Guild Wars 2

Fasalina.6571:

I hope Mike and the other devs understood something from all this.

You guys really need to post a little more on the forums. Like honestly it doesn’t even matter what or how much you post as long as there’s some RED on the front page. You don’t have to give away info on projects or anything. I mean seriously, even before you almost never gave away that much info on what’s coming up next, but you guys still posted on the forums from time to time. I understand it’s summer and probably some of you went on vacation (I hope you had fun) but a little post here and there won’t hurt, I mean I’m pretty sure you left someone back at the office, or you all just went on a group vacation?
Anyway the main point here is the people that visit this forum get antsy really fast if they feel they’re being ignored. Let this be a lesson. Try giving them posts more often, even if they don’t contain any info.
TL;DR: Please the masses more.

This is only gonna kitten people off more.
Talk to your playerbase, dont treat us as zombies that will follow your “colored commander tags” anywhere.
We are all capable of understanding the reasons why you can’t do such-and-such, or why you won’t do it. Well maybe not the 12,13 or 14 year olds. But us over the teen years of our lives will be able to.

Oh i got another one:

Communicate with us………..why the foxfire cluster still doesnt have a place in our collections tab?

Oh, and kudos for this post. Please keep it up.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi,

We read many forums all the time, we just need to do a better job of communicating that and working to discuss topics.

In retrospect the CDI break has probably been to long as well (That’s my fault).

Chris

i’m just throwing this, i imagine something like this has been discussed internally, but what if feature packs happened every 4 months, instead of every 6 months?

advantages:

• players get less features per release, but get new features on a more frequent basis
• balance changes occur more often without being too often (something the competitive community would greatly appreciate)
• CDIs can iterate on subjects that have been affected by these packs without long breaks
• shorter release spans means communicating on short term more often, instead of leaving players guessing what’s going on for over half a year.

i think the tradeoff of each pack being less “impactful” in sheer volume of features is a small one compared to the above points. i imagine this wouldn’t shy the team away from long term projects, since if it doesn’t make it to one feature pack, it’s just four months away from the next one (which is only two months longer than the current time frame for feature releases).

@anyone/everyone

I just want more definitive responses when a Dev speaks to us. I don’t care if its only a yes or no answer. Its way easier to say you aren’t working on Precursor Crafting at this time and leave it at that, than it is to say no then go off on a tangent trying to take the middle ground about how much you would like to work on it, the community wants it, you are listening to us, etc. blah, blah, blah (I am referring to pretty much every Anet interview for the last year that had precursor crafting as a question).

I mean, seriously, lets say I ask an employee at Anet (at Pax Prime or whatever next time you make an appearance) if they are going to add new elite skills to the game in the near future (lets say six months), I would prefer that they just say no. Just plain ‘no’, instead of spending five minutes talking about how they have ideas for it, how they want to work on it, how they are doing this and that, but they are busy on something else, but its a distinct possibility, though it might not be, but it could be, and end up at a point where their original “no” answer turned into “I don’t Know”

Just say no without dressing the answer up in pounds and pounds of fat. We ask about playable Largos race, just say ‘not at this time’. Subclasses? just say “not at this time”. New Ranger pets? just say “Not at this time”. New Legendaries? just say “not at this time”. don’t go into details about how you want to do it, how you might be planning it, or how its some sort of possibility that depends on the stars aligning and the Favor of the NCsoft gods being with you next month…., because that strings us the players along just as much as a false confirmation.

Eh, I’d rather have a simple roadmap than a cdi with ongoing threads stickied for feedback.

E.G.
" Hey guys, this year we’d like to slow living story down to once every three weeks to give our devs more time for a few other things. These may include: adding one new weapon to each class, re-evaluating each professions 10 least used traits, and improving how aoes and stacking effects both dungeons and WvW. We will do our best to let you know if some of these aren’t working out or our priorities suddenly shift, but these are our goals over the next six months."

Roadmap post like this, each point/subject stickied for feedback, thoughts, and red posts.

Chrispy.5641:

I just want more definitive responses when a Dev speaks to us. I don’t care if its only a yes or no answer. Its way easier to say you aren’t working on Precursor Crafting at this time and leave it at that, than it is to say no then go off on a tangent trying to take the middle ground about how much you would like to work on it, (…)

I’ve been a developer at a small community project, and I work as a developer of applications for our company’s other departments, and I’ve learned one thing. It’s better to avoid giving details, ETAs, answering detailed questions or even questions like “will it be done”.
There’s always more to do (in a software development process) than the resources for it, and unless you’re ABSOLUTELY sure a feature is going to make in on a specific date, you want to save yourself the disappointment, questions, and an angry mob with pitchforks and and torches every time you’re late with a feature.

