Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

That wasn’t just bad review, that was insiders talking, people that worked there.

Doesn’t matter. You think the reviews from all of the other companies don’t have people commenting who used to work there?

Of course it matters and we are not talking about other companies. We are finally seeing where the disconnect internally and the end product of the expansion. Think about it…the disconnect between Anet employees is carried over with disconnect from players and expansion. Disgruntled employees and customers!

From a few people and yes it does matter. People are treating those reviews as if it’s an indication that the company is performing poorly when practically every company is the same.

Performing poorly? Do you play the game? want more evidence than Reddit or this forum?

xbutcherx.3861:

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

That wasn’t just bad review, that was insiders talking, people that worked there.

Doesn’t matter. You think the reviews from all of the other companies don’t have people commenting who used to work there?

Of course it matters and we are not talking about other companies. We are finally seeing where the disconnect internally and the end product of the expansion. Think about it…the disconnect between Anet employees is carried over with disconnect from players and expansion. Disgruntled employees and customers!

From a few people and yes it does matter. People are treating those reviews as if it’s an indication that the company is performing poorly when practically every company is the same.

Performing poorly? Do you play the game? want more evidence than Reddit or this forum?

Small subset of players otherwise you can use your logic and infer that playerbase wants mounts based on what we see on the forums and Reddit. What exactly do you consider performing poorly?

Ayrilana.1396:

xbutcherx.3861:

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

That wasn’t just bad review, that was insiders talking, people that worked there.

Doesn’t matter. You think the reviews from all of the other companies don’t have people commenting who used to work there?

Of course it matters and we are not talking about other companies. We are finally seeing where the disconnect internally and the end product of the expansion. Think about it…the disconnect between Anet employees is carried over with disconnect from players and expansion. Disgruntled employees and customers!

From a few people and yes it does matter. People are treating those reviews as if it’s an indication that the company is performing poorly when practically every company is the same.

Performing poorly? Do you play the game? want more evidence than Reddit or this forum?

Small subset of players otherwise you can use your logic and infer that playerbase wants mounts based on what we see on the forums and Reddit. What exactly do you consider performing poorly?

How about balanced patch? WvW? Dungeons? hundreds of topics about problems with the game? how about COMMUNICATION?

xbutcherx.3861:

Ayrilana.1396:

xbutcherx.3861:

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

That wasn’t just bad review, that was insiders talking, people that worked there.

Doesn’t matter. You think the reviews from all of the other companies don’t have people commenting who used to work there?

Of course it matters and we are not talking about other companies. We are finally seeing where the disconnect internally and the end product of the expansion. Think about it…the disconnect between Anet employees is carried over with disconnect from players and expansion. Disgruntled employees and customers!

From a few people and yes it does matter. People are treating those reviews as if it’s an indication that the company is performing poorly when practically every company is the same.

Performing poorly? Do you play the game? want more evidence than Reddit or this forum?

Small subset of players otherwise you can use your logic and infer that playerbase wants mounts based on what we see on the forums and Reddit. What exactly do you consider performing poorly?

How about balanced patch? WvW? Dungeons? hundreds of topics about problems with the game? how about COMMUNICATION?

What game doesn’t? How much communication is considered successful? Does Anet provide less, about the same, or more communication that other MMO companies? Is communication for everything they do, before they do it, really required?

Ayrilana.1396:

Every company has many that complain about whatever. How is what is on that website any different than what you’d find elsewhere? So based on the OP, any company that has bad reviews on there must be doing poorly?

Hmmm you might wanna check other companies in that same site, the most successful companies have up to 4.5 stars, with a 90%+ Approve of CEO/Would recommend, with an overwhelming majority of reviews being positive.

Also, a big percentage of ANets (former) employee’s complaints have the same thing in common, it’s not just a few. Dismissing that evidence because “every company has many that complain whatever” is a bit too arrogant.

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Every company has many that complain about whatever. How is what is on that website any different than what you’d find elsewhere? So based on the OP, any company that has bad reviews on there must be doing poorly?

Hmmm you might wanna check other companies in that same site, the most successful companies have up to 4.5 stars, with a 90%+ Approve of CEO/Would recommend.

That’s just one site. It’s not the definitive source on whether a company is performing poorly or not and that’s even assuming you can prove there’s a correlation between those reviews and how a company is actually performing.

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Every company has many that complain about whatever. How is what is on that website any different than what you’d find elsewhere? So based on the OP, any company that has bad reviews on there must be doing poorly?

Hmmm you might wanna check other companies in that same site, the most successful companies have up to 4.5 stars, with a 90%+ Approve of CEO/Would recommend.

That’s just one site. It’s not the definitive source on whether a company is performing poorly or not and that’s even assuming you can prove there’s a correlation between those reviews and how a company is actually performing.

Okay, but this site is undoubtedly more trustworthy than your statement.

We see there are issues with this company, they are not doing good, the community is unhappy, and judging by what I see in regards to patch content and forums i’m more inclined to believe these negative reviews than your blissful outlook.

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Every company has many that complain about whatever. How is what is on that website any different than what you’d find elsewhere? So based on the OP, any company that has bad reviews on there must be doing poorly?

