Guild Wars 2

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpc.4gamers.be%2Fspecials%2F27771%2F1%2FInterview-Guild-Wars-2-heden-en-toekomst

This is a 4gamers interview (in Dutch) with Lead Content Designer Mike Zdorojny. Here is the Reddit post with a translated cliffnotes: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1hrr89/4gamers_interview_with_mike_zadorojny_lead/

What I’m most concerned with is this quote from the article (translated):

" We will also see some changes in the management of the Guild? There are, we still have some major problems in managing a Guild concerns.

Zadorojny: It’s always something we’ll investigate and what we look at, but currently we are left with limited resources in this area and has no priority. It is always a possibility that we will return to the Guild UI and make it work."

There is NO priority for improving the Guild management function in this game? WHY? I understand that churning out living world content is the big money maker for this game and that most of your development resources are going into that, but guild management tools are one of the biggest things LACKING in this game. Even compared to GW1, which had relatively simple guild management tools, GW2 is absurdly lacking. Surely it wouldn’t be unreasonable to detach a small team (i.e. the size of the team that built the SAB in a month) to crank out improved Guild Management tools + UI, or at least to develop an API for guilds so that players can build their own Guild Management tools.

/confused

A simple “last time logged in” timer would go such a long way…here’s my +1

Wolfheart.1938:

A simple “last time logged in” timer would go such a long way…here’s my +1

YES PLEASE. The guild UI lacks completely basic guild management tools right now.

Nothing is > Living Story!

NCSOFT is committed to their vision of a “budget” online RPG. They have always had a strategy of keeping the overhead low, so they drastically scale back on things like Customer Support and UI development. It’s just how the model for the guild wars games go. We are never going to see much improvement in these areas, unfortunately.

Mercurio.4970:

NCSOFT is committed to their vision of a “budget” online RPG. They have always had a strategy of keeping the overhead low, so they drastically scale back on things like Customer Support and UI development. It’s just how the model for the guild wars games go. We are never going to see much improvement in these areas, unfortunately.

That doesn’t really make sense since UI + mechanics development are handled by the design and art teams…not something like QA/CS that can be cut back on. Designers/artists at Anet are usually salary employs, not 3-month contracts like the QA/CS people

Mercurio.4970:

NCSOFT is committed to their vision of a “budget” online RPG. They have always had a strategy of keeping the overhead low, so they drastically scale back on things like Customer Support and UI development. It’s just how the model for the guild wars games go. We are never going to see much improvement in these areas, unfortunately.

So they created a budget MMO by having several motion picture’s worth of voice acting in it? Failed logic there.

This game cost quite a bit of money to design, because voice acting is expensive. Voicing the personal story, several quests, and many of the in world NPCs wasn’t cheap.

But like all games, there is a budget and every game will list it’s priorities. Star Wars ToR did terribly because all their money went to cinematics…it’s the most expensive MMO in history.

No MMO, even ones with big budgets, have enough of a budget to prioritize everything.

They probably only have 1, maybe 2 UI designers, so only one project can be handled at a time. At this time, their priority is the LFG tool, which is hinted at in the files.

Last online functionality can be ripped from the achievement leaderboards. If you don’t want to manually look, there’s a program for that.

Vayne.8563:

Mercurio.4970:

NCSOFT is committed to their vision of a “budget” online RPG. They have always had a strategy of keeping the overhead low, so they drastically scale back on things like Customer Support and UI development. It’s just how the model for the guild wars games go. We are never going to see much improvement in these areas, unfortunately.

So they created a budget MMO by having several motion picture’s worth of voice acting in it? Failed logic there.

This game cost quite a bit of money to design, because voice acting is expensive. Voicing the personal story, several quests, and many of the in world NPCs wasn’t cheap.

But like all games, there is a budget and every game will list it’s priorities. Star Wars ToR did terribly because all their money went to cinematics…it’s the most expensive MMO in history.

No MMO, even ones with big budgets, have enough of a budget to prioritize everything.

The least they could do is polish the game before they launched it. If I had the time to list all of the aesthetic and functional problems that need looking at, I would but the list is too long for me to place it anywhere near the top of MY priority list.

Wolfheart.1938:

A simple “last time logged in” timer would go such a long way…here’s my +1

I’ve crying out for this for months since launch! Is it so hard to add this one info into the guild panel?

Healix.5819:

They probably only have 1, maybe 2 UI designers, so only one project can be handled at a time. At this time, their priority is the LFG tool, which is hinted at in the files.

Last online functionality can be ripped from the achievement leaderboards. If you don’t want to manually look, there’s a program for that.

