or what?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Then when you do get closer LET US KNOW. SHARE with us some concept art for new weapons, get players feedback BEFORE you release them.

Any player in the game could have told you that 300g per commander tag was unacceptable, but your lack of communication with the player base left you scrambling at the last minute and working weekends for something that could have been avoided by talking to the community for 30 seconds.

This is a great example of how holding back information until the last minute and having no public beta servers for testing and feedback (though yes, I realise there are economy concerns regarding that) are problematic.

Everything you talk about is something that’s going to happen in the future. If there’s a problem, you’re either going to fix it, or ignore it. If there’s something we want, it’ll happen in the future. How do you communicate with people when you refuse to say anything about your plans, and have to be cagey with what you do say? It’s frustrating and pointless. In this interview: http://www.guildmag.com/guild-wars-2-interview-part-1-general-game-living-world/ You almost literally say nothing of any interest, except to stir up the recent crapstorm about SAB. I’m sure you’ll say “That’s why we don’t talk about the future.” But you don’t seem to talk about anything else, either.

This question, for instance:
Will you be updating the older personal story line steps to match the changes in the world?

Get’s this reply:

I don’t know the answer to that. It’s definitely something we talk about and we say ‘hey, if we’re going to go into a map that has existing story content, how much depth does that accumulate and is there a better place for us to do that? Is there a spot on the new map where we can tell that story without having to rework a bunch of the old stuff to match up.’ That said, you know, what we did with Lion’s Arch, we also did a lot of work to make some of the story steps to actually make sense within the context of ‘Now Lion’s Arch is destroyed’. So it’s possible that we go back and do that, but it’s definitely a question of, given the scope and the time frame that the team has, what do they think is going to be the most effective story and content that they can build?

What exactly is said? Almost nothing. You just say “well, we might or might not do it. It depends.” There’s 4 sentances, and 2 of them are questions.

The user base is frustrated by the black hole of information that represents Anet. You tell us nothing until you’re ready to deliver it, and then have to backtrack furiously when the entire community hates it, eg: the recent commander tags. You deliver updates like we’re Moses in front of the burning bush, and expect us to love them. And then you seem frustrated that we don’t, and clam up. There’s a thread about the trait system that’s been going since APRIL, and there’s like 2 replies in it. How the hell is that good communication?

Thanks for talking to us, really nice to hear from you guys, especially you Mike. I must say i miss seeing Colin on the forums, it’s been a long time and I especially miss those blog posts that outlay your plans for the future. Hope to see one of those again soon.

Keep up the good work, still love gw2, but ofc want to see more, lots more!

Seriously this is the 6th mmo ive played where people expected the developers to communicate with the playerbase.

Nobody does that.

It’s not just Arenanet. I mean, I’m not defending them for it.

But SWTOR, TESO, WoW, FFXIV…

None of these games have people on the forums actually explaining things or discussing stuff with people.

Want to know why?

Because official forums are filled with the vocal negative minority and there is no freaking point in talking to these people.

If he says stuff is coming, its a lie.

If he doesn’t, Arenanet doesnt care.

If they say they care, its a lie.

There’s no point “discussing” the future of the game with a giant forum full of people who secretly want it to fail just so they can say I told you so.

Yujin.1785:

Keysha.2815:

Whilst I appreciate you saying this, it is more a matter of putting your money where your mouth is. The biggest thread right now is the Trait system. And you, as a company, are conspicuously absent from it. Many other very controversial subjects, you, as a company, are very conspicuously absent from. If you want us to believe you, you need to consistently and fairly do this.

Even if you feel you cannot comment on the content of a thread, a comment stating you are reading and discussing it with others on the team, or saying an occasional ‘good point’, or ‘no, that won’t work, because’ would show interaction, that you are reading, that you are processing, and that you care. But to have a long dry spell, with little to no interaction except in a few select threads, and then post something like this, is almost condescending.

Your player base is not stupid. We know what we see, and it is diametrically opposite what you are saying. We are not children, to get a pat on the head and be told ‘everything is fine, we are doing what we should, now go play and let the adults do what they are doing.’ Yet it sounds like that.

Please, either be consistent in paying attention to us, or don’t. But do us the favor of not thinking we are stupid enough to let your words override what we see and experience. It doesn’t work that way.

Well said. If stringing us along for 2 years over other means of gaining a precursor isn’t “stringing us along” then I don’t know what is.

I hate to say this but you’re right; talk is cheap, even if it’s from the current CEO of anet.

Agreed, I actually hold anet to a higher standard, they used to be a company i’d get emotional about due to the effort spent communicating with players, today is another story. They need that, people need to feel connected to a dev/CM willing to take time and post, answering questions and providing feedback.

This to me “feels” like more PR, without the face, without the forethought, the goal, the ideas behind what they do. Get some structure, is all this tells me.

I don’t post a tremendous amount on the forums, but i gotta say this is the most lack luster response i think i’ve ever seen. No matter how much screaming from the rooftops people do, ANet used to be a company that felt the players woes. Now it’s like a wall of bad PR and canned responses. Bring us some emotion. Expectations are everything, make it happen.