Hmmm you might wanna check other companies in that same site, the most successful companies have up to 4.5 stars, with a 90%+ Approve of CEO/Would recommend.

That’s just one site. It’s not the definitive source on whether a company is performing poorly or not and that’s even assuming you can prove there’s a correlation between those reviews and how a company is actually performing.

Okay, but this site is undoubtedly more trustworthy than your statement.

We see there are issues with this company, they are not doing good, the community is unhappy, and judging by what I see in regards to patch content and forums i’m more inclined to believe these negative reviews than your blissful outlook.

Because a bunch of anonymous people reviewing a company are trustworthy? Whether or not I am trustworthy has absolutely nothing to do with my argument. People are more inclined to criticize than praise.

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Every company has many that complain about whatever. How is what is on that website any different than what you’d find elsewhere? So based on the OP, any company that has bad reviews on there must be doing poorly?

Hmmm you might wanna check other companies in that same site, the most successful companies have up to 4.5 stars, with a 90%+ Approve of CEO/Would recommend.

That’s just one site. It’s not the definitive source on whether a company is performing poorly or not and that’s even assuming you can prove there’s a correlation between those reviews and how a company is actually performing.

Okay, but this site is undoubtedly more trustworthy than your statement.

We see there are issues with this company, they are not doing good, the community is unhappy, and judging by what I see in regards to patch content and forums i’m more inclined to believe these negative reviews than your blissful outlook.

Because a bunch of anonymous people reviewing a company are trustworthy? Whether or not I am trustworthy has absolutely nothing to do with my argument. People are more inclined to criticize than praise.

Sites like glassdoor are a great tool to see overall trends. Its not that difficult to write one or two crappy reviews, but if a company has 30 reviews and the overall tone paints the company as a hellhole, it’s something you would rather avoid.

Notsoperky.2348:

This is why games bring in dailies, or a daily log in chest. So they can say ‘look at how many actives we have’.

Be a much more interesting statistic to see the average daily time per active logged in to the game- then eliminate the obvious bots (on 24/7) and see what the true user figure is.

Forgot to say, ‘active users’ is also a bit iffy- 5 of my accounts only log in to open a chest and grab the daily log in reward..do i count as 6 actives?

Yeah when my PC was on it’s way out, I would log.on everyday to just get my chest and my home instance gathering. That was for about 3 months until I got he cash together to buy a new one. So yeah, if it wasn’t for the daily chest I probably would have not logged on for those 3 months.

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Every company has many that complain about whatever. How is what is on that website any different than what you’d find elsewhere? So based on the OP, any company that has bad reviews on there must be doing poorly?

Hmmm you might wanna check other companies in that same site, the most successful companies have up to 4.5 stars, with a 90%+ Approve of CEO/Would recommend.

That’s just one site. It’s not the definitive source on whether a company is performing poorly or not and that’s even assuming you can prove there’s a correlation between those reviews and how a company is actually performing.

Okay, but this site is undoubtedly more trustworthy than your statement.

We see there are issues with this company, they are not doing good, the community is unhappy, and judging by what I see in regards to patch content and forums i’m more inclined to believe these negative reviews than your blissful outlook.

Because a bunch of anonymous people reviewing a company are trustworthy? Whether or not I am trustworthy has absolutely nothing to do with my argument. People are more inclined to criticize than praise.

Sites like glassdoor are a great tool to see overall trends. Its not that difficult to write one or two crappy reviews, but if a company has 30 reviews and the overall tone paints the company as a hellhole, it’s something you would rather avoid.

So 30 reviews is a large enough sample size to determine whether a company is performing well or poorly?

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Every company has many that complain about whatever. How is what is on that website any different than what you’d find elsewhere? So based on the OP, any company that has bad reviews on there must be doing poorly?

Hmmm you might wanna check other companies in that same site, the most successful companies have up to 4.5 stars, with a 90%+ Approve of CEO/Would recommend.

That’s just one site. It’s not the definitive source on whether a company is performing poorly or not and that’s even assuming you can prove there’s a correlation between those reviews and how a company is actually performing.

Okay, but this site is undoubtedly more trustworthy than your statement.

We see there are issues with this company, they are not doing good, the community is unhappy, and judging by what I see in regards to patch content and forums i’m more inclined to believe these negative reviews than your blissful outlook.

Because a bunch of anonymous people reviewing a company are trustworthy? Whether or not I am trustworthy has absolutely nothing to do with my argument. People are more inclined to criticize than praise.

Sites like glassdoor are a great tool to see overall trends. Its not that difficult to write one or two crappy reviews, but if a company has 30 reviews and the overall tone paints the company as a hellhole, it’s something you would rather avoid.

So 30 reviews is a large enough sample size to determine whether a company is performing well or poorly?

Yes. Especially if they’re all complaining about the same thing.

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Daharahj.1325:

Ayrilana.1396:

Every company has many that complain about whatever. How is what is on that website any different than what you’d find elsewhere? So based on the OP, any company that has bad reviews on there must be doing poorly?

Hmmm you might wanna check other companies in that same site, the most successful companies have up to 4.5 stars, with a 90%+ Approve of CEO/Would recommend.

