Guild Wars 2

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

You asked me to be honest so I am going to be. I am starting to feel like doing another CDI just isn’t worth the frustration, huge amount of time and heartache.

As i have said many many times before getting the logistics around communication right is extremely important. Time is precious and anything that can be done to make every second more valuable is paramount. Any time a developer spends on CDI is time away from the game. The benefit however is huge in terms of the products evolution so it is an extremely difficult balancing act.

Chris

As a developer I sympathize with your frustrations.
There’s too many times I’ll listen to a client use their “client speak” about what they want while my brain tries to translate the problem into “dev speak”.

All that time used could have been used for something constructive (IMO) like coding, maybe finding that blasted bug they will eventually discover, or getting a soda as I rage at the potentially new project that will last a month or more just on pure committee.

Even though my kneejerk reaction would be “maybe if the CDI is a headache we shouldn’t do it” I also get what you’re saying.

ANet needs to see where the community thinks we need fixes, then internally compares them with what ANet sees, and eventually something comes out of it.

Maybe one of the CDIs could be more of what ANet thinks is important and we sit and listen for a change? I can’t remember if this was done in the past, but personally it would help discussions in the future.

If ANet is more concerned about (example) Living world story satisfaction and folks are still wondering why no mounts/ duels/ non gem store skins, the community can at least see the latter being well off your radar at this time.

I’ll still contribute to CDIs if I have something worthwhile, but I wanted to let you know that you have my sympathies during these hectic times.

Is some of the friction that’s out there right now a side effect of NCSoft wanting GW2 to go in a direction Anet doesn’t? By this I mean does Anet actually agree with us players, but can’t say anything because of the direction upper management dictates?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Is some of the friction that’s out there right now a side effect of NCSoft wanting GW2 to go in a direction Anet doesn’t? By this I mean does Anet actually agree with us players, but can’t say anything because of the direction upper management dictates?

If that were true, they couldn’t tell you – so you’ll have to guess.

…ugh, that awkward moment when the only questions you have are things that probably won’t be answered or on-topic: Whether Hobosacks (Engineer Kit backpacks) will ever not override back item visuals, and if that every-class-every-weapon thing is still in the works.

Anyway, it’s really cool that this communication thing is happening. I mean it! I know text can be difficult to ‘tone,’ but communication – actual communication like this has been – is always appreciated. Especially since it can be so difficult, whatever the reason.

Anymras.5729:

…ugh, that awkward moment when the only questions you have are things that probably won’t be answered or on-topic: Whether Hobosacks (Engineer Kit backpacks) will ever not override back item visuals, and if that every-class-every-weapon thing is still in the works.

Anyway, it’s really cool that this communication thing is happening. I mean it! I know text can be difficult to ‘tone,’ but communication – actual communication like this has been – is always appreciated. Especially since it can be so difficult, whatever the reason.

I know it’s great. While certain details would be discussed off this thread, at the very least this is a good start. I understand by saying their response, other people will take it the wrong way unintentionally or otherwise.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

codiac.5642:

I just bought a spare character slot, number 9, on special, just in case there is a new class sometime … don’t waste my investment!

Nice try (-:

Chris

So … two new classes then! :P

codiac.5642:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

codiac.5642:

I just bought a spare character slot, number 9, on special, just in case there is a new class sometime … don’t waste my investment!

Nice try (-:

Chris

So … two new classes then! :P

Playable skritt?

Lheimroo.2947:

codiac.5642:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

codiac.5642:

I just bought a spare character slot, number 9, on special, just in case there is a new class sometime … don’t waste my investment!

Nice try (-:

Chris

So … two new classes then! :P

Playable skritt?

The skritt class?

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Lheimroo.2947:

codiac.5642:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

codiac.5642:

I just bought a spare character slot, number 9, on special, just in case there is a new class sometime … don’t waste my investment!

Nice try (-:

Chris

So … two new classes then! :P

Playable skritt?

The skritt class?

yea…steals shinies and weapons\skills from other classes\foes as unique class mechanic… actually this doesnt sound as stupid as i thought it would

Basaltface.2786:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Lheimroo.2947:

codiac.5642:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

codiac.5642:

I just bought a spare character slot, number 9, on special, just in case there is a new class sometime … don’t waste my investment!

Nice try (-:

Chris

So … two new classes then! :P

Playable skritt?

The skritt class?

yea…steals shinies and weapons\skills from other classes\foes as unique class mechanic… actually this doesnt sound as stupid as i thought it would

So, the little (big?) brother of the thief?

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Basaltface.2786:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Lheimroo.2947:

codiac.5642:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

codiac.5642:

I just bought a spare character slot, number 9, on special, just in case there is a new class sometime … don’t waste my investment!

Nice try (-:

Chris

So … two new classes then! :P

Playable skritt?

The skritt class?

yea…steals shinies and weapons\skills from other classes\foes as unique class mechanic… actually this doesnt sound as stupid as i thought it would

So, the little (big?) brother of the thief?

more like the lovechild of engi and thief id say

@HHR LostProphet,

I agree with most everything you wrote except for the “buy anything” comments. I actually think this is the best part of the game and aligns well with the original manifesto. It allows people to play the game the way they want. The worst MMO games are when you have to farm a dungeon 500x to hopefully get some gear you want. That is not fun. I prefer the gw2 approach.

I cannot play “anything” and get Citadel skins.

To get those, I have to platy Citadel.

Thanks for actually interacting with us, Chris Whiteside. You really are the only glimmer of hope most of us have of getting our messages / thoughts heard. We all feel so desperate for Arenanet’s attention that it’s truly wonderful to be able to communicate with you.

I really really think that there is a huge wasted opportunity with Arenanet’s decision to avoid implementation of new dungeons. This new LS season is the perfect window of opportunity to add an entirely new dungeon with a unique theme and unique mobs with unique bosses with unique mechanics. I can literally imagine how I’d create it. A dungeon in the Maguuma Wastes would be so so so so so freakin’ amazing. I absolutely guarantee you that the vast majority of the playerbase would be thrilled for content of this nature.

