The Manifesto- Word for Word
It would be real great if the devs made a post about the following lines:
“We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that, no one finds it fun”
“Everybody around you is doing the same thing you’re doing, the boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later, it doesn’t care that I’m there.”
“- you affect things around you in a very permanent way.”
“Cause and Effect. A single decision made by a player cascades out in a chain of events.”
“You’re rescuing a village that will stay rescued, then remember you.”
ArenaNet seems to have abandoned all of the above ideas, many of which were the same parts that brought people to the game.
All bosses just respawn later, they don’t care that you’re there or what you’ve done. How many times have people killed the champions in Frostgorge Sound and Queensdale? Tequatl is a recent example of this, he comes back a little over an hour every time, he doesn’t care that you’re there or not. The world does not change in any way when he is killed except that some exploding fish don’t spawn.
Villages don’t stay saved, they go through the same cycle every time. If it was attacked by centaurs once, it will be attacked again. It doesn’t matter who saves them, or if no one saves them for days, it will continue the same exact cycle. They don’t remember you, they don’t care about what you did, unless being able to buy items from the heart NPC is what they mean here.
You don’t affect anything in a permanent way. The only case I can think of that fits this is perhaps the Cutthroat Politics, but that wasn’t in the hands of one player. I have never done something in the game by myself that affected anything in a permanent way. Sure, I single handedly went through the major event chain in a zone the other day and saved several towns, but so what? It will happen again, and again, and again, and it doesn’t matter what I did.
And I don’t need to remind anyone about the ascended grind, or the dungeon gear grind.
Most of those have been answered in a blog post shortly after the manifesto was released (3 years ago?). Most of those are referring to your personal storyline. “Grind” is really subjective.
Found the blog post, and yeah posted 3 years ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20130201031636/http://www.arena.net/blog/mmo-manifesto-reactions
(edited by eisberg.2379)
they never said it was a sand box though they advertise it as a living breathing world… i hardly noticed when it was night or day in this game…
and yes i forgot to say that is not living and breathing for my personal taste, you made it already clear that it is fine for you countless times.for this and many more reason i’m not playing it anymore, and in time i will stop bother reading and commenting the forum… it was just a lazy morning
edit: true gw1 wasn’t a sandbox and it wasn’t even an mmo for some people. although i never had to log off to learn lore and story about the world i was playing in. if i know something about gw lore i learned it there. what i learned here is to press h and see what was asked me to do and learn nothing. just seeing at filling bars
Plenty of people played Guild Wars 1 without learning a kitten thing. And the later stuff in Guild Wars 1, particularly the War in Kryta and later, certainly required you go go to additional websites. In fact, the War in Kryta content was so hard to start, someone had to make a flow chart for it, and Hearts of the North required the wiki to find where to go next, because if you just looked around, you’d never have found what you needed.
Guild Wars 1 was a themepark, Guild Wars 2 is a themepark. However, Guild Wars 2 is far less linear than Guild Wars 1 and most MMOs are.
After all, you can level to make level in Guild Wars 2 without ever leaving a starting zone. It’s a lot lot harder to do that in Guild Wars 1, and virtually impossible in most MMOs.
It would be real great if the devs made a post about the following lines:
“We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that, no one finds it fun”
“Everybody around you is doing the same thing you’re doing, the boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later, it doesn’t care that I’m there.”
“- you affect things around you in a very permanent way.”
“Cause and Effect. A single decision made by a player cascades out in a chain of events.”
“You’re rescuing a village that will stay rescued, then remember you.”
ArenaNet seems to have abandoned all of the above ideas, many of which were the same parts that brought people to the game.
All bosses just respawn later, they don’t care that you’re there or what you’ve done. How many times have people killed the champions in Frostgorge Sound and Queensdale? Tequatl is a recent example of this, he comes back a little over an hour every time, he doesn’t care that you’re there or not. The world does not change in any way when he is killed except that some exploding fish don’t spawn.
Villages don’t stay saved, they go through the same cycle every time. If it was attacked by centaurs once, it will be attacked again. It doesn’t matter who saves them, or if no one saves them for days, it will continue the same exact cycle. They don’t remember you, they don’t care about what you did, unless being able to buy items from the heart NPC is what they mean here.
You don’t affect anything in a permanent way. The only case I can think of that fits this is perhaps the Cutthroat Politics, but that wasn’t in the hands of one player. I have never done something in the game by myself that affected anything in a permanent way. Sure, I single handedly went through the major event chain in a zone the other day and saved several towns, but so what? It will happen again, and again, and again, and it doesn’t matter what I did.
And I don’t need to remind anyone about the ascended grind, or the dungeon gear grind.