That’s just one site. It’s not the definitive source on whether a company is performing poorly or not and that’s even assuming you can prove there’s a correlation between those reviews and how a company is actually performing.

Okay, but this site is undoubtedly more trustworthy than your statement.

We see there are issues with this company, they are not doing good, the community is unhappy, and judging by what I see in regards to patch content and forums i’m more inclined to believe these negative reviews than your blissful outlook.

Because a bunch of anonymous people reviewing a company are trustworthy? Whether or not I am trustworthy has absolutely nothing to do with my argument. People are more inclined to criticize than praise.

Sites like glassdoor are a great tool to see overall trends. Its not that difficult to write one or two crappy reviews, but if a company has 30 reviews and the overall tone paints the company as a hellhole, it’s something you would rather avoid.

So 30 reviews is a large enough sample size to determine whether a company is performing well or poorly?

Anything 3 or more is technically a ‘pattern’.
The more data you have that says nearly the exact same thing, the stronger that pattern is. Even the positive reviews say nearly the same issues as the negative ones.
Its not entirely a ‘yes/no’ conclusion you should get from this. Its merely a tool you should use for consideration.

Ayrilana.1396:

So 30 reviews is a large enough sample size to determine whether a company is performing well or poorly?

30 reviews from people who all worked there ? Yes that’s more than enough !!
You should just stop arguing and start thinking.

Considering the new game’s direction, it’s obvious, current management team has no clue what to do with their game and ressources. They did a poorly expansion in a rush because they were put on pressure by NcSoft. Nothing was planned, they had no idea what to put in this expansion, so they did many CDI only to retain ideas compatibles with ther monetization goals.

A Good director is someone who knows what to do and stick to his plan, no matter what. That’s clearly not the case anymore in Anet.

Back in GW1, Izzy was the most hated guy on the forum because of his balances patchs, all players were flamming on him, but still he did his job in his own way, and we all recognize now that he did a great job balancing a game with thousands of skills and billions of possibilities.

Theses times seems so far away now…

I’m as livid about the kittencrap that’s happened to this game recently and the direction it’s gone towards but you can’t take one websites information and use it to crucify Mike O’Brien because a few unconfirmed employees are mad at him.

Trending business models for gaming nowdays in every company are evolving to meet shorter attention spans and quicker games. GW2 and similar MMO’s are being changed to meet that demand over time and regardless of whether employees, managers or customers like it, if it increases the bottom line it’s going to happen.

Acinonyx Rex.8609:

Ayrilana.1396:

So 30 reviews is a large enough sample size to determine whether a company is performing well or poorly?

30 reviews from people who all worked there ? Yes that’s more than enough !!
You should just stop arguing and start thinking.

Considering the new game’s direction, it’s obvious, current management team has no clue what to do with their game and ressources. They did a poorly expansion in a rush because they were put on pressure by NcSoft. Nothing was planned, they had no idea what to put in this expansion, so they did many CDI only to retain ideas compatibles with ther monetization goals.

A Good director is someone who knows what to do and stick to his plan, no matter what. That’s clearly not the case anymore in Anet.

Back in GW1, Izzy was the most hated guy on the forum because of his balances patchs, all players were flamming on him, but still he did his job in his own way, and we all recognize now that he did a great job balancing a game with thousands of skills and billions of possibilities.

Theses times seems so far away now…

That’s your opinion though about the expansion. You’re basing your personal opinion about the expansion, and the small fraction of players who felt the same as you in game or on the forums, as definitive evidence that the expansion was as you so think.

You cannot base the performance of a company on reviews that you read on some website. People are more prone to complain than praise so you’ll get lopsided results. Once again, that’s even assuming that there is a correlation between the two which I haven’t seen evidence of yet.

To be fair, a lot of those complaints are similar to what I’ve seen of the company as far as content goes.

When I say that Arenanet is an “ideal driven company”, that is not a compliment. It basically means the head brass have some artsy picture of how they want things to be, and be kitten ed if it is impossible or you don’t agree with it. Think about GW2’s inception: they wanted a game to break the mold, be different from how other games in the genre operated, so much so that the entire GW2 project was considered a gigantic risk. While some changes were good, other changes removed the character of what the game was, and Arenanet quickly had to compromise their manifesto just to deal with the onslaught of complaints they received.

Many of the glassdoor reviews reflect this, if not directly then indirectly. Unreasonable demands, suggestions ignored, everything having to go through one person’s flighty mood for issues they shouldn’t even be in charge of, etc. GW2 isn’t run on sense or reasoning, and because of this you’ll see design decisions that are utterly baffling and benefit no one. There is a lot of stupid complaints about the game. However, many of the legitimate complaints are about things so absurd it would take a profound study in the rationality of humanity to explain how Arenanet came to such a decision.

Ayrilana.1396:

The expansion has been pretty successful.

Can you link us up with the data to back up that feeling. Thanks.

“Peer review” sites are inherantly biased toward negative reviews because those with nothing bad to say don’t want to burn bridges, risk their career, or alienate future employers.

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

The expansion has been pretty successful.

