Guild Wars 2

Eliyahu.1467:

Chuo.4238:

Ojimaru.8970:

But you don’t have concrete proof that these new content, which you include Shadow of the Mad King and Wintersday, alienated “significant groups” of players. All we have are sporadic outcry from vocal forum goers, with positive counterpoints. Are one side’s opinions more valid than the other?

You can kind of tell when the forums are just a low buzz of people QQ-ing over this or that, and when a large number of people are actually upset about something. There’s a difference.

I’m pretty sure that ArenaNet has their head in the sand over it, though. I bet they are still wondering why a large chunk of their playerbase left back in November…

The forums for every game released in recent years is full of pointless whining. The people that enjoy the game spend their time playing the game. The people who enjoy whining post on the forums.

The real tragedy is that the legitimate criticism gets totally drowned out by asinine complaining. I honestly wish the mods would do more thread mergers here. Far too many topics on the front page of these forums are all about the same topics because everyone who has a problem with something like dailies or guild missions feel like they need their own personal soapbox.

I’d like to think that this is probably the reason why ArenaNet doesn’t seem to really listen to their customers. Good feedback is just drowned out in the general QQ.

But I think what’s really going on is they have some formula for how they think they’re going to maximize profits, and they’re trying to fit that square peg into the round hole of what would otherwise be a pretty good game.

So we wind up with poorly implemented gear grinds, content that divides up the playerbase (fractals/open world, big guild/small guild, and so forth), and funnels that push people towards certain areas of the game, away from others, and discourage people from “playing how they want”. It’s like they’re trying to please everyone, and that’s mostly just kitten everyone off.

Moreover, they just can’t seem to fix something without breaking 3 other things. Every major update has been bugged badly when it released; and they had to go into damage control mode to try and fix it.

And they just don’t seem to be in touch with the remaining fragmented community at all. Any given communication might be on 1 or 2 social media sites, but it’s never consistent and everywhere. When mega-threads start forming on their own forums, they either let them go ignored, or the moderators look for the one jerk who violated the ToS and use it as an excuse to shut the thread down.

All this tells me that they aren’t listening to anyone, really, and don’t want to. That certainly doesn’t endear them to me at all.

Who are you people, and what have you done with the wonderful ArenaNet of Guild Wars? This fan’s muti-year loyalty is about stretched as far as it can get, all in the course of a few months.

Eliyahu.1467:

The real tragedy is that the legitimate criticism gets totally drowned out by asinine complaining. I honestly wish the mods would do more thread mergers here. Far too many topics on the front page of these forums are all about the same topics because everyone who has a problem with something like dailies or guild missions feel like they need their own personal soapbox.

In this specific case, OP should have posted here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-guild-missions-opinions-concerns/first

Distinguishing the people who always whine, from a segment of players who’ve been disenfranchised or more likely messaged badly, from a real and game wide issue is a very difficult challenge for MMOs. If you read history books or textbooks on MMOs you’ll find that the normal life cycle of a MUD had the dungeon master ruin the game in response to a vocal minority.

At the same time, I have seen DAoC, RIFT, and to a lesser extent WoW attrit major segments of their player base because they didn’t listen to beta testers who said “scrap this expansion, don’t take it live”.

Separately, the issue of this thread is much larger than the most recent content. It is equally applicable to the release which brought us Fractals, and the release which reworked the dailies a month or so ago. My choice to create a separate thread is based in that broader concern. If you have read all 29 pages of the thread you mention, you will find I have posted several times, but those posts are specific to the topic of that thread.

Chuo.4238:

Eliyahu.1467:

Chuo.4238:

Ojimaru.8970:

But you don’t have concrete proof that these new content, which you include Shadow of the Mad King and Wintersday, alienated “significant groups” of players. All we have are sporadic outcry from vocal forum goers, with positive counterpoints. Are one side’s opinions more valid than the other?

You can kind of tell when the forums are just a low buzz of people QQ-ing over this or that, and when a large number of people are actually upset about something. There’s a difference.