I can totally understand why they are avoiding such answers.

I look forward to reviewing the CDI!
I have so much thought has ideas, start working on solutions with Kulvar!
Really! =)

Otherwise I would have liked to see the devs’ just discussed ideas that work, that do not work … or respond to creative proposals. Even hairstyles … Or why remove the SAB…

Tell us if they have the equipment to do this and that.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Precursor scavenger hunt…

Tell me again how you don’t talk speculatively?

I would wager that this was a major part of why they stopped talking about things in development, actually.

phys.7689:

i hear you, and your the boss, so you can do what you want. But, i dont think its a good strategy to say nothing until you are ready to ship. Not only do you not get feedback early, but you have long periods of time where no one knows what the future holds.
If you can deliver constantly, it may work, but since you have long development cycles, it seems that this course will lead to people not really knowing what direction/what to expect at any given moment. Not only that, but you increase the chance that what you develop as a finished product is well intentioned but features a critical flaw. We have seen this happen with many of the releases, where something was almost great, but just off in some key way that could have been predicted early.

If you make CDI type projects more focused on specific thing you actually are working on or trying to develop, it is possible to walk this line.

Pretty much this ^. Just want to add a point: this strategy would prbly work aswell, if players actually still had confident in what Arena.Net is doing.
But after launching GW2 while still being Beta (prbly forced by NCSoft but still…) with tons of bugs, not well thought features and issues with core-mechanics (just think about the condi-dmg issue. No, a handfull of tusks did NOT fix it), with the logic effect of struggling for almost 2 years (while the game keeps running, no easy task at all) to catch up until the game reached gold state (which in my opinion is just what we have by now- the basic game the way it should have been released, ready for progress).
Unfortunatly this 2 years were enough for most players to lose every little piece of trust they had in Arena.Net. So what’s the consequence? Whenever there’s an update and something turns out to be sub-par or not 100% well thought, people will claim “if you’d told us before what you’re going for, we surely would have identified the issues we now have to deal with”. And sadly, I feel there more often right than not.

Yes, there is a lot of negative replies in this forums. Yes, there is also quite a lot of rage leading to nowhere. But if you take a closer look, there are also some really intelligent suggestions and thoughts on this forums.
Picking some of these up with a “we love the idea, let’s discuss the details so we can start working on it” paired with regular updates about how well (or not) the programming is going would be something really appreciated I think.
Though you will never get fully rid of rage and hate, I’m sure most ppl here would have more understanding for a “Community idea -> Discussion -> trying to implement and give regular feedback on it -> turns out to be impossible to do due to [insert true issue here] -> thanks for trying to make the game better -> on to the next idea” cycle. And even better if things turn out to actually work.

VincentDW.9376:

Why not test the community waters with ideas during the concept phase, before investing significant resources in them, so they can be done right the first time? I’m not talking about a vague, open-ended CDI thread asking the community what they want to see, I’m talking about sharing what YOU want to see, and asking the community if they share that vision or not.

Anet have their own vision, and as long as they’re bent on it being the ‘right’ one, no amount of ‘constructive feedback’ nor series of sound arguments as to why something is off the mark relative to what the community wants will change their minds.
I thought players had realized that by now.
After all, some were even kicked from alpha when their feedback/criticism differed too much from the path the company had set for itself, irregardless of the argumentation behind the proposals.

To have Mike pop on and say Hi is a nice treat but considering the current moral of the community and the toxic threads below that have been the norm of late , a ban-aid isn’t quiet the solution when a defibrillator is required.
I understand that your time is of immense value and limited but there is a growing need for some questions to be answered and not just browsed over ,as the passion of this community is one that has been built over the last 8 years.
Players are getting frustrated at the simple things that were done so well in GW1, that we know you guys can deliver, that are simply put on the back burner for the LS( note I do love this season alot more then the last).

