Guild Wars 2

Really people, i have been noticing specially on this patch, there are changes like the Town Clothes with tsunamis of negative feedback as no-one (who actually spent gems on such and made their visuals / roleplayers / social guilds) wants the solution they give us.

Yet on apologies after apologies on posts from ANet on such thread, they never, ever, accept any different solution than what they had in mind on the first place.

I saw this happening on several other things community said a clear No but ANet said a clear Yes, what means our feedback is useless, they will implement this changes we like or not.

Why not, discuss this changes with the community before announce them as they just did?

That’s why most of the game community doesn’t post on the forums, they have their opinion on this things but, provide feedback seems a waste of time.

I don’t mind the town clothes change… So no-one wants the solution statement is untrue.

Just as you say that everyone wont like the new feture I say everyone I know thinks this new feture will be awesome, sure the old townclothes will be different but it can’t be helped and this was how I understood it the best way to do it and I beleave them.

I find this change wonderfull and is the fruit of our feedback so saying that feedback does nothing is bull.

Yes, devs doesn’t make a changes the first day people complain or have an objection to their idéas but most of the times when we give our feedback it will have impact on the game. So continue and give feedback and let them know what you think is good and bad, someday your opinion may be what the devs concider and implement.

Maby in the future our townclothes will be just as you want them, who knows?

There is feedback on this community since day-1 launch of GW2 people ask for, on this feature patch we actually see things that should have been launched with the game on the first place. Yet there are things as the armor repairs costs ending and events nerf that actually puzzled some of us as they seem blog posts just to fill up space O.o

Still, after they announced the changes, we clearly notice no matter the feedback they get they will not change what they are going to do, it’s like, “we listen to your feedback but don’t think it will change anything.”

Saying that don’t listen to ALL feedback is not the same thing as saying they don’t listen to ANY feedback.

Not all feedback is good feedback. And not every fan knows the thought process behind every decision.

Sure, there are a percentage of people who don’t like this. There were also a percentage of people who didn’t want to have to wear town clothes only in cities.

I wonder which group of players is bigger.

I do not agre. The devs have clearly taken into account a lot of our feedback on various design choices. One example that comes to mind is ranks. Anet were originally going to remove them when they removed glory, but due to the responses they got, they decided to leave them in. The big difference between this and the town clothes debacle is it was before the actual changes were made. Naturally, Anet are going to be more conservative going back on changes which have already been implemented in large part, due to the man hours invested. That said, I’m confused that they didn’t think this was a topic worthy of community debate before its implementation. My guess is they did not want to spoil the wardrobe reveal, or that they underestimated how much the community liked individual town clothes items based on their poor sales. Either way, saying they ignore us is a vast oversimplification. Do they sometimes mistake what the community wants when making design choices? Yea, probably. But they do listen. And when it is feasible, they have made changes to accommodate us. I know you’re upset about the changes to town clothes. I am too. But we can’t make knee jerk assumptions based on that. After all, it has only been 2 days. Continued mature support for the issue may yet convince them it is worth changing.

Nage.1520:

Saying that don’t listen to ALL feedback is not the same thing as saying they don’t listen to ANY feedback.

Not all feedback is good feedback. And not every fan knows the thought process behind every decision.

Sure, there are a percentage of people who don’t like this. There were also a percentage of people who didn’t want to have to wear town clothes only in cities.

I wonder which group of players is bigger.

You didn’t had to, never did happen with me, isn’t that one option?
This specific change will kill Roleplayers, as i am in one guild of such and we make huge use of the clothing system, no one on there is a “byte” happy about this, it will destroy the way our social guild works, our roleplay-movies we create, everything.

For some it’s a little change that doesn’t makes a difference, for others it forces them to play differently.

Personally, I don’t care about town clothes either way the update seems fine with me though.

As for which group is bigger the angry ones or the ones happy with the change, from what I have seen in the forums, looks like the happy ones are in the majority.

Now, as for which group is Louder, that is a different story.

Taking feedback into account does not equate to doing what you suggest. Even if a dev agrees that is no guarantee there is time and money (time equals money for a business) available to make something happen.