Any doubts you or anyone else working at Arenanet might have will be shattered if you ever release one of those in-game polls like a poster on one of the previous pages suggested.

The amount of people disappointed with the lack of higher-end content with replay value is pretty astounding. This game has been very competitive with the supergiant WoW in the past few years, which actually became as popular as it did primarily because of content of this nature. GW2 has the best combat system I’ve ever ever seen, so to shy out of taking advantage of the stage you’ve set and not acting on this amazing potential that you all have is just painful and frustrating!

Prove us all wrong. I ranted a bit here and I’m sorry for that, but as I stated earlier you’re the only way most of us can communicate with how we feel. I wouldn’t bother posting this if I didn’t care and want the best for GW2.

Amazing post by HHR LostProphet.

Another issue I feel is within the spirit of his post, is universal profession design and balance. Each game format has very different game-play mechanics and goals, yet the professions share the same skills between every format and balance patches are for the most part universal.

Building around 5v5 PvP scenarios and trying to throw it into large scale combat (open world PvE, WvW) and dungeons has created a vast multitude of issues in those areas.

And of course the developers are perfectly aware of the content being broken, so they respond with things like “WvW is not meant to be balanced”. An imbalanced game mode is nothing less than a flawed game mode, killing any serious competition from happening, which strangely they have been trying to encourage with the WvW tournaments despite these issues. You can’t have something be both unfair and seriously competitive at the same time.

This fits pretty well into the category HHR mentioned:
“Many of these flaws are so huge that they probably can’t be removed until ANet is willing to rework huge portions of the game to please players who have played this game a long time now, the non-casual gamers.
And I honetly don’t think this will ever happen.”

I fail to see how any non-casual player can take any of these areas seriously in their current state.

“Rework huge portions of the game” is almost never in the agenda.

With the exception of FFXIV – the only MMO in my memory that was rebooted – I’ve never played it, so I have no idea how well that went.

ipan.4356:

“Rework huge portions of the game” is almost never in the agenda.

With the exception of FFXIV – the only MMO in my memory that was rebooted – I’ve never played it, so I have no idea how well that went.

Fairly well, actually. But it still has plenty of issues with core design philosophy, much like GW2 does. I’ve been only playing it for a week now on free trial but I can spot several and have been collecting some things of note.

Mostly how it’s falling into “power creep” very steadily and endgame is a mess.

Chris – I know it’s kinda against forum rules to talk about other games, but I thought I’d bring up the (fairly) recent example of Oldschool Runescape to highlight an important point about communication. I hope you don’t mind…

Quick background: Oldschool Runescape (OSRS) has a small dev team of around 5 guys and an active player base of at least 100k (with around 10-15k online at any one time). It released in early 2013 as a set of official legacy servers running an 2007 build of the Runescape, and has had fairly significant development since then, with updates requiring a 75% majority vote from the community before they are implemented.

If you ever played Runescape back in the day, you’ll know that the community was very toxic, with ignorant and rude players who constantly demanded/complained about updates, insulted both the developers and one another and were generally very offensive. In many ways, the OSRS community is no different; players constantly argue over game updates with much the same level of vitriol as before, and from my experience it is significantly more toxic than the GW2 community.

However, the player-driven nature of the game forced the devs to interact with the community from day one: they post on the forums very frequently, asking the player feedback and engaging in real discussion. Particularly notable are the game update threads: a couple of devs will follow the thread for several hours after an update goes live and when players bring up bugs (sometimes in a very insulting manner), they patiently let people know that they’re looking into it, often give nice and simple explanations of the problem and provide ETAs on fixes (where possible).

While they still don’t do everything perfectly, I think it is because of this interaction that OSRS has thrived as a game separate to Runescape 3. The number of players has dropped since the initial nostalgia/hype has entirely worn off, but the game is currently in a very strong position, accounting for maybe 1/3 of current Runescape players, which is amazing given that it has been fully Pay to Play (unlike RS3) and with a dev team a fraction of the size of RS3’s.

So what exactly is the point here?

The very small OSRS dev team remains dedicated to engaging with a fairly large and often very difficult community, even after a year of the game’s release. The reason, I believe, is that all the devs have built up a habit of posting on the forums and so have become active members of the community (albeit better spoken than the majority). They are comfortable with giving honest and open answers, even about the most controversial topics and will even call out and attempt to correct any displays of extreme ignorance.

The Guild Wars 2 forums, by comparison, have had very few developers post actively since launch. I anticipate that it is fairly daunting for any one dev to start posting when none of the others do, and so the level communication fails to improve (or even gets worse as those devs that do post do so less frequently or stop altogether). My advice is therefore to encourage as many devs as possible to begin posting on a regular basis. I think this could be achieved by scheduling in some time every couple of days for everyone to both look at respond to the forums. Once more of them start engaging, it will become easier and easier for ANet to get back into sync with the community.

As a final point, I’d like to thank you, Chris, for all the work your putting into fixing this communication issue – I very much believe that good, two-way communication is necessary for Guild Wars 2 to have a sustainable future. As a final bit of encouragement, I’d like you to remember that each time you come back and engage with people in this thread, it will become that little bit easier to do it again in the future.

Thanks again, and keep up the good work,
- Loxorz

ipan.4356:

“Rework huge portions of the game” is almost never in the agenda.

With the exception of FFXIV – the only MMO in my memory that was rebooted – I’ve never played it, so I have no idea how well that went.

That’s always an issue when they release a product that’s unfinished. They have put a lot of band-aids on it, like defiant and unshakable, but the issues are still there waiting to be healed.

Unless they are willing to live with countless issues in the game large changes are required, but understandably they don’t want to make them.