Chris you seam to draw the short straw mate, so thank you for again stepping up when the padded cells are full, you will need a drink before the nite is done ill say.I haven’t gotten into the CDI format of things as it always seams to go wayward for my likings ,bit old school here .

anyway is nice to see some talking from you all cheers

I’m sure those who can’t understand your stance on the future plans policy are unaware how an angry mob can form when future plans are mentioned (like precursor crafting), but then don’t get implimented as planned. Most of us do understand how emotional gamers can be about thier game.

Thanks Anet, for communicating what you can. We love the world you have created for us.

chris its nice to se you back i figured we tired you out on the cdis. its great to know they are coming back i was worried they might never return and some of us do appreciate the work youve put into them. i understand the cdis were all extra time on your part its one of the bright point of the communication betweens us and anet. my thoughts are when your passionate about something you give too much of yourself. i personally like to see someone not a dev specifically who might run it keep everyone in line and be a go between the dev and us. thanks again chris for your time and effort

Chrispy.5641:

@anyone/everyone

I just want more definitive responses when a Dev speaks to us. I don’t care if its only a yes or no answer. Its way easier to say you aren’t working on Precursor Crafting at this time and leave it at that, than it is to say no then go off on a tangent trying to take the middle ground about how much you would like to work on it, the community wants it, you are listening to us, etc. blah, blah, blah (I am referring to pretty much every Anet interview for the last year that had precursor crafting as a question).

I mean, seriously, lets say I ask an employee at Anet (at Pax Prime or whatever next time you make an appearance) if they are going to add new elite skills to the game in the near future (lets say six months), I would prefer that they just say no. Just plain ‘no’, instead of spending five minutes talking about how they have ideas for it, how they want to work on it, how they are doing this and that, but they are busy on something else, but its a distinct possibility, though it might not be, but it could be, and end up at a point where their original “no” answer turned into “I don’t Know”

Just say no without dressing the answer up in pounds and pounds of fat. We ask about playable Largos race, just say ‘not at this time’. Subclasses? just say “not at this time”. New Ranger pets? just say “Not at this time”. New Legendaries? just say “not at this time”. don’t go into details about how you want to do it, how you might be planning it, or how its some sort of possibility that depends on the stars aligning and the Favor of the NCsoft gods being with you next month…., because that strings us the players along just as much as a false confirmation.

To be fair (well, not really), because they have to commit to a 2 week cadence, they have to release something meaning any big project that takes longer than expected is either dropped or rushed because they want to market the whole “we release so much content” nonsense.

Too bad many things suffers because of this.

Also, I doubt that they’ve fully understood what really happened with this recent incident, but that’s ok. We’re just going to go through this whole cycle again.

Here’s something funny, blizzard who also has the development speed of molasses, tells their customers a whole year before an expansion release what’s coming in the expansion. Followed by interviews, patch notes, 6+ months of beta testing, more forums posts etc. While blizzard is not the best developer anymore, they at least spend a lot of time communicating to their customers, and it’s not just “developers”, every single week for the past 10 years they’ve had a ton of blue replies.

Do things change in development? sure all the time and we know that, love them or hate them, blizzard lets you know what’s going on with their game. It would be easier to swallow changes when an anet rep talks to us about stuff more frequently, rather than coming in after 6 months of complete silence on a subject. Some stuff get release without any input from us. The april feature patch certainly contained a lot of stuff that we never thought was being worked on, something like megaservers almost got no feedback because you were ready just to implement it without even asking us what we thought about it, we could have shed some light on some of it’s problems.

Arenanets problem is their lack of proper communication with their customers, you don’t always have to talk about the big future road plans only, the little stuff can use some answers too. Why does the wvw forums see like 1 reply every 8 or more weeks? Is it really too much to ask to get even one part time community manger for wvw? Can Devon really not spare 30 mins a day to read the wvw front page and give some quick answers to stuff that might be hot topics?

Start talking to your customers more frequently, I really don’t think even taking one day to answer a grab bag of questions for the week is too much to ask.

Mike, I don’t need to hear exactly the nitty-gritty details of an amazing feature to be released in 6 months, but I would like to have Anet to communicate its vision for the game more often. Especially if/when it changes.

For example, I still feel this game is very much dumbed down, compared to Guild Wars 1. Even though some skills have been added, it is no-where close to the amount of creativity and diversity the players had available to their characters in Guild Wars 1. What I would like to hear, is if Anet considers lack of build diversity a problem or not.

Those are the kind of things I want to talk about. Not about the gritty details of possible solutions they may and may not do, because those are understandably subject to change.

Less communicating, more doing.

