Guild Wars 2

I think the new CDI is going to be productive and respectful! I have high hopes and am feeling VERY optimistic!

About communication..

Not knowing if we will actually get a CDI on that topic, still something I would want to get off my chest. Even though I value the CDI approach very high, and I think it’s a great way to get customer feedback in a more structured approach…

I still feel like its very much a one way street, not so much that Anet is not contributing during the CDI, even though we would all love to see more red post in there I am sure. But I’m talking about what happens next, and I think that is also were some of the recent upheaval comes from… Mainly, after the CDI is finished, ANet talks about stuff and then makes a decision to do X or A or w/e. Works on that, and then it’s presented ‘as is’.

I dunno, I sort of miss a step in ‘communication’ there, I’m not sure if it would work, but where is the step: “We discussed the CDI internally, and we are strongly leaning towards doing ‘this’, what do you guys think? before we put the time into it.” Once you put ‘this’ and substitute it by 3 coloured commander tags for 300g each, I am sure the responses are clear by now. ‘Yet & But, seeing it is not a ’given’ we just have to deal with, it’s an intermediate step in communication where you ask the person(s) you talked to about how they feel about the choice you eventually made".

It would give Anet things to talk about, even thought they are not finalized, they could test the waters with whether the chosen road is the one to take; and we are not surprized by something we wanted somewhat but didn’t ask for in that rendition of it.

Heck, it might even be ‘after’ the thing is finalized, but then ‘talked about’, not dumping it as this is what it is, deal with it release… but more of a ‘this is what we made of it, what do you think b4 we put it into the game’. So that they do not feel the obligation to then have to come up with the feature, or say they failed, and stick to the ‘we only talk to what is ready’… yet accepting that there is a difference between ‘talking about it’ and ‘releasing 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

Maybe it’s not such a great policy and sincerely needs to be considered for revision. For inspiration and examples, take a look at what Digital Extremes does, the folks behind Warframe. Their openness and even inclusion of players in the design process is a big part of their success. Grinding Gear Games, makers of Path of Exile, are also excellent at communicating with their players. There are good examples out there you can learn from and adapt to your own way of doing things.

ArenaNet prides itself on doing things differently within the game and we love you for it. How about taking that approach to outside the game, too?

It could be an amazing, beautiful thing.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

phys.7689:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

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.

you dont, thats what it all boils down to. Yes you create expectations you dont fullfill, but many times its worse to create no expectations than to fail to meet one. Also explaining WHY you didnt meet expectations, and HOW you plan to meet them asap is a HUGE means of dealing with expectations that arent met.

The reality is that the announcement of the precursor scavenger hunt SAVED anet for many many many months. They had a big problem boiling, and knowing it was in the works HELPED anet and players grin and bear it because they had hope for the future. Never announcing that feature would have helped no one, and hearing peoples feedback about the concept probably helped anet scrap some ideas that they may have gone with if they didnt announce that idea.

precursor hunt announcement gave anet a lot more benefit than not doing it would have done, the results were bad because they didnt deliver, the results would have been worse had they said nothing about it 1 year ago, and we still had no solutions, or if they had gone forward with a system that all feedback that came from the announcement shows would be a bad answer.

short version, for arenanet, the precursor announcement was actually a way better thing than the current system would allow, even with its negative backlash.

The precursor hunt is simply something we just wasn’t ready to be discussed. Case in point therefore regarding policy.

This said I personally feel that there is room for maneuver and a policy adjustment to be more inclusive.

I am really looking forward to seeing how the next CDI goes as that could lead to some more open discussion for sure.

Chris

P.S: Going back to bed for a bit.

though my first inclination is to go into why it was something that needed to be discussed, and i stand by that statement 120% logically and upon looking at the results of those announcements, we probably wont agree, and its not really that important you agree with me.

I do however think its important that whatever communication system/strategy you guys come up with can somehow give people realistic expectations for the overall direction of the game/and development of the game. Also i believe it has to allow you to get some real feedback on features that are in development so you can avoid near misses, (good idea not so great implementation situations)

I feel like these two issues are central to having positive outcomes from player communication.

its a very real statement that people have no idea what the future of gw2 holds, and that isnt working well for a lot of people (especially people who have been playing longer)

Hei Chris
Did you can say something about directx11 support? Last news about this is 2 years old on facebook and since that there arent any news/updates about it….

Grebcol.5984:

Hei Chris
Did you can say something about directx11 support? Last news about this is 2 years old on facebook and since that there arent any news/updates about it….

Oh yeah i would also love to hear something about that.

Leolas.6273:

Grebcol.5984:

Hei Chris
Did you can say something about directx11 support? Last news about this is 2 years old on facebook and since that there arent any news/updates about it….

Oh yeah i would also love to hear something about that.

They’re not allowed to talk about it – company policy.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

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

Well that pretty much sums up Anet doesn’t it lol.

What that folks who don’t see value in something are probably better of not partaking in it?