SolviteSekai.9816:

Seriously this is the 6th mmo ive played where people expected the developers to communicate with the playerbase.

Nobody does that.

It’s not just Arenanet. I mean, I’m not defending them for it.

But SWTOR, TESO, WoW, FFXIV…

None of these games have people on the forums actually explaining things or discussing stuff with people.

Want to know why?

Because official forums are filled with the vocal negative minority and there is no freaking point in talking to these people.

If he says stuff is coming, its a lie.

If he doesn’t, Arenanet doesnt care.

If they say they care, its a lie.

There’s no point “discussing” the future of the game with a giant forum full of people who secretly want it to fail just so they can say I told you so.

Every one of those you mentioned (minus WoW) are literally dead. Want an good example, look at Bungie and Destiny…

When i do post here it’s because i’m passionate about the game, when i stop posting, when i stop caring, or people like me, then you can shut the doors. I’ve seen it in so many games, it’s not even funny. Look at reddit, it’s mostly logical, stable posters, and as of late it’s been a lot of well explained outrage.

BTW, no one says he’s lying (least i’m not), we are all trying to hold ANet to a standard they set themselves. Not some we hate ANet and the game mentality.

I’ll whiteknight defend anet, i have no problems when i think they are making headway, when they say they are improving their communication and actually do. But as of late, i’m ready to say forget it.

SolviteSekai.9816:

Seriously this is the 6th mmo ive played where people expected the developers to communicate with the playerbase.

Nobody does that.

It’s not just Arenanet. I mean, I’m not defending them for it.

But SWTOR, TESO, WoW, FFXIV…

None of these games have people on the forums actually explaining things or discussing stuff with people.

Want to know why?

Because official forums are filled with the vocal negative minority and there is no freaking point in talking to these people.

If he says stuff is coming, its a lie.

If he doesn’t, Arenanet doesnt care.

If they say they care, its a lie.

There’s no point “discussing” the future of the game with a giant forum full of people who secretly want it to fail just so they can say I told you so.

Actually another MMO that though is in the decline and making REALLY bad decisions right now ( which is why I am in GW2 not there) DOES have a faily active Community team, Bashiok and Nethera post quite often compared to zero here at all !

Yujin.1785:

Well said. If stringing us along for 2 years over other means of gaining a precursor isn’t “stringing us along” then I don’t know what is.

I hate to say this but you’re right; talk is cheap, even if it’s from the current CEO of anet.

The flip side is that the situation with precursors is probably the reason they no longer talk about long term plans that haven’t been finalized yet. It sounds to me like Mike was saying that talk about future stuff that is not yet set in stone could create similar problems, bad both for the community and the dev team.

Whenever they finally do revamp precursor acquisition, I sure as hell hope they explain the iterations they went through and why it took so long.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

This post is, as has already been said, overdue – but it is still greatly appreciated. Hopefully your hand won’t get bitten by some angry ranter while you’re trying to reach out to us.

However, there is one thing I do just have to bring up. I’m not demanding a reply or anything, I just hope that it’s noted.

Mike O Brien.4613:

In general the simple truth is this: when we’re not currently working on something, it’s because we’re working on something else instead that we think is more important for the game and community.

I appreciate that everyone’s opinions differ, but I think the community has made it very clear exactly which areas they are interested in being developed. A little communication in regards to these subjects (I won’t name them, I don’t want to derail a communication-related thread into discussion about them) would be nice, perhaps a little more than something along the lines of “We’re not working on [insert content/feature here] at this time.” If the playerbase knew why something was on the backburner, maybe they would quieten down about it for a while?

Thanks again for daring to visit these forums at such a time; but saying that you are working on “more important” things is really raising the bar – especially considering how passionate some players are about things that aren’t being worked on.

As was said earlier, the developers HAVE THE BIG PICTURE in mind, players do not. Hence, what players find important, like SAB, may not be that important to the game as a whole and is just a bit of fluff thrown in for fun.

munkiman.3068:

SolviteSekai.9816:

Seriously this is the 6th mmo ive played where people expected the developers to communicate with the playerbase.

Nobody does that.

It’s not just Arenanet. I mean, I’m not defending them for it.

But SWTOR, TESO, WoW, FFXIV…

None of these games have people on the forums actually explaining things or discussing stuff with people.

Want to know why?

Because official forums are filled with the vocal negative minority and there is no freaking point in talking to these people.

If he says stuff is coming, its a lie.

If he doesn’t, Arenanet doesnt care.

If they say they care, its a lie.

There’s no point “discussing” the future of the game with a giant forum full of people who secretly want it to fail just so they can say I told you so.

Every one of those you mentioned (minus WoW) are literally dead. Want an good example, look at Bungie and Destiny…

When i do post here it’s because i’m passionate about the game, when i stop posting, when i stop caring, or people like me, then you can shut the doors. I’ve seen it in so many games, it’s not even funny. Look at reddit, it’s mostly logical, stable posters, and as of late it’s been a lot of well explained outrage.