That precursor scavenger hunt from nearly two years ago?

New armor sets being purely from cash shop instead of instances?

Best way to acquire prestige items is via auction house instead of playing the game?

Oh, and the “balance” patches you do every 6 months, which is a couple of fixes/changes while warriors and guardians have been dominating most of the game types for years, while pet classes like ranger and necro are garbage.

Yeah, I think I like it better when you stop talking and do something for a change instead of being disgustingly greedy and putting everything new/desirable in the game behind some huge goldsink or abysmal RNG drop to drive up your gem to gold conversion sales.

I gotta love how quickly you abandoned that ship of veteran dungeons with tokens in favor of RNG free to play style rewards.

This game is not even a worthy shadow of the first installment. The design practices in this game are henous and a complete taint to the predecessor.

This is the exact type of post that people complain about. Regardless this patch seems really good with a lot of the CDI stuff included even if a bit jaded. Hopefully the rest of the announcements live up to player expectations. Thank you for stepping up!

TL;DR

We are listening.

Reminds me of a passage from Asimov’s Foundation.

“That,” replied Hardin, “is the interesting thing. The analysis was the most difficult of the three by all odds. When Holk, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications – in short, all the goo and dribble – he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out.”

“Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn’t say one kitten ed thing, and said it so you never noticed. There are the assurances you had from your precious Empire.”

Apparently Mr. O’Brien some see you statement along those same lines. This is a game of high adventure, we are folk of deeds not words.

i’m happy to see this topic, this is what i was asking for some days ago…
i hope will be a new game phase for help the game to grow up and give finally to players what they want and what they asking since release.
there is too many stuff player want, other games have, also really older game, and gw2 doesent….
hoping will be no as a mesmer phantasm disappearing after be shattered in face of players :p

i dont know how many ppl will be avalaible on anet for working on stuff, and i dont wanna give u 400000000 ideas we will never see, i think we should talk about some priority, and give a roadmap or a to do list if u prefear, also with some kind of voting for know what community want, and plan with you what is more important

The game is amazing and you are doing a good job with it.

But we do need a rep on the forums on a regular basis.
Someone who can rely information and feedback and respond to our questions

Maybe more information relayed to the forum staff or even moderators

I don’t mean future changes but updates on a daily basis would be nice

I’ll start believing in the effectiveness of communication AND CDI threads when some of the suggestions of the ranger balance thread get implemented in the game (and not just shoehorned into ideas for the new major traits (traits being one of the ranger’s biggest issues)), rather than resulting with the person in charge of ranger communication leaving the company… once again.

The lack of communication is a longstanding issue, a PR stunt with a few more active posts in the past 48 hours with more false promises will not fix an otherwise broken system.

Chris,

Looking forward to the return of CDI I never took part in one before ,but I always loved reading them. Ohh also looking forward to the sub-classes CDI thread as well as Orpheal of course XP.

" we are currently doing this today…."
" we have changed out minds and now we are doing this…"
" we like the ideas of this… And this …."
" we are aware of the issue with this…"
" today we experienced latency issues with this…"

Just update us with common issues and movements

Nice to hear from you guys

it would be also very appreciated if all the dungeon-bugs/exploits are getting fixed (some of them exist since beta-days)

Greetings

Thank you, but don’t care as it’s too little too late. The only reason for any of this is because the tag issue went viral. Now that it’s a public issue, Anet did a 180 for good PR. Nothing more, nothing less.

You had plenty of chances to communicate with the players before this and say the exact same thing. It took bad press for you to finally do anything.

Hi.
1st. I want to thank you for your game, for combat in special.
2nd. I want to talk about wvw, after 2 years of playing:
I got more than 4k hours in wvw (like many others) and I learned that you don’t let us talk (no more necroposting, no match-up threads) or you don’t care (“when it’s ready” philosophy).
Pros: very good combat (fast and easy, addictive)
Cons: – still lag, queue was broken (and sometimes you bring back old problems), rally mechanics and hard revive in pvp environment sucks;
– no real updates for wvw (rubbish ranks, tournaments and achievements, commander tag,), same kitten maps with same old tactics (zerg, blob);
– class balance without holy trinity was almost good, almost.
Thanks again and good luck with GW3.

I just want to know have they actually worked this last two years solely on Living world or should I still live in hope that there’s actually a larger content pack on the works.