I think that’s a pretty reasonable statement isn’t it that applies to many things. here is an example I don’t like getting involved in political discussions but I don’t berate or judge folks for doing so.

Kudos for your attempt at sharp wit though (-:

Chris

I kind of agree with Chris here. I’m not the biggest fan of the CDI presentation so try to avoid much participation with them. That said, if the devs find them useful, if the community finds them useful, then my opinion towards them is moot if they lead to meaningful changes to content.

Even myself, with my sceptical attitude to the CDI structure, can still visibly see ideas coming through from them into the game. Anyone who can’t, either didn’t read them at all or willfully chooses to ignore any positive developments to further harbour their own case/agenda.

@Ipan

I know but a small update like “its not from the table” would be nice.

Grebcol.5984:

@Ipan

I know but a small update like “its not from the table” would be nice.

It is verboten.

Perhaps it’s time that Arenanet reconsider their policy regarding discussion of development progress.

Players do not deserve to be blindsided by announcements that incredibly popular facets of the game like SAB and dungeons will not be receiving developer attention for the foreseeable future. That’s not information that should be handed out in interviews as if it’s obvious to community.

I think the community would be far more tolerant of design goals not being met on time than Arenanet management believes. All of the issues with the community recently seem to be the result of management at Arenanet failing to properly inform the community on the direction the game is heading.

If management were to return to quarterly (or hell, even yearly) state of the game posts, I think you would see much less discontent in the community over the direction of the game. Put out a blog post stating, "we’d like to do x, y, and z this quarter (or even year) and we’re making no guarantees that x, y, z come out on time, that they come out in the exact form we’ve detailed here, or that they’ll be released at all. "

Management has a catastrophic misunderstanding of its community if it does not believe the community is capable of understanding those conditions. We are not children and we realize that goals are not always met and changes mid-production are often necessary. We prefer to be informed and expect change in the plan than to be left in the dark.

Chris, Colin, John Smith, and everyone else, thank you for taking the time to acknowledge the community’s concern. I try to keep up and skim through all the “dev tracker” posts on a daily basis, and just that alone has taken a considerable amount of time, so I genuinely appreciate the time and effort you guys take to respond. I also see all the cynical, accusatory attacks “comments” towards you all, and even from an “outside” perspective, it’s disheartening and hurtful to see; so, thank you for not giving up despite comments like that. You have created a unique and incredible game with endless potential and your passion and love for this game shines through in the videos, the comments, the extra effort you put in after hours, and in the game itself. Please don’t let trolls and toxic comments discourage you or rob you of your joy and passion for this game or take away how much you love working on and improving this game. Instead, I hope that the strength of your vision and the determination of your passion will inspire hope in even the most hurt and discouraged players. Anyway, I try not to post too much and I hope I didn’t waste too much of your time. I really love this game, and I share your passion for it, and I hope together we can make it better.

P.S. Top three things I’d like to see changed/addressed in GW2:

• 3) Allow a sink for excess ascended crafting materials (i.e. bloodstone, dragonite, emphyreal) to be used to boost permenant account karma gain %, exp gain %, and gold gain %, just like luck from excess fine/masterwork can increases magic find %
• 2) Reintroduce wepon-set specific claim vouchers that are always sold for the same price as the weapons in its set (e.g. sell a “chaos weapon voucher” for 1 black lion claim ticket; when the chaos weapon set raises to 5 tickets sell the “chaos weapon set voucher” for 5 tickets, but a “chaos weapon voucher” will always be traded for any chaos weapon in a 1:1 ratio)
• 1) Precursors/Legendaries. Make them all account bound, remove the RNG element, and standardize means of aquisition such that everyone has to go through the same process to get them. These items (IMO) should not be in the hands of every player who wants them, they should be coveted, and they should exclusive to “hardcore” players who either are avid players who spend a LOT of time in the game (I’ve 5k hours so far), are dedicated to the game (the same thousands of hours spread over more years), and/or are able to pass some skill test (Liadri 8 orbs stressed me out, but maybe normal Liadri or SAB tribulation mode level difficulty is reasonable).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Grebcol.5984:

@Ipan

I know but a small update like “its not from the table” would be nice.

I will ask the folks tomorrow.

Chris

Thank you chris !

CDI underway and people can’t follow the directions they want to give their 2cents or give a 3rd option that is why things get nowhere people don’t put the need of the community as a whole in front of what they personally think should be done…

says only to choose no topics and people STILL give topics… FOCUS PLEASE! that is why its almost impossible to communicate with the forum community.

If you are a 1000h player, then ask yourself.

What is it that kept you going for that long and does ArenaNet add hours of fun faster to the game than you can invest them? Otherwise, you are going to hit a wall. You may be able to find new hours of fun at an aspect of the game you ignored before, e.g. sPvP. Or you may come to not like other parts of a very broadly set up game and be frustrated about it. GW2 is not a magically self-reconfiguring game with auto-created content in every corner. There are limits.

