Guild Wars 2

Its nice and all that we are getting snippets and tidbits of living story building into season 3, and I am hopeful for the future… but I feel we need more.

The content drought from HoT has “not” done GW2 any favors and too much E-sport and Raid focus has cost the world at its core too much content backlash and time wasting, which prooves neither are a viable medium for the games contentual progression.

Season 3, needs communication:

What we need:

The Players need to have teasers at every turn, screenshots, small concept art tidbits, pictures of current characters with quotes to speculate upon.

It is good to have speculation, it is healthy to HAVE something to speculate upon for a games progression because it means the game “IS” being made and something “is” being made of it.

Communication is Never, a bad thing

Its worrying that only now A-net has finally started to talk to us, now im not saying thats bad, im really glad we have finally had talks. But I really think A-net, you need to keep talking, keep interacting, the community needs something to think about, and right now theres a large number of people thinking "Everythings getting QOL updates, but nothing “new” is being made".

Ive spoken to alot of friends, in my good 100 or so list, granted 100 is not “everyone” but its a good enough number to sum up a decent sized tally of peoples thoughts generally and of that 100, only about 7-9 of them seemed reletivley content with the game in its current state. Most seem more eager to go onto other games, and some have just left already.

People want to know whats going on behind closed doors, not EVERYTHING, spoiling it sucks, but at the same time, give us “Something” to think about.

This doesnt just apply to S3 either, it applies to the “future” of GW2, we need an outline, some kind of makeup that makes the next 6 months and what we can expect in them, for example:

Example of Outline: Gw2 Updates List

Stuff Like:

- A Third World Vs World Borderland
- Season 3
- PvP Season 4, new rewards
- New hairstyles and faces comming soon.
- New QOL Features such as megaserver choice (E.g. choose the RP megaserver)
And much more.

Now im not saying you should add all of the above, im just saying its a template of what people want to see, they want to see something that gives us a “plan” a plan for the future so we “know” what to expect, and we “know” something is being made.

That at least lets us have some element of hope.

Because right now sometimes, it just feels like the game is being downright neglected or ignored, and that the majority of the people that it caters to are being dismissed in favor of “new” audiences that nobody else cared about (raiders, E-sports).

Ultimatley, what im trying to say is…

While I dont speak for everyone, I am fairly sure most of us want to hear something, something to look forwards to, a plan.

So please A-net, sometime soon, give us an idea of what we can expect.

Communication can be a bad thing if they lie.

Any predictions made become lies when a change of plans happens.

Changes of plans are often necessary.

Thus, communication is often a bad thing.

I don’t want this.

Software development, and especially game development, is rife with unexpected delays, budget reallocation, and unpredictable production/programming walls.

The policy of not telling us something until it ships is a mature business decision, because it takes into account those systemic problems with software development.

I’d rather be pleasantly surprised getting something I didn’t know about, than disappointed that something I was expecting didn’t happen.

~EW

Okay, I should probably back up a bit and be a bit more even-handed.

Companies can get in trouble by communicating too much. There seems to be a perception that too much was promised with HoT, and they’ve now gone in the opposite direction by giving us stuff as a surprise — and it’s been working well.

I do think they may have gone too far in the other direction, though.

You mean the content drought before HoT right? we went with 8 months before any major updates from Jan until Oct when HoT was released. And now we are back in that same pattern.

sure we get fixes and general updates, but no new story and the like.

I fear that is now the current state of the game as a whole. But, that is what happens when the community demands expansion packs rather then staying with the living story. And there was plenty of warning from those of us that an expansion pack was not the way GW2 should go, and now we all suffer cause of it.

Why do we need to know ahead of time where the story is going? Why aren’t the current in-game hints enough to start speculation on where/why/when/how?

There are all sorts of reasons why communication is sometimes worse than no communication.

In any case, I hardly ever care about what ANet tells us they are about to do (unless it’s something we can use to start gathering supplies) — I care much more about what they actually do. I’d rather have no “coming attractions” than boring ones or ones that give away all the good jokes or key moments. And aside from the entertainment value of the trailers themselves, they don’t help make a movie more enjoyable.

They give players the story in little bits and they complain. “We want an expansion!”

They give the players an expansion and they complain “We want a constant stream of updates!”

Devs can’t win.

tolunart.2095:

They give players the story in little bits and they complain. “We want an expansion!”

They give the players an expansion and they complain “We want a constant stream of updates!”

Devs can’t win.