I’m pretty sure that ArenaNet has their head in the sand over it, though. I bet they are still wondering why a large chunk of their playerbase left back in November…

The forums for every game released in recent years is full of pointless whining. The people that enjoy the game spend their time playing the game. The people who enjoy whining post on the forums.

The real tragedy is that the legitimate criticism gets totally drowned out by asinine complaining. I honestly wish the mods would do more thread mergers here. Far too many topics on the front page of these forums are all about the same topics because everyone who has a problem with something like dailies or guild missions feel like they need their own personal soapbox.

I’d like to think that this is probably the reason why ArenaNet doesn’t seem to really listen to their customers. Good feedback is just drowned out in the general QQ.

But I think what’s really going on is they have some formula for how they think they’re going to maximize profits, and they’re trying to fit that square peg into the round hole of what would otherwise be a pretty good game.

So we wind up with poorly implemented gear grinds, content that divides up the playerbase (fractals/open world, big guild/small guild, and so forth), and funnels that push people towards certain areas of the game, away from others, and discourage people from “playing how they want”. It’s like they’re trying to please everyone, and that’s mostly just kitten everyone off.

Moreover, they just can’t seem to fix something without breaking 3 other things. Every major update has been bugged badly when it released; and they had to go into damage control mode to try and fix it.

And they just don’t seem to be in touch with the remaining fragmented community at all. Any given communication might be on 1 or 2 social media sites, but it’s never consistent and everywhere. When mega-threads start forming on their own forums, they either let them go ignored, or the moderators look for the one jerk who violated the ToS and use it as an excuse to shut the thread down.

All this tells me that they aren’t listening to anyone, really, and don’t want to. That certainly doesn’t endear them to me at all.

Who are you people, and what have you done with the wonderful ArenaNet of Guild Wars? This fan’s muti-year loyalty is about stretched as far as it can get, all in the course of a few months.

I see a massive disconnect in perception here.

From where I stand:

This is a good game. It has a great deal of room to improve and it certainly has its flaw, but it is a good game and it is fun.

Where you see a “poorly implemented gear grind” I see content in its infancy. They have said again and again that they will be adding new methods of obtaining ascended for varying playstyles. I have no doubt they will do that, but implementing that sort of thing takes time — something very few people on this forum seem to understand.

The reason why they don’t communicate more of what they’re doing behind the scenes is because it’s work in progress and subject to change. If they say they’re working on something and it doesn’t get released in exactly the form the fans thought it would they get called liar who don’t care about the community. Case in point: everything you’re complaining about.

And you are definitely looking back at GW1 with rose colored glasses as a lot of the people on these forums are apt to do. GW1 was far from perfect — the guru forums were always full of complaints. The community was also extremely fractured in GW1. Examples that readily spring into mind are that you could not get an HA or UW group without already being experienced and shoing it with your /rank or with UW tokens.

bewhatever.2390:

Eliyahu.1467:

The real tragedy is that the legitimate criticism gets totally drowned out by asinine complaining. I honestly wish the mods would do more thread mergers here. Far too many topics on the front page of these forums are all about the same topics because everyone who has a problem with something like dailies or guild missions feel like they need their own personal soapbox.

In this specific case, OP should have posted here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-guild-missions-opinions-concerns/first

Distinguishing the people who always whine, from a segment of players who’ve been disenfranchised or more likely messaged badly, from a real and game wide issue is a very difficult challenge for MMOs. If you read history books or textbooks on MMOs you’ll find that the normal life cycle of a MUD had the dungeon master ruin the game in response to a vocal minority.

At the same time, I have seen DAoC, RIFT, and to a lesser extent WoW attrit major segments of their player base because they didn’t listen to beta testers who said “scrap this expansion, don’t take it live”.

Separately, the issue of this thread is much larger than the most recent content. It is equally applicable to the release which brought us Fractals, and the release which reworked the dailies a month or so ago. My choice to create a separate thread is based in that broader concern. If you have read all 29 pages of the thread you mention, you will find I have posted several times, but those posts are specific to the topic of that thread.