What is ArenaNet supposed to do about this? Ask 10 people what ArenaNet should do, you will end up with 20 answers ranging from new maps, to PvP modes, to classes, to new races, to Super Adventure Box, to anything really. ArenaNet can try its best to “group” interests together and spread out projects in hopes of pleasing the most people, but the fundamental nature of the argument is not going to change. People having to come to terms with the fact of a game which provided them unprecedented amounts of fun, not adding new fun faster than the player can consume it. This is especially a problem, since LW2 is focusing on creating a type of content where the ratio between development time and consumption time is not in ArenaNet’s favor. Even if there are mechanisms trying to offer replay value, those mechanisms, in reality, are an entirely different type of game. For all intents and purposes, the story missions and open world missions which are part of LW2 might belong to two different games, they are two entirely different types of gameplay experiences. They just happen to be in the same patch and a good average of players like that mixture, while other like only one part, and some players like neither part, hoping for the next WvW content patch.

When it comes to talking about the future, ArenaNet is cursed if they do and cursed if they don’t. If they don’t, then you end up with a situation such as this one, over and over and over again. A systemic error, if you will. The upshot being that at least for the present everybody might fool themselves into thinking the next update was exactly what they wanted, because everything told about the future is deliberately vague. Even with the best intentions, this can result in looking malicious. What we see now, is the backlash of that. If ArenaNet do communicate, then we must realize that resources are limited, so there is a good chance that something will get made that some players will never have an interest in. Every announcement then carries the risk of scaring players away. Even if something some players should like is announced right now, the time until it might happen could undermine the fun they have right now and discourage them from playing a game they would have still enjoyed, otherwise. ArenaNet would heve been better off shutting their mouth then and we are back to square one.

What is the choice then? Constantly over-deliver, constantly crunch, constantly run people in the ground to make content? And btw, everything has to be part of the so called Living Story and ongoing narrative which rivals cinematic experiences on HBO! Sorry, please, no. There is another word for cinematic → non interactive, which is bad for a game. There is another word for A Game of Thrones which is: “A tale of consecutive clips featuring sex, violence, misery, and an occasional reaction shot of a shocked person to remind the audience to throw up an emotion.” At least that stuff is only on once a week, for some reasons the antics of Handsome Jack are far better in high dosage.

There isn’t even a reason to drown everything in story. Look at Minecraft, never before has an audience accepted games that just tried to be games, not loosely connected cinematics with the legal minimum of gameplay in order to receive a tax bonus. ArenaNet might be ahead in the story game, but it does not need to be the altar everything is sacrificed at.

and finally, when everybody can recite the roadmap for Sony, Microsoft, EA, Blizzard and whomnot in their sleep, but non of your fans can excite other fans for anything that is further away than next week, then there is a problem. It is the second birthday of GW2 this week for crying out loud: there should be angry CMs because somebody leaked the birthday minipet, not vacant positions.

I know I’m jumping ahead, but I want to at least make a recommendation on topics for the CDIs. I know the devs can choose the categories, so its food for thought (in Chris’s situation, coffee :p).

1. The first CDIs should be on the previous features, the mega server, trait finding, wardrobe (gonna be honest, wardrobe just needs some bug fixing. Stop asking me to spend 0 charges for dying armor! XD).

2. Second set of CDIs should be with the communication and new ideas, features, etc CDIs.

3. The new feature pack CDIs. I say these third because there should be a period of time it comes out that we as players (and devs) see how it works, and test it for ourselves. Then a proper discussion can insue.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cainejw.7142:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

However a number of CDIs…

The point is, as I posted before, you gotta treat users as more than wallets. You gotta talk to users like people. Joke with us, laugh with us, take 30 minutes out of your day to reply to 2-3 threads either with content based on the game or just jokes and laughter. Join your community. Then you won’t have to push the gem store with “And you can get gold!” We will see you as people who we want to support so we’ll buy that useless, silly trinket in the store because it goes to help the developers we appreciate.

Finally, in today’s world, professionalism is dead. You’re wearing jeans and t-shirts to work. Unless you’re at the top of the ladder, you’re going polo and slacks. You guys don’t have to treat us like you’re in suits. Treat us like you’re in jeans. Be cool. Be fun. Be HUMAN.

You should probably read through the entire thread. Every one of your points as been covered and for want of a better term is old feedback now.

Thanks for taking the time to post however.

Chris

I can promise you, he’s taking a lot more than “30 minutes” out of his day to read, respond, and reassure the community, even though none of that is his job, especially not the last part. It takes me way more time than that just to skim through his replies on a daily basis.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The precursor hunt is simply something we just wasn’t ready to be discussed. Case in point therefore regarding policy.

I’d like to address this specifically, because it keeps coming up, and it illustrates a larger issue.

Regardless of whether you jumped the gun mentioning it, it’s obviously something people wanted to hear. People keep bringing it up because it’s become obvious that the route to a Legendary isn’t functional with drop/forge RNG at this point in the game. It’s become more of an economic and playtime issue than anything. I truly believe you’d be hearing about precursor crafting at this point in the game, regardless of whether you’d mentioned it or not.