First, they have made at least one post about some of that which has been posted in this thread.
Essentially, there was a clarification of the manifesto published three days after the manifesto that made it abundantly clear that Ree was talking specifically about the personal story and Colin was talking specifically about dynamic events. So when Ree says “the boss you killed respawns ten minutes later” she was talking about the personal story. Since most games don’t have a personal story that was completely fair game. You should read clarifications, they help. It’s why Anet put it out there in the first place.
As for the “we don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2 line”, I’ve covered that in great great detail elsewhere. What you’re doing is taking a couple of lines out of a paragraph and trying to assign meaning to them….without taking into account the rest of the paragraph. That’s called taking information out of context and it’s bad for a reason. Because you change the definition of what is being talked about. If you read the whole paragraph, you’ll realize that Colin actually defined the kind of grind he was specifically talking about a mere two sentences before…and you’re just completely ignoring those sentences and assigning your own definition to grind.
I saw the manifesto and I knew exactly what he meant. Oh and what he meant was repeated and clarified many times in many interviews after the manifesto went live.
This thread shouldn’t die because Anet has NEVER lived up to what they promised and they continue to get farther and farther away from it.
This thread shouldn’t die because the more people that see it, the more people realize how ridiculous it is to bring up 3 year old videos that have been supplanted time and time again by new information that players have completely ignored.
This “new information” states that they’ve completely abandoned their principals and decided to create a completely different game? Please, share this revelation.
This thread shouldn’t die because Anet has NEVER lived up to what they promised and they continue to get farther and farther away from it.
This thread shouldn’t die because the more people that see it, the more people realize how ridiculous it is to bring up 3 year old videos that have been supplanted time and time again by new information that players have completely ignored.
This “new information” states that they’ve completely abandoned their principals and decided to create a completely different game? Please, share this revelation.
The new information shows exactly what a dynamic event was, and exactly what the personal story was, long before launch. People still try to use the manifesto like they didn’t know all roads led to Zhaitan or something, which is just crap.
There’s plenty of new information. Yes, Anet did change their stance on vertical progression…but since vertical progression was not mentioned in the manifesto at all, I can only assume you haven’t seen it.
This thread shouldn’t die because Anet has NEVER lived up to what they promised and they continue to get farther and farther away from it.
This thread shouldn’t die because the more people that see it, the more people realize how ridiculous it is to bring up 3 year old videos that have been supplanted time and time again by new information that players have completely ignored.
This “new information” states that they’ve completely abandoned their principals and decided to create a completely different game? Please, share this revelation.
The new information shows exactly what a dynamic event was, and exactly what the personal story was, long before launch. People still try to use the manifesto like they didn’t know all roads led to Zhaitan or something, which is just crap.
There’s plenty of new information. Yes, Anet did change their stance on vertical progression…but since vertical progression was not mentioned in the manifesto at all, I can only assume you haven’t seen it.
So, you got nothing. I figured as much, but it’s cleaner when you say it.
This thread shouldn’t die because Anet has NEVER lived up to what they promised and they continue to get farther and farther away from it.
This thread shouldn’t die because the more people that see it, the more people realize how ridiculous it is to bring up 3 year old videos that have been supplanted time and time again by new information that players have completely ignored.
This “new information” states that they’ve completely abandoned their principals and decided to create a completely different game? Please, share this revelation.
The new information shows exactly what a dynamic event was, and exactly what the personal story was, long before launch. People still try to use the manifesto like they didn’t know all roads led to Zhaitan or something, which is just crap.
There’s plenty of new information. Yes, Anet did change their stance on vertical progression…but since vertical progression was not mentioned in the manifesto at all, I can only assume you haven’t seen it.
So, you got nothing. I figured as much, but it’s cleaner when you say it.
Way to miss a point. Seems intentional to me. Let’s try this one more time.
Anet makes a manifesto, a series of ideals. There is precisely one line people can legitimately complain about, and that’s “everything you love about Guild Wars 1”. As I’ve already pointed out, here and elsewhere different people like different things. So you have to be pretty naive to take a line like that at face value…but some people are.
The rest of the video is still true to this day and the stuff people bring up to say its not is the sort of stuff that was explained afterwards.
Simple example is Ree saying “the boss you killed spawned ten minutes later”. Three days after the manifesto, Anet published a clarification that said she was talking about the personal story, not the persistent world. Do people still bring this up, regardless of the fact that Anet took the time to explain it? Sure they do.