Can you link us up with the data to back up that feeling. Thanks.

http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/o-PILES-OF-AMERICAN-MONEY-facebook.jpg

PopeUrban.2578:

“Peer review” sites are inherantly biased toward negative reviews because those with nothing bad to say don’t want to burn bridges, risk their career, or alienate future employers.

Wait, what? Don’t you have this backwards? Why would someone who has only good things to say be afraid to say them?

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

The expansion has been pretty successful.

Can you link us up with the data to back up that feeling. Thanks.

There isn’t which was why I included that statement. It’s an opinion just like those that feel otherwise.

Labjax.2465:

PopeUrban.2578:

“Peer review” sites are inherantly biased toward negative reviews because those with nothing bad to say don’t want to burn bridges, risk their career, or alienate future employers.

Wait, what? Don’t you have this backwards? Why would someone who has only good things to say be afraid to say them?

It’s not that they are afraid to. People that are disappointed with anything for whatever reason are more likely to go on and review something to vent than someone whose expectations were met or exceeded.

Swagger.1459:

True leaders lead from the front, not behind. I think there needs to be a change in mentality from the top to make this happen. If the top would focus more on supporting their development team properly to help produce better stuff for us customers, then they would naturally see bigger green numbers on their monthly and quarters reports… If this were to happen, then everybody wins right?

Actually, the best leaders lead from the back. You did mention one key aspect of a good leader, and that is supporting their people. A leaders true goal and responsibility should be serving those under them in order to achieve the task, what ever it may be.
This is coming from 4 years of advanced leadership training, as well as nearly 10 years of actual leadership experience. (Of course this being the internet, that doesn’t really mean much). But even doing a cursory search of what a great leader is, and you’ll find the servant leadership model is the most effective and most successful.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s not that they are afraid to. People that are disappointed with anything for whatever reason are more likely to go on and review something to vent than someone whose expectations were met or exceeded.

Partly true, but not really. It’s misleading to lump “expectations met” and “expectations exceeded” together like that.

People who are polarized to either extreme – frustration or excitement – are more likely to go talk about it. People in the middle, whether they fall more toward slightly disappointed or fall more toward slightly impressed, are less likely to say anything due to the experience being forgettable and therefore not lasting in their mind long enough to motivate them to say something.

This is generally speaking, mind you.

In some specific contexts, such as the experiencing of video game content, what you’ve said can easily be true because the people who are satisfied, or “very satisfied” may be too busy playing the game to talk about how amazing they think it is.

In the context of employment, that same reasoning is missing. You would have to control for employees who posted a review shortly after quitting or being fired, versus employees who didn’t, to get any realistic idea of how that impacts their choice to review compared to the extreme they fall on. Some employees, for example, might quit to go in a different direction and leave a positive review regardless, either because they liked the job or because they want to look good if the review somehow comes back to their name.

Which can muddy the waters in yet another way. There are so many ways for it to be muddied, which is why I said the thing about the details of the reviews being more important than the existence of negative ones. Details are a lot harder to forge, without looking like a bad fiction story.

Pretty much what most of us suspected, I think. Sounds all too familiar though for the gaming business models of today. Clueless twits wringing the sponge way too hard…

pdavis.8031:

Swagger.1459:

True leaders lead from the front, not behind. I think there needs to be a change in mentality from the top to make this happen. If the top would focus more on supporting their development team properly to help produce better stuff for us customers, then they would naturally see bigger green numbers on their monthly and quarters reports… If this were to happen, then everybody wins right?

Actually, the best leaders lead from the back. You did mention one key aspect of a good leader, and that is supporting their people. A leaders true goal and responsibility should be serving those under them in order to achieve the task, what ever it may be.
This is coming from 4 years of advanced leadership training, as well as nearly 10 years of actual leadership experience. (Of course this being the internet, that doesn’t really mean much). But even doing a cursory search of what a great leader is, and you’ll find the servant leadership model is the most effective and most successful.

We are saying the same thing basically. A leader that is truly involved, engaged and with their finger on the pulse, not someone who merely dictates.

Edit- lead by example might be a better way for us to put this. I tend to feel the best leaders are not afraid to get in there when needed, but of course someone needs to observe and guide.

By these reviews basically the brainstorming process is something like this:

I’ve read some and skimmed over most of the responses here, I expect mine will be taken as a grain of salt by most as well, BUT…

Who. Cares.

Unless you’re applying to ArenaNet for a job.

(almost) EVERY company in America is trying to do more with less. I wear five different hats at my job because as people leave, I get to do their jobs in addition to the one(s) I’m already doing. “Upstairs” too amibitious? Yeah, that’s their job.

What matters is the product. Everyone here’s acting like they know everything on management, and I’m sure several of you do, but what it all boils down to (unless you’re employed by them or seeking employment) is whether or not the product sells. It ain’t a charity.

Let’s use the forums to discuss the actual product/game?

Lysander Freeman.4186:

I’ve read some and skimmed over most of the responses here, I expect mine will be taken as a grain of salt by most as well, BUT…

Who. Cares.

Unless you’re applying to ArenaNet for a job.