I think the first thing that should be happening is a big ban-wave to all of the users who derail threads. You can perfectly observe it in this thread, people start claiming some nonsense and others jumping the bandwagon, which makes a further constructive discussion impossible.

Yes, people have a right to get angry, but they have no right to claim assumptions that Anet doesn’t care, that it’s too late already or that PR wrote that statement. This isn’t not only not helpful but those killerphrases cut down any constructive discussion.

And then, when only people who can voice their opinion in a respectful manner are among us, constructive communication can happen.

I’ve got to admit, this is something i’ve been worrying over most – this communication gap. Frankly, on the topic of SAB, i don’t mind if it stays off a while. Seeing some actual developer talk on the forums, replying to our questions and concerns, aside from the usual customer support banter, is a serious relief. I love how the commander tag system was revised because of community feedback, too.

Thanks a bunch for these posts, and looking forward to the CDI’s :-).

My only problem is that Arena Net do not always reply to the “hot” topics.

For example, the Blix exploit was not a hot topic but only after a hundred or so posts it received an official reply. Then you have genuinely hot topics like SAB over five hundred posts and no official reply. Other examples include the Watchwork Pick and Living Story gender Bias (I am only mentioning them as examples, please do not derail the topic by talking about them here.) and the list goes on.

Yes Arena Net communicates with us, but not always when the community truly requires it, which brings about this feeling of apathy. I do not blame the developers for not posting, they have a game to build upon, but the community relations team could really do with getting more involved and address peoples concerns more promptly.

It’s not really communication that maybe needs tweaking but really the developers need to take a step back and stop thinking like developers but think like players.

Thinking like players would stop so much of the hassle we see on the boards. I mean why would anyone think that charging 300g per commander color would be good? or thinking the reasons why people want first person would be to fight stuff? Or the commander suppression system which seems to double the suppression duration every time the ‘you are supressed’ message comes up.. or a multi guild system that doesn’t allow you to see the chat of all the guilds you are in, or stuff the game knows about(like what dungeon paths you’ve done or what IP you’re in) but doesn’t deem it fit to tell you… and so the list goes on.

The grown ups among us realise that telling us stuff before it’s ready is a bad move, but we’re also grown up enough to look at some of the design decisions that have been made and go ‘huh’?

Maybe that’s a CDI topic. Design decisions that make you go ‘Huh? what?’

Just taking a step back and looking at stuff from a player point of view would save so much grief and money in terms of rework.

If you want a TLDR on how to communicate in future it’s

“Treat us like logical, but passionate about your game rational adults who because of that will question and find holes in stuff because we care.”

It really isn’t rocket science.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

First new CDI topic, how to improve communication between devs and community :p

Would LOVE to see a CDI regarding communication, especially regarding the Mac community. Believe it or not, a few of us are still here and would LOVE to hear from ANet.

It’s cool to have feedbacks directly from the top of the company. Anyway there are still some things from this message that are not clear for me.

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.

The commander thing was a nice move sure but I have the impression that it was only possible because the feature was advertised before at Gamescom. I mean, in the normal schedule, we should have heard about the details yesterday and it would have been too late for feedbacks to revert the situation, and the change would only have happen for the next feature patch in 6 months. You have shown in the past that this company value feedbacks from players but lately I have the impression that players feel less engaged in giving feedbacks since feddback topics are not “animated” by any dev.

Mike O Brien.4613:

We want to talk design philosophy with you and hear how you want to see the game evolve.

I’m not sure this has to be player driven but having input of the devs on their global view of different parts of the game would be nice for sure. Before release there were those blog posts which were describing game mechanics and the philosophy behind but since then …. As an example, for a year or so the dungeon forum is in a really bad state. Always the same sterile debates about stacking/berserk/skipping/…. sadly no devs ever came to share their philosophy and goals for that part of the game. The thing is that it is not really a dev’s job to do so, as you explained

Mike O Brien.4613:

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.

I must admit it is one of the biggest issue lately. I mean where are the CMs? I won’t say they are bad at doing their job because before release they were really good at relaying information, creating some hype, debunking false theories… and they were only three!! Now you have hired more people but strangely enough they all disappeared from the forum (and if I remember well it was the exact reason for having an official forum : not spreding too much the community team on too many fansites). Sorry to say that but I think it was a bad move to ask them to change the way they were working.
If I remember well they were always around for interviews before, focusing it around what is allowed to be talked about or not. I mean of course asking the WvW lead designer what will happen with SAB was the best way to get a fiasco. With CMs (who are professional ) helping to prepare the interview of devs with the fansites (who both are not professional of communication) it is easier to send better messages to th community.