Okay so your original post addresses player attrition, which you have no conclusive evidence of actually being problem. People naturally get bored with a game over time and so a player base will naturally shrink after launch. The game still has a very large very healthy player base regardless.

The examples you use were expansions that fundamentally changed the games and led to mass exoduses. We have seen nothing like in this game — neither in cause nor in symptom. You are attempting to explain a problem that does not exist.

Eliyahu.1467:

I totally disagree with you on this one.

GW1 simply did not have official forums and most players did not read guru at all even in good years.
GW1 had AI companions to fill the gaps for casual players and make more areas of the game available for everyone. So the community was fractured but overall had access to a wide variety of rewarding content. What’s more Hard Mode allowed players to play the game to their liking without stopping access to most of the in-game content. Also please don’t bring up the fact that HM was introduced some years later, this is no excuse for any developer. The standards of the last decade were very different.
GW1 has a very simple loot and leveling system with very distinct prestige items.

GW2 has official forums so there is more actual feedback coming in.
GW2 tries to put hardcores and casuals in the same basket while telling them that they can play their own game.
GW2 has a horrible loot system, given that every casual can go get a flaming sword, armor whatever and look cool, which I am sure was not intended but due to the broken nature of dungeons at launch is how it turned out. HA and UW provided very distinct rewards and /rank was truely a measure of skill or time invested. Now that the prestige factor in loot visuals has been lost they are trying to introduce a numerical factor which is exactly what a large portion of the community tried to avoid by investing money in this game.

Was GW1 as good as people make it look ? Hell No.
But GW1 did not try to force both player types together in the same content.
What’s more GW1 had a good way to measure prestige, while GW2 is horrible at it… I don’t run DPS gear, but I got a nice text file with all the codes I need to paste in game chat so I can go with any dungeon group, funny how ppl dont event realize I’m not running a DPS build at all. Any notion of prestige in this game is a joke and the Damage Control that this patch was will not fix that.

Point one: yeah, i can see some of those aspects in the games development after launch. Still wondering if it is actually a decision based on trying to please more players or rather acknowledging that the original design idea cannot be realized.

Point two: rubbish. The exact same people are in charge of the the game now as were during development.

Tweekon.2510:

Very long post.. Says exactly the same as all the others.

‘My small guild deserves to be able to do this new content. I will not change my playstyle to fit.’

EQ2 had guild levels. Hitting max guild level gave nice things. Small 2 person guilds whined it was harder for them to level than big raid guilds.

Dev response – so go join a raid guild, or recruit to your guild.

I hope the devs stick to their guns here. And wrap these inane entitlement posts up into one big thread.

Agreed. We seen some of the best games just get ruined because companies listen to crying rejects that want everything handed to them easily and it’s get extremely boring to play on games that the dev’s ruin their own game to make everything easily for them (casuals). Agreed 100%, if you are in a small guild then that is your problem and your fault so deal with it. No idea why anyone would wanna be in a small guidl and lame excuses like they don’t wanna mix with the trolls, night elves, orcs, and every other wow character they can think of doesn’t really cut. L2manage a guild nubs and you won’t those annoyances, that simple. I am in a big guild my self by random chance and if anyone becomes of those annoyances they get removed. I find it hilarious from what I read the kitten wanna rage quit because they got to put effort in to to the guild events because that’s what the cries are about really. Not the lame excuse of big guilds and small guilds. They just rather have someone do the work for them and have it done asap, please..

Eliyahu.1467:

Where you see a “poorly implemented gear grind” I see content in its infancy. They have said again and again that they will be adding new methods of obtaining ascended for varying playstyles. I have no doubt they will do that, but implementing that sort of thing takes time — something very few people on this forum seem to understand.

But they HAVE been adding new ways to get ascended stuff. First we had mystic forge and fractals, then they added dailies, then they added guild missions.

Only, they forgot that people asked for new ways to get the existing ascended stuff, not new exclusive ways to get the next type.

stof.9341:

Eliyahu.1467:

Where you see a “poorly implemented gear grind” I see content in its infancy. They have said again and again that they will be adding new methods of obtaining ascended for varying playstyles. I have no doubt they will do that, but implementing that sort of thing takes time — something very few people on this forum seem to understand.