Also, the views of a very small and vociferous minority does not make a company beholden to follow their feedback, all that is required is that they listen to the feedback and consider it.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Personally, I don’t care about town clothes either way the update seems fine with me though.

As for which group is bigger the angry ones or the ones happy with the change, from what I have seen in the forums, looks like the happy ones are in the majority.

Now, as for which group is Louder, that is a different story.

The only complicated change till now is the clothes system, everything else there is no reasons to be angry with the changes. The fact the majority of the players do not use/purchased clothes don’t have to mean the feedback from the ones who did should be considered the minority that is actually the majority that like, spent money and use Town Clothes.

So if you say that they should do X and I say that they should do the opposite of X, which feedback should they listen?

Oh and I like the change btw :P

I think the trade-off of being able to use Town Clothes in combat to the new restrictions is well worth it.

And considering how long they have been working on this, how can one expect immediate changes? It would probably take many months to implement changes to satisfy one group, and waiting to be able to use the Wardrobe would probably cause more dissatisfaction that what has already been expressed.

Personally, I’m fine with what I’ve heard, so far, but I think it would be best to postpone assessments until after the actual changes are released.

Sorry OP, kinda with everyone else. There is equal feedback, if anything more positive than negative. The negative people are just louder and when they don’t listen to your suggestions you feel they don’t listen, when those of us who like the changes feel they are listening.

They can’t, and shouldn’t, try to please everyone.

I guess I’ll comment too… to be honest, I don’t like reduction of choices or removal of the ability to mix and match things in general… Imagine if our armor was reduced to one set without the ability to mix and match… That would be something I would be very unhappy with so I can imagine how this change might affect others.

The following statement from Curtis Johnson though makes me wonder if some pieces are becoming armor skins or something… or could be in the future (that’d be interesting).

“As always we ask you to try out the new system of customization and see what’s available to you. I think many people will be surprised by how many pieces have become armor compatible.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-Questions-Town-clothes-Costumes-Combat/page/18#post3823361

In the end though I am happy with what is coming. I’m sorry to those affected but I can’t wait to do dungeon runs as Mad King Thorn or to start collecting my skins. The overall changes proposed are things I wish came at the start of the game, I can’t help but think that many people that had left would have stayed longer if these things were there. Even so, better late than never and I’m glad I get to see them get implemented.

They do take feedback, but apparently some topics seem to be off-limits. Such as that tad controversial one on refunds for duplicate skin sets where Gaile has been patiently advising people to can requests until the patch drops on the 15th and to post in the relevant feedback thread which, strangely, there isn’t really one (the change in fuctionality of costumes is a somewhat separate topic and so long that anything can get lost) while they close any threads deemed not in the relevant (not really existing?) feedback channel. Meanwhile, the hype train keeps going with the flashing lights and loud noises keeping people distracted while there is dead silence from ANet officially about any policies with regards to this and the only reassurances are from players citing past refunds of gathering tools etc while there is a clear policy up already with regards to costume items.

So, why the PR circus and no clear answers? I mean, I’d have liked to known beforehand as soon as it was decided that gem store skins would work this way with the new wardrobe system because it would affect the way I would choose to spend currency bought with real money instead of potentially being seriously ripped off. I would think that it’s a reasonable place to draw the line as to when information about future patch content is released as opposed to being kept to the hype train schedule i.e. where it will affect how I choose to spend real money. Especially when you have one day sales at the same time that you have employees dropping hype bombs about the feature patch and presumably, this information is already known. Or releasing the information just days after such a sale. It would have saved a few of us from stocking up on more of single use skins at the same price as ~20 xmute stones per skin.

Failing that, something, anything that isn’t soft censorship and tight lips, would have been nice at all after the fact. eg. a policy still being worked on, etc. As it stands I’m not happy at how this has been handled thus far and I’m wondering why I’ve chosen to spend hundreds on this game when seemingly there have been no qualms about potentially ripping people off in this situation and complete silence as to how they will remedy it, if there is to be compensation.

