Guild Wars 2

Dunno about you, but to me it’s becoming apparent that in the rush to complete content every 2 weeks good old fashioned user friendliness seems to be being left out. It’s this last 5% of polish and thought-fullness towards the player that’s just not making into the final patch content. Here’s some examples from this patch alone

o Invasion completer. why should we need to manually track what’s been completed(bugs mean that even though you do the event you might not get credit). Why not have each zone as a separate achievement you can track?

o Pointless soul/account bound items. E.g Why have the communicator as a soulbound item? Why make the player go to find another NPC to get a new one for a new toon?

o Stuff that is unfun to use and mess with. E.g 5 min duration with a 30 min cooldown on the watchwork tonics?

o Confusing and contrived quest lines. Alright so I do 5 invasions, got that. BUT unless I know how it works I then have to do another one to get the quest items. Why not just link things in an easy to follow way. Sure people don’t need hand holding all the time, but at least make it so people don’t just go rushing to dulfy to work out how to get started..

And I could go on and on with example after example of game and interface mechanics that well.. Just seems to get in the way of the player getting to the stuff they actually want to do.

It’s like driving along a freeway and suddenly finding a chicane which was put there either because the builders forgot to take it out or they thought ‘you know what, this road gets people where they want to be too well. We need to make it more inefficient’

So, in the next set of living story. Please take a step back and look at this last 5% of polish. For sure it might not be important in the short term, but each 5% of frustration, needing to repeat stuff because it didn’t work, losing track of something etc etc just adds up and makes the game un-fun

And is’nt fun the point of it all?

I thought the communicator from Volkk, or whatever his name was, was pretty helpful. Whenever I was unsure what to do, I spoke to him…or looked in the Achievement panel. But, maybe, that only worked for me.

There could probably be more tips listed, and explanations of how things work.

Wait, did I need to do something other than zerg around the map for 45 minutes(x5)?

with the 2 week release schedule there is no time to actually finish content

The main issue is that people today is unable to actually do things without the game pushing it straight into their faces, and thus when something is released that requires some thinking on your own people usually won’t have a clue about what to do.

I found this release quite straight-forward. If you actually listened to what the NPCs said they explained quite well what needed to be done.

Klawlyt.6507:

Wait, did I need to do something other than zerg around the map for 45 minutes(x5)?

Nope, keep doing what you’re doing.

lordkrall.7241:

The main issue is that people today is unable to actually do things without the game pushing it straight into their faces, and thus when something is released that requires some thinking on your own people usually won’t have a clue about what to do.

I found this release quite straight-forward. If you actually listened to what the NPCs said they explained quite well what needed to be done.

It’s not about being hand held around the game. It’s about the usability of the game itself.

In just this patch.

1. Why should I have to keep a paper and pen record of the zone’s i’ve cleared an invasion of AND it’s actually updated the achievements. The Game knows what i’ve done so why can’t IT tell me.
2. Why do I need to go find an NPC if I want to do the content on another character, why not just give me the device so I can use it on whatever character I like.
3. Why not structure the achievements so they have a logical flow to them? why do we have a separate invasion and Vorpps ones?
4. Why not think oh right, maybe the players might like to mess around fighting in watch knights tonics or some other high jinks so we’ll make them last until they rezone etc.

More examples.
The game knows what dungeon paths I’ve done. Why do I have to remember?
The anywhere>mists>LA>somewhere else route is universally used. Why do I have to go through that each time rather than an easier ‘port to LA’ button etc

And don’t get me started on guild management ‘features’

Stuff like the token wallet is great, but why should it be down to the players to suggest it?

As I said, it’s the last 5% of thinking about how usable the content is to the player that I think needs more focus. It’s like a right click context sensitive menu. it’s not vital but it’s darn useful and hassle saving

You have impossible expectations if you think a game will be completely without bugs.

If you gave them even 2 months between releases there still would be bugs.

The release so far is above acceptable and the bugs right now are not gamebreaking.

Vol.5241:

You have impossible expectations if you think a game will be completely without bugs.

If you gave them even 2 months between releases there still would be bugs.

The release so far is above acceptable and the bugs right now are not gamebreaking.

It’s not about bugs.. It’s about usability.. E.g if that had a dungeon path/invasion tracker that didn’t work that would be a bug. It’s the fact there isn’t one at all..

I am pretty sure that you don’t need to do 13 different maps for the invasion achievement, albeit it does sound that way by how it’s worded. Every time I finish an invasion, my count goes up, and I have done some of the maps 3 times.

Vol.5241:

You have impossible expectations if you think a game will be completely without bugs.

If you gave them even 2 months between releases there still would be bugs.

There are three types of bugs.

1. “Bugs happen” bugs are the bugs that slip through the cracks, no matter how vigilent the developers and QA teams work to catch them. I don’t think any reasonable person would hold these against the devs.