Having a route to a precursor means a focused goal that people can work towards. It’s also new content in some shape or form. Similar to new PvP and WvW maps, new dungeons, new open world content, it’s representative of something the game community wants – new content and new goals. The reason people keep harping on these things that you guys mentioned two years ago is because they’re still important and relevant, now more than ever, since so much of the game has become familiar to long term players. I understand the frustration of having people hang on your every word, but please understand that these are things that the community have prioritized over others and want in the game.

And thank you to you and all the other Anet folks that have taken time to read and respond, especially on your day off. It shows a marked change for the better and is much appreciated.

phys.7689:

<big snip>

its a very real statement that people have no idea what the future of gw2 holds, and that isnt working well for a lot of people (especially people who have been playing longer)

I agree, and I would add that it isn’t just the uncertain, unknown future of GW2 that is causing player friction in regards to lack of communication. They seem to have that wrapped up in a tight little bow of company policy. What about the very current issue of the last feature patch and the wall of silence that followed? I’d say that isn’t working well for a lot of people either, but it would be a thunderous understatement.

Chris, I suppose I would just like to know why feedback threads were made and then there was no reciprocal discussion. Your players made thousands of well thought out posts, with suggestions of improvements, and there wasn’t even acknowledgement by your team that our concerns were being looked into. I simply don’t understand how that choice on your end was a good decision.

I’m also going to share that my personal frustration of the Trait re-vamp, our attempts to gain answers and fixes, and then 5 months of silence was a deciding factor in making me leave your game. Not only uninstalling, but throwing the CD in the garbage. I don’t want to sound over-dramatic on that, but it is exactly what happened.

Now, understand that I love GW2. I was having a blast up until the last Feature Patch in April. But, the non-communication just killed the game for me (as well as the Trait re-vamp). I have no problems whatsoever buying another copy of your game, but I need to see if the conditions here improve. If I didn’t love the game, if I didn’t care about it’s future, then I wouldn’t have been following and participating in discussion for the last few months.

I really hope there is a turnaround. I think it’s great that you are here talking again! But, you also have to understand that a lot of ill-will came about by months silence. I’m hoping that these discussions, and the up-and-coming CDI will improve the current player/dev relationship.

Everyone wants personal gain. They think ANET ignores forums when in almost every interview they make a reference to a “hot” topic. CDI asks simple request good to organize and give direction to the discussion and people STILL focus on what they themselves want. Two options in current CDI and people still manage to derail the discussion by adding 3rd 4th and 5th “options” We are working on how to better organize and people still raging about this and that and adding topics when we are working on organization. How can you be confused why developers don’t “listen” to you when you don’t make an effort to listen to them! I wonder how many people when taking a test go straight into writing and SKIP the directions….. Sorry for raging a bit but it is a bit frustrating to see some people trying to better the situation and others focus on just talking about what THEY think is important….. What happened can not be changed but we can still focus on the future.

I would like to take a stab at this issue. Communication failure (How behavior is modified by the reception of information) can occur for a few reasons. Psychological Noise and Silence are two of these. Power relationships is another.

Psychological noise is the receivers mental environment while communicating, anger can pull the receiver out of the moment and cause a loss of communication between the sender and themselves. If both become angry, then the communication spirals out of each others control.

If silence from the receiver is their reaction, then all the sender can do is reiterate their point to see if there is a response. If no response continues then silence becomes a social affront leading to hurt feelings which then instigates psychological noise on the senders part, starting the breakdown process.

Finally, the sender and receiver have to understand their place in the power structure within the system. If the receiver feels they have a collaborative place in the system, then silence from the sender begins the psychologic noise, which ultimately derails the overall message.

Based on this information everyone should figure out how to deal with the issue that we have, i.e. a group asking for our input, whose basic response HAS to be silence..or a message so dilute as to be equatable to the same. To the users, to maintain any level of communication, we have to hold onto our composure, understand the senders predicament, have realistic expectations, and as Wooden Potatoes so aptly put it ‘Calm the Kitten Down.’

To those in Arenanet, be certain that, when you ask for collaboration, you have some way to show that our input has been received and is of real value. Otherwise we are not collaborating and we are also not communicating. We are being allowed to vent social pressure against a system, to maintain our interest in that system.

As a community, allowing pressure to build over a companies decision to be silent is understandable, but in many ways, we have brought this upon ourselves by creating so much psychologic noise at things that hurt our feelings, that there is no other choice for the company to do but remain silent. As the company, it is unfair to expect us to be collaborative in the face of silence…or a message so diluted as to be considered one and the same. Without both sides changing the way they work together this does not forebode well for the continued application of funds to support the ultimate goal, a profitable game in which people want to become invested in.

