Guild Wars 2

I just wanted to chime in briefly to say to ArenaNet: This whole open communication direction thing you’re taking with the Dec 10th patch…it’s a beautiful thing.

As a long time MMO player, I’ve seen devs take several different tactics to talking with the community. Sadly, a lot of devs end up being very tight lipped about everything after seeing how up-in-arms a community can get with bad news. Developing and maintaining a game isn’t an easy thing to do and making what often looks like a simple change can often turn out to be a tremendous undertaking or can cause an immeasurable wave of unintended consequences. This makes it dangerous for devs to say something as simple as “We will make X change and it will be released on Y date”.

I know Jon Peters caught the sharp end of the community for talking about some ranger changes that were supposed to come out in a November 2012 patch. When the patch came and went without the type of ranger changes he mentioned, the started flowing with raging posts and honestly I think the devs (understandably) got a lot quieter about future releases after that.

However, the way the Dec 10th patch has been handled has been nothing short of truly awesome. I know it’s taken a ton of work for ANet to read the mountain of posts and to deal with unappreciative little snots that decide to say “WTF ANET U SO DUMB FOR DOING X” instead of saying “Please consider doing X because of Y reasons”. I can’t imagine the time and effort put into reading everything that’s been posted here. I also can’t I admit that I truly understand what it’s like to devote my waking hours into an award winning, living, evolving game, only to have people verbally kitten all over the forums just because they have a different perspective of how things should be.

I can’t say I know what it’s like to be in the shoes of the devs.

But I can say I appreciate it.

Thank you for opening up to us and thank you for being patient with us. I look forward to putting countless more hours and dollars into your game and hope you continue this open dialogue with us in years to come.

- Dahkeus

(p.s. I guess the chiming I did ended up being a bit more than brief, haha)

(p.p.s. Out of all the devs from games past that talked to the community, Gaile Gray was one of the best. I know she’s in a different role now, but she deserves special shout outs.)

They will get a lot of negative feedback from virtually any change they attempt to implement, but in the end that matters a lot less than having open lines of communication – even through the forum rages thir playerbase will end up respecting them a lot more. So kudos, and I strongly encourage them to keep it going.

I definitely agree that it seems like the devs pay special attention to certain things that need to be addressed, but it’s the things they don’t address that get people angry. From Anet’s standpoint, it seems like the Living Story takes precedence over Class Balance. Actually, at this point, I think it’s safe to say that Anet is thinking the Living Story is more important than anything else, and therefore they neglect many other important aspects of the game.

I believe most of the players would take class balance over the living story any day. I, myself, didn’t even participate in many of the Living Stories, and if I did, I played them for about 5 minutes.

Hopefully Anet will address some of the issues in PvE and the gear viability issues. As of now, it seems like they’re doing very well and communicating with the players much more often, so it seems like there’s going to be a lot more communication in the future. Good job so far on communication, Anet!

Didn’t the players ‘vote’ on the subject up for discussion…that being Living Story/World? I am thinking ‘most of the players’ found that more compelling than class balance. At least, on the forums.

Galtrix.7369:

I definitely agree that it seems like the devs pay special attention to certain things that need to be addressed, but it’s the things they don’t address that get people angry. From Anet’s standpoint, it seems like the Living Story takes precedence over Class Balance. Actually, at this point, I think it’s safe to say that Anet is thinking the Living Story is more important than anything else, and therefore they neglect many other important aspects of the game.

I believe most of the players would take class balance over the living story any day. I, myself, didn’t even participate in many of the Living Stories, and if I did, I played them for about 5 minutes.

Hopefully Anet will address some of the issues in PvE and the gear viability issues. As of now, it seems like they’re doing very well and communicating with the players much more often, so it seems like there’s going to be a lot more communication in the future. Good job so far on communication, Anet!

Actually I don’t think most players even know about class balance at all. There are a few hundred people that post here, and hundreds of thousands that play the game. It’s a small percentage. Most people don’t think deeply about their gaming experience. I do. You do. Most don’t. They just come in, bang around on a character for a while, kill some stuff, have some fun, and never look deeper. I’d guess the people who do care and notice are smaller than you’d think. I mean those who run with a zerg, those who don’t SPvP, aren’t necessarily going to notice much. You have to be a dungeon runner, or an SPvPer or a solo/small group WvWer to really notice stuff like that.

And I agree with the OP completely…more transparency is better. Anet has made a lot of their own problems by not communicating, or by communicating poorly. This is definitely a good trend.

As someone who is VERY critical of anet to the point I have not really played in a few weeks due to direction of the game I have to agree that the communication has improved at least on this topic. Changes will always meet resistance and mixed reviews but what has always bothered me most is when changes happen that are totally off base from what classes are having issues with, and then there is no communication for weeks if ever as to why the changes were made. At least having more back and forth with the community helps us understand anets motives and makes them seem less like evil overlords. People are a lot more forgiving if you make them feel like your considering them in your decisions and will be a lot more accepting if/when things don’t quite pan out like you thought.

As a new player I agree 100%. I’m thoroughly impressed by the obvious caring and effort put forth by the dev team, and this is what will keep me playing even beyond the attributes of the game itself.

Well made thread op. I completely agree on everything you stated. You should definitely send a thank you email to them. It is indeed an admirable approach they are taking toward this future patch.

Communication, feedback and organisation (such as quality control, bug tracking etc.) have always been the weakest points of GW2 and Anet. I think this is really amazing that they have realised this and obviously work to improve these aspects. The development process has been a bit lack-lusted and chaotic for the last half a year, but I see it rapidly changing now.

Bravo ANet! Keep it going And don’t get upset about those few vocal aggressive comments – there are always some rude jerks which try to abuse the situation.

Firstly, I completely agree with the OP. Its been a great step forward by anet to be so inclusive in the Dec 10 patch changes. They have also taken some suggestions and added them in the upcoming patch. That’s a really big step forward.

As to whether the devs are prioritizing Living World changes over class balance changes I would say that it may appear that way, however in reality that is not necessarily the case.

As a long time software developer I know that it is easier to add new software than it is to modify it. Creating is easier, as for the most part you have few constraints with what currently exists to worry about, just the addition of what you are trying to achieve. This is in contrast to modifying software which has complex interactions with already exists, what you are trying to achieve and the current user (player) base’s use of the software (classes). The last part of which can be quite volatile

This makes balancing classes very difficult and quite time consuming.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Well made thread op. I completely agree on everything you stated. You should definitely send a thank you email to them. It is indeed an admirable approach they are taking toward this future patch.

Hmm…I don’t know what email address that would go to. .

Einlanzer.1627:

They will get a lot of negative feedback from virtually any change they attempt to implement

I absolutely agree. This will be their biggest hurdle in my opinion.