And then there’s the line about “we don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2”…a line continually and consistently taken out of context. When taken with all the lines around it, the entire paragraph, there’s not one mention of grind or gear grind. And when you look up grind in something like wikipedia, the first and prime defintion is killing mobs over and over again to level. He was talking about combat and making combat interested, instead of this “boring grind” which he already referred to.
The fact is, the manifesto, from the art to the personal story to the dynamic event system is all in the game. People who think otherwise simply aren’t paying attention.
manifesto
Sidebar Commentary: elsewhere on these forums there was a discussion about the collective nouns associated with various animal groups (a pack of wolves, a pride of lions, a murder of crows, etc.) and the perfect collective noun for a group of game developers occurred to me:
a manifesto of devs!
/e Stanley Roper
The table is a fable.
Nope,. it won’t be the case for Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 already has in less than a year, half the sales that Guild Wars 1 had in it’s entire lifetime and it hasn’t released in China yet.
You didn’t mention the part where 80% of those sales were made in the previous year and the number of sales since then dropped significantly. And will continue to drop, since most of the people that have been interested in this game have likely bought it already. Yes, chinese sales might change that, but so far the chinese market has been very resistant to western style MMO’s, due to many reasons.
One of which is that there’s not enough grind. Chinese culture is about competition and progress.
And boobs and Panties and more boobs and some loli girls in stockings………………….
That’s more Japanese than Chinese but if they like it, you need to give it to them. Personally I find the British culture of drinking your insides out stranger.
Personally I find the British culture of drinking your insides out stranger.
That would be Irish. And Russian. German, too.
“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
– Euripides
– Euripides
Personally I find the British culture of drinking your insides out stranger.
That would be Irish. And Russian. German, too.
The Irish can drink and hold their drink. The British drink then proceed to immediately throw it back up :p
No matter how much the cheer squad try to deflect people’s thoughts on the “manifesto” it remains :
1. A published statement of their intended meta for the game.
2. People believed ANet would be able to deliver on what were pretty clear statements of intent.
3. Many people made their purchase of the game on those beliefs.
4. People are ENTITLED to voice their disappointment that the game does not meet their expectations created by 1 and 2 and 3.
5. ANet has failed in communicating changes in a meaningful and timely fashion.
6. Player communications are largely ignored.
7. Players feel abandoned on many issues, ie play breaking bugs which have been evident since beta…this destroys player confidence in the development team…especially when they are not even acknowledged.
8. As a result of a lot of these issues, rightly or wrongly, people have lost trust in ANet to deliver.
People are allowed to feel misled and voice that opinion, and should not be howled down for doing so.
All the counterposts and weaving will NOT change how people FEEL.
The old sayings “words are cheap” and “actions speak louder than words” may hold more truth here than they appear to.
people here who tolerate a.net for breaking their word tolerate dishonesty and breaking promises.
goodluck being good parents when you grow up, noobs. pass that to your kids.
lol
Tolerate “dishonesty and breaking promises?”
Hunh. I didn’t realize Arena.net was my friend. I thought all this time they were a business and were going to whatever they had to in order to cater to the audience they’re targeting that will give them money; even if I’m not in that group.
Boy is MY face red.
Tolerate “dishonesty and breaking promises?”
Hunh. I didn’t realize Arena.net was my friend. I thought all this time they were a business and were going to whatever they had to in order to cater to the audience they’re targeting that will give them money; even if I’m not in that group.
Boy is MY face red.
I really hate when people make posts like this.
I understand that Anet is a business (well ncsoft..) but they made an mmo. mmo’s unlike other games need people to continue playing so yes its their business to make the most they can, but making people kitten ed and leaving isnt going to help this game in the long run. The community is as important as the business.
I really hate when people make posts like this.
I understand that Anet is a business (well ncsoft..) but they made an mmo. mmo’s unlike other games need people to continue playing so yes its their business to make the most they can, but making people kitten ed and leaving isnt going to help this game in the long run. The community is as important as the business.
And I hate when people make posts about being “betrayed” or “lied to” or “slapped in the face” or whatever.
They made a decision that apparently was something the majority wanted. They seem to think they made the right decision. The head brass didn’t wake up and say, “Ya know all those fans we had from Guild Wars 1? Kitten ’em. I want to make them cry.”
They had to do SOMETHING. You didn’t like what they decided to do. I get that. And you have every right to voice your displeasure. But you weren’t “stabbed in the back.” You weren’t “lied to.”
You don’t like what they’re doing. Hell, I don’t like much of it myself (the direction of the living story is tedium distillate, for example). It’s not personal. And I’m not taking it as such. Nor should anyone.
They made a decision that apparently was something the majority wanted. They seem to think they made the right decision.