So yes there may be an issue with the communication but what is weird is that communication was one of the strongest point of the company not so long ago…. and with the same people!!! Innovation is a god thing but if you have something working well, use it…. I’m sure this will end well because you have good people to do that

Eww mikes on the forums! Hehe good to hear from the anet guy. Welcome to the forum (of craziness)!

jaka.9635:

Fasalina.6571:

I hope Mike and the other devs understood something from all this.

You guys really need to post a little more on the forums. Like honestly it doesn’t even matter what or how much you post as long as there’s some RED on the front page. You don’t have to give away info on projects or anything. I mean seriously, even before you almost never gave away that much info on what’s coming up next, but you guys still posted on the forums from time to time. I understand it’s summer and probably some of you went on vacation (I hope you had fun) but a little post here and there won’t hurt, I mean I’m pretty sure you left someone back at the office, or you all just went on a group vacation?
Anyway the main point here is the people that visit this forum get antsy really fast if they feel they’re being ignored. Let this be a lesson. Try giving them posts more often, even if they don’t contain any info.
TL;DR: Please the masses more.

This is only gonna kitten people off more.
Talk to your playerbase, dont treat us as zombies that will follow your “colored commander tags” anywhere.
We are all capable of understanding the reasons why you can’t do such-and-such, or why you won’t do it. Well maybe not the 12,13 or 14 year olds. But us over the teen years of our lives will be able to.

Oh i got another one:

Communicate with us………..why the foxfire cluster still doesnt have a place in our collections tab?

Perhaps I should have said it in a different way, you’re right.
What I meant by all that wall of text there, is people usually need proof the guys actually read the forums. When the front page goes by for weeks without a single new red post. People are going to assume the devs don’t even log in the forums.(as stupid as that might sound I bet people actually think that way)
So yea, more red posts pls, even joke on or stupid comments will to if you ask me.

I’m happy to see this thread…but i have to agree with one thing, a lot of people said before.

It’s just too late.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not kittening around or something and yes I know that there will be people who say: “A-Net is finally talking with us, don’t complain and be happy about that!”…and i perfectly understand such statemants because they’re coming from people who are still hoping for the best. I’m not one of them (anymore) so it’s natural that there are opposite meanings.

You know i buyed Gw2 without a second of thinking about that decision. Most of the people who played Guild Wars 1 did….i’m pretty sure about that.
Not just it was an AWESOME game and we all wanted MORE of this, but because we had absolute trust in Arenanet.

They delivered awesome content, took care of their fans and joined the forums.

So there was no need in thinking about buying Gw2…I just did because i trusted Arenanet and knew they would deliver something awesome.

…you know it is hard to gain this trust but Arenanet earned it, and with that a big, loyal fanbase.

But.

You (Arenanet) are going the wrong way for a few months now. I don’t know why and what happened so you took such a wrong turn. And i’m not talking about your content.

There are many problems and if you read your forums you’ll see them. There’s no need for me in pointing them out, even though there are plenty of threads.

What i can do is telling you why I finally lost my trust in you (And i’m really sad about that.).

First: Talking about “coming features” or heavy game-changes…you know these things really need to be accepted (or acknowledged) by your fans BEFORE you integrate it into the game…but this is not the main problem. What your biggest mistake about that was:

You lied to us.

I can perfectly live with short changes or things changing after they were announced different but there is just no way you can promise something to your fans and then just don’t even give a kitten about your own words or what it’s meaning to your fans.

Don’t know what i’m talking about? That would be tragic.
I’ll give one example: Megaservers.

Second problem:

You ignore your fans.

Seriously, i don’t need to say ANYTHING about that because everyone here know’s what i’m talking about.

If i’m looking at threads like https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-and-RP without any meaningfull response while threads like:

“Ehr ma gewrd I l0ve yuo’r patch! xoxoxo much love”

…get Dev-Posts one minute after these…things appear i honestly have to say that i’m kitten angry about that.

Massive critics all around the forum and…you’re posting on the mainpage and on your facebook-site that….“Megaservers are rolling out just fine” and “working great”….there are no words for that.

And this was -again- only ONE personal example-

I love Guild Wars.
I love the lore.
I love the universe and everything around it.