(almost) EVERY company in America is trying to do more with less. I wear five different hats at my job because as people leave, I get to do their jobs in addition to the one(s) I’m already doing. “Upstairs” too amibitious? Yeah, that’s their job.

What matters is the product. Everyone here’s acting like they know everything on management, and I’m sure several of you do, but what it all boils down to (unless you’re employed by them or seeking employment) is whether or not the product sells. It ain’t a charity.

Let’s use the forums to discuss the actual product/game?

This is a good comment. You are right.

A quote that stuck out to me was,

“The director level is incredibly detached from what it actually takes to create a good game.”

But at least as far as the economy and HoT difficulty is they seem to be making a great game. You spend a very marginal fraction listening to or watching cutscenes, even the story instance repeats are for the challenge achievements and spend most time of course grinding but that’s to get ready for more challenging stuff. John Smith did lots of good for the Guild Wars 2 economy. PvP balance on the other hand needs a serious looking at.

“There is no clear vision of what makes a game good.”

Yes there is, at least among the multiplayer game community.

1.PvP balance. This being number 1 is intentional, this is most important because all the players involved are actual players…well, not all, you still have mist champions, archers, etc., but stakes, pride, sportsmanship, and honor are more important in PvP than PvE. If you exploit a dungeon for example you aren’t cheating a real person whereas if you do speedhacks in WvW then that’s far worse, since you’re letting third party programs carry you and cheating someone out of an honest result.

2.Economy. Stuff should be worth what it’s worth. Who determines worth however? The market also known as the players ourselves. Certain goods are high as they are because players are willing to pay for them, and they’re willing to pay that much due to need and scarcity. Let’s say linen is quite rare due to its implementation and overall mechanics. The bags they drop in have an okay chance to give them while also sharing loot tables with jewels, food, etc., and salvageable rags won’t drop that often. You’re level 80 so you aren’t going to see light armor drops in the 40-55 range that often. Then that shares with other cloths for bolt of Damask which has time gated components. This time gating combined with scarcity of materials was simply brilliant: it gave finished products more value than the sum of its parts because one simply cannot mass produce them keeping supply lower while things like crafted exotic armor is worth less than the sum of its parts. The base metal and cloth are potential and flexible, you can put those towards anything that requires them. A finished product on the other hand lacks that flexibility, so the ectoplasm, orichalcum, and gossamer have more value by themselves than mixed into the armor.

So both time limits to restrict supply and flexibility create value.

3.Open world PvE content. It seems easy to us, but we gained experience playing and even before elite specs had full exotics. In a lower level area it’s assumed you don’t have all your traitlines and skills unlocked while wearing greens. Being level 80 therefore (and logically should) give you an advantage there. However, the whole spectrum of skill should be represented. Orr in 2012 was fun because it taught us to dodge pullbacks and get our rotations down and be alert to our environments. Today HoT zones do the same thing, but those zones assume you’re at least wearing full exotic, and frankly should. There are zones that give intermediate and good players trouble, and that’s a good thing, it pushes them to raise their skill levels and coordinate and organize better on those events.

PopeUrban.2578:

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

The expansion has been pretty successful.

Can you link us up with the data to back up that feeling. Thanks.

http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/o-PILES-OF-AMERICAN-MONEY-facebook.jpg

LOL—

Daharahj.1325:

You don’t have to look far

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820_P2.htm?filter.employmentStatus=REGULAR&filter.employmentStatus=PART_TIME&filter.employmentStatus=UNKNOWN

Now you know why they aren’t doing so good and are so reluctant to give answers.

Glassdoor is like the forums: the unhappiest people post passionately and thoughtfully; the happy people often don’t even know about it.

Not saying that the critiques are necessarily wrong or baseless — just that glassdoor isn’t offering any insight to what “really” goes on at ANet.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Glassdoor is like the forums: the unhappiest people post passionately and thoughtfully; the happy people often don’t even know about it.

Not saying that the critiques are necessarily wrong or baseless — just that glassdoor isn’t offering any insight to what “really” goes on at ANet.

I disagree:

Unlike being a consumer of a game, an employee has reasons to withhold negative feedback. Namely, avoiding the risk of connection between review and name, and (especially if they have quit or been fired) having reason to simply move on with their life and find something else so that they can pay their bills.

Also unlike being a consumer of a game, opinions about games are almost entirely subjective. Most complaints are a matter of taste, which is easily seen in the passionate disagreement between people about the quality of a single feature or design choice.

Employment is largely standardized, with common complaints from lower echelon employees; poor management, being asked to do extra work for no or poor compensation, lack of upward mobility, being micro-managed, etc.

Although one’s opinion of management can, for example, be somewhat opinion-based, compensation is pretty much fact-based, as are some other aspects of employment.

The thing is, some people are confusing commonality and importance. The complaints being talked about are common in jobs because the standards of a strong workplace/workforce are mostly the same. The fact that many jobs induce such complaints is not ok (but that’s a discussion for another time). The point is that the product is invariably going to be impacted by the quality of the workforce.

However, due to video games being such a subject experience, it’s difficult to argue one way or another whether any particular company is being run poorly overall. You might have 50 people making compelling arguments for why the game is going downhill and 50 making compelling arguments for why it’s not. And neither is necessarily wrong or right.

