Guild Wars 2

CC Charles.3675:

It’s true that our team is a bit reduced due to this end of the year/celebration time.

The term double entendre comes to mind.

So, they worked their butts off to get this game out, did content patches, bug fixes, and a huge Wintersday content patch and then somebody complains that they took a break over the Christmas holidays to spend time with family.

Holy moly, now I’ve seen it all.

Well to be honest I am as well bumped for the lack of communication. In the other hand I can hardly imagine the work force they’ve put into this game this year. Despite all the troubles and game issues I do believe that the team deserved a good break off.

Just be patient. This is by far the most responding team I’ve seen so far and pretty sure they will keep up the pace.

CC Charles.3675:

Hello everyone,

It’s true that our team is a bit reduced due to this end of the year/celebration time.

However, I just wanted to tell you that we are still reading and forwarding all you concerns and requests to the appropriate teams. So no one has forgotten you.

I let this thread open, but please stay constructive and always write your posts according to the rules written in our code of conduct.

Thanks!

You touched on what is the problem. You forward concerns and request. Your job basically should not exist as all it does is add a level of noise between customer and developer. The holiday time is the perfect time for developers to communicate more as they don’t have any actual work for the most part. One of the key components and one that is ignored by almost every mmo developer is proper communication between devs and community. With that I mean a direct line between them and not some inbetween person like you.

CC Charles.3675:

Hello everyone,

It’s true that our team is a bit reduced due to this end of the year/celebration time.

However, I just wanted to tell you that we are still reading and forwarding all you concerns and requests to the appropriate teams. So no one has forgotten you.

I let this thread open, but please stay constructive and always write your posts according to the rules written in our code of conduct.

Thanks!

What makes this statement frustrating is that sometimes the information does not seem to get forwarded. This is evident with the loot drop issue when a (now locked) thread was full of data, and ANet started another thread asking for data.

Having developers checking the forums regularly would probably help resolve some issues quicker as they would know what questions to ask, or respond to questions about what we could provide that would help them resolve the issue.

From what I can gather at the moment, any information that developers get is vetted by moderators and if a moderator mis-understands an issue, it could be mis-directed or overlooked, as is what happened when the loot drop issue was first reported in bugs (and was moved to discussion).

Again, having the developers themselves scanning the forums regularly would help in situations where issues may be overlooked by moderators.

Also, maintaining a “known issue/bug” list on the forums would be nice so we know if the developers are aware of issues we are having with the game. You have some talented developers so I’m sure someone can write an “automated” system of doing just that.

I would like to clarify this post in hopes that the discussion stays constructive. Some people have misinterpreted this thread as being focused on reduced communication during the holidays. It is not. I get that we all want to take Christmas week off and chill with the family and the employees at Arenanet deserve to do the same. They’re just regular working people too.

What I am looking for is a stronger level of communication the rest of the year. Things I do not want:
– Replies to threads about such and such is OP
– Replies to silly posts about QQ my profession can’t 1 shot the universe
– Replies to trolls and flamers in general

What I would love to see posted:
– The developer’s ideas: your thoughts on the state of play, what is working what isn’t
– Specifics: don’t tease us with “we’re implementing a change of some sort sometime” tell us what you’re lookin to do and approximately when.
– Put patch notes on the launcher so I don’t need to hunt them down. If a change is made that has a large impact on a proffession, try to include a few notes so we know why you guys felt X needed to be buffed/nerfed.

Overall, I fell that if we, the players, better knew what you, the developers, were working on and when we could expect to see it (roughly, I know hard deadlines can be tough), the amount of posts that contain nothing but complaints and whining on these forums would shrink. Moreover, the GW2 is not stupid. There are some pretty sharp folks on here and I think you’d be surprised how much useful feedback and analysis you could get if the players had a little more concrete info to work with.

Thanks for keeping this thread mostly mature and constructive. Flamers and trolls the door is —-→

PraetorMortis.8610:

Overall, I fell that if we, the players, better knew what you, the developers, were working on and when we could expect to see it (roughly, I know hard deadlines can be tough), the amount of posts that contain nothing but complaints and whining on these forums would shrink.