But for a few months now you’re doing everything to destroy my….no, our experience.
I’m dissapointed…really.

Again, i’m sorry that i have to say…i lost my trust in you, Arenanet…and i’m not the only one. To be honest, in the few past months i even gave up the hope that there will be any change because Arenanet has….i don’t know. “Changed”? Or do you just need more money? I mean….well, i don’t know what to say anymore.

Slowly but surely you’re losing your fanbase which was on your side since Guild Wars 1 released. It’s too late to say “Don’t let it happen.” because it is already happening.
So….please don’t let it end. Regain our trust. I honestly don’t know how but…

Just do it!

Listen to your fans.

TLDR;

You’re losing our trust.
Get it back.

Also where is Danicia btw? With Allie’s absense, it would be nice to have the other two CC’s left show their face sometimes. Only one i (very rarely) see, is Mark. And leaving him alone for CC is a bit to much to ask i’d think.

To many absenses maybe escalated the problem?

Temporary absense: Chris Whiteside
Unknown absense: Danicia
Permanent Absense: Allie
90% Occupied with other stuff absense: Mark

Not that I want to play your boss or so, but it’s an observation. This might be leading to even more frustration and the escalation that resulted in this thread.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Also where is Danicia btw? With Allie’s absense, it would be nice to have the other two CC’s left show their face sometimes. Only one i (very rarely) see, is Mark. And leaving him alone for CC is a bit to much to ask i’d think.

To many absenses maybe escalated the problem?

Temporary absense: Chris Whiteside
Unknown absense: Danicia
Permanent Absense: Allie
90% Occupied with other stuff absense: Mark

Not that I want to play your boss or so, but it’s an observation. This might be leading to even more frustration and the escalation that resulted in this thread.

Danicia is no longer with anet. However she’s amazing and doing well.

did my post just get deleted?

saventis.1485:

did my post just get deleted?

Look at your post history. Thread has gotten big.

If there is going to be a CDI about developer communication, I really feel an answer is needed in regards to communication with the dungeon community. It feels like for all intents and purposes we might as well not exist, there’s that little interaction.

Mike O Brien.4613:

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.

Well, the problem is that you are now saying nothing until it’s a week or so before it’s ready to go, at which time it’s generally too late to get feedback that can be acted on. Once something lands on the servers it tends to be left “as is” for a long period of time. By that I mean you guys don’t tend to iterate on the design, barring bug fixes you all move on to the next job and the feature or content is left for weeks or months as it is. If that’s always what happens then giving feedback begins to seem pointless.

Look at the Commander Tag changes, if feedback had been sought on those during or immediately prior to implementing them then Zack (<3) and Tyler (<3) could have enjoyed their weekend off rather than having to come in and rewrite anything. My point, ultimately, is that you’re trying to “protect” us by managing expectations and ensuring that the “ZOMG ANet lied” rage is kept to a minimum but doing so results in features that aren’t all they could be if you had sought more direct feedback on implementations earlier in the design and development cycle when it would cost you less in time and resources to act on it.

Mike O Brien.4613:

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.

Have the CDI threads been good? I mean, from what I can see there are a lot of suggestions made there but very little feedback from you guys either in the threads or afterwards. They are certainly not a “roadmap” in any sense of the word I’ve ever seen used (I have 18+ years as a software engineer, that’s horrifying to see written down) as they give us no visibility at all and no idea what to expect or when.

While we’re on the subject, I don’t know how many changes have been made as a result of the CDIs but from looking at the suggestions in the commander CDI the only thing that has happened from there is that the tag is now account bound (which is a logical progression taken from all the other areas of the game that have become account wide, WvW rank, ascended weapons and armour and so on) and 4 different coloured tags. They’re good and they’re welcome changes but are any of the other suggestions there being considered or worked on? Are any changes to the functionality of the commander system being implemented?

I pick that as a recent example, and I’m not pressing for an actual answer to those questions but the same questions hang over all the CDIs: is anything actually being done with the suggestions made? As the weeks turn to months and there’s still no sign of the CDI having had any effect on the game it gets frustrating and people (me included) start to question if there’s any real purpose to them. If they were just a fad that has been dropped and they have been dropped so I’m glad that you will be reinstating them.

Mike O Brien.4613:

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.

I very much look forward to seeing that. Thank you, Mike.