BTW, no one says he’s lying (least i’m not), we are all trying to hold ANet to a standard they set themselves. Not some we hate ANet and the game mentality.

I’ll whiteknight defend anet, i have no problems when i think they are making headway, when they say they are improving their communication and actually do. But as of late, i’m ready to say forget it.

SWTOR is currently in the top 5 most lucrative free to play games in the world and has 700 thousand active players.

So… I guess you just don’t know how to google or something.

BTW, First off Destiny isnt even an MMO. Its a co-op shooter with dynamic shooters.

Second, it will be dead within months, just like every other game on console that isn’t call of duty or borderlands.

IDK if you have justified it in your head, but the simple fact is that nobody in the grand scheme of things cares what standard you hold Arenanet to. They dont need your money. They don’t care for criticism apparently.

Idk why people think insulting them on their thread where they express a desire to reach out will help.

I don’t think anybody’s really asking for lots of details in advance at this point.. just an increased sense of where Arenanet’s head is at; opportunities to see how dev thought processes dovetail with the hot topics of the day.

In other words, we don’t need ’Here’s what’s coming next, guys..’ so much as ’We’re putting a lot of thought into how to design a precursor scavenger hunt. What’re you guys’s most favorite in-game activities? Oh, really? Cool, but we want to include more skill-based challenges as well as things that are farmable..’ .. and so on and so forth. Conversation. Or, "That’s not such a good idea; we got such poor response to SAB world 2 and we’ve got to figure out what went wrong there before we get back into it.’.. excellent example!

I think you guys do yourself a disservice by not seeking feedback in advance. It’s lead to a couple not-very-pleasant surprises for both developers and players – things that didn’t have to happen, but did because of a seeming lack of cross-fertilization.

The commander tag thing was an example of the system working pretty much as it ought to, horrible as it may be to say. I applaud your guys’s willingness to change, but it could be so much smoother.

But c’mon, seriously. Right now nobody on these forums has any idea what anybody in your company even thinks about several controversial topics – all of the april 15th threads are still open and unremarked upon, and here we are on another feature patch paranoid about the as-yet unrevealed things that might fill up the forum threads for the next five months.

Lheimroo.2947:

I don’t think anybody’s really asking for lots of details in advance at this point.. just an increased sense of where Arenanet’s head is at; opportunities to see how dev thought processes dovetail with the hot topics of the day.

In other words, we don’t need ’Here’s what’s coming next, guys..’ so much as ’We’re putting a lot of thought into how to design a precursor scavenger hunt. What’re you guys’s most favorite in-game activities? Oh, really? Cool, but we want to include more skill-based challenges as well as things that are farmable..’ .. and so on and so forth. Conversation. Or, "That’s not such a good idea; we got such poor response to SAB world 2 and we’ve got to figure out what went wrong there before we get back into it.’.. excellent example!

I think you guys do yourself a disservice by not seeking feedback in advance. It’s lead to a couple not-very-pleasant surprises for both developers and players – things that didn’t have to happen, but did because of a seeming lack of cross-fertilization.

The commander tag thing was an example of the system working pretty much as it ought to, horrible as it may be to say. I applaud your guys’s willingness to change, but it could be so much smoother.

But c’mon, seriously. Right now nobody on these forums has any idea what anybody in your company even thinks about several controversial topics – all of the april 15th threads are still open and unremarked upon, and here we are on another feature patch paranoid about the as-yet unrevealed things that might fill up the forum threads for the next five months.

Nobody out there gives that much feedback.

You can see whats coming in September update on GW2 twitter and the new living world story is in production.

What more do you want? A bedtime story?

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Precursor scavenger hunt…
Tell me again how you don’t talk speculatively?

Honestly, I think that the never-ending complaining about the scavenger hunt is the exact reason why there’s the strict no-speculation policy. They want to avoid a second scavenger hunt debacle. ANet learnt that they shouldn’t talk about future ideas the hard way.

I wanted to comment that ArenaNet has done spectacular communication in the past.
The name? Josh Foreman, the creator of everyone’s favorite release that we can no longer play.

Also, from what I have read, he was actually reprimanded for being so active with the community and is now no longer able to post freely because of it. What’s with this?

Sure, he may have said things that not everyone liked or agreed with, but this is because he is human. As a human and the designer of Super Adventure Box he could not please everyone. But he did listen greatly to feedback and show a passionate human side to the company that I and many players deeply appreciated.

If you want some pointers on how to have a great conversation with us, just go ask Josh. And please, for the love of Trahearne, get him his posting priveleges back.

Here is the issue that has been raised in a nutshell. In this thread about how there is open communication, I don’t expect a response, because that’s typically how these things go. It would be nice to have back and forth.

Nobody expects everyone at Arenanet to know everything. The sane amongst us understand that sometimes things promised or intended don’t pan out. But even a post saying, “so we heard you and this is what we’re currently thinking, but I have no idea whether this will be implemented soon” or “we’re sorry, we do plan to get to this, but we just can’t right now” is better than complete silence.