Oh, we know Anet reads the forums. I’ll stick to my criticism of this ‘no talkies’ policy with my belief that seeking specific input earlier in the process would lead to lots fewer forums blowups, though.

So for the CDIs.. Anet, pick your own topics. Forward looking topics, as general or specific as you like.

And in general.. no offense intended, but stop acting like dopes.

You draw this huge lesson about early announcements from the precursor hunt scandal. Lesson drawn: don’t do early announcements. Instead, my lesson? ‘Keep folks in the loop when plans change or get delayed’.

You introduce a changed dungeon path and a new SAB world. Lesson drawn, “New dungeons don’t work.” – My lesson? “Fiddle with the recipe, cuz we recognize how different those two new experiences were from ‘standard’, and yet Molten Facility and SAB world 1 were massively popular”

.. and so on and so forth. Maybe you’re too terrified of user reactions, cuz you’re drawing a lot of timid conclusions.

Mike O Brien.4613:

We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: we don’t talk speculatively about future development.

ColinJohanson.2394:

“Our company policy is not to talk about what’s in development”.

Sigh. And this is why, despite the near-Herculean effort by the wonderful Chris Whitside, I feel that this latest push to improve communication is, like all other attempts before it, doomed to failure.

I understand why this policy was initially put in place. But you (as a company) are following the letter of the policy to the detriment of your relationship to your community, as opposed to following the spirit of the policy when it makes sense to do so.

Others have already mentioned that there are other ways to accomplish the end goal of not being held accountable for changes in content production that have already been announced:

• Communicate very clearly that things are subject to change (not in tiny print at the bottom of a blog post or in a later follow-up post in a forum thread). I, too, get frustrated when people cling to announcements of future content as “promises” when it is fairly obvious to most of us that they are not written in stone.

• When priorities change or problems arise, you must communicate the delay in implementation. People really only become angry and toxic when they are kept in the dark for long periods of time. This has been the result of your communication policy, and it will not change unless your policy also changes. If you keep us informed, I believe most of us will be on your side.

You are being repeatedly given feedback that your policy does not work as intended. If you do indeed listen to feedback, then do not ignore this. This one little gem could singehandedly change the way the community relates to this company for the good.

I just want to know when the heck the guilds banks and rep and all of that is going to be cross server, if ever…

minbariguy.7504:

Mike O Brien.4613:

We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: we don’t talk speculatively about future development.

ColinJohanson.2394:

“Our company policy is not to talk about what’s in development”.

Sigh. And this is why, despite the near-Herculean effort by the wonderful Chris Whitside, I feel that this latest push to improve communication is, like all other attempts before it, doomed to failure.

SMH. If representatives cannot speculate about what might be worked on, nor can they actually discuss current work, what content are they allowed to discuss? Why allow anyone to speak in public except those in Marketing? Why is this different for other NCSoft games? Aren’t there road maps ahead for others? Why is this disallowed for GW2? Was past experience so toxic? Although I understand the reason why communication is breaking down on this game, I am left to wonder as to how these rules have come into play and why they are being followed in such a draconian manner as to be detrimental.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Going out for a bit, will be back shortly.

Chris

Take care brother.

Zoso.8279:

CDI asks simple request good to organize and give direction to the discussion and people STILL focus on what they themselves want. Two options in current CDI and people still manage to derail the discussion by adding 3rd 4th and 5th “options”

People are offering a third option because, in all honesty, the two options given are both terribly flawed and won’t result in any type of open communication. If ANet chooses the topic for the next CDI, be prepared for a huge outcry of “that’s not even important, why is there a CDI on it”. If the players choose the topic be prepared for lots of ANet responses like “we’re not able to do that at this time”. The most obvious solution is to have ANet produce a list of realistic and feasible topics and the community determines which item from the list is most important. Win-win.

Why lock yourself into two flawed options when there’s a distinctly superior third option?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lheimroo.2947:

Oh, we know Anet reads the forums. I’ll stick to my criticism of this ‘no talkies’ policy with my belief that seeking specific input earlier in the process would lead to lots fewer forums blowups, though.

So for the CDIs.. Anet, pick your own topics. Forward looking topics, as general or specific as you like.

And in general.. no offense intended, but stop acting like dopes.

You draw this huge lesson about early announcements from the precursor hunt scandal. Lesson drawn: don’t do early announcements. Instead, my lesson? ‘Keep folks in the loop when plans change or get delayed’.

You introduce a changed dungeon path and a new SAB world. Lesson drawn, “New dungeons don’t work.” – My lesson? “Fiddle with the recipe, cuz we recognize how different those two new experiences were from ‘standard’, and yet Molten Facility and SAB world 1 were massively popular”

.. and so on and so forth. Maybe you’re too terrified of user reactions, cuz you’re drawing a lot of timid conclusions.

No that isn’t the case at all.

I have taken the time to answer loads of questions in this thread and many comments around your points can be found in my previous responses.

No idea what you mean by ‘Dopes’ but overall it isn’t conducive to healthy discussion in that i Have no idea what you mean.