So the reason I said I disagree is because I think reviews have the possibility of offering insight into the functioning of a company. The thing is, it’s not all that relevant to us as players beyond speculation. Those of us who already have issues with the game will tend to use it to confirm what we already (think) we know. Those of us who love the game will tend to write it off as an angry minority of disgruntled employees.

And of course no game company is jumping at the opportunity to give us real statistics about the health of their game to confirm our suspicions one way or another. They will do their best to give out statistics only if they can spin them to make the game look like a success. No company wants to give off the impression of sinking because it will induce more abandoning of ship from players.

Labjax.2465:

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s not that they are afraid to. People that are disappointed with anything for whatever reason are more likely to go on and review something to vent than someone whose expectations were met or exceeded.

Partly true, but not really. It’s misleading to lump “expectations met” and “expectations exceeded” together like that.

People who are polarized to either extreme – frustration or excitement – are more likely to go talk about it. People in the middle, whether they fall more toward slightly disappointed or fall more toward slightly impressed, are less likely to say anything due to the experience being forgettable and therefore not lasting in their mind long enough to motivate them to say something.

This is generally speaking, mind you.

In some specific contexts, such as the experiencing of video game content, what you’ve said can easily be true because the people who are satisfied, or “very satisfied” may be too busy playing the game to talk about how amazing they think it is.

In the context of employment, that same reasoning is missing. You would have to control for employees who posted a review shortly after quitting or being fired, versus employees who didn’t, to get any realistic idea of how that impacts their choice to review compared to the extreme they fall on. Some employees, for example, might quit to go in a different direction and leave a positive review regardless, either because they liked the job or because they want to look good if the review somehow comes back to their name.

Which can muddy the waters in yet another way. There are so many ways for it to be muddied, which is why I said the thing about the details of the reviews being more important than the existence of negative ones. Details are a lot harder to forge, without looking like a bad fiction story.

Not really. It’s well documented that those who have negative impressions/experiences are the ones most likely to be vocal about it. Lumping those that had their needs met with those with needs exceeded didn’t matter as I was not arguing specifically about the differences between them.

Altair.2905:

Reading over many of those it seems like there’s a lot of micromanagement of the creative talent. I think anyone with common sense can see why this is bad management. CEO also seems to be focusing on roles that CEO’s are not supposed to be focused on.(details vs long term strategy)

Ugh, I don’t know about that…

If you have a creative vision, for the overall product, of course you will tend to want that vision to remain true and cohesive.

So, you may end up having to get involved in the details.

But, of course, that will tend to be annoying for some of the creative staff…

Especially the ones who think of themselves as individual talents, rather than being the vital cogs in a bigger machine.

Takes a bit of humility to think like that, frankly.

Having said that, the titles of the comments (I didn’t sign up to read more) often involved a poor management accusation, so perhaps there is a problem there.

PopeUrban.2578:

“Peer review” sites are inherantly biased toward negative reviews because those with nothing bad to say don’t want to burn bridges, risk their career, or alienate future employers.

Surely, you could also say the opposite, though?

People with only good to say, could use peer review sites to suck up to future employers?

Kind of says to a future employer;“Employ me and even when we eventually part ways, I’ll leave you a glowing review!”.

As opposed to the disgruntled former employee, who has to be pretty brave and honest to speak his, or her, mind; despite (quite possibly) being unemployed at the time.

Ayrilana.1396:

Not really. It’s well documented that those who have negative impressions/experiences are the ones most likely to be vocal about it. Lumping those that had their needs met with those with needs exceeded didn’t matter as I was not arguing specifically about the differences between them.

“It’s well documented” = “I don’t have an argument at this point, but I’d rather not admit that I’ve been driven into that particular corner.”

The lumping did matter and I explained why in my post. It doesn’t matter whether you were arguing about the differences between met and exceeded. The differences are relevant to the argument.

You don’t get to personally decide what is and isn’t relevant to an argument. That’s not how reasoning works.

Ayrilana.1396:

xbutcherx.3861:

Ayrilana.1396:

xbutcherx.3861:

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

That wasn’t just bad review, that was insiders talking, people that worked there.

Doesn’t matter. You think the reviews from all of the other companies don’t have people commenting who used to work there?

Of course it matters and we are not talking about other companies. We are finally seeing where the disconnect internally and the end product of the expansion. Think about it…the disconnect between Anet employees is carried over with disconnect from players and expansion. Disgruntled employees and customers!

From a few people and yes it does matter. People are treating those reviews as if it’s an indication that the company is performing poorly when practically every company is the same.

Performing poorly? Do you play the game? want more evidence than Reddit or this forum?

Small subset of players otherwise you can use your logic and infer that playerbase wants mounts based on what we see on the forums and Reddit. What exactly do you consider performing poorly?

How about balanced patch? WvW? Dungeons? hundreds of topics about problems with the game? how about COMMUNICATION?

What game doesn’t? How much communication is considered successful? Does Anet provide less, about the same, or more communication that other MMO companies? Is communication for everything they do, before they do it, really required?