I’ve loved the back and forth with John Smith in the q&a thread over there, it’s been pretty fascinating even with the understanding that he WILL NOT answer questions about anything specific that might affect the current economy or future releases. If we could have more threads like that, I think the general tone of the forums would improve. But I mean…. the traits thread is dozens and dozens of pages long and doesn’t have anything apart from a “yeah, we’re listening”.

A lot of this is on the community because it’s easy to provide disincentive for you guys to talk to us, and I’m sure for you it seems like it’s a sucker’s game. But the knowledge that I might be able to go and ask John Smith a question and get an answer is REALLY nice. I wish that extended to dev and strategery as well.

Lunaire.5827:

I wanted to comment that ArenaNet has done spectacular communication in the past.
The name? Josh Foreman, the creator of everyone’s favorite release that we can no longer play.

///Also, from what I have read, he was actually reprimanded for being so active with the community and is now no longer able to post freely because of it. What’s with this?///

Sure, he may have said things that not everyone liked or agreed with, but this is because he is human. As a human and the designer of Super Adventure Box he could not please everyone. But he did listen greatly to feedback and show a passionate human side to the company that I and many players deeply appreciated.

If you want some pointers on how to have a great conversation with us, just go ask Josh. And please, for the love of Trahearne, get him his posting priveleges back.

Sounds legit.

Sauce?

SolviteSekai.9816:

Seriously this is the 6th mmo ive played where people expected the developers to communicate with the playerbase.

Nobody does that.

It’s not just Arenanet. I mean, I’m not defending them for it.

But ANet USED to do that, that is why they have so many fans, not just of their games, but of them as a company. They had a personal face, and you wanted the game to succeed because you wanted the devs to succeed, because you could clearly see how passionate the devs were for the game.

SolviteSekai.9816:

Nobody out there gives that much feedback.

You can see whats coming in September update on GW2 twitter and the new living world story is in production.

What more do you want? A bedtime story?

That’s completely uncalled for – and frankly, your contention that ‘nobody talks to their customers’ in this business is untrue. But you go ahead, you keep spouting your self-serving rhetoric,made-up statistics, and adhominem attack.

I get that you don’t want to answer “big” questions in interviews, and Wooden Potatoes gave a good longer answer as to why. I get that, really. But what you need to do is homework.

When you get those big questions in an interview, give your politically correct, “lots of words that mean absolutely nothing” answer for the interview, but then take that question home with you. Work on it. Come up with a complete, “lots of words that actually mean something” answer to it, as to either why you can’t work on it any time soon, or on how it may be developed over the coming months. Release these however you want, in another interview, an article, a blog post, an AMA, whatever works for you, but definitely release that actual answer to the question within a month or so of the article, even if the best you can do is “we looked into it, we have some ideas we’re working on, here is how we’d basically like it to work, here’s the problems with that, maybe you can help see a way around it.”

Give some vague time tables, not “maybe eventually,” but “we’re aiming for before Christmas, but here are a few things that could push it back. . .” For God’s sake, Precursor Crafting/alternatives, you NEED a rock solid answer on this one, “vague maybes” died on this topic a year ago, now it’s just sad.

I’m giving you some space here, because you have an anniversary coming up, and while almost none of the recent September Feature Pack news has interested me at all because I do not PvP, do not want to PvP, and do not care about features that are focused on PvP, there are two more weeks coming and those might have actual news in them that you do not want to spoil. If those two weeks pass without seeing some really huge news as to the future of the game, then I will be sorely disappointed.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Precursor scavenger hunt…

Tell me again how you don’t talk speculatively?

Please know I do appreciate the time and effort put in to making this post. One long overdue but at least it is now here… Just please don’t make statements that are blatantly untrue…

There are many other instances of features being said that they are being developed some even given a preliminary time table… all to be lost to oblivion never to be spoken of again… I just used precursor scavenger hunt as the most obvious example.

um….its been a year since they “promised”/ talked about any feature they “wanted to implement”, before it was ready to be implemented.

you are just siting the reasons why they no longer talk about speculative objectives.

SolviteSekai.9816:

munkiman.3068:

SolviteSekai.9816:

Seriously this is the 6th mmo ive played where people expected the developers to communicate with the playerbase.

Nobody does that.

It’s not just Arenanet. I mean, I’m not defending them for it.

But SWTOR, TESO, WoW, FFXIV…

None of these games have people on the forums actually explaining things or discussing stuff with people.

Want to know why?

Because official forums are filled with the vocal negative minority and there is no freaking point in talking to these people.

If he says stuff is coming, its a lie.

If he doesn’t, Arenanet doesnt care.

If they say they care, its a lie.

There’s no point “discussing” the future of the game with a giant forum full of people who secretly want it to fail just so they can say I told you so.