I’d like to think that some things, even controversial, could be handled with a little more transparency and respect towards customers and their concerns.

Most of the feature patch is entirely based on feedback. The wardrobe/town clothes have been in development since the wallet – a reversal or coding change this close to patch is probably unfeasible from a workload point of view, especially as they have put out a pretty reasonable and well articulated reason why it is, how it is.

The forums make up a tiny proportion of the community and the devs have to make changes based on the wider game, not just a few people who will be put at a loss. Are they going to please everyone? No, but that’s life and business.

As for compensation, well there’s still more info to come yet – including Ready Ups and collated feedback replies and more patch info. Maybe you will hear more in the days to come.

One major reason for the announcements in advance of the change was to get feedback which the community has obviously been actively providing. Just because you don’t hear a particular response or you don’t hear the response you want necessarily doesn’t mean that the feedback hasn’t been heard and ignored (it’s possible though). ANet has until April 15 so they may possibly be looking into adjustments and fixes. We’ll see. You should appreciate that they’re giving you the opportunity to help them by providing constructive feedback. They can’t please all the people all the time, and they’ll make the difficult decisions. They’ve could’ve just released it on April 15 without advance information and then deal with the feedback afterwards.

Randulf.7614:

Most of the feature patch is entirely based on feedback. The wardrobe/town clothes have been in development since the wallet – a reversal or coding change this close to patch is probably unfeasible from a workload point of view, especially as they have put out a pretty reasonable and well articulated reason why it is, how it is.

The forums make up a tiny proportion of the community and the devs have to make changes based on the wider game, not just a few people who will be put at a loss. Are they going to please everyone? No, but that’s life and business.

None of that bears any relevance to what was posted which is more to do with business ethics.

1. ANet knows at the time of the one day March sales how the wardrobe system will function in a month or so’s time. They put up ‘time limited’ skins for sale again.
2. Release absolutely no information as to why it’s a bad idea to double up on these skins. People buy duplicates assuming that’s how they’ll get more copies of the skin since this has been the way it’s worked in the past.
3. Release this information very shortly after people have already doubled up on skins during the sale.
4. Say nothing about what they’re going to do about it with regards to compensation, if any. You could get ~20 transmutation uses for the cost of one of the weapon skins.

Essentially, bait and switch.

Sure, there may be information coming but they already had a policy up with regards to how costume items will be handled given their functionality will be changing. The concerns over how duplicates will be handled is a known issue but nothing official has thus far been communicated as to how this will be handled. I’m holding hope that the response will reflect common decency but the cynical side says nothing will happen and you will be down those gems spent.

PS: I’d like options to refund, exchange or gift duplicates.

Our feedback is what prompted this patch in the first place. The only people who are really complaining about the town clothes thing are those who mix and match, and in my opinion they’re the only ones who have a legitimate complaint to make. Honestly though, when it comes right down to it ANet can’t please everybody. There are going to be hurt feelings somewhere.

Max Lexandre.6279:

Nage.1520:

Saying that don’t listen to ALL feedback is not the same thing as saying they don’t listen to ANY feedback.

Not all feedback is good feedback. And not every fan knows the thought process behind every decision.

Sure, there are a percentage of people who don’t like this. There were also a percentage of people who didn’t want to have to wear town clothes only in cities.

I wonder which group of players is bigger.

You didn’t had to, never did happen with me, isn’t that one option?
This specific change will kill Roleplayers, as i am in one guild of such and we make huge use of the clothing system, no one on there is a “byte” happy about this, it will destroy the way our social guild works, our roleplay-movies we create, everything.

For some it’s a little change that doesn’t makes a difference, for others it forces them to play differently.

Yes, changes are like that. They force people to play differently. That’s exactly what changes do. Changes to skills also force people to play differently. But I"m not sure people are looking at the big picture here.

From what Anet said, town clothes were like a fourth tier of armor and not really compatible with the other tiers. Now Anet is making it so it’s more efficient to produce more stuff. Over the long term, roleplayers might well be advantaged, because they’ll not only have stuff they can wear out in the world anywhere, but they’ll be able to do it with armor piece skins, instead of a separate towns clothing thing.