I don’t know if you have played other games or not or how vast your gaming library is but A-net is THE company that has THE LEAST amount of communication in my library of games.
just an example: in the Announcement section,

Path of Exile has over 900 threads since 2012
Tera Online has over 700 threads since 2012
FFIV Online has 250 Dev Blogs since 2012
Guild Wars 2 has…. 90 announcements since 2012

as for the rest… bad management and toxic environment. that happens in many many companies. That is usually the case when you have upper management that is pressured by investors to make money quick and NOW, or they get replaced with someone that will. while we here take this as entertainment, the upper management is their livelyhood, their bread and butter. So upper management make decisions to make investors money as quick as possible, even if its releasing a half kitten d kitten on a stick as long as its pretty and covered in sparkles so people buy it.

Then you have middle management (where my real life job is) where I am the expert leading a team of workers who are as passionate about their jobs as me. Now i get kitten from above to get things out the door as fast as possible while my team wants to get the thing out the door as perfect as possible. So my bosses (upper management) tell me that it needs to be out by 2pm while my team tells me it will be ready in a in 48 hours. So i get kitten from above fighting with them on how unrealistic these deadlines are and we come to a compromise to release it in the morning, all while i get kitten from my team because i am rushing them all the time to ship it in the morning.
(kitten all this story to say 1 thing)

from my point of view, uppper management makes bad decisions for product quality while the point of view from the team is that it’s a toxic environment due to all the pressure and politics from middle management.

this reflects the reviews we are seeing on this website.

Loli Ruri.8307:

People who are enjoying their employment, or enjoyed and moved on, won’t go onto some random website on the Internet to post about their positive or unbiased experience and review. People however do when they wanna complain. Also the system is probably subject to abuse by bogus people making falsified claims. After all, some people want to watch the world burn.

That site has been heavily moderated and reviewed for a few years now. Apparently when Evolution of Combat came out in Runescape, a large wave of falsified reviews attempted to paint Jagex as a horrible company because a chunk of the runescape community was rioting over the update. One of the members of the runescape community contacted the site’s owner and gave him the situation in detail. The member then posted on the runescape forums stating what he had done and what was going to happen to the site.

Now you not only need to make a profile but provide information about yourself (which gets checked) before you can contribute. Also posts made are heavily reviewed before they are approved and placed on the site while peer reviews and constant moderation filters out potentially false ones.

Ayrilana.1396:

Labjax.2465:

PopeUrban.2578:

“Peer review” sites are inherantly biased toward negative reviews because those with nothing bad to say don’t want to burn bridges, risk their career, or alienate future employers.

Wait, what? Don’t you have this backwards? Why would someone who has only good things to say be afraid to say them?

It’s not that they are afraid to. People that are disappointed with anything for whatever reason are more likely to go on and review something to vent than someone whose expectations were met or exceeded.

You know you are the only one defending Anet’s position right now, if 1 person is happy with the game’s direction and 99 more are not; there is something wrong about it, keep defending all you want and argue all you want, at the end the numbers and the reviews says everything.

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

The expansion has been pretty successful.

Can you link us up with the data to back up that feeling. Thanks.

I am afraid that, were such “data” available, you would still not care because your opinion is strongly different. In which case, why bother with such “requests”? Just respect that person to dissent, rather than attacking him/her due to having an “unpopular” opinion, as far as these forums are concerned.

As a counter-argument, you could be asked the very same question you posed. “Data” does not matter when your mind is already made up about something.

Labjax.2465:

Ayrilana.1396:

Not really. It’s well documented that those who have negative impressions/experiences are the ones most likely to be vocal about it. Lumping those that had their needs met with those with needs exceeded didn’t matter as I was not arguing specifically about the differences between them.

“It’s well documented” = “I don’t have an argument at this point, but I’d rather not admit that I’ve been driven into that particular corner.”

The lumping did matter and I explained why in my post. It doesn’t matter whether you were arguing about the differences between met and exceeded. The differences are relevant to the argument.

You don’t get to personally decide what is and isn’t relevant to an argument. That’s not how reasoning works.

No it didn’t matter. I was talking specifically about negative reviews. If was not talking about those where people had their needs met or exceeded. Please don’t add things to my argument that were not even there. Thanks.

Saying it’s well documents does not mean that I don’t have an argument. I can provide several links and such but people will just be “oh well that’s not credible” and so on. You’re taught in marketing classes about this as well.

Those of you who are discounting the site or the reviews because “happy people don’t post reviews” clearly have no idea how to use reviews to your advantage. Negative reviews are FAR more helpful than any number of positive reviews, and you can tell that there are some real problems, repeated by many reviewers.

Developers in any job (at least here in the US, I know) aren’t treated very well because they’re easy to replace. I have read far worse reviews for development positions than those ones, and I’m as in love with GW2 as the next girl, but that’s no reason to discount what they’re saying. Just because you’re a fan of something, doesn’t mean that everything that they do is done perfectly.

xbutcherx.3861:

Ayrilana.1396:

Labjax.2465:

PopeUrban.2578:

“Peer review” sites are inherantly biased toward negative reviews because those with nothing bad to say don’t want to burn bridges, risk their career, or alienate future employers.