Every one of those you mentioned (minus WoW) are literally dead. Want an good example, look at Bungie and Destiny…

When i do post here it’s because i’m passionate about the game, when i stop posting, when i stop caring, or people like me, then you can shut the doors. I’ve seen it in so many games, it’s not even funny. Look at reddit, it’s mostly logical, stable posters, and as of late it’s been a lot of well explained outrage.

BTW, no one says he’s lying (least i’m not), we are all trying to hold ANet to a standard they set themselves. Not some we hate ANet and the game mentality.

I’ll whiteknight defend anet, i have no problems when i think they are making headway, when they say they are improving their communication and actually do. But as of late, i’m ready to say forget it.

SWTOR is currently in the top 5 most lucrative free to play games in the world and has 700 thousand active players.

So… I guess you just don’t know how to google or something.

BTW, First off Destiny isnt even an MMO. Its a co-op shooter with dynamic shooters.

Second, it will be dead within months, just like every other game on console that isn’t call of duty or borderlands.

IDK if you have justified it in your head, but the simple fact is that nobody in the grand scheme of things cares what standard you hold Arenanet to. They dont need your money. They don’t care for criticism apparently.

Idk why people think insulting them on their thread where they express a desire to reach out will help.

I’ve spent thousands of dollars here. They don’t need my money, BS. It’s not insulting, it’s fact, they focused on releasing for China and NA/EU felt left out. Get some perspective man. I’ve yet to read anyone asking for the world, or even details of stuff they are working on, but give us a plan to make an educated decisions. If you aren’t going to work on communication, stop saying you are, period. If they don’t care about my criticism, then i bet there are 100’s of in line people that spent big bucks on the gem store or helped to build and promote this game that want some improvements.

Re: SWTOR I work for EA, but thanks for that. Glad you like Google.

Destiny is actually an MMO, with an entirely new way to incorp players. It’s an amazing way to bring FPS to the genre, Moreso than BL, but not in a better way, just a different one. Have you played it? While it’s not in direct competition, it’s still going to pull players away from this game (me at least) and it does raise the bar of communication ANet used to be able to deliver.

I’m not the only one that holds ANet to that standard, there are plenty of people that played GW since beta. They know ANet and how they communicated in the past, while not stellar, much better than other games of the time. We can expect that of them now.

Mike O Brien.4613:

I know some are concerned about whether ArenaNet is communicating with you and listening and responding to your feedback. As you saw with yesterday’s announcement, we do. All of us at ArenaNet play the game with you, chat with you and read your forum posts, and work on the things that we think will most delight and entertain you.

We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: we don’t talk speculatively about future development. We don’t want to string you along. Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t; sometimes we go back to the drawing board over and over before we get something right. If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers. So when we attend a trade show or give an interview, we’re there to talk about what we’re getting ready to ship, not to speculate on what we might ship someday.

Don’t read that as meaning that we don’t want to talk with you about the longer-term roadmap. The intention of the CDI threads is to talk with you about the roadmap. We want to talk design philosophy with you and hear how you want to see the game evolve. When those discussions trigger development, we’ll work internally until we have something we’re proud of before we’ll announce it.

A lot of the questions I’ve seen posted this week are as simple as this: does ArenaNet have an agenda to never do something? That’s almost never the case, and if it is the case you deserve to know and we’ll make sure we get more clear. In general the simple truth is this: when we’re not currently working on something, it’s because we’re working on something else instead that we think is more important for the game and community.

Our developers post on these forums on a voluntary basis, and in addition to developers, we have a community team who can clarify and be the bridge between players and developers. They’re ready to engage you on these topics. And I know it’s hard for the community team to engage players across all the forums and sites where these questions are being discussed, so I’m going to support the team in consolidating and focusing as necessary, so that we can be clear to the community where you can go to get a response.

See you in-game,
Mike O’Brien

This isnt communicating, this is saying nothing again, like always.

So how is letting SAB be permanent content compare to temp “speculative” same goes for are you actually working on broken/not finished parts of the game?

You literally didnt address the issues and basically said “we dont want to talk about them”.

munkiman.3068:

SolviteSekai.9816:

munkiman.3068:

SolviteSekai.9816:

Seriously this is the 6th mmo ive played where people expected the developers to communicate with the playerbase.

Nobody does that.

It’s not just Arenanet. I mean, I’m not defending them for it.

But SWTOR, TESO, WoW, FFXIV…

None of these games have people on the forums actually explaining things or discussing stuff with people.

Want to know why?

Because official forums are filled with the vocal negative minority and there is no freaking point in talking to these people.

If he says stuff is coming, its a lie.

If he doesn’t, Arenanet doesnt care.

If they say they care, its a lie.

There’s no point “discussing” the future of the game with a giant forum full of people who secretly want it to fail just so they can say I told you so.

Every one of those you mentioned (minus WoW) are literally dead. Want an good example, look at Bungie and Destiny…

When i do post here it’s because i’m passionate about the game, when i stop posting, when i stop caring, or people like me, then you can shut the doors. I’ve seen it in so many games, it’s not even funny. Look at reddit, it’s mostly logical, stable posters, and as of late it’s been a lot of well explained outrage.