Sadly, I think you are wrong, i have seen waaay too many games/devs saying that they are working on X or Y, then:
1) A few weeks/months later they say that they cant implement it because its imbalanced/bad mechanics or whatever and the forum community explodes in rage: “OMG-we-were-promised-so-and-so-Anet-sucks/lies”
2) they implement a slightly changed version and the community explodes in rage: “OMG-we-were-promised-so-and-so-Anet-sucks/lies”
3) they implement exactly what they said, but because of rampant rumours and some ppl deliberately twisting/misunderstand the community explodes in rage: “OMG-we-were-promised-so-and-so-Anet-sucks/lies”.

Yes a part of the community might be able to take those kind of “we are dreaming about” devs posts, but way too often it ends in QQ/rage posts.

Im not saying that the devs should stay silent, but i would advice against anything concrete until a-net knows with 100% certainty that they can implement.

Can we at least give them a break for the holidays?

By the way, they may not post directly on the forums a lot, but it would be intellectually dishonest to ignore the many blog posts, the “Ask Me Anything” sessions on Massively, Kotaku, Reddit, etc., the seminars at conventions, the podcast guesting, etc.

I actually feel more plugged into these developers than most. The only other MMOs that I have played with more developer information and feedback coming out in real time was City of Heroes and EVE Online, both of which also had very passionate dev squads.

Ponendus.4987:

Creating an expansion for us.

I’d hope they’d fix the current game before adding more buggy crap to it.

Conner.4702:

You touched on what is the problem. You forward concerns and request. Your job basically should not exist as all it does is add a level of noise between customer and developer. The holiday time is the perfect time for developers to communicate more as they don’t have any actual work for the most part. One of the key components and one that is ignored by almost every mmo developer is proper communication between devs and community. With that I mean a direct line between them and not some inbetween person like you.

Actually, their job is necessary, and I’ll tell you why. This is going to be a long post, so… For people who don’t want to read further, the explanation is simple, even though you may not want to hear it: the developers’ primary job is not to read forum posts and feedback, or even to talk to you, but to work on the game. Community teams serve as a valuable resource to allow the developers to perform their primary job function while being able to understand player sentiment distilled into its purest, most helpful form so they can actually code and program the game’s systems for you, the player.

You want details? Ok, I have details to support this.

A developer or team’s time is limited in terms of being able to take in, process people’s feedback, and act upon it. While in this industry time spent outside of the traditional expected workday is normal, think about the fact that this forum alone generates thousands if not tens of thousands of posts a day. Not all of the posts contain decent feedback that is helpful to the developers, either. Would you rather that developers spend time replying to posts that they have to sift through to ensure they are responding to the best thread, or would you rather they be fixing the game? I’d take the latter.

And there’s also the fact that not every developer is suited to communicating with the players. They may not possess the training to ensure their messaging is consistent, or the knowledge of the trending sentiment on the forum to ensure what they are saying is understandable and practical to players. Developers that do post on the forum are usually representative of a team or system, and in many cases also have other obligations outside of development or answering forum posts. Even then, they are not capable of dealing with the sheer volume of feedback that is given.

There’s this myth about how more developer communication directly to players is better, when in fact it’s a disaster waiting to happen. What if the developer says something that isn’t in line with what another developer said in another part of the forum? What about if a developer answers in a way that, even if unintended, comes off as arrogant or condescending? What about if a system is still in development or bugfixing, and false expectations are set? People have cited other companies with other track records of communication during this holiday, but have failed to understand that every company is different, that the type of communication varies (communicating a “easy” answer like a known milestone or deadline or an approved bugfix answer is not the same as “tell us what content you are introducing in the next month”), and that companies have different tolerance and philosophy when it comes to when it is correct or incorrect to communicate with the players.

Community teams and coordinators like Charles fill an extremely valuable role. They process all the feedback, go through the volume of posts, take out all the information that doesn’t provide much value, then pass on how we feel and what needs to be done to the development teams. They may also be able to proxy in a pinch by giving approved answers and also ensure that anyone who communicates with us is doing so in a consistent way. And because they’re on the forum and on the fan feedback channels, and their PRIMARY job is to do that, they’re closer to the players and therefore able to understand how we feel a bit better.