?? not even sure what to say.
It’s players like you that destroys a healthy communication with the Dev’s.

Let me be clear here…..

People doesn’t want content, people want MEANINGFULL CONTENT !!!!!!!!!!.

And this is exactly why there is so much friction and a huge chunk of the players left.
Everytime we have friciton A-Net tries to give out everything but content.

People are not angry woth HOT they are angry with what HOT offers.

I am very clear about what people don’t want jut to clarify.
- People don’t need a 2nd job
- People don’t need always repeating events at special timers.
- People don’t need to deserve everything they want, this is a freaking video game.
- People don’t want mindless zombie zerking.
- People hate no customization of skills
- People hate the low variety of monster.
- People absolute hate how A-Net butchered the original map to 60% of it’s former Glory
- People hate grinding for cosmetics.
- Archivements are NO CONTENT !!! Just because you do stuff over and over again doesn’t mean there is more content.
- People are so fed up with repeating the same lukewarm story over and over again.
Dragon comes.. groups who could fight don’t want to… you make them work together…
defeat the dragon….. this is so old and so annoying i could puke we have 1375 more Dragons to come.

You wanna have positive examples ??

- People love adventuring and exploring new locations full of wonder and miracles.
- People love sheer beauty
- People love to play around with skills and outfits
- People want PVE and PVP skills absolutely disconnected, i can’t point this out enough
- People want to hang out with some friends and have a great time, they don’t want to be forced to team up with 60 random people to do a 2nd job.
- People want freedom to do whatever they please, they want a meaning in this world.
- People want homes to decorate and cusomize their own environment. And no, they don’t want to grind 3 month for a chair.
- Peopel want to interact with each other in a meaningfull way.
- People want a story that ties you to your chair.
- People want variety in bad guys… they want twists in storys they want exitement.

i could go on and on with stuff ……….

And you come and tell me Dev’s can’t win ?
Heck, People would cry of joy if Dev’s would at least try to go the extra mile instead cutting corner wherever they can.

Just take a look at GW1 after 10 years you can still go there and have fun with 3-4 people or your own customized heroes. You don’t have to do anythign else than having fun…. this is a huge difference… no grinding, no timer, no fixed skills, every story has it’s own unique boss…… just pure fun…

Quoting from another thread of similar topic:

In all seriousness, they limit just how transparent they are because this community has a disgustingly high ability to self-delude exploratory comments (“we may have precursor crafting out by the end of the year [2013 or ’14, cant remember], but things may change plans”) into concrete Word Of God statements (“we WILL have precursor crafting by the end of the year”) and start flipping kitten like brain-addled monkeys who had their banana taken away when their supposed “promises” didnt happen. That resulted in anet more or less staying quiet on projects until they reach the “short of an act of god killing our servers, this IS happening” stage. Primarily because this means that we’ll have a near-zero chance (because some people exist) of misconstruing exactly what’s happening. It also means we can provide feedback that actually means something rather than being as vague as “I hate sword skills on my class, do something.” Or whatever.

I’m sorry, “we” don’t need that Molyneux-level political promise-making. “You” need it. Moving on…

You want all (or most of) the inside details? Here ya go! Good luck!

“Nothing new and only QoL updates/revamps to old existing content” has been a problem since release and I don’t know why A.net won’t change.

People get bored of doing the same content over and over, no matter how many times you update it to be “better”, it’s still the same content they’ve done a million times.

Please spend more dev time on NEW content and less on OLD content.

The expansion was basically 99% player feedback and metrics, and it performed horribly in sales, and I’d wager, if they released the numbers, just as badly in player retention among those sales.

Stahp with these threads already. No, we don’t “need” to know ANet’s plans. Overcommunication has gotten the devs in hot water in the past because, shockingly, the GW2 playerbase can be extremely fickle and demanding. Yes, we may have one of the friendlier communities when compared to other MMO’s, but take a look at nearly any thread on this topic on the forums and you’ll see just how overtly demanding this community can be. We are not entitled to know what they have in store for us. Wait and see.

I honestly think ANet is much better off by keeping us in the dark about big content and LS updates. The entitlement is so strong on these forums and in-game it can be really disgusting sometimes. Then, because of that entitlement, ANet listens to their vocal playerbase and makes a change a big part of the forums is demanding, only to be met with even more hate-filled diatribes like so many posts on these forum pages, because “they should have listened to us —but, you know, not the us that was demanding the change, but the silent us that didn’t want it.”