BTW, no one says he’s lying (least i’m not), we are all trying to hold ANet to a standard they set themselves. Not some we hate ANet and the game mentality.

I’ll whiteknight defend anet, i have no problems when i think they are making headway, when they say they are improving their communication and actually do. But as of late, i’m ready to say forget it.

SWTOR is currently in the top 5 most lucrative free to play games in the world and has 700 thousand active players.

So… I guess you just don’t know how to google or something.

BTW, First off Destiny isnt even an MMO. Its a co-op shooter with dynamic shooters.

Second, it will be dead within months, just like every other game on console that isn’t call of duty or borderlands.

IDK if you have justified it in your head, but the simple fact is that nobody in the grand scheme of things cares what standard you hold Arenanet to. They dont need your money. They don’t care for criticism apparently.

Idk why people think insulting them on their thread where they express a desire to reach out will help.

I’ve spent thousands of dollars here. They don’t need my money, BS. It’s not insulting, it’s fact, they focused on releasing for China and NA/EU felt left out. Get some perspective man. I’ve yet to read anyone asking for the world, or even details of stuff they are working on, but give us a plan to make an educated decisions. If you aren’t going to work on communication, stop saying you are, period. If they don’t care about my criticism, then i bet there are 100’s of in line people that spent big bucks on the gem store or helped to build and promote this game that want some improvements.

Re: SWTOR I work for EA, but thanks for that. Glad you like Google.

Destiny is actually an MMO, with an entirely new way to incorp players. It’s an amazing way to bring FPS to the genre, Moreso than BL, but not in a better way, just a different one. Have you played it? While it’s not in direct competition, it’s still going to pull players away from this game (me at least) and it does raise the bar of communication ANet used to be able to deliver.

I’m not the only one that holds ANet to that standard, there are plenty of people that played GW since beta. They know ANet and how they communicated in the past, while not stellar, much better than other games of the time. We can expect that of them now.

You:

1.) Have spend thousands of dollars on GW2

2.) Work for EA

3.) Are currently repping the hell out of an Activision Co-op shooter for Consoles.

I dont even know where to start.

Also, if you claim to be leaving for Destiny, why are you here raging about inconsequential issues?

Just to rage at Arenanet for not treating you well before you leave?

Faux.1937:

Mike O Brien.4613:

I know some are concerned about whether ArenaNet is communicating with you and listening and responding to your feedback. As you saw with yesterday’s announcement, we do. All of us at ArenaNet play the game with you, chat with you and read your forum posts, and work on the things that we think will most delight and entertain you.

We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: we don’t talk speculatively about future development. We don’t want to string you along. Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t; sometimes we go back to the drawing board over and over before we get something right. If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers. So when we attend a trade show or give an interview, we’re there to talk about what we’re getting ready to ship, not to speculate on what we might ship someday.

Don’t read that as meaning that we don’t want to talk with you about the longer-term roadmap. The intention of the CDI threads is to talk with you about the roadmap. We want to talk design philosophy with you and hear how you want to see the game evolve. When those discussions trigger development, we’ll work internally until we have something we’re proud of before we’ll announce it.

A lot of the questions I’ve seen posted this week are as simple as this: does ArenaNet have an agenda to never do something? That’s almost never the case, and if it is the case you deserve to know and we’ll make sure we get more clear. In general the simple truth is this: when we’re not currently working on something, it’s because we’re working on something else instead that we think is more important for the game and community.

Our developers post on these forums on a voluntary basis, and in addition to developers, we have a community team who can clarify and be the bridge between players and developers. They’re ready to engage you on these topics. And I know it’s hard for the community team to engage players across all the forums and sites where these questions are being discussed, so I’m going to support the team in consolidating and focusing as necessary, so that we can be clear to the community where you can go to get a response.

See you in-game,
Mike O’Brien

This isnt communicating, this is saying nothing again, like always.

So how is letting SAB be permanent content compare to temp “speculative” same goes for are you actually working on broken/not finished parts of the game?

You literally didnt address the issues and basically said “we dont want to talk about them”.

They are communicating, just not what you want to hear. That is 2 different things.

I see that you forgot to mention your policy on not communicating about currently/ already implemented aspects of the game as well.

And forgive me for saying this, but I stopped listening to when you guys “communicate” awhile back, as there always seems to be this…….“disconnect” between what you say, and what you actually DO.

And I`m far more interested in the do.

Mike, what boggles our minds is, how you say you want to work with the community but you don’t do it. I didn’t read every CDI in its full entirety but did any of the features you “liked” ever see the light of day?
When you ask us for suggestions, we expect you to try and work on these. When you’re done with the outlines, how about you come back and say “look, this is the way we would like to implement it, what’s your feedback on it?”. Instead you pretend to want our feedback but when it comes down to delivering, you slither your way out by saying “the forum is just a vocal minority”. Why bother at all then?

Let me pick up an example: The case of imbalance in WvW. Including mine, there have been easily hundreds of threads with well thought out suggestions on how to improve the scoring system, yet there is no feedback, no roadmap, not even recognition. How can you claim that you listen when one of the core flaws is still ignored to this very day?