This has always been one of my top issues with MMOs. So many have fundamental issues that never get attention, and it ruins my ability to take the game seriously.

Yeah, defiant and unshakeable are terribly lazy band aid design decisions. I could think of a dozen ways to improve upon that, that doesn’t require writing the code for Hal. I’ve seen better mechanics in games 10 years old.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Atlas.9704:

Maybe one of the CDIs could be more of what ANet thinks is important and we sit and listen for a change? I can’t remember if this was done in the past, but personally it would help discussions in the future.

I think that’d be an interesting discussion, you’ll probably be surprised to find the “big” lists aren’t that different, it’s just that since we can’t share the projects we’re working on to solve them – it’s not clear we’re actually working on, or even aware of or worried about the issue. Worse, when people see work being done in other areas shipping rather than what seems like a core area, they assume no work is being done and no one is even aware of the other issue.

At its core, I think that’s a lot of the problem communication wise – it’s a tough nut to crack when we’re also not allowed to discuss what’s in development, but I’m sure we can find a better balance than we have currently and your suggestion at its core could be a good way to help find that balance.

Maybe the community team could keep a rolling “top over-all concerns” for core development areas of the game from the dev teams perspective? We wouldn’t be allowed to go into specifics per our rules about not discussing what’s in development, but certainly categorical summaries could help?

We hear a lot about “not allowed”.

May I ask, “not allowed” by whom? You guys are the developers. Who do you need permission from?

Chris, I just want to say thank you! It’s a breath of fresh air seeing the sheer amount of interaction in this thread.

Having slogged through the entire thread, I’ve got to admit, doing another CDI seems almost pointless without having the proposed “List of things we’ve done or are doing based on the previous set of CDIs”. There’s a huge feeling that the last set had no impact at all – even though that’s objectively not true.

Obviously, you’re also aware of how badly the last set of interviews hurt Anet’s public image. The people I know in game have the impression that SAB is never coming back, there will never be new PvP modes, and there will never be another dungeon, because every resource is bent toward the LS and gemstore.

I’d suggest, if at all possible, bringing back the little questionnaire boxes from the Beta weekends, but instead of being on completion of content, be on logging in. Have it be something like:

“Hello Tyrians!

In our ongoing effort to provide the best game possible for as many of our players as possible, we’re asking everyone to let us know how we’re doing in keeping things FUN!"

How important are dungeons to you? [Very][Moderately][Not at all]
How important is WvW to you? [Very][Moderately][Not at all]
How important is PvP to you? [Very][Moderately][Not at all]
How important is PvE content to you? [Very][Moderately][Not at all]

followed by:

How satisfied are you with the current state of dungeons? [Very][Moderately][Not at all]
How satisfied are you with the current state of WvW? [Very][Moderately][Not at all]
How satisfied are you with the current state of PvP? [Very][Moderately][Not at all]
How satisfying do you find the Living Story? [Very][Moderately][Not at all]

Then, after few weeks, having a follow up based on the response from the previous.

“People of Tyria!

We asked for your thoughts, and based on your concerns about [TOPIC], we’ll be asking for your thoughts on [new dungeons/new wvw maps/new pvp modes/living story improvements]."

This would serve as an addition to forum feedback, since we know that forum goers are a minority in any gaming population, and our concerns likely don’t match those of the majority of the playerbase.

It would also address the issue wherein game metrics can tell you what people are or aren’t doing, but they cannot tell you WHY.

Maybe more people would be involved in WvW if the scoring system was more focused on holding objectives instead of just flipping. Maybe people are most interested in the large/small/zerg level of combat. Do most people genuinely not care?

Possibly more folks would be involved in PvP if there were alternate game-modes, or the leaderboard was more readily available in-game. How are the rewards? Does anyone care?

Do people want new dungeons? Would they play the existing ones more if the rewards or mechanics were changed? Do most people not enjoy dungeons/raids at all?

Then sharing those results, and where your current focus is.

“Tyrians Rejoice!

We asked, we listened, and would like you to know that your concerns are heard! Based on your feedback, we’re looking into changes to [TOPIC], and are excited by the possibilities!"

It might not be doable, but I can’t help but feel you’d get a more complete picture of how the playerbase feels, and what we’re concerned with than just being on the forums. It would also be a form of back and forth with the community, that wouldn’t necessarily eat too much dev time, which can quite honestly be better served actually working on content, instead of talking directly with the forums. (I’m not suggesting you stop talking with us – I’d really love to see more chat from the Anet folks – I just think it would help get the most information from the largest possible sample).

It’s been a huge wall of text, but I’d like to end off with a great big thank you!

THANK YOU! Not just you, Chris, but everyone at Anet. GW2 is an amazing game – and on the whole I’m not grateful enough when I post. The potential to be one of the greatest games ever released is there, and you guys should be proud of what you’ve accomplished so far. The criticism I’ve given (and lord knows there’s been a LOT of it) isn’t out of spite – it’s out of a desire for the game to come that much closer to being the perfect game.

I look forward to reading more from you, and the others at Anet.

Later, eh?

Stale.

I find that the Living World updates being the focus of ArenaNet to be a waste of resources because of how poor they are with replayability. The amount of hours that have been sunk into a single dungeon will dwarf all of the Living Story instances combined because there is no reason to keep playing them once all Achievements have been obtained. (Yes, this is assuming they are out for two years as well)

The main strength of an MMO is its ability to bring players together. The Living World story arcs do not do this because most can be completed solo. Dungeons and WvW by their very nature do this though. Originally, the problem with Living World was it being temporary; now the problem is that it feels too shallow. Dry Top is a good addition to the game though, even though some of the events feel very copy/paste.

Thank you Chris.

Living Story could delve into a new dungeon – I’m just saying it would relatively easy to dovetail the two together. Save some time on development.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Essence Snow.3194:

Any inclination to what type of cdi ya’ll will start with?

