Guild Wars 2

I’m sure you’re tired of constantly getting flac, so let me explain to you why you’re getting flac.

Your userbase is not monolithic.

Each and every thing you’ve gotten massive flac for over the past 2 years has come from appeasing the majority. From ascended gear all the way to the recent incredible rise in scamming dungeons, it can all be traced down to this.

Why does this always get you flac? Because your playerbase is not monolithic. No-one will agree on what exactly the game should be, and most probably won’t agree with you either.

If you make changes that make 60% of your playerbase happy 10 times, in all likelihood you’ll be left with a playerbase where 80% thinks you’re idiots and should change things back, though what should be changed back will vary by person.

The solution:
Options!

• The global fractal level reset was supposed to “Allow players to experience the instabilities as they level up”. If experiencing the instabilities was optional, we would have done it anyway and it would be a non-issue
• While the content guide was derided en masse for pointing newbies to level 80 zones or for pointing in an essentially random direction, the option to turn it off made it a non-issue
• Having to unlock 65 traits through varyingly boring content before you can even build your character is horrible! It’s made slightly better by the ability to buy them from a trader, but giving players the option to skip trait unlock events they already completed on a different character would make it a non-issue
• Can you even imagine how horrible double-tap to dodge would be if we couldn’t turn it off? Thank goodness it’s a non-issue!
• There has been a massive influx of scammers kicking people from half-finished dungeon paths since the removal of a party owner, as the huge thread in the dungeons forum will tell you, having the option to turn it back on would fix the problem immediately

By providing an option you will go from making 60% of your playerbase happy to making 60% of your playerbase happier, and the rest will consider the change a non-issue.

The future
While I don’t believe that you’ll put your very limited resources into adding options for things you’ve already released, I’d like to ask you to keep this in mind when implementing the next global fractal level reset, daily reward lock, or new player experience.

It will save us both a lot of pain.

- Zip