Yeah, fully agree with tolunart above. Devs can’t win.

If you want to support the development team, give meaningful feedback and feature requests with reasons why those features should be included. Don’t give demands. Check your entitlement at the door…please?

Kirschsahne.2081:

tolunart.2095:

They give players the story in little bits and they complain. “We want an expansion!”

They give the players an expansion and they complain “We want a constant stream of updates!”

Devs can’t win.

?? not even sure what to say.
It’s players like you that destroys a healthy communication with the Dev’s.

Let me be clear here…..

People doesn’t want content, people want MEANINGFULL CONTENT !!!!!!!!!!.

And this is exactly why there is so much friction and a huge chunk of the players left.
Everytime we have friciton A-Net tries to give out everything but content.

People are not angry woth HOT they are angry with what HOT offers.

I am very clear about what people don’t want jut to clarify.
- People don’t need a 2nd job
- People don’t need always repeating events at special timers.
- People don’t need to deserve everything they want, this is a freaking video game.
- People don’t want mindless zombie zerking.
- People hate no customization of skills
- People hate the low variety of monster.
- People absolute hate how A-Net butchered the original map to 60% of it’s former Glory
- People hate grinding for cosmetics.
- Archivements are NO CONTENT !!! Just because you do stuff over and over again doesn’t mean there is more content.
- People are so fed up with repeating the same lukewarm story over and over again.
Dragon comes.. groups who could fight don’t want to… you make them work together…
defeat the dragon….. this is so old and so annoying i could puke we have 1375 more Dragons to come.

You wanna have positive examples ??

- People love adventuring and exploring new locations full of wonder and miracles.
- People love sheer beauty
- People love to play around with skills and outfits
- People want PVE and PVP skills absolutely disconnected, i can’t point this out enough
- People want to hang out with some friends and have a great time, they don’t want to be forced to team up with 60 random people to do a 2nd job.
- People want freedom to do whatever they please, they want a meaning in this world.
- People want homes to decorate and cusomize their own environment. And no, they don’t want to grind 3 month for a chair.
- Peopel want to interact with each other in a meaningfull way.
- People want a story that ties you to your chair.
- People want variety in bad guys… they want twists in storys they want exitement.

i could go on and on with stuff ……….

And you come and tell me Dev’s can’t win ?
Heck, People would cry of joy if Dev’s would at least try to go the extra mile instead cutting corner wherever they can.

Just take a look at GW1 after 10 years you can still go there and have fun with 3-4 people or your own customized heroes. You don’t have to do anythign else than having fun…. this is a huge difference… no grinding, no timer, no fixed skills, every story has it’s own unique boss…… just pure fun…

I’m not sure stating “players like you destroy a healthy communication with the Dev’s (sic)” is a constructive comment when one claims to speak for the community.

I feel I am a ‘person’ and I don’t want those things, especially not ‘a story that ties me to my chair’! Lol.

You might find the Devs listen more when one speaks only for oneself; not to mention, the forum listening and commiserating, as a whole.

Good luck.

My personal preference is that ANet provide things to do, rather than talking about providing things to do. I guess I lost my “we” license.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

I don’t want this.

Software development, and especially game development, is rife with unexpected delays, budget reallocation, and unpredictable production/programming walls.

The policy of not telling us something until it ships is a mature business decision, because it takes into account those systemic problems with software development.

I’d rather be pleasantly surprised getting something I didn’t know about, than disappointed that something I was expecting didn’t happen.

~EW

Basically this. You’d be surprised how many times I’m told “Yeah this will be done tomorrow” by a programmer and then get a message in the morning “Sorry ran into a lot of bugs and had to undo all of the nights work to fix it” Or something of the sort.

I really like what they are doing with the WvW polls though. And I like the Content pages we get for new releases. Maybe if they could do something like those two ideas combine?

drunkenpilot.9837:

Stahp with these threads already. No, we don’t “need” to know ANet’s plans. Overcommunication has gotten the devs in hot water in the past because, shockingly, the GW2 playerbase can be extremely fickle and demanding. Yes, we may have one of the friendlier communities when compared to other MMO’s, but take a look at nearly any thread on this topic on the forums and you’ll see just how overtly demanding this community can be. We are not entitled to know what they have in store for us. Wait and see.

Agreed to some extent.

ArenaNet will say something like “We will look into such and such…”

Players will say “What happened to such and such that you promised us?”

The word promise is being tossed about too much by players in threads lately. ArenaNet barely use the word promise, if at all.