Yes, you give us colored tags, yes you reacted to our outrage (some might claim this was intended..) but what the community actually said was something along the lines of “hey, we’d totally love to have a working and more fleshed out squad system. And coloured tags would be nice too”.

Please work with the community, not in your segregated bubble alongside it because that’s only going to lead to frustration on our side, because we feel ignored and on your side because your work is wasted on the wrong build sites.

Mike, I would like to address a very specific part of your post as I think it’s important.

Mike O Brien.4613:

If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers.

I think by now, it is clear to you as well that by avoiding just that (and thus sometimes not saying anything for long bouts of time), everyone suffers as well. Pretty much everyone knows that some group of players will always complain and appear unsatisfied, regardless of what you do. I think what it then really comes down to is how do you view the other part of your community? Are they able to handle somewhat uncertain information in a responsible way (i.e. like adults) or can’t they handle it at all (i.e. like little kids).?

I hope you can one day reflect on this in an unbiased way and then chose the former, as life sometimes has a funny way of giving us exactly what we ask: you choose to treat your customers as if they can’t handle this uncertainty, so that is exactly the reaction you got this past week. Had you simply said from time to time “look people: we are trying to do this, we are attempting to build that; no promises, no deadlines, but that’s what we are working on” many of the people that were carrying pitchforks this last week would instead have been defending you. Yet the method you chose results in alienating these people and thus you ended up getting this instead.

I really can’t stress enough that handling people in a mature way will also cause them to react in kind. After all, you are all human beings too, and human beings try things and fail sometimes: these are things most of us can relate to and which in turn create an understanding. (For a cool GW2 related example of this: check out Helseth’s recent video about his impressions concerning Gamescom, where he goes as far as apologizing for any harsh things he said in the past after simply experiencing the dev’s passion and conviction for the game firsthand.) Yet by hiding yourselves behind a wall, and only showing the things you yourselves are happy enough to show, you are basically making yourselves in-human: by showing only your best, we will in turn only expect perfection from you and if that isn’t the case ‘kitten will hit the fan’, as it did. I think the expression “far from the eye, far from the heart” is well placed here. As such, I really don’t think you have been and will doing yourselves any favor by sticking to this course of action.

SolviteSekai.9816:

munkiman.3068:

SolviteSekai.9816:

munkiman.3068:

SolviteSekai.9816:

Seriously this is the 6th mmo ive played where people expected the developers to communicate with the playerbase.

Nobody does that.

It’s not just Arenanet. I mean, I’m not defending them for it.

But SWTOR, TESO, WoW, FFXIV…

None of these games have people on the forums actually explaining things or discussing stuff with people.

Want to know why?

Because official forums are filled with the vocal negative minority and there is no freaking point in talking to these people.

If he says stuff is coming, its a lie.

If he doesn’t, Arenanet doesnt care.

If they say they care, its a lie.

There’s no point “discussing” the future of the game with a giant forum full of people who secretly want it to fail just so they can say I told you so.

Every one of those you mentioned (minus WoW) are literally dead. Want an good example, look at Bungie and Destiny…

When i do post here it’s because i’m passionate about the game, when i stop posting, when i stop caring, or people like me, then you can shut the doors. I’ve seen it in so many games, it’s not even funny. Look at reddit, it’s mostly logical, stable posters, and as of late it’s been a lot of well explained outrage.

BTW, no one says he’s lying (least i’m not), we are all trying to hold ANet to a standard they set themselves. Not some we hate ANet and the game mentality.

I’ll whiteknight defend anet, i have no problems when i think they are making headway, when they say they are improving their communication and actually do. But as of late, i’m ready to say forget it.

SWTOR is currently in the top 5 most lucrative free to play games in the world and has 700 thousand active players.

So… I guess you just don’t know how to google or something.

BTW, First off Destiny isnt even an MMO. Its a co-op shooter with dynamic shooters.

Second, it will be dead within months, just like every other game on console that isn’t call of duty or borderlands.

IDK if you have justified it in your head, but the simple fact is that nobody in the grand scheme of things cares what standard you hold Arenanet to. They dont need your money. They don’t care for criticism apparently.

Idk why people think insulting them on their thread where they express a desire to reach out will help.

I’ve spent thousands of dollars here. They don’t need my money, BS. It’s not insulting, it’s fact, they focused on releasing for China and NA/EU felt left out. Get some perspective man. I’ve yet to read anyone asking for the world, or even details of stuff they are working on, but give us a plan to make an educated decisions. If you aren’t going to work on communication, stop saying you are, period. If they don’t care about my criticism, then i bet there are 100’s of in line people that spent big bucks on the gem store or helped to build and promote this game that want some improvements.

Re: SWTOR I work for EA, but thanks for that. Glad you like Google.