Much of the developer communication and action taken is the direct result of an “inbetween” resource like Community seeing, understanding, and passing on the appropriate items needed, much of which occurs behind the scenes. Direct access to the developers from the players and vice versa has some intrinsic value, but it’s limited. It’s ultimately Community’s job to make sure the feedback has the highest quality value it can have. You severely underestimate their value, and while Community teams aren’t always perfect, they deserve as much appreciation as any developer.

Work is work, regardless of where you work at. Christmas/New Years is a period where everyone should enjoy some time off and relax. Who ever suggested that ANet representative/devs should communicate more often with us at this moment is, in my opinion, completely wrong.

@ CC Charles (Community Coordinator)

I am glad that you have taken the time to respond to us and it is good that our concerns/issues/discussion are passed on to the appropriate parties/people.

As per below quote:

CC Charles.3675:

PraetorMortis.8610:

- Put patch notes on the launcher so I don’t need to hunt them down. If a change is made that has a large impact on a proffession, try to include a few notes so we know why you guys felt X needed to be buffed/nerfed.

…we never give precisely which changes/modifications will come until we are 100% sure of them.

A patch launch/update is as official as a game lunch. This is the perfect time for the devs to provide feedback to us. It will provide us with what was taken into account and implemented. Furthermore, if these changes do not work as we, the players, feel they should we can write back and continue the discussion. Lack of such simple information can suggest to us that the input (i.e. changes via pathces) made by devs used minimal effort. It is, perhaps, a mentality thing, but, taking the time to add information to the patch notes creates another communication bond between both parties – and that is a good thing!

:)

IT would be good to hear more from ANet at the turn of the year. Perhaps the CEO Mike could provide a 2012 roundup and what priorities are, moving into 2013.

How is GW2 going to push into eSports market. Will it be this coming year?

What is his thinking on stickiness for players who have completed the majority of content?

Are supporting organised guilds with increased functionality and purpose a priority or not?

Guesting? I understand danger of committing to time scales but something needs to be said on this one

WvW. Ascended gear coming in Jan/Feb? New map in Q1 or Q2 etc?? Orbs reintroduced or scrapped for foreseeable future. Breakout events …success / failure?

The list could go on but I think a monthly article from the top man is not too much to be expected.

They said they would conduct an AMA after the holidays, maybe later this week or next week I would think.

Karizee.8076:

They said they would conduct an AMA after the holidays, maybe later this week or next week I would think.

per a response to a post of mine of similar context, Chris Whitenight mentioned an AMA sometime after the new year’s eve

I’m not sure who twisted this into an issue having to do with the holidays; I don’t recall the OP mentioning it.

I think the idea was in general/overall, communication has been poor. I don’t think the holidays factored into what the OP (or many of us here, for that matter) were getting at.

I’m hoping we see a more… shall we say “forthcoming” communications strategy in 2013.

Conner.4702:

CC Charles.3675:

Hello everyone,

It’s true that our team is a bit reduced due to this end of the year/celebration time.

However, I just wanted to tell you that we are still reading and forwarding all you concerns and requests to the appropriate teams. So no one has forgotten you.

I let this thread open, but please stay constructive and always write your posts according to the rules written in our code of conduct.

Thanks!

You touched on what is the problem. You forward concerns and request. Your job basically should not exist as all it does is add a level of noise between customer and developer. The holiday time is the perfect time for developers to communicate more as they don’t have any actual work for the most part. One of the key components and one that is ignored by almost every mmo developer is proper communication between devs and community. With that I mean a direct line between them and not some inbetween person like you.

You’re right. We should obviously fire the poor folks doing that job. Instead, we should have the actual developers, design teams, artists, sound guys, etc all on the forums 24/7 instead so that the know what’s going on!

One question though…who is going to handle actually fixing/changing/adding all the stuff that needs done?