Hopefully you will find some of the answers to your questions and assumptions.

Chris

Being a former dope-head I might be able to explain, and I actually wanted to point this out as well in a thread, but might as well do it here (aka. your 180degree turns) …

Anyways: dope is all about the rush (which can be positive (good high) or negative (bad trip)) but both will be this experience of a rush. So how does that apply, well it sometimes feels that when you face criticism or critiques, you react all ‘doped up’ take a complete 180, and fully rush the other way… perhaps, ‘hyped up’ is about the same experience as ‘doped’ implies…

F/e the LS, where it was this mayor 1x big open world ordeals, to now, a timid stream replay-able mostly instanced personal story expansion. While I hope it will pick up some steam, and even though I think in part this solved some issues. It is a full 180… and if you check feedback, there are numerous people missing these big open world things… (a permanent big boss open world event would certainly help here but that aside)

Same with SAB, so ok, part 2 wasn’t all people expected, some things are hit and miss, no need to just abandon it. Analyse why it was received so differently than part 1, see if you can rediscover/recapture that part 1 spirit. Or, simply acknowledge this is it, and just put it permanently in the game, with a ‘if we find that spirit again, we will pick this up, currently our priorities lie else where, and we don’t think we have enough inspiration to do a full part 3 at this moment, but enjoy what is there…

That is ‘what I think’ he means with doped, you get this idea in this rush and go with it like a headless chicken, because you think it’s the best idea you ever had. Being all Hyped up, is probably the best equivalent to it, if you aren’t inclined to get intoxicated. But ‘you know’ even alcohol does this, just write down your great ideas at the bar, and read them again the next morning… doped is a bit different, but still…

;tldr: So really, the full 180s you make based upon feedback are sometimes hard to comprehend, not everything needs a full 180, sometimes a 10-30 degree diversion from the original idea is enough to deal with the concerns.

Sorry if this has been discussed at all, but I wanted to bring up an example of clear communication. You should be able to read this even without a forum account, but let me know if you can’t:

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=11317491

This is what the League of Legends forums have looked like for a very long time. They don’t hinder their developers from being explicit about what changes are in the works and what progress is being made. Note these this specifically:

• A player asks in a public method and the dev responds.
• The dev responds on a feature that is both incomplete and subject to change
• The dev goes into great detail about the problems being faced in development and, to that extent, why the change hasn’t been made yet
• The dev gives insight both into long term goals and current procedures
• The dev continues to respond throughout the thread to insight and concern

Long ago, and still today, Riot does this consistently and effectively. Recently they had a beloved champion up for change who wasn’t altered due to community feedback, and they had a massive thread where the developers talked with players about how they felt about the champion.

Anet has been around much longer than Riot. This is the kind of clear community interaction that Anet should be long famous for. And there’s absolutely no way that being open like this has made Riot unsuccessful, given they’re the most successful non-Blizzard game company.

This is what your players want to see. They want developers to talk candidly about what’s being worked on. They don’t expect developers to give timelines, but they love and accept when developers can talk about the development process and why something is or isn’t working and why it might take more time. Involve your players in the development process openly and they will love you. We you can’t open up like this it speaks volumes in the other direction: it leads players to believe you’re not working on anything important, or that your company as a whole has management issues as isn’t actually doing anything. Give your players confidence. Look at the upvote score on that dev post; talking candidly about a developing feature scored heaps and heaps of praise from the community. Nobody was mad because there we no promises, everyone was relieved.

Hi Chris!

Few simple ideas to increase meaning of rewards:

Achievments:
- Devide achievments to easy, normal, hard. Make for hard automatic announcement to the guild chat. Players like if somebody will see their success.
- Make for “hard” achievemnts the “title”. It already good reward for many people.
- Make extremely hard achiements and leaderboard for them. People will start to compete.
- Make extremely hard achiements guild based, and leaderboard for them. Guilds will start to compete. For example for guild missions.

WWW-seazons
- Make “alley of fame” and create for winner server unique permanent statue with a name or top-3 server. For each season a new statue. And finisher with this statue.
- Make reward for the object defence. For example if you baby-sittling with a object, upgrade it, protect it, then killing enemy near the object gives you +100% of magic find.
- Between WWW-seazons make “Crazy Friday” on WWW-maps, each Friday like +50% pemanent speed-boost for golems. Or 5 times cheaper cost of sieges. Or 3 times more strong castles. To make existing mehanics more fresh and also you can test any even crazy ideas

PvE
- People like trains. You can make some random chains.
Like kill Fire Elemental, find a key, do a puzzle, kill the champion, take another key to have 2 chests instead of 1 on next champion, etc. Next key will be like a direction for the player.

sPvP
- So BORING to wait 5 minutes between solo-arenas. Stupid waiting kills immersion.
- GW1 had great feature. It not disband random team after each win. After 10 wins you even can try to fight against team-arena. It was so immersive and fun to win once, then 2nd time, you basically found new teammates and win with them and feel that new team is good. And even ask to join to your guild after fight.
- Also like in GW1 Arena will be much more immersive and interesting if few wins in a row will give a gladiator-point. And rewars is a gladiator title. Then this title will be so honored and respectful.

