Guild Wars 2

Is there any chance that we could have some of the devs sit down and write some simple roadmaps on some of the things they’re working for on each class? Areas that the devs feel a class may be underperforming or overperforming in, making some general statements about their plans for the future. Such as “we want to investigate guardian condition damage builds to improve condition variety” or “we want to to address necromancer trait trees to improve cohesion and appeal.”

I know that class design is a fluid concept, and will change as players and devs discover new things, but at the same time we left beta with the devs having commented on a number of different topics (for example mesmer and thief needing love, ranger utility skills being subpar) and more. Are those projects complete? Ongoing? Canceled because they reconsidered?

Changes were made between then and release, but there is still a lot to be curious about. A lot of people I know in the game, myself included, have been stuck waffling between different classes because while the concept may be there the execution is clunky or the numbers are simply blown away by another class doing the same thing.

For example, the flamethrower was long lamented as a subpar kit for engineer. This was recently addressed in a patch, to the tremendous joy of a friend of mine who only days ago was considering rerolling due to disappointment.

Please Anet, let us know what some of your (general) plans for the near future are. Help make us all happy about our choices, or at least educate us on what is on your radar.

One of the worst things when working on a project is having to stop everything to write up a status report for your boss or customer.

I’m reminded of the Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert is behind on some projects, so his boss demands that he take a full day to create reports about why he’s late on his projects.

Amos, you make it sound like this kind of information shouldn’t be organized and known already in Anet’s office. The odds of them not having a whiteboard if not something more grandiose tracking class concerns are almost none. Even an intern can type something up off a white board.

Sorry, all I meant to imply from my post was that I’d rather have them keep working on bugs/current issues, and that at this moment, this sort of thing isn’t that important. They have people working their kitties off to make things run smoothly and get the game out of bug-squashing mode and in to maintenance/planning for the future mode.

I’m not saying your idea shouldn’t be done – I like this sort of information just as much as the next guy. I just feel now is not the time for it. I didn’t mean to sound snarky in my first post :P

Having a public acknowledgement of “these are things we know about and are working on” is one of the greatest things that a game dev can offer the players. Weeks, sometimes even months of complete silence about pressing issues is extremely frustrating to the fanbase.