I wonder why we need an AMA since we have a whole forum dedicated to GW2 and it’s fans / people who play the game. Couldn’t they just answer questions here in the forums in the time they would do the AMA? Or is it the kind of “upvoting” a question thing that is important for the devs? Then I would ask: wouldn’t it be possible to include such a option in the forums here?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wonder why we need an AMA since we have a whole forum dedicated to GW2 and it’s fans / people who play the game. Couldn’t they just answer questions here in the forums in the time they would do the AMA? Or is it the kind of “upvoting” a question thing that is important for the devs? Then I would ask: wouldn’t it be possible to include such a option in the forums here?

Part of it is a “publicity stunt” – and also not of the reddit community posts here and vice versa.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wonder why we need an AMA since we have a whole forum dedicated to GW2 and it’s fans / people who play the game. Couldn’t they just answer questions here in the forums in the time they would do the AMA? Or is it the kind of “upvoting” a question thing that is important for the devs? Then I would ask: wouldn’t it be possible to include such a option in the forums here?

Reddit is a better option for an AMA, each question has a reply directly underneath it rather than a question being asked on page 2 and the answer being on page 5 of a thread. If they tried to do an AMA on a forum thread it would be a disorganized mess. To turn the whole forum into an AMA defeats the purpose of the forum.

The up and down voting is an added bonus as well, questions that the most people care about get the most upvotes, superfluous or trolling posts get downvoted and things people don’t care about one way or another don’t garner any votes.

fair go they are on holidays but what isn’t good on their behave is the event that is running with problems and getting no answers on the said problems and we won’t until the event is over with. This isn’t good practice at all if there is a problem with an event that is running then at least have the ppl available to address issues with this event at the time it is running. Everything else can wait till they are back from hoildays that is a very reasonable thing for them to have us do , but you can’t have event bugs and not be addressing them at all while the event is running.

cheers

Fiennes.9568:

So, they worked their butts off to get this game out, did content patches, bug fixes, and a huge Wintersday content patch and then somebody complains that they took a break over the Christmas holidays to spend time with family.

Holy moly, now I’ve seen it all.

Im as upset about issues in this game as the next guy, but this is just kinda ridiculous….c’mon guys. They don’t huddle over their computers all day long like some of you.

A suggestion in regards to communication: It would be brilliant to see a “List of possible plans but none of which are promises, just ideas that may or may not get scrapped depending on how progress goes” although I’m one of the people that wouldn’t have a problem with things getting scrapped, I’m sure there’s a danger in doing such a thing for all the people who’ll decide that promises were broken, just like people who complain that staff are not communicating enough… while they’re on holiday.

I do hope staff are having their well deserved holiday.

I’m still waiting for e-mails back about my unfair infractions that actually had points against my account. Some I’ve been waiting for over 12 weeks on. I’m guessing that they are slammed with other people complaining about the unfair infraction system they put in place.

PraetorMortis.8610:

I would like to clarify this post in hopes that the discussion stays constructive. Some people have misinterpreted this thread as being focused on reduced communication during the holidays. It is not. I get that we all want to take Christmas week off and chill with the family and the employees at Arenanet deserve to do the same. They’re just regular working people too.

What I am looking for is a stronger level of communication the rest of the year. Things I do not want:
– Replies to threads about such and such is OP
– Replies to silly posts about QQ my profession can’t 1 shot the universe
– Replies to trolls and flamers in general

What I would love to see posted:
– The developer’s ideas: your thoughts on the state of play, what is working what isn’t
– Specifics: don’t tease us with “we’re implementing a change of some sort sometime” tell us what you’re lookin to do and approximately when.
– Put patch notes on the launcher so I don’t need to hunt them down. If a change is made that has a large impact on a proffession, try to include a few notes so we know why you guys felt X needed to be buffed/nerfed.

Overall, I fell that if we, the players, better knew what you, the developers, were working on and when we could expect to see it (roughly, I know hard deadlines can be tough), the amount of posts that contain nothing but complaints and whining on these forums would shrink. Moreover, the GW2 is not stupid. There are some pretty sharp folks on here and I think you’d be surprised how much useful feedback and analysis you could get if the players had a little more concrete info to work with.