GvG
- Please make leaderboard for guilds for sPvP at least. People like competition. The guild will have meaning for PvP. New players will come to sPvP. It will be a new-player-factory for sPvP. The game will live for years then. Game will be e-Sport then.

minbariguy.7504:

Sigh. And this is why, despite the near-Herculean effort by the wonderful Chris Whitside, I feel that this latest push to improve communication is, like all other attempts before it, doomed to failure.

I understand why this policy was initially put in place. But you (as a company) are following the letter of the policy to the detriment of your relationship to your community, as opposed to following the spirit of the policy when it makes sense to do so.

Players have a tendency to take an offhand comment from a “red” post and turn it into a guarantee carved into the side of a mountain in fifty-foot high letters. Posters still point to a tentative “maybe we could do something like a scavenger hunt” for precursors into a broken promise and fail to recognize that it was never a promise in the first place, several updates have been released about their plans, and the process is still on the table. No doubt many hours of work have been put into the process, and a fair amount of money invested by Anet, but doing it right is more important than doing it quickly, particularly since this particular system has the potential to harm the game if done wrong. But the lack of comprehension and understanding on the part of the players shows the dangers of talking about plans too early.

I completely understand why they would want to err on the side of caution, particularly since the way the Trading Post is set up, speculating about things that may or may not happen in the game has the potential to crash the economy that is carefully constructed and maintained.

If you think people are upset now, this is a brief thundershower compared to the hurricane that would come.

why all those suggestions Lich? Have you any idea what this topic is all about?

I gotta say I feel so sorry for Chris that he has to give up his nights and weekends (family time) to spend it replying to people on the forums.

@Darmikau, that was an interesting thread to go through, I skimmed through 7 pages, but from what I got from that the discussion was very interesting, insightful, respectful (both ways – though possibly the rating system helped there as well), and here I thought LoL was rage hell on earth…

Also nice to see how he used a simple format to address his own work, clear and easy to go through, and even though he didn’t go into full detail, he also didn’t go into a full ‘well I been doing stuff’ either. It was enough to comprehend what he was dealing with, and that is coming from somebody that hasn’t even see the LoL installer up close (aka. me), yet on the other hand he didn’t spoil anything either.

Really good example of how it could be done…

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

why all those suggestions Lich? Have you any idea what this topic is all about?

because I love the GW2 and worry about it,
because no other way to comminicate with devs.
look to my previous post.
just random luck if they will read it or not…

Good work with the anet team vs players interaction chris. Keep it up. Don’t indulge them too much, they can get overwhelming, the least to say.

Lich King.1524:

WWW-seazons
- Make “alley of fame” and create for winner server unique permanent statue with a name or top-3 server. For each season a new statue. And finisher with this statue.
- Make reward for the object defence. For example if you baby-sittling with a object, upgrade it, protect it, then killing enemy near the object gives you +100% of magic find.
- Between WWW-seazons make “Crazy Friday” on WWW-maps, each Friday like +50% pemanent speed-boost for golems. Or 5 times cheaper cost of sieges. Or 3 times more strong castles. To make existing mehanics more fresh and also you can test any even crazy ideas

sPvP
- So BORING to wait 5 minutes between solo-arenas. Stupid waiting kills immersion.
- GW1 had great feature. It not disband random team after each win. After 10 wins you even can try to fight against team-arena. It was so immersive and fun to win once, then 2nd time, you basically found new teammates and win with them and feel that new team is good. And even ask to join to your guild after fight.
- Also like in GW1 Arena will be much more immersive and interesting if few wins in a row will give a gladiator-point. And rewars is a gladiator title. Then this title will be so honored and respectful.

GvG
- Please make leaderboard for guilds. People like competition. The game will live for years then.

I really like the WvW-seasons ideas above. Even if it turned out to be way unbalanced (though global buffing generally seems fair), it would be fun to play for a day anyway just to mix things up.

I really like your ideas for this healthy competition. The game has always been against having competition, but it can be well done if the competition isn’t in a gear grind but instead fosters competition between guilds, PvP, WvW, EotM, and dungeon running, PvE. There are many ways to track a players ability throughout these modes and all can be leaderboarded with rewards ranging from buffs, item chests, mats, existing currencies (we have a bunch already). I think GW2 has a great amount of casual content, but the hard content is missing a key element. What’s missing is more complex encounters, bosses need more complex movement, abilities and variance. Even bosses in PvE could be given movement patterns and skill patterns to make them more “real.” Easy AI leads me to detach from what I’m doing that’s when I get bored.