In other words, Anet screwed up with how they made town clothing in the first place. RPers don’t want it fixed because they’ve adapted, but it’s still bad for the game, and more, it’s bad for the future of more outfits.

Take a step back and look at what the devs have actually said about why they made the change. Is it inconvenient? Yes. It is better for the long term health of the game? Yes.

That would probably be beneficial to RPers as well as everyone else.

No company can make decisions based on the concerns of a single minority.

A.Net does listen to feedback but they also think about the future of the game. I do like that. As an example, TRION only listened to players feedback, at the beginning of Rift, and really caused HUGE imbalance issues in the game.

In such patches, like the one upcoming, there will be people that hate it and people that don’t.

Because the miniscule percentage that browse the forums equals the entire community’s feedback, amirite?

The vast majority of players have never even put on town clothes. I’ve been playing since headstart with over 3,600 hours played and I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve put on town clothes. I haven’t seen anybody in my guild or even in map chat even mention the town clothes issue.

Yes, a very small minority (no matter how vocal they are) won’t be able to get quite the look they had, but the advantages of the new system outweigh the disadvantages so much.

Also, even if arenanet is looking into doing something to address the concerns, they are certainly not going to announce it here and now. If they did that and then something came up that they weren’t able to make the changes people would go nuts.

Anet mentioned before it takes about 3 months for a development cycle, but that was mainly referring to living story content, features probably take longer. If you want to look at how anet is responding to feedback you need to compare the game now to the feedback from 3-6 months ago.

Given how grotesquely provincial and self-serving most player feedback is, and the rampant tendency to believe that one’s personal playstyle automatically has the weight of massive numbers of other players and there for must be cherished and appeased at every turn… yeah, there’s a lot of “clear feedback” that any game designer has to just flatly ignore.

They didn’t start these changes overnight.. they’ve been months if not a year in the making. I doubt a little QQ will revert the most expensive (in dev time) changes.

Berelious.3290:

Our feedback is what prompted this patch in the first place. The only people who are really complaining about the town clothes thing are those who mix and match, and in my opinion they’re the only ones who have a legitimate complaint to make. Honestly though, when it comes right down to it ANet can’t please everybody. There are going to be hurt feelings somewhere.

That’s completely false, I own one piece of town clothing and honestly wouldn’t care if they took it away, and I’ve been contributing to the thread, as well as a great deal of people who also don’t use much or any town clothes.

There have literally been two people other than the developers who have defended this change. And they haven’t even been able to justify their stance with any mechanical reasons, just stating “Anet doesn’t owe you anything”, which is false, since these players paid real money and by any legal standard they do owe them something. The developers have given real reasons why they can’t do this, but frankly, players have already shown those reasons to be invalid.

And to the people in this thread saying, you’re too much of a minority to matter. That’s beside the point, it has already been proven by players that this is possible from a technical prespective to have town clothes converted to armor, and not even particularly difficult to be honest. All that needs to be done is make town clothes in to chest/leg piece, and to provide the single pieces with skin that meets the different armor weight seams. ANet just painted themselves in to a corner and is opting to punish players for their mistaken work rather than take responsibility for it themselves.

I have worked in a dozen different businesses across everything from manufacturing to sales to services, sometimes with some of the cheapest bosses you could ever imagine. Even with the dirtiest most corner-cutting bosses I have had I have NEVER once EVER seen a customer pay for an employee’s mistake, either the company takes responsibility for the costs, or the employee that made the mistake, but never the customer. That is a line that no company dares cross.

In the end, it is ANets decision to make no matter how many players are against it or how many other better options there may be. But if they are going through with this, there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for not providing a full refund for ALL related purchases, doing otherwise is dishonest by any standard.

People aren’t bothering to launch counter-arguments OR to support the cause because the level of fanaticism in there is self-defeating. Normally I’m all over not randomly screwing with player appearance – I have infraction points from when they screwed up every single piece of Sylvari cultural armor because a designer was fiddling with it for the Toxic alliance and decided offhandedly to ram the changes down player throats. It took a few weeks but we got that fixed. But that town-clothes group is so spun up I don’t really want to have anything to do with it one way or the other.