2. “Sloppy bugs” are bugs that exist because the developers are either too lazy or too incompetent to catch or fix them. Again, I don’t think any reasonable person would accuse ArenaNet of being guilty of not putting forth maximum effort into ensuring their game is smooth and polished.

3. “Deadline bugs” are bugs that bugs that would have otherwise been caught had the developers or QA team had enough time to properly test and polish the product. With a two week turnaround with content, these are slipping into the game. While there’s hardly been anything game-breaking, I think it would be hard to argue the level of polish we’ve come to expect from ArenaNet hasn’t slipped.

Vol.5241:

The release so far is above acceptable and the bugs right now are not gamebreaking.

Again, the bar for quality and polish has been set high by ArenaNet. A perfect example would be the support tickets. Though not by any stretch gamebreaking, support tickets for an election dropping a week after the election ended just isn’t what some of us have come to expect from the team that lived by the credo “when it’s ready”.

And that’s just one example. There are others (such as the lack of PC voice acting). I’m not saying you should be bothered by this lack of polish, but I am.

The QA team may or may not be on a two-week turnaround, but the developers for each 2-part related release are on a 4-month turnaround. Remember, there are 4 teams, each responsible for 2 releases per month. So, they have quite a bit of time to work on their content.

The OP is right in that some of this stuff is missing from the game that should be in the game. Of course, the same is true for every game I’ve ever played.

There are X number of developer hours in a day/week/month. I had very similar problems with other games. Guild Wars 1 had many omissions too.

This isn’t some huge company that has dozens of games and a zillion dollars. This is Anet that has Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2. They’ve really pushed the envelope for a company their size.

The OP isn’t wrong that polish is missing. The only real question is what game at 1 year had more polish…of the type the OP is referring to. What MMORPG could the OP play that he couldn’t find similar things in.

Things get fixed, and added, things get missed and left behind. We got the wallet, we got a fix to culling, but we don’t have a fix to knowing what dungeons we’ve done or haven’t done.

Is the OP wrong for wanting this stuff? Not at all. Is the OP wrong for pointing out that this stuff is missing from the game? Not at all.

Do I feel considering the scope of the game and the size of the company that expecting that 5% polish at the end is reasonable? Not in my opinion.

darkace.8925:

Vol.5241:

You have impossible expectations if you think a game will be completely without bugs.

If you gave them even 2 months between releases there still would be bugs.

There are three types of bugs.

1. “Bugs happen” bugs are the bugs that slip through the cracks, no matter how vigilent the developers and QA teams work to catch them. I don’t think any reasonable person would hold these against the devs.

2. “Sloppy bugs” are bugs that exist because the developers are either too lazy or too incompetent to catch or fix them. Again, I don’t think any reasonable person would accuse ArenaNet of being guilty of not putting forth maximum effort into ensuring their game is smooth and polished.

3. “Deadline bugs” are bugs that bugs that would have otherwise been caught had the developers or QA team had enough time to properly test and polish the product. With a two week turnaround with content, these are slipping into the game. While there’s hardly been anything game-breaking, I think it would be hard to argue the level of polish we’ve come to expect from ArenaNet hasn’t slipped.

Vol.5241:

The release so far is above acceptable and the bugs right now are not gamebreaking.

Again, the bar for quality and polish has been set high by ArenaNet. A perfect example would be the support tickets. Though not by any stretch gamebreaking, support tickets for an election dropping a week after the election ended just isn’t what some of us have come to expect from the team that lived by the credo “when it’s ready”.

And that’s just one example. There are others (such as the lack of PC voice acting). I’m not saying you should be bothered by this lack of polish, but I am.

Sloppy bugs could be sloppy, or they can just be low-priority. I would hate to be someone in charge of fixing bugs since it can take awhile to diagnose, write and test one bug, and then suddenly you’re handed another bug to quickly fix (which turns out that it isn’t a quick fix)

Then you end up with a dozen reports on your desk and having to multi-task and go back and forth.

There are only so many devs to make these changes and so little time to fix and test them.

Support tickets are an oversight, yes, but it’s not game-breaking. It may seem like an easy fix to just remove an item completely from the game. But there could be stuff behind the scenes that be affected by removing it.

Hmm. Perhaps I’m not getting the idea across. It’s not about any sorts of bugs, or the majority of polish(like clipping issues or wrong text on traits etc). It’s about the sort of polish that makes it easier to perform certain tasks.. Like track which dungeon paths you are missing, which invasion zone you need, not having certain items soul or account bound when there’s no need for it. Achievement categories not having a flow to them.

Since we’ve had the LS the amount of examples of this have been increasing, hence me wondering if in the rush to get it out and tested. The player experience is not quite being thought through as thoroughly?

Think of it as having copy and paste options missing from a right click context bar when the cut option is on there. That sorta polish.

raptor.1064:

with the 2 week release schedule there is no time to actually finish content

I have to disagree with that. I was at 15/17 after the first day. Yes, I did play a lot that day, but I also did two hours of sPvP and a fractal 30 run.

There is plenty of time to get this done.