(hopefully not a cdi on how communicate via a cdi…think I saw that mentioned somewhere…might be wrong)

Well we do need to talk about format but we end up never doing it because folks would rather discuss the actual game (-: (How dare they!)

I plan to post on Monday asking if folks want us to pick or we do a poll on the forum.

Chris

I could do that post now actually….

Chris

In my honest opinion I think you should pick. Many people tend to think more about themselves rather then the community as a whole. This way we have an idea of what you guys are thinking and we can build that way rather then everyone thinking about self interests and the whole "give me thisthisthisthis its not only me its what we “all” want!" problem. Also will help focus in on problems rather then letting an unstable community highjack the conversations.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Maybe the community team could keep a rolling “top over-all concerns” for core development areas of the game from the dev teams perspective? We wouldn’t be allowed to go into specifics per our rules about not discussing what’s in development, but certainly categorical summaries could help?

It couldn’t hurt.
I worked with a few Pen and Paper gaming companies that had to balance the “I can’t tell you” with the “We are excited to share this sneak peek!” moments and the “Yes we know… for the 10 billionth time” moments.

The fun parts were when the customers scream about Issue A and Release C is like Issue A with a different slant. Just because the companies aren’t tackling issues the exact way a customer wants doesn’t mean it isn’t on their radar after all.

I think that’s where some rage is coming from.
The customers here just don’t know what ANet wants from their own game.
We have players chanting and raising the Manifesto up like gospel.
Then there’s the multiple bases within game modes wondering if their specific love is ever going to get any love from ANet.
Meanwhile it seems we get evasive answers and we have even lost the teaser pages for releases after Season 1.

So at least having a hit list from you guys might shed some light on where the direction is going from a dev side.

ipan.4356:

We hear a lot about “not allowed”.

May I ask, “not allowed” by whom? You guys are the developers. Who do you need permission from?

Team Leads? Project Managers? Corp Suits in charge of the direction of the company overall? Those would be my short list right now.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Maybe the community team could keep a rolling “top over-all concerns” for core development areas of the game from the dev teams perspective? We wouldn’t be allowed to go into specifics per our rules about not discussing what’s in development, but certainly categorical summaries could help?

What, like a bi-weekly or monthly “Top 5 Hot Topics”?

It could work.

Also.. Chris, are you at all familiar with a game called Kerbal Space Program?

They do this feature they call the Daily Kerbal. They feature player work, useful mods, etc – of particular note to me is Devnote tuesdays where the devs`ll just give this little twitter-like blurb about what they`re doing. People look forward to it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

ipan.4356:

May I ask, “not allowed” by whom? You guys are the developers. Who do you need permission from?

Sorry that should say: “Our company policy is not to talk about what’s in development”.

-CJ

I said it to Chris before, but I feel the need to say it again. It’s the company policy that is partly to blame for the forums turning into a massive cesspool. While most game forums don’t smell of roses this one is by far the worst. A lot of people have soured on you guys due to this policy. It really is time to reassess how rigidly you want to hold on to this policy.
I’ll guarantee this it will only get worse if the same pattern keeps being followed. As the downward line is much steeper than the upward line that pops up during the brief, 1-2 months worth, communication periods.

I think that’d be an interesting discussion, you’ll probably be surprised to find the “big” lists aren’t that different, it’s just that since we can’t share the projects we’re working on to solve them – it’s not clear we’re actually working on, or even aware of or worried about the issue. Worse, when people see work being done in other areas shipping rather than what seems like a core area, they assume no work is being done and no one is even aware of the other issue.

Yes. This. You might think you’re doing what we want, because you’re aware of projects being worked on internally, but you have to understand that we don’t see this stuff, and you deliberately withold it from us. So for example Precursor Crafting, perhaps you know that it’s well into development and soon to be ready, but all we know is that we’ve been promised and promised and promised for almost two years now with no end even on the horizon.

You have a "company policy is not to talk about what’s in development,” but that policy needs to change. You do need to talk about what’s in development, not haphazardly, not in random replies on the forums, but at the very least through managed outlets like blog posts and pre-arranged topic interviews. A little “hey guys, here’s something you won’t see for six months or more, but you can look forward to it in the meantime,” would go a long way.

If the rules prevent you from having good community interaction, then change the rules.

Ohoni.6057:

I think that’d be an interesting discussion, you’ll probably be surprised to find the “big” lists aren’t that different, it’s just that since we can’t share the projects we’re working on to solve them – it’s not clear we’re actually working on, or even aware of or worried about the issue. Worse, when people see work being done in other areas shipping rather than what seems like a core area, they assume no work is being done and no one is even aware of the other issue.

Yes. This. You might think you’re doing what we want, because you’re aware of projects being worked on internally, but you have to understand that we don’t see this stuff, and you deliberately withold it from us. So for example Precursor Crafting, perhaps you know that it’s well into development and soon to be ready, but all we know is that we’ve been promised and promised and promised for almost two years now with no end even on the horizon.

You have a "company policy is not to talk about what’s in development,” but that policy needs to change. You do need to talk about what’s in development, not haphazardly, not in random replies on the forums, but at the very least through managed outlets like blog posts and pre-arranged topic interviews. A little “hey guys, here’s something you won’t see for six months or more, but you can look forward to it in the meantime,” would go a long way.

If the rules prevent you from having good community interaction, then change the rules.

A lot of the secrecy has to do with competition also. They don’t want other MMO companies trying to copy their ideas until they can get it out first. So in that respect, it’s a good policy to keep.

And i’m surprised Colin showed up. I thought he got kidnapped by quaggans or something.

Lheimroo.2947:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Maybe the community team could keep a rolling “top over-all concerns” for core development areas of the game from the dev teams perspective? We wouldn’t be allowed to go into specifics per our rules about not discussing what’s in development, but certainly categorical summaries could help?

What, like a bi-weekly or monthly “Top 5 Hot Topics”?