I am in favor of these changes. Yes, it involves a tradeoff of functionality, but in the end what we get I believe is better for the game as a whole than what we lose. As with any feature, some people utilize it more heavily than others, and for different purposes, and so some will be more heavily impacted than others. One game cannot be a platform for all things for all people, and sometimes that means niche uses of the system (such as mixing and matching town clothes to make roleplay movies) are going to be sidelined to improve the mainstream uses of the system. There’s nothing wrong with utilizing the system for types of play beyond the mainstream, but doing so should also come with the knowledge that development resources are going to be spent in ways that support and enhance “typical” play rather than niche play, because that is what provides the most value to the most people for a given expenditure of resources.

The problem, as I see it, is that there are better ways to handle this. Better ways to meet ANet’s goals AND keep the town clothes players happy (or make them even happier). Players came up with these ideas within a couple of days of hearing about the changes.

ANet has had MONTHS, and this was the best they could think of? I’m sorry, but this is stuff like the charr tails clipping through armor all over again. This isn’t “We can’t do it”, this is “We can’t be bothered.”

And before you say I’m being harsh on the devs, yes, I am. As should everyone here. If you want to make a AAA game and be a success, then there are standards of quality and dedication to excellence that are required. If you try to get along by just doing “enough”, then you may still have a good game, but not as good as it could have been. You won’t be the leader, you’ll be the game other people look at and say “Wow, not bad, but we can do it a lot better”. The second rate game that quickly gets overshadowed by the next wave.

Second rate fun doesn’t cut it. They want this to be an AAA game? Then they need to put forth the AAA effort. And this… isn’t cutting it.

All I can say is…I’m sure as hell glad that you guys aren’t making this game.

Just contact support after the patch drop to ask for a refund on your clothes; they’re usually pretty nice about doing such things.

But they just cannot treat demands before the patch hits (for many reasons stated in many other threads), so hang on, and ask refund on patch day…
Having known that it would be possible to wear them in combat, I would sure have bought some of these skins, though I didn’t because they were unusable in WvW – and having known that, some people wouldn’t have bought them… now, who’s in worst position… people who didn’t buy, or people who can get a refund?

Jocksy.3415:

who’s in worst position… people who didn’t buy, or people who can get a refund?

The people who can get a refund.

Why? Because a lot of them consider the town clothes a major part of their character. Those that didn’t buy are not losing anything, and may get chances to buy similar stuff in the future. Those that did buy ARE losing something. And getting a refund in store credit/gems isn’t going to really replace that.

I haven’t looked deep into the Town Clothing issue. Are you referring to not being able to mix-and-match ? If so, yes that is a total downfall.

But overall, I must say (for the first time in many months) that Anet is doing a very good thing for the game. The changes they had made are definitely good changes (very very few aren’t though).

GG Anet

Wow, remind me to NEVER rile up the RPers in this game. They come to the forums and make it sound like a patch that is a laundry list of changes that PLAYERS have been begging for is all just crap.

Not to offend but RPers and Town Clothes users are (in my estimation) an extremely small fraction of the playerbase. Very vocal but also very small. Plus ANet has changed a lot of those clothes into armor skins, just wait with the rage for now.

Just a reference, almost all the changes that got implemented in this patch are player-suggested. Also, almost every single trash update that drove GW2 from it’s original purpose was player-suggested.

nGumball.1283:

Just a reference, almost all the changes that got implemented in this patch are player-suggested. Also, almost every single trash update that drove GW2 from it’s original purpose was player-suggested.

Exactly.

What I don’t understand, is why these small group of people believe that their ‘artistic’ vision trumps the artistic vision and integrity of everything they come into contact with.

You think Da Vinci should and would have changed the Mona Lisa because you thought she had to big of a nose?

You either like something, are apathetic towards it, or dislike it. Move on and stop kittening about a piece of art in hopes of changing it, when it’s not even yours to change.