But they HAVE been adding new ways to get ascended stuff. First we had mystic forge and fractals, then they added dailies, then they added guild missions.

Only, they forgot that people asked for new ways to get the existing ascended stuff, not new exclusive ways to get the next type.

So..in other words they want to get every item from the same manor and let me guess, the easiest one of every possibility. ?

KOLZ.4501:

L2manage a guild nubs and you won’t those annoyances, that simple. I am in a big guild my self by random chance and if anyone becomes of those annoyances they get removed.They just rather have someone do the work for them and have it done asap, please..

I am glad you found your place in life by working this game.

I wish you the best in your future career.

Wayfinder.8452:

KOLZ.4501:

L2manage a guild nubs and you won’t those annoyances, that simple. I am in a big guild my self by random chance and if anyone becomes of those annoyances they get removed.They just rather have someone do the work for them and have it done asap, please..

I am glad you found your place in life by working this game.

I wish you the best in your future career.

Yeah.. I like to put effort in to my games unlike trash casuals that just want everything handed to them asap. It’s fun.

Yeah.. I like to put effort in to my games unlike trash casuals that just want everything handed to them asap. It’s fun.

bewhatever.2390:

bewhatever.2390:

2. Until release, the game is in the hands of a lead developer who has in their head the target customers of the game and a set of principles — the contract with the players, as it were — and in a hands on way imposes that on the entire development process. At release the game is handed to a live team which, not having had enough contact with the original lead dev (or worse thinking he acted out of ego) have not internalized who the customers are that must be retained, and what principles must never be violated if those customers’ trust is to be maintained.

Good analysis, in terms of the above it arguably happened with anet’s original manifesto and what the game has become. However it seems even the lead developers are now saying that the manifesto was never violated, its not just the live team.

Anet is kitten lucky that they’ve had a rather large window with very little competition unlike say swtor.

LOL swtor was garbage from day 1 to be honest. Do you remember the unfinished dungeon KP that had to get finished a month later or more in a patch? Yeah very professionally done considering the game had ONLY 2 raids when it came out. We could go on all day how horribly done swtor was right from day. That game could only wish they had a dev team like arenanet, hell they it would probably just wish it was properly done by anybody, lol.

{Yeah.. I like to put effort in to my games unlike trash casuals that just want everything handed to them asap. It’s fun}
{I quit if you don’t gimme this gimme that!}
As pueril as it sounds, that’s the sad reality.

I don’t think this is about whether or not people want things handed to them. I think it’s about them being forced into a playstyle that they don’t like (large guilds). The guild missions are a fantastic idea…but they need to remove the influence cost. It’s not necessary. All it does is create a long, pointless wait where you can’t do anything anyway.

Chuo.4238:

I don’t think this is about whether or not people want things handed to them. I think it’s about them being forced into a playstyle that they don’t like (large guilds). The guild missions are a fantastic idea…but they need to remove the influence cost. It’s not necessary. All it does is create a long, pointless wait where you can’t do anything anyway.

Ah not exactly. They aren’t forced to do anything. If they still want those awards then they just got to work a bit more than (yeah I know it’s a bit more, exaggeration there so what :P) than the large guilds. I didn’t see any where in the patch notes saying that it was mandatory that you got to be ina 250+ person guild to get item X or whatever. Plus if they don’t wanna do the work then simply go on do something else. No one is forced to do anything really. If they want then work on getting it, if it’s too much trouble then don’t and move on.

KOLZ.4501:

Chuo.4238:

I don’t think this is about whether or not people want things handed to them. I think it’s about them being forced into a playstyle that they don’t like (large guilds). The guild missions are a fantastic idea…but they need to remove the influence cost. It’s not necessary. All it does is create a long, pointless wait where you can’t do anything anyway.