It could work.

as much as i don’t want to scare ANet away from the idea of sharing more of their thought process and priorities, i can’t help but wonder if those lists wouldn’t be essentially the same for months, and the moment one is replaced for another, half the community will assume it’s ready to ship, and half will think they gave up on it. either of those would lead to outrage…

Chris, thanks a lot for the interaction, I really enjoy it and I think so are you.

Let me sum up some of the problems I perceive with the game. I agree with Lost Prophet that some of them require a fundamental rework of core systems in the game, and the reluctance of Anet to touch any of these fundamental flaws is really the main reason I lost hope.

The game doesn’t care that I’m there

This really is the biggest thing for me. The manifesto really talked a lot about putting the player central. But I just don’t see any of that in the game. The outcome of dynamic events resets 5 minutes later, bosses respawn 5 minutes later, the personal/living stories are on rails and doesn’t allow us to make any meaningful choice. In Guild Wars 1, I could at least decide which of the NPC characters I wanted in my party and with Heroes, I could even choose their gear and skillbars directly. In Guild Wars 2, I’m forced to play with Trahearne, Kasmeer, Rox, etc, while I don’t like any of them, both in their appearance and their actual character. Only possible exception is Marjory. But I can’t decide to leave the annoying Kasmeer at home

Solution: Let players make a party of NPCs of their choice for their future living story. They actually have to play some specific content to unlock an NPC to join them (like Razah in GW1) and once they have gathered enough NPCs they can proceed with the living story, having these NPCs join them. Allow us to personalize/customize these NPCs to a certain degree.

So you may say: Well but then we can’t do as much voiceacting and cutscenes for the narrative! I’d say, mewmew the voice acting and cutscenes. I want the choice in my hands and I don’t care if the game becomes text-only! See attached image. I think that applies very much for GW1 vs GW2 too. Even though you unlocked zones one at a time in GW1, GW2 still feels way more constraining somehow.

Fundamental Problems with Character Stats/Skills and Battles

This is one thing that really irks me and I wonder why the developers do not see this. It’s a bit hard to explain, so bear with me…

We have weapons that give us a package of up to 5 skills to use in battle.

Then there are there stats on our gear that influences the effectiveness of those skills in different ways. Some aspects of skills are influenced by a single stats (eg, healing done comes from Healing Power stat) while other skills are influenced by a boatload of stats (eg, direct damage is influenced by Power, Precision and Ferocity). Then there is one big odd thing: There is also Condition Damage. It is influenced by both Condition Damage and Condition Duration.

And now the developers ask us to pick three stats… But then I look at my weapons and their skills. And I see that most weapons are actually hybrid weapons. They have some skills that do direct damage and some skills that do condition damage, and even more fun, they have hybrid skills that do both direct damage AND condition damage. And you can probably see the point that I want to make: I am forced to choose between either direct damage OR condition damage, which as a result makes some of the skills that I get from my weapon useless to me.

In GW1, you had diminishing returns (each level of an attribute required an increasing amount of points). While in GW2, you have incremental returns (power, precision and ferocity multiplying eachother’s effectiveness), which makes it unattractive to raise multiple stats, in most cases. In addition, in GW1, an attribute made ALL of the effects of an associated skill better: If you increase points in swordmanship, both the bleeding duration of Sever Artery and the direct damage of galrath slash would improve. So all sword skills were a valid choice.

Right now we have this monoculture, because min-maxing power-precission-ferocity has the best result and investing statpoints in anything else is wasteful. So we end up with a monoculture of DPS-centered characters.

I personally really think the stat system has to be reworked fundamentally. Or even removed altogether…

continued…

Steps on the right track fail to have an impact

There have been moments where Anet did produce content that seemed to cater to player wishes, but in the end failed to have any impact. Examples are the new skills and new traits. It feels like delivering exactly what players asked for, but still there is disappointment. Why is that?

1) It is building on a broken foundation. If you introduce new skills and traits, the only thing I am judging them by is if it makes me deal more DPS. Not more DPS? Then I’m not going to use them. For PVP it’s a little bit more complex, but still. Compare the thief traits Invigorating Precision to the old Executioner trait. I was interested in InvPrec, but why would I take it? I can kill my enemy 10% faster if I take Executioner, but does InvPrec make me 10% more resilient? No. Not even if it allowed me to leech 10% of health, as a lot of my resilience actually comes from simply dodging and blinding not direct damage mitigation or healing (IF I get hit, odds are high that I lose). So we’re back at DPS being king, for tanking also, because killing enemy 10% faster = 10% less time it can deal damage to you, and that’s especially true for the PVP thief metagame, thieves being total glass cannons and all.
2) The content is just not enough. Whoop, a few end game bosses that unlock a few traits that don’t really do much. While I appreciate the effort, it’s not really a return to GW1’s skill hunting, nowhere close.
3) It brought a bunch of negative side effects: Leveling a new character is now incredibly tedious, because what little character customization options we had is now gated down completely. I already found the first 60 levels of the game a terrible experience, now just can’t bring myself to level any additional characters at al.

Disassociation between what players ask for and what devs create

Often, it feels like players are pretty much in agreement when asking for things. And then devs doing exactly the opposite.

Players: We want a more meaningful role in the story! Our personal story has Trahearne make all the decisions, not us!
Devs: Let’s make this epic living story, which is run by a bunch of ancillaries! Players really love to help out ancillaries, yes?

Players: We would really like to have capes!
Devs: Let’s make loads of non-combinable OUTFITS for the gemstore! (that still have clipping issues anyway…)

Players: We want Cantha/Elona and a more realistic Chinese/oriental theme!
Devs: Here, have some giant robots and cybernetic madness!