You DON’T always know what’s best. All of us have our personal wants and tweaks for every game….but unless you made that game, it’s not your choice and frankly you can pipe the kitten down.

The people who only care about town clothes are a very small minority. Heck, I bet they all stay on one server – TC

All we’re getting here is a vocal minority.

The last big content update was in 2012 November, FOTM.

I like every change of the feature pack so far. And being a programmer I know how hard and time consuming those changes were, so they didn’t take those decisions lightly, rest assured there was some analisys of what the community wants or what might be better for the future of the game.
Just because 10 people rant on the forums that they want something doesn’t mean anything. Was proven again and again that only a small amount of the players care to read or write on the game forums (valid to any game not just GW2).

Nick.6972:

The last big content update was in 2012 November, FOTM.

False.

The Revenant.4970:

Nick.6972:

The last big content update was in 2012 November, FOTM.

False.

Not saying you’re wrong, but why do you feel this is false? Where do you draw the line on “big” for content updates?

Personally, I’d call the LA Invasion a good example of a big update. The update after, where we take down Scarlet…. not one I’d call big.

Palador.2170:

The Revenant.4970:

Nick.6972:

The last big content update was in 2012 November, FOTM.

False.

Not saying you’re wrong, but why do you feel this is false? Where do you draw the line on “big” for content updates?

Personally, I’d call the LA Invasion a good example of a big update. The update after, where we take down Scarlet…. not one I’d call big.

Anything that kept you busy for a week or more.

Well you may be asking for a big content patch that wasn’t temporary, that actually added something big to the game permanently, on that aspect, it must have been the FOTM.

Max Lexandre.6279:

Well you may be asking for a big content patch that wasn’t temporary, that actually added something big to the game permanently, on that aspect, it must have been the FOTM.

False.

New WvW map begs to differ.

I’ve been playing FOTM since the 2012 November.
How long would you play your LA invasion or Tower or whatever if it was permanent? A day? A week? Certainly not as long as FOTM.

I understand why, players don’t always know best. But such a weird update to take a stand on. They listened to players on Scarlet, they heard us on Orr but said the reason why they wouldn’t change it. They listened to us on a lot of balance issues, like launch orr (which for the record i’d still like orr to go back to that), but now we’re not dealing with gameplay, we’re dealing with mostly UI updates. It’s odd for them to pick this update to make a stand on.

I do get it, anet probably feels like we’re telling them “Yeah these changes arnt good enough do it right” but we’re not, or i’m not at least. Yeah i’m upset about the town clothes thing but besides that all the changes so far seem good to me. We’re more saying “Most of these changes are good but one or two you should look at again.” We’re just misunderstanding each other.

Nick.6972:

I’ve been playing FOTM since the 2012 November.
How long would you play your LA invasion or Tower or whatever if it was permanent? A day? A week? Certainly not as long as FOTM.

That doesn’t make the other patches content ‘not big’.

FOTM is an endless dungeon tower….of course itll have longevity. You can only put so many endless things in a game before they become redundant.

I can definitely say I played Nightmare Tower much longer than I played Fractured/FoTM.

Calys Teneb.7015:

I can definitely say I played Nightmare Tower much longer than I played Fractured/FoTM.

Of course….that’s what makes the frequent (albeit smaller than an expansion) patches great. Different things for different tastes.

Max Lexandre.6279:

Yet on apologies after apologies on posts from ANet on such thread, they never, ever, accept any different solution than what they had in mind on the first place.

This isn’t true. It just takes a while to implement changes.

People asked for a LFG tool in 2012, and it was implemented in 2013!

People asked for a WvW overflow workaround in 2012, and we got EotM recently!

People asked for account-wide dyes back in 2012, and here they are!

People asked for a wardrobe system back in 2012, and now we have one… sort of. At least account-wide skin unlocks.

So, make sure you continue to provide feedback, and you can look forward to seeing Town Clothes reworked for you in early 2016.

Feedback on a forum? No, it does nothing.
Feedback via the wallet usually gets attention, but it will not really matter with China in the mix, since the population is so large, no one will care if the western players quit.
We just have to suck it up or find a new game.