Thanks for keeping this thread mostly mature and constructive. Flamers and trolls the door is —-->

WELL SAID!!
In short, we’re asking to be treated and related to as what we are – adults which are the backbone of the company’s money-making platform. The game is not sub-based, which means we need to be kept in the game-world long enough to WANT to spend cash… We WILL do this if we feel involved in the decision-making process of the development of the world.
Simple communication is the best way to assure a community which feels emotionally invested.
NOTE – by “simple communication” what I actually mean is “detailed communication”

I still don’t know why or how we got onto the subject of the holidays or how/why that is an excuse for 3 months of nearly no communication between players and developers. Yes, I understand that if they answered every forum post all day they would never develop anything. No, that is NOT a valid argument for the current state of things.

For those of you whom GW2 is your first MMO, this will not make sense. For the rest of us who have played other MMOs, we like to be informed of upcoming changes so they aren’t a surprise.

How crappy does it feel to gear out a character for a build and really learn how to play it well, only to have it suddenly get nerfed into the ground or changed to no longer be viable without warning. Sure players can find new builds and adapt. But it disheartens players to have to constantly rework everything. However, if someone discovers that ABC is the uber build and devs communicate that the potency of said build is not what was intended, players know that a potential nerf or change is on the horizon.

Bored over lack of content as so many on these forums bemoan? How cool would it be to see info regarding possible updates or additional content? That might certainly keep players in the game longer. Even if not all of the content made it to final release, having seen the process develop would give players more reasonable expectations as the game goes on.

Occasionally, we get small posts on the main webpage from one dev or another with very broad, very generalized overviews of upcoming changes. I think a lot of players would appreciate these posts to be more detail (at least more than they are now) and more frequent.

I want to believe there are great things in the works for GW2 2013, now show me some evidence. Just a little morsel.

Yeah, i don’t think the communication issue has anything to do with the holidays – pretty sure no one has any qualms about them taking a break.

How about addressing in game bugs and giving us some updates – for example, the Necromancer minion issues – there have been dozens of threads about this issue and we have no idea if they are even working on the issue, or if they deem it unimportant due to the small numbers of Necro players.

How hard is it to trot out a one line response saying “We’re working on this”

The community liaison person should be providing feedback from the developers to the customers, not just say “i have sent this to the developers” – that is meaningless. There are so many outstanding bugs and issues that it’s starting to get ridiculous.

Just adding my two cents, to say that it WOULD be nice if AN communicated more with the community in general. It would be really good to know exactly what they’re currently working on and what plans they have for the game, and I’d like to hear some of their reasoning behind some of the changes they make to the game, why they did this and that. I think that might go a long way towards mitigating the popular perception that they often slap together “fixes” in a rather haphazard manner. Even just quicker posted and more informative patch notes would be a beginning. I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ve ever played an MMO that seems so cavalier about patch notes. They’ll typically make mention of one or two changes they made, while in reality they made a dozen.

I for one would love to see this as well, we need a community personality that is a direct liason between us poor schmos and the devs that directly change the game. Every dev has had at least 1.

To those who say “it’s not their job” it’s someone’s job or they are missing a staff person somewhere because every game developer in history has had that 1 developer community personality that’s communicated to the forums full of players what the confirmed plans are.

To those who say “they never release details until it’s patch day and that’s fine” what about the night before? Wouldn’t it get their face out there when they know there’s a patch and it’s completed awaiting final checks and setup to be uploaded to the server to be released to the public next day by telling people, look this is what’s going to happen? Then the that evening before the next day people could be reading about it and discussing it?

Ghanto.9784:

Just adding my two cents, to say that it WOULD be nice if AN communicated more with the community in general. It would be really good to know exactly what they’re currently working on and what plans they have for the game, and I’d like to hear some of their reasoning behind some of the changes they make to the game, why they did this and that. I think that might go a long way towards mitigating the popular perception that they often slap together “fixes” in a rather haphazard manner. Even just quicker posted and more informative patch notes would be a beginning. I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ve ever played an MMO that seems so cavalier about patch notes. They’ll typically make mention of one or two changes they made, while in reality they made a dozen.

Colin Johanson just posted this today.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/January-updates-Any-sources/first