Players: We want more rewards from dungeons etc! And more skills to personalize our characters!
Devs: Here, let’s add a new rarity tier! Ascended gear! Go craft it now!!! (this really made me hate Anet more than any other thing you did – and it also forced people to stick with their Power-Precision-Ferocity stats even more as experimentation with different stat sets became unaffordable)

While I can see that the devs have been busy, they just do not seem to work on things that I want, and that is the main source of disappointment. Many people might not have wanted this living story stuff, so they disregard it and go shout: “Muuuuuuhhhh Anet has done NOTHING these past two years!”. Anet did do stuff, just not any of the things they wanted.

If you ask me personally which things Anet did these past two years that I actually wanted, I can only answer with “Wardrobe!”, “Secondary upgrade slot in 2h weapons!” and “Heart of the Mists!” (at least some aspects of it are nice).

There is potentially a way to address this problem

There was one big moment in GW2 history where the devs actually… 1) gave players a choice in the outcome of an event and 2) gave players influence on the future of the game. This happened during the Evon VS Kiel election. If players used their ingame votes to vote for Evon, they’d get this fractal and that discount. If they voted for Kiel, they’d get another fractal and some other discount. Which was a totally AWESOME idea, and I think devs really were onto something there.

Why have this interaction on toxic forums where most of the players don’t even go to? Why not just have this interaction directly in game? Make a bunch of NPCs, let them present their vision of the future in the game in the game itself, and then let players play to vote for what they want! You’ll have a much more representative result, everyone feels they have an impact, and you can do what you do best: Make actual game content which players enjoy playing instead of fighting an uphill battle on the forums. Everyone happy! And if the things I want are not what the majority of players votes for, I can live with that a lot better than when I see devs make arbitrary decisions and implement content that I do not like at all.

ColinJohanson.2394:

ipan.4356:

May I ask, “not allowed” by whom? You guys are the developers. Who do you need permission from?

Sorry that should say: “Our company policy is not to talk about what’s in development”.

-CJ

I can’t wait for the first game studio that just puts their whole SCRUM planning thing and backlog online for all to see.

And then has players vote every month on stuff in the backlog, with the player vote deciding in part what goes in to the next sprints.

EVE Online did that to a degree, with the actual voting stuff too. Many people in the company wanted none of that, but players loved it while it lasted. They had these elections, where 9 players were voted in by the rest of the players and flown into CCP HQ to raise issues and be an actual stakeholder in the company.

Can’t wait for another game studio to go all-in on this approach.

http://skemman.is/stream/get/1946/5394/16183/1/MA-ritgerd_heimspeki_pjo.pdf here’s a whole bunch of blahblah if you don’t know what EVE did.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Anymras.5729:

…ugh, that awkward moment when the only questions you have are things that probably won’t be answered or on-topic: Whether Hobosacks (Engineer Kit backpacks) will ever not override back item visuals, and if that every-class-every-weapon thing is still in the works.

Anyway, it’s really cool that this communication thing is happening. I mean it! I know text can be difficult to ‘tone,’ but communication – actual communication like this has been – is always appreciated. Especially since it can be so difficult, whatever the reason.

.. (-: Going to make some dinner and watch Locke.

See you all tomorrow and thanks for the discussion it was fun.

Chris

Thanks Chris.

Before you embark on this CDI, I implore you to find a better tool to do this task with. While the forums are fine and dandy for basic back and forth, they are tedious to read through (for both parties involved) and really lack a lot of features that makes sorting through a pile of information anything more than frustrating.

Even if you used a reddit type system, that’s practically self moderating and would highlight key concerns, it would be far more valuable (and likely less frustrating and time consuming) than an inline set of forum posts. I think if you folks took a couple hours and used something pre-built, set it up and made it accessible, even if you didn’t tie it into the logins for the game (there are several systems that can authenticate using external methods) it would be far more valuable than trying to do it on here.

My 2 cents.

I think that the minimalistic forum structure is a big problem for readability. It looks nice, but it’s quite difficult to read through big threads and focus on a specific idea.

The imdb message boards has some nice features that would certainly help analysing threads like the CDI one.

• you reply not on the thread as a whole but on the posts within. If you don’t want to discuss a certain idea it’s easy to see where another idea starts. The answers on a post are indented (is this the right word? english isn’t my main language, sorry).
• merging wouldn’t destroy the whole thread since ideas are still structured and can be followed easily.
• you can minimise posts. It would be helpful I think if devs could (on their own account or dev-account) tag certain users as “destructive” so that their posts have a different colour or get minimized automatically. This would certainly decrease the frustration when reading a thread since devs could easily skip trashtalk.

I love the CDI’s and parttaking in them, but I think it’s very hard to follow ideas in there and it’s very difficult to read when you’re a day away. There needs to be a certain structure.

You can’t change the Thread-structure over night, but I think doing the CDIs on platforms like reddit (which have a much more readable layout) until the forum-changes are done would go a long way.

• new ideas and answers to it are seperated from different ideas and answers automatically
• You could ask a reddit-responsible to disable the downvote-function.
• when you install a tool (forgot the name) you can tag other users in order to increase recognition of those users.
• you can easily minimise posts (and their follow up posts) which makes it much easier to find new idea-strings

TL:DR: I think that the simplistic forum structure is a big hindrance to good and productive communication. There are very good examples of forum-features out there which help in readablity and filtering bad posts(posters).

PS: such a simple thing as forum-avatars would make it much easier to find well liked posters and/or identify forum trolls.

Edit: example of reddit-structure: http://i.imgur.com/3QEqsQ2.jpg

Hi there,

I have to admit, that I didn’t read the whole post, and that I probably will be reiterating some stuff.

I am a recurring player to GW2 with almost 2k hours played in this game. There is a lot that GW2 does right. Especially for new players/players new to MMOs and to players on their first play through. Now keep in mind that my initial levelling up experience was at launch, with a lot of buggy events, that realistically couldn’t be tested in a large scale in the beginning. Events were broken left right and centre. That is fixed(at least in most cases). But there was the beginning of a communication culture that was a bit lacklustre – Which also brings me to my first point.