Ah not exactly. They aren’t forced to do anything. If they still want those awards then they just got to work a bit more than (yeah I know it’s a bit more, exaggeration there so what :P) than the large guilds. I didn’t see any where in the patch notes saying that it was mandatory that you got to be ina 250+ person guild to get item X or whatever. Plus if they don’t wanna do the work then simply go on do something else. No one is forced to do anything really. If they want then work on getting it, if it’s too much trouble then don’t and move on.

But that’s exactly my point. Sure, you don’t have to do anything…but if that’s the case you may as well go do something else.

A really creative game designer would find multiple ways for people to accomplish the same goal. That, I think, would keep more people playing, because it would cater to varieties of playstyles.

Chuo.4238:

KOLZ.4501:

Chuo.4238:

I don’t think this is about whether or not people want things handed to them. I think it’s about them being forced into a playstyle that they don’t like (large guilds). The guild missions are a fantastic idea…but they need to remove the influence cost. It’s not necessary. All it does is create a long, pointless wait where you can’t do anything anyway.

Ah not exactly. They aren’t forced to do anything. If they still want those awards then they just got to work a bit more than (yeah I know it’s a bit more, exaggeration there so what :P) than the large guilds. I didn’t see any where in the patch notes saying that it was mandatory that you got to be ina 250+ person guild to get item X or whatever. Plus if they don’t wanna do the work then simply go on do something else. No one is forced to do anything really. If they want then work on getting it, if it’s too much trouble then don’t and move on.

But that’s exactly my point. Sure, you don’t have to do anything…but if that’s the case you may as well go do something else.

A really creative game designer would find multiple ways for people to accomplish the same goal. That, I think, would keep more people playing, because it would cater to varieties of playstyles.

It doesn’t take a really creative game designer, it just takes a mediocre one. There are tons of different implementations of guild quests they could have chosen that not only would have given the mega guilds the content they wanted, but wouldn’t have done it at the expense of the micro guilds either.

Does the concept of equal pay for equal work, not ring any bells with the frothing defenders of this mechanic? By allowing tiny guilds to access the same content, but scaling the rewards down with the difficulty, would have made this a complete non-issue. Everyone gets to play, no one gets left out, and everyone gets a shiny commensurate with the effort they put into it. The way guild missions are set up now totally fails to accomplish this.

Just the gating system itself is designed SPECIFICALLY to accommodate larger guilds. Not only that, but concealing these missions behind a PvP-specific track, that even when completed, provides a set of rewards that are absolutely USELESS to a large number of the guilds who earn them, is again, painfully stupid design. Add in the fact that AoW is the most fleshed out track already, while other tracks have entire tiers empty of any kind of reward whatsoever. You buy those empty tiers only so you can unlock the next one.

You don’t need to be a genius designer to circumvent these problems, you just need the willingness, the common sense — and to not be hopelessly mired in your own hubris. ANet is lacking in at least one of those three requirements.

@chuo

lol to be honest if you’re gonna feel like this game has nothing to do just because of ONE thing you don’t like then that is no one’s fault but your own. Maybe not you but in general. There is a lot to do in this game but it depends on the person to see it all. Lately I been doing a lot pvp then I would go do world pvp then at random times I work on my character through out pve and crafting. You’re gonna tell me that one feature is gonna rip all of that away from your game? I am not seeing how that is possible at all. That’s what happens when people just play one way or just one thing.

@blacklight
First let me ask, did you type all of that with the idea that this was the last patch to ever enter gw2? Sounds like a reasonable idea you got there and who knows what they will add or change in time to come. Personally I don’t see why people always want be in small guilds considering you get kitten done unless it’s just people wanting that kitten of leadership because the lame excuse of “I want to avoid the annoying people” doesn’t cut it to be honest. L2manage a guild and you won’t have those people. I am in a very big guild just by chance really and the “drama” is so little I never been around for it. Plus do remember that this patch frost and flame is actually 4 parts if I am correct so there is still more to come so the crying and moaning about this and that is actually more stupid than any design. People are crying about enemies being tougher…oh nooooo it’s not like wow where everything is in stupid mode and extremely easy for the casuals. Now when it gets to that point I would definitely be gone because much as casuals love playing god mode with a lvl 5 character I found it boring as hell.