Wait, what? Don’t you have this backwards? Why would someone who has only good things to say be afraid to say them?

It’s not that they are afraid to. People that are disappointed with anything for whatever reason are more likely to go on and review something to vent than someone whose expectations were met or exceeded.

You know you are the only one defending Anet’s position right now, if 1 person is happy with the game’s direction and 99 more are not; there is something wrong about it, keep defending all you want and argue all you want, at the end the numbers and the reviews says everything.

I’m the only one? Not really. It’s just that the negative people are more vocal at the moment. I dare say that you should provide your source that it’s 99 percent of players. People who are disappointed are more likely to post about it than those that are not.

So why the silence about taking away human female animations, Super Adventure Box, Etc

The silence is defining,

Daharahj.1325:

You don’t have to look far

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820_P2.htm?filter.employmentStatus=REGULAR&filter.employmentStatus=PART_TIME&filter.employmentStatus=UNKNOWN

Now you know why they aren’t doing so good and are so reluctant to give answers.

This is the most useful and interesting thing I’ve read on these forums. It really gives insight into why the heck everything seems to be going awry. It’s a shame it seems that the CEO is completely disconnected from his customer base and does not seem to care enough to change, plus it seems to be unanimously agreed that he has his hands in too many departments and is apparently the be-all-end-all of all decisions, often causing projects to be scrapped completely, even when they are close to completion, simply because he changed his mind.

Underpaid and understaffed is what I suspected for the snail’s pace of bug fixes and meaningful content (I didn’t suspect underpaying, just understaffing).

I do like to see that there still are passionate and creative people that work there, but if management doesn’t get their kitten together, those people will leave and we really will be looking at a serious problem.

Very useful post and very eye-opening: 10/10 would read again.

That doesnt mean anything most the people were positive or equal if you were too look up any company for employee reviews you would see the same exact thing.They are employees whom mostly like to moan just like we players do but they moan because they have to work and they have to do what they are told by the bosses. Anyone who’s had a job has had the same exact thoughts on their managment at one point.

and as a gamer that stuff really none of our buisness and i think anet should take it down no need to spread negative morale around true or not.Thats their buisness and their employees and any future employee’s not the players not the customers buisness,

Angelica Dream.7103:

So why the silence about taking away human female animations, Super Adventure Box, Etc

The silence is defining,

I’m guessing you didn’t spend much time reading the items in the link so I’ll go ahead and answer it for you so you don’t have to put in the effort of reading and inferring.

They seemingly have a high turn-over rate due to poor company management. I’m sure the team that worked on the original SAB doesn’t work there anymore. As for human female animations, that could seemingly have been a mistake or they were planning on changing something, got halfway, then a director changed their mind, told them to stop the project, and then never undid the change they made. Or the specific person working on it no longer works there, and their organization is so chaotic that they don’t know where he left off or who was working on what, and it just gets forgotten.

They also seem to be plagued with frequent equipment failures and their IT staff is too small and slammed to get anything done in a timely manner, causing projects to take exceptionally long and scrapped all together.

Bringing in new programmers also seems to be a slow-down as their current system is apparently not standard and/or so convoluted that make even minor tweaks is a large undertaking.

All in all, they seem to be able to start a lot of projects, but due to high turn-over and frequent decision changes by upper management, never finish them. This would explain pretty much every single complaint we see on the forums.

2 of the 3 original founders have left the game already, and the 1 remaining (O’Brien) apparently hired outside executives to try and fill those roles. People who had no idea what the core concept of GW2 is or was and are all supposedly yes-men. This may also explain the strong push for eSports. I’m sure one of these “experts” pulled in said it would be a great idea, and the upper management ran with it.

Daharahj.1325:

You don’t have to look far

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820_P2.htm?filter.employmentStatus=REGULAR&filter.employmentStatus=PART_TIME&filter.employmentStatus=UNKNOWN

Now you know why they aren’t doing so good and are so reluctant to give answers.

For some reason, this link brings me to the second page of reviews. Admittedly, the second page has a lot of low ratings, but when you go to the first page, a lot of the ratings (which are newer) are much much higher and speak better of the company. Maybe management changed how they approached the business and listened to feedback: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820.htm?filter.employmentStatus=REGULAR&filter.employmentStatus=UNKNOWN

Everyone on the first page speaks highly of the company, where the biggest complaints seem to be about what to eat for lunch, and having to pay for parking. Those are pretty mediocre

“The environment is very open and transparent which is something you don’t get at many companies. The CEO is insanely smart, humble and has solid goals and plans for the business. Everyone is very warm and welcoming. It is seriously the nicest group of people I’ve had the pleasure of working with in my fairly long career in games.”

and another one that I liked to hear:

“* Excellent tech and decent tools * Very enthusiastic, smart and knowledgeable team * Emphasis on sane work-life balance * Projects reflect forward thinking in design and planning * Highly collaborative environment * Strong business analytics support * Nice office with good road access * Reasonable core hours with flexible work schedules * Good communication channels available with fans”

So all in all, it seems the company wasn’t the best place to work for, but I am glad to see that overall, people are now enjoying it and things seem to have changed for the better.