Lack of feedback. When a player creates an ingame support ticket, he/she has to hope for it to be received. Now support feedback is tricky and can often leave the player/community angry because of poorly wording or other stuff. But NO feedback is almost worst. It can bog support down, because when I am testing bugs (like a reliable way to bug post patch Detha) I need to reroll an instance multiple times /create multiple tickets, which are handled(most likely) by different people on the Front Desk. Now I imagine I am not the only person doing that. So what probably could be handled with 1 ticket number per player generates more. And information will get lost in that process. Forums (especially the Dungeon sub forum can sing a song about that) are not the place for bugsupporting too, because people often feel like they are shouting into a forest and nothing gets returned.

Which brings me to my next point. I believe you read most of the forums, and if it is company policy to not talk about features in development, don’t talk about them. Believe me we will accept that. BUT a simple: “We have read your concerns, it is on the big list fixing” helps. Make a list “being worked on” give it to the forums. Make it so that it says “no promises”. Especially for the numerous bugs still present it would be a balm for the soul that Anet sees the issues.

There is also some nasty rumours of posts being deleted, because they don’t strike the fancy/are mean and hurtful – probably often racist… Don’t delete posts. It has the stench of censorship and is never well received. Flag the posts and fold them on themselves, so that people that are willing to read them can still do that. Dealing with trolls is never easy, especially if they attack something you have put energy on. And opening yourself in forums is scary because of that.

Another thing that strikes me as a bit weird is probably a design choice early in the game that now gives a bit in part, because GW2 wants to be a more pvp competitive game. I do love the ideas behind the new combat log. BUT. This game was promised to be not so numbers focused. On the other hand your made it so that players could test with standarized weapons what did more damage in Hearts of the Mists. And then you push competitive pvp. That makes me scratch my head a bit, when I can maybe guess and math out how attributes affect my character. This affects the clarity of your game. And it is BAD for competitive stuff. If I have to rely on guess work in order to make a competitive build. It is simply not possible to balance all traits/builds in a way that all are equally valid. At least give me clear info what is doing what.

Which brings me to my last point. Summing up communication and Clarity.

Love Ava, post to long → moar posts

cont. from above

Your patch notes are too vague.

This is a big point, so let me quote and explain, why I find this to be the most annoying issue.

Dungeon changes: There are some, most of them bug fixes, some mentioned, some not.(july 29) “Ascalonian Catacombs Explorable Mode: Fixed several issues causing Detha’s story path to stall.” First Reaction: Woot, no Detha stall any more. But there is no mention of Detha’s new behaviour. And that changes the defence part when she builds her traps dramatically. That should have been mentioned in the patch notes as should have the new (August 12) Turmaine fix, which fixed the 2 spots you could bug him out, by most likely updating his pathing/general leashing in that dungeon. The players will not be angry with you when you fix bugs/exploits. And if you write it into the patch notes there is also the added benefit of telling the players most things you do. And if that fix is an unintended consequence, tell them in an update.

Clarity: (august 12) “Guardian Scepter Power: Updated the damage skill facts for scepter skills to properly scale with this trait.” – scale how? If you provide us with a new and improved combat log (that finally formats/and shows condi damage right) and you want to offer a competitive pvp experience, we need cold and hard numbers from you. Is this a purely visual fix, does it involve balance? It is simply to unclear what is meant by this post. (july 29) “Fixed various issues in Frostgorge Sound events.” What did you fix exactly? For someone not playing FGS this note is a mystery. And for players playing FGS there is too little information if the bug they were concerned about is fixed. Notes like this create more dissatisfaction than no note at all. Because the feedback is to vague. Now it is more work to say “In FGS we fixed: a on event A, b and c in event D” You might also think that it opens you up to more criticism, but the criticism you will now receive is more going to be in line of “but in event D when i do this and that it still bugs” than in the line of “but i wrote 2 tickets about event XYZ – anet nubs” Even if you didn’t touch event XYZ. The player does not know.

Your players are after all beings who want to be comforted and noticed. I hate to compare companies, because underlying aim/resources/policies/experience and even problems can be so vastly different that it cannot be anything unfair to compare, but Riot Games does some things right in the communication department. And no this is no scream for a pbe (i prolly wouldnt even be able to qualify to join or even their openness on forums), this does conflict with your policy and i accept this. This is about their support experience and their patch notes. All of the support tickets you throw in via form get a response, be it a canned Front Desk one or a more human one. You cannot post a ticket from within the game, which is an interesting, but probably not viable idea for GW2 because of its size, and location data also matters. But you do have our account email. Respond to our tickets. And let us add to them. Also their patch notes nowadays have 3 things lacking to GW2 patch notes: Cold hard facts, reassurance that stuff is worked on but not ready/subject to major chance, reasoning why a change is happening and a human touch. On point 2 it is certainly company policy how far one wants to go, but the other points make patch notes so much more human and engaging and satisfying. (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-413-notes) as reference.

Love Ava

Tl;Dr: Read the wall of text ^^

ipan.4356:

“Rework huge portions of the game” is almost never in the agenda.

With the exception of FFXIV – the only MMO in my memory that was rebooted – I’ve never played it, so I have no idea how well that went.

WoW? There are fairly large changes over its history with new expansions. Star Wars Galaxies NGE as well.

Big big thanks and respect to both Chris, Regina, Colin & co for taking the time and reply on a weekend!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Thanks for the feedback Michael. Note your step plan is roughly how i have run my CDIs in the past. Some good ideas there.

Chris

hey chris,

I’ll put this on top

Do you think it would be possible to get written or numeric feedback from a wider player base ingame? With the forums only representing a small portion of the player base, do you think it’s a good enough average of opinion?