I’m glad to see the return of the CDI. I didn’t actively contribute since it seemed every time I spent formulating a response/question I would find someone else had given a better one with the same talking points I’d had. So, I simply up-voted those that had similar views as myself.

I don’t know if this would be considered direct communication but I had an idea. I was wondering how hard it would be to have an in-game survey. —An NPC located in Lions Arch that offered some form of game currency payment for the player’s opinion. The survey would be account bound so that the survey could only be taken once and the payment received just once as well.

A short 3 or 4 question survey with a small area for comment at the end limited by word count. And then when the player is done they can optionally view a quick graph as to where their answers fell as opposed to other players. Then they get paid.
If it succeeds then Anet can put in a new survey on a time schedule.

I know forums are representative of only a small percentage of the player population. I was trying to think of some way to get a majority of player’s participation. I know that developers will always get a strong response when offering in-game currency. Whether or not the response will be click, click, click. Pay Me! or someone reading each question and using their brain…. I can’t say for sure.

Behellagh.1468:

saventis.1485:

did my post just get deleted?

Look at your post history. Thread has gotten big.

didnt know that existed till now,
thank you very much!

turns out it was in another topic lol my bad

Can someone tell me what CDI stands for?

I appreciate your posting, thank you for coming on and expressing to us that you are listening but I have to say….actions speak louder.

I’ve been watching for some time now waiting to see if even the CDI requests have been implemented much less anything anything at all on the wiki list including precursors, rewards revamp, the hobosack problem, anything at all and when we receive what little information we do receive about upcoming feature packs and things like the wikilist aren’t on them of course we’re going to be highly disappointed after waiting for months.

I can’t imagine what is more important at this point than fulfilling statements your team has already made? Honestly? Nothing else should be. We’re all passionate about the game for sure otherwise we wouldn’t be here giving you feedback, but I have to ask, how long is too long?

I can understand waiting for something as economically changing as a precursor scavenger hunt, but when it comes to more simplistic things like removing the hobosacks you’ve gotta admit, that shouldn’t take half a year to wait on much less 2.

What’s worse is the only thing I’ve seen community managers do of late is squash forum posts with very valid concerns from the playerbase, that doesn’t help matters either.

Thanks for the re-assurance I’ll try to be more patient but I gotta say it’s taking alot right now after waiting so long.

OK, Anet talk on the forum that’s cool but IN GAME whate are you doing?

Why you don’t want SAB back ? many players want it but Anet say “NO”, ok but why ? and don’t tell us it’s not RP whith the Lore, who cares, we just want the return of the most exciting content in this game.

And PvP, why in two years nothing happend in PvP, you say "we working on new game mod… OK but in 2 years nothing so you work or you play table tennis with your friends ?

And the last joke is:“we do something but we stop that because we think we have to do another thing” OMG, in my own work if I do that, I’m fired. Stop talking, stop complains, stop search an excuse and go work. 2 years and no permanently content, no PvP, no precursor solution, no fun at all(RIP SAB), if you want your game die, say it that will be more easly for players to make reason and stop to let us HOPE a change.

Thank you

Sorry for my english I’m french but in our forum the communication are at zero point so….

Infernia.9847:

I’m glad to see the return of the CDI. I didn’t actively contribute since it seemed every time I spent formulating a response/question I would find someone else had given a better one with the same talking points I’d had. So, I simply up-voted those that had similar views as myself.

I don’t know if this would be considered direct communication but I had an idea. I was wondering how hard it would be to have an in-game survey. —An NPC located in Lions Arch that offered some form of game currency payment for the player’s opinion. The survey would be account bound so that the survey could only be taken once and the payment received just once as well.

A short 3 or 4 question survey with a small area for comment at the end limited by word count. And then when the player is done they can optionally view a quick graph as to where their answers fell as opposed to other players. Then they get paid.
If it succeeds then Anet can put in a new survey on a time schedule.

I know forums are representative of only a small percentage of the player population. I was trying to think of some way to get a majority of player’s participation. I know that developers will always get a strong response when offering in-game currency. Whether or not the response will be click, click, click. Pay Me! or someone reading each question and using their brain…. I can’t say for sure.

That would be brilliant. I have seen other games do this through the UI and those games worked out well because player concerns were put in a short request kind of thing so it wasn’t long winded and the devs actually reacted to these requests and implemented these things in the games that did this. I’d love to see this in this title because imo I just don’t see them reacting to what we’re putting here in the forums at all honestly, not in the feature packs at least.