There’s a thirdy-party program that mines the leaderboards? Could you point us towards that?

They are way overdue not for an expansion as some have argued but for an overall massive UI update across the board. Guilds being one of the many items that are subpar in the control department yes.

Every other game in history has had some sort of UI kitchen sink update before reaching the anniversary, and we now know that they’ve made major profits so it’s not like NCsoft couldn’t hire temp contract programmer teams to make the jump.

Thrumdi.9216:

There’s a thirdy-party program that mines the leaderboards? Could you point us towards that?

http://code.google.com/p/gw2-lastonline-leaderboards/

(direct link)

Lol, IMO, IMHO….guilds right now have an abundance of information…all of which means about nil compared to last logged on.

IMO, the only two things guilds really need are ranks and last logged on. Everything else should stem from those two things. Ranks allow for privilege tiers. Last Logged on allows for leader to know if a player is active in the game.

With Anets choice to go with multiguilding- maybe there should be a last repped too. Maybe something for leaders to know who is gaining their guild the influence. It already tracks “paid for” influence.

These things don’t have to be something the entire guild sees, but would go a long way for managers of guilds in game.

Zacchary.6183:

Vayne.8563:

Mercurio.4970:

NCSOFT is committed to their vision of a “budget” online RPG. They have always had a strategy of keeping the overhead low, so they drastically scale back on things like Customer Support and UI development. It’s just how the model for the guild wars games go. We are never going to see much improvement in these areas, unfortunately.

So they created a budget MMO by having several motion picture’s worth of voice acting in it? Failed logic there.

This game cost quite a bit of money to design, because voice acting is expensive. Voicing the personal story, several quests, and many of the in world NPCs wasn’t cheap.

But like all games, there is a budget and every game will list it’s priorities. Star Wars ToR did terribly because all their money went to cinematics…it’s the most expensive MMO in history.

No MMO, even ones with big budgets, have enough of a budget to prioritize everything.

The least they could do is polish the game before they launched it. If I had the time to list all of the aesthetic and functional problems that need looking at, I would but the list is too long for me to place it anywhere near the top of MY priority list.

See, this is the problem. The least they could do. Completely wrong.

Why do you think almost EVERY MMO launches before it’s completed? The only exception I can think of is Rift and they did that by having a polished but very very small world. Sure if you have a tiny tiny world it’s easier.

There’s no such thing as infinite development money and at some point, ready or not, every game has to be pushed out to make money to pay people that have been working for the last five years. Anet needed another year, and very likely didn’t have the funds to wait. Plus they felt they had to strategically launch before MoP.

You didn’t invest millions of dollars and five years to make a game. They did. So you don’t actually get to pick when it launched. This is why so many MMOs come out with huge bug lists, missing features and a lack of polish.

SWToR had a MUCH bigger budget than Guild Wars 2, they worked on it for the same amount of time and it still launched missing features and filled with bugs.

It’s the nature of the beast I’m afraid. Unless you know a multi millionaire who’s willing to wait an indeterminate amount of time to see a profit, that’s how most MMOs are going to launch.

With the API being released improvements to the Guild API may not be as necessary as those that are looking into the “Last Online” as well as other features may be able to get those features out of game.

People get the features they want though the API and ArenaNet freed up some resources. I call that a win win.

Zadorojny: It’s always something we’ll investigate and what we look at, but currently we are left with limited resources in this area and has no priority. It is always a possibility that we will return to the Guild UI and make it work."

Just to clarify, the last part is not a good translation; It really says “It is always a possibility that we will return to the Guild UI to work on it."

Not to “to make it work”. This is a big difference as “to make it work” would suggest that he agrees that is does not work at this moment. But he does not say that. What is to bad because it does not work.

It’s a very good article.. the questions you see here on the forum are the ones that had been asked, the answers are however a little disappointing. Summarized they keep on pushing temporary content and for now we have not to expect any improvements on the totally broken guild management system. In addition they confirm that they are not working on an expansion but do expect people to ‘support them’. So basically, they want us to buy gems.

Well I am willing to support them but only with buying an expansion. Thats why I did go for a B2P game. If I wanted to support a game with ingame-shops I might have gone for a F2P game.

The funny thing is, he says Anet listens to the playerbase and gives as example that they will bring back MF (possible with a new story or else as a fractal dungeon.. lets not hope for the last option, I liked MF as it was, not as part of 4 dungeons that I need to complete) but the most heard complain on the forum (temporary stuff) gets totally ignored if you read the interview.

For a list of guild management improvements that we need check this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Guild-System-Improvements/page/4#post2195992

On page 4 I combined all ‘problems, additions, suggestions’ that I could find on the forum.