I did notice your CDIs following this structure, roughly. Not asking for this exact workflow but I didn’t feel like there was a clear enough structure or optimized for time spent, which might just be the forums structure. The developement of the CDI happened very naturally, which might not be the best case.
The meat of the discussion would be the time after you have made your statements/summary of issues. I felt like there was too much time spent on gathering ideas and not so much on finding out what the best compromise between player wishes and your schedule and effort would be.
I also think you spent a bit too much time on interacting, I love that presence but you already said it’s a chore.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Sorry that should say: “Our company policy is not to talk about what’s in development”.

-CJ

Colin,

Do you think it would be too much effort or to expensive for you guys to create a framework within you could talk about concepts without giving out specific enough information to crash markets?

This policy feels very very restrictive, telling developers they cannot talk about what they develop. While it actually makes sense in some cases like precursor crafting, I don’t think this secrecy helps with things like the commander tag changes.

Keeping everything top secret also often suggests bigger changes than what will end up in game and you get called out on hyping things beyond their actual scope, which could be prevented. You put all changes into the same “top secret” category.

Behind the scenes material often helps creating a nicer environment also, besides being incredibly interesting, is this an idea to run parallel the the customer relations changes that are incoming? At one point.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

It is actually much less frustrating to just say it like i see it. I hope though that this approach is taken in the spirit it is intended and not in a negative way.I tend to be like this on CDIs.
Chris

With the chance of assuming too much, that’s pretty much how the internet works no? If you’re being upfront honest people can feel it and will
1. give you less sarcastsic bs or more honest bs (it’s still bs)
2. organize themselves and their feedback in an equally honest way.

People on the internets are very very very used to the marketing lingo, over hyping and stalling by talking nice and when they/me perceive something as purely hype or marketing mumbo jumo, they’ll react in an “appropriate” way.

Nick.6972:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

nexxe.7081:

lordkrall.7241:

Jandopo.2107:

Mr. Whiteside, I have a question.

Do you remember the Commander CDI 1 year ago? Why we got only 3 more colors out of it? I love the idea of CDI, but after this I wonder if the community’s time and effort are wasted…

Or maybe the big improvements to the commander system are yet to come?

Do you?

The main things that came out of that CDI was different colors for tags and account-bound tags.

Both which we are getting now.

Wrong. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-Commander-System/page/14

Commander Visibility
More options for the Color/Shape of the tag itself. This could be tied to functionality or rank of commanders but mainly targeted around organization.
Removal of buff display to enemies. As well as we should avoid doing skills/abilities that highlight the commander to enemies.
Ability to limit visibility to a sub group, party, guild, ect..
Tag sizing. (I debate this a bit as when you auto size the tag you can often lose the ability to see how far away something is but it was brought up a lot so listing it here)
Add squads to LFG system.

Commander Tools
More detailed supply info that’s always up. (Increased radius)
Ability to create sub roles within a squad.
Current squad tools are rarely used.
Seems to be some debates on buffs to followers, but there is a lot of good examples of ways to do that.
Squad size needs to be increased.
Ability to group up parties or other commanders to form different squad organization.
Improved chat suppression for commanders
Commander announcements (yellow text across the screen)
Open/Closing Squad tools

Commander gating
Current 100g gate isn’t the cleanest gate. (Whole goal behind a gate is to limit the number of commanders out there.
Gating using WvW abilities seems to have some debate to it, but seems like something we should avoid.
Account bound commander tags vs character bound.

This wasn’t even half of the suggestions in that thread either. The fact that Anet paid it’s WvW team (if there is one anymore) for 8+ months to add different colors to Commander Tags and make them Account-Bound is baffling. Yes, i know, they also worked on EotM, and Golem Mastery, and Siege Disabler, but EotM came out in February 2014. That’s 7 months for Golem Mastery and Siege Disabler?

So yes, i agree with Chris Whiteside, and it’s not worth the frustration when player’s suggestions are ignored. And yes, they were ignored and weren’t implemented.

Hi Nexxe,

My advice to you then would be to not get involved in the next round of CDIs.

Chris

That’s a legitimate question though.
After 2 WvW CDIs, 8 months later, all WvW developer team can deliver to us is new Tag colors, new mastery and siege disable trick?
I’m no programmer, however, I fail to see how this would take 8 months considering the size of the Arena Net.

Great suggestions, feedback and well thought out criticism has been written many times before, however, there’s no fruition.

That’s because there is no development team that works exclusively on WvW.

ColinJohanson.2394:

ipan.4356:

May I ask, “not allowed” by whom? You guys are the developers. Who do you need permission from?

Sorry that should say: “Our company policy is not to talk about what’s in development”.

-CJ

which in hindsight can be seen as a bad policy. Just look at the dissatisfaction on these forums, that policy is the sole cause of that.
Dissatisfaction on forums will spread into the game and onto other forms of communication beyond Guildwars2.com and its affiliated sites.

Your policy makes sense in a early state of a game, as saying "we would like to make a great game with this feature can cause your competitors to jump on the same wagon and announce said content in a “major patch” in order to steal customers. However Guildwars 2 is no longer a new game. It is young, but not new, and a core of customers has been built, customers that will not leave this game due to minor disappointments.
So perhaps it is time to rethink that policy and update/rework it to meet the present needs.

Prysin.8542:

which in hindsight can be seen as a bad policy. Just look at the dissatisfaction on these forums, that policy is the sole cause of that. […]

I understand your point, but how would you suggest to prevent future outrages about features that get announced (like the precursor hunt) and possibly scrapped later on because it doesn’t meet Anets standards?

People will scream that they’d rather want a bad implementation than nothing at all, but this would lead to a game where half-baked stuff is implemented which would lower the quality of the game as a whole.

ColinJohanson.2394:

ipan.4356:

May I ask, “not allowed” by whom? You guys are the developers. Who do you need permission from?

Sorry that should say: “Our company policy is not to talk about what’s in development”.

I think that unless that policy is changed – without a willingness to talk about and seek feedback on what’s actually coming up – then any attempt on you or Chris Whiteside’s to “increase communication” with us will fall flat.