Other things I would like to see for PvE are different quest lines that occur in world, adding to the lore of the game in a way that’s different from the main storyline. These quests could show a different side of Tyria, the regular folk in need of help that make the player think or undertake a more complex path rather than simple things to do such as herding cows, killing bandits, gathering apples, etc. This is different from events in that they provide a mental challenge (treasure map locating, creating potions to cure an epidemic plaguing the local crops/wildlife/farm animals, puzzles to reset electrical/magical components, riddles from folk that are more challenging, etc.). Also I think caravan events could move faster and NPCs should run faster when following them is necessary.

Fractals could also use some of these ideas, also having a time limit perhaps to grab items and create something based on a prompt given by an NPC (spirit, oracle, dragon, whoever).

I would love a duel option in the PvE to duel another player just for fun, and a proper trade window instead of using mail.

GW2 would also benefit majorly from having different types of items available for reward. So far, there is only equipment, titles, and minis to attain as ultimate rewards for playing. What other rewards can be added to the game to work towards?

On the communication side of things, I think it is a good idea to announce plans or take polls for long term plans from the community and then have final decisions made by ANet. The community gets stirred when there isn’t enough knowledge of what is being worked on, plus it detracts from the interest of playing the game for the future releases. The community doesn’t always know what’s best for GW2, and this is further compounded by the fact that GW2 offers all directions to play the game and some players want only WvW, others only PvE, etc. which can lead to the development team being spread too thin to make adequate progress. Taking in the community’s suggestions and then responding with a post telling the upcoming plans, while also giving reason for not doing other plans would placate the playerbase.

Regardless, I love the game thus far, and it is still young if GW1’s lifespan is anything to go by. Good work so far team and I am optimistic that this renewed communication can bring good and fun changes to the game, while also promoting constructive well-thought criticism and suggestions from the playerbase.

Thanks for all the hard work!

you derail the thread guys, keep your suggestions elsewhere please

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Crise.9401:

This has probably been mentioned already, but since I saw no response for it repetition can’t hurt.

Ages ago, in one of the older Ready Up streams, after the last WvW tournament, a CDI regarding WvW seasons/tournaments was mentioned to be “coming within a week” I don’t think I would have missed it if it did. So whatever happened to that?

Hi Crise,

i will double check. That seems like eons ago so please forgive me for my weak memory (-:

Chris

Any updates on this? Did a quick glance through your post history and didn’t see anything, though I might’ve just missed it.

The longer this thread goes on, the clearer one can see that the problem is extending into multiple dimensions.

(1) What are developers allowed to talk about.
(2) By which means do developers talk to the community and how can their range be maximized. Clearly, out of context red posts do not cut it.
(3) Which space of time is covered, since players organize their goals short middle and long term, while not fully adopting all short middle and long term goals presently in the game. Thus asking more more in specific game categories the like best.
(4) Which are details of gameplay the players want to have addressed more than others. A total scattershot topic.
(5) How is the initial reinforcement of the validity of existing company policies a step forward? It was not assertive and it is getting dismantled quite a bit.

Arghore.8340:

@Darmikau, that was an interesting thread to go through, I skimmed through 7 pages, but from what I got from that the discussion was very interesting, insightful, respectful (both ways – though possibly the rating system helped there as well), and here I thought LoL was rage hell on earth…

I agree, it’s a good example of valuable user-developer discussion. I love rating systems as well, user-posts who troll or can’t contribute will get folded so that you don’t have to go through that nonsense – which is also discouraging for trolls or people who can’t contribute in a respectful manner.

I really think that the forums need an overhaul, since communication between us and the devs is made through the forums and those can get pretty overwhelming to read – which takes more time for the devs than they have.

I made this suggestion before, implement new features in the forums to increase readability.

About communication:

Why should I and anybody else participate in a future CDI? They aren’t going anywhere. They only summarize what has been said in the forums and in chat and in the game for ages, make nice short lists…. and then the tiniest topic is being addressed in a weird way and everything else is thrown away. Because of that I didn’t participate in any past CDI – it never has been any different.

CDI for communication – you will read what the community says, make a list, and then … silence will be. As there has been for the last year for everything the community was trying to say. The most toxic posts are suspended during it, that’s the benefit for you. You are reading the community, but you are not listening to what they say.

You are not communicating, you only make the community make lists of their concerns, and then you take this list somewhere. But not into the game, since I can find only the tiniest bits months later. Things that were first mentioned one year ago, some were around even since the BWEs.

As far as I know, Arenanet sill has 200+ employees. I assume they are doing something. But I cannot see stuff in the game worth of 200+ people’s work. Where is it? Are they developing GW3? Have they developed 3 extensions that were archived right before completion?

If you say: they are working on something great and we are excited about when we are allowed to talk about it: forget it. I don’t believe it.

There was always a great hype about new things in the past, but they turned out being somewhat average and long expected. For example, you made the upcoming commander flag colors an extra blog post announcement. Is this the work of 200+ people of the past months? You got thus far, making the ability to chose a tag color a great and exceptional feature. What a letdown. Where have your ambitions and abilities gone?