Destiny is actually an MMO, with an entirely new way to incorp players. It’s an amazing way to bring FPS to the genre, Moreso than BL, but not in a better way, just a different one. Have you played it? While it’s not in direct competition, it’s still going to pull players away from this game (me at least) and it does raise the bar of communication ANet used to be able to deliver.

I’m not the only one that holds ANet to that standard, there are plenty of people that played GW since beta. They know ANet and how they communicated in the past, while not stellar, much better than other games of the time. We can expect that of them now.

You:

1.) Have spend thousands of dollars on GW2

2.) Work for EA

3.) Are currently repping the hell out of an Activision Co-op shooter for Consoles.

I dont even know where to start.

Also, if you claim to be leaving for Destiny, why are you here raging about inconsequential issues?

Just to rage at Arenanet for not treating you well before you leave?

I’m not raging or dumping GW2 for Destiny. But, thanks for pointing out where my perspective comes from so clearly.

I have a lot invested in this game already.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

There have been a number of questions about when the CDI will spin up again.

The answer is shortly after our next Feature Pack is released.

Looking forward to collaborating with you all and having some awesome discussions.

Chris

Yay! Excited to spend my work days talking with you again! hehe

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

There have been a number of questions about when the CDI will spin up again.

The answer is shortly after our next Feature Pack is released.

Looking forward to collaborating with you all and having some awesome discussions.

Chris

Huzzah

SolviteSekai.9816:

Seriously this is the 6th mmo ive played where people expected the developers to communicate with the playerbase.

Nobody does that.

It’s not just Arenanet. I mean, I’m not defending them for it.

But SWTOR, TESO, WoW, FFXIV…

None of these games have people on the forums actually explaining things or discussing stuff with people.

I’ve played those MMO’s but only one ‘WoW’ I ever played or cared long enough to visit the forums over. It took forever to get a blue post from those guys. Anet are far more vocal, but people want more, and more, and more. And that was a $15/month sub game where at times it took almost a year before any new content was released. pft bloody useless bunch.

Its almost like we expect some kind of report after Anets weekly progress/design meetings.

Although I do believe though that they should talk about upcoming features just so we know what to expect. Its normally a good way to big hype and keep people interested in the game. I little “stay tuned this coming soon!” helps. That’s just basic marketing 101.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

There have been a number of questions about when the CDI will spin up again.

The answer is shortly after our next Feature Pack is released.

Looking forward to collaborating with you all and having some awesome discussions.

Chris

Thanks Chris, i think we all wish your passion spread throughout the dev team. Regardless, i’m thankful for your dedication. Now about that commander tag thing… Just kidding Welcome back.

Thobek.1730:

SolviteSekai.9816:

Seriously this is the 6th mmo ive played where people expected the developers to communicate with the playerbase.

Nobody does that.

It’s not just Arenanet. I mean, I’m not defending them for it.

But SWTOR, TESO, WoW, FFXIV…

None of these games have people on the forums actually explaining things or discussing stuff with people.

I’ve played those MMO’s but only one ‘WoW’ I ever played or cared long enough to visit the forums over. It took forever to get a blue post from those guys. Anet are far more vocal, but people want more, and more, and more. And that was a $15/month sub game where at times it took almost a year before any new content was released. pft bloody useless bunch.

Its almost like we expect some kind of report after Anets weekly progress/design meetings.

Although I do believe though that they should talk about upcoming features just so we know what to expect. Its normally a good way to big hype and keep people interested in the game. I little “stay tuned this coming soon!” helps. That’s just basic marketing 101.

The problem is people want this game to have expansions, and Arenanet dont.

Hence why everyone is raging and trying to disguise it as “being upset about lack of communication”.

Without Guild Wars 2: The Rise of Cantha people can’t feel secure that the game wont go down tomorrow.

People should just relax and enjoy the game while they can.

A question for you, Chris.

Can you confirm whether or not there has been any discussion about player feedback about…

- the new trait system
- the megaserver
- roleplaying and what seems to be Anets attempt to destroy it?

Cheers!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

There have been a number of questions about when the CDI will spin up again.

The answer is shortly after our next Feature Pack is released.

Looking forward to collaborating with you all and having some awesome discussions.

Chris

Yay! Excited to spend my work days talking with you again! hehe

Really excited to get back into it again and connect with some old and new faces (-:

Chris

Yet again no comment on why no one mentions the ANET threads like Mega server and Traits threads… Does Anet have tunnel vision that kicks in when ever anyone mentions them ?

Both threads have been mentioned multiple times in here and again over looked.

Thanks for replying Chris, so CDI’s starting again, is that so y’all can claim you working with players and again ignore any feedback ?

Threads created in April BY ANET for feedback on The LAST Feature pack still lay empty and a new feature pack on the horizon……… would it not be better to look / comment on the last feature pack before steam-rolling ahead with next one ?

Big fan of the CDIs. Glad to hear they’re coming back. I know I’ve been more than sarcastic about a few things lately, but.. genuinely, we’ve also seen a lot of cool things come from them.

Keep the communication coming. The back and forth is worth it – in tangible and intangible ways. In a sheer dollars and cents kinda way, too.