Rift at one point was going to make their PvP based solely on horizontal progression. So instead of enacting that because they thought it would be a good idea. They did testing, and guess what happened during testing? People preferred vertical progression in PvP and Rift didn’t put that system in the game.
FireFall another game, the realized that only 4% of their population was playing PvP with horizontal progression. Know what they did? They totally scarped PvP and are redoing it.
Basically this type of thing should have been done in beta. Yes they missed it, but it is too late to blame them for that now.
Sure. They missed the chance to do so in beta. They apparently wanted to give their manifesto a shot in the wide open world.
But that doesn’t change anything really. Should they have stuck with what wasn’t working since it was post-release?
Sure. They missed the chance to do so in beta. They apparently wanted to give their manifesto a shot in the wide open world.
But that doesn’t change anything really. Should they have stuck with what wasn’t working since it was post-release?
Xcom is saying they should release it as a test, so that if people dont like it they can take it out or change it. They take forever to change things and they rarely test things with the majority of the community before setting them into stone.
Sure. They missed the chance to do so in beta. They apparently wanted to give their manifesto a shot in the wide open world.
But that doesn’t change anything really. Should they have stuck with what wasn’t working since it was post-release?
Ok so Colin said this was going to be the last tier. Do you believe him? If that system didn’t work in the past, why did Colin say this new ascended was the last tier?
Ok so Colin said this was going to be the last tier. Do you believe him? If that system didn’t work in the past, why did Colin say this new ascended was the last tier?
I believe he wants it to be. Will it be? I have no idea. But it really doesn’t matter if he means it or not. My feeling is that Ascended gear is meant to be busy work while they put together the “endgame” content people have been demanding.
If it is the last tier, we’re cool. If it isn’t, I’ll most likely quit. Other non-starters would be a level cap increase (though if current gear will scale to that level than I could probably suffer it), and if Arena.net were to add a subscription model (I refuse to play subscription games at this point).
I’ve made that opinion pretty well clear, and not just on these forums.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
Sure. They missed the chance to do so in beta. They apparently wanted to give their manifesto a shot in the wide open world.
But that doesn’t change anything really. Should they have stuck with what wasn’t working since it was post-release?
Xcom is saying they should release it as a test, so that if people dont like it they can take it out or change it. They take forever to change things and they rarely test things with the majority of the community before setting them into stone.
First of all, only a small portion of players actually goes into test servers, so the opinion you get isn’t going to be very representative.
Secondly, if the situation is that the game isn’t getting enough players, asking the current playerbase about something isn’t going to let you find out what the people who aren’t playing the game.
Ok so Colin said this was going to be the last tier. Do you believe him? If that system didn’t work in the past, why did Colin say this new ascended was the last tier?
In built into it is another upgrade path which doesn’t require a new tier, infusions. They could in the future end up with more grinds for higher level infusions.
Jade Quarry [SoX]
Miranda Zero – Ele / Twitch Zero – Mes / Chargrin Soulboom – Engi
Aliera Zero – Guardian / Reaver Zero – Necro
Miranda Zero – Ele / Twitch Zero – Mes / Chargrin Soulboom – Engi
Aliera Zero – Guardian / Reaver Zero – Necro
I don’t understand why people hang on the manifesto so much. The game’s been out a year and things change. I would’ve trusted the manifesto in the first place. Doesn’t every company make big claims just to get players hyped up? To me, it’s like reading the back of a PS2 game case and getting incredibly excited only to play the game and realize the case lied and was designed to make the game seem more interesting than it actually is.
Probably the same reason people think government should follow its constitution and founding principles. I know they dont and alot of problems arise but people still think they should even if the document is more than 200 years old.
The manifesto was a promise/founding principle for gw2 and alot of people liked the ideas and think they should have stuck with it. It isnt just that its the manifesto its also what people want.
Even founding principles of countries change. If it didn’t, only white men would be able to vote. Let’s not put too fine a point on it. The Constitution has been ammended a number of times …and people got kitten ed about it. They went to war over some of those changes.
People should follow the constitution, until it makes no sense to do so. Then they should amend it.
Oh and way to compare a GAME to the governance of society. lol
you missed the point
i was saying that people bring up the manifesto for the same reason that people bring up the founding fathers principles up over and over again is because they believe in it. Im not comparing the two im comparing the rationale behind people citing the manifesto everytime they have a problem. Also the constitution has been followed for many many years, it hasnt been changed only amended and many of the core principles remain the same. The civil war happened before the change to the consitution, and are you really saying the manifesto made no sense or that it wouldnt work because i still feel that if they held on to it gw2 would still suceed.
And again most of the manifesto, particularly when taken together with the clarification and other things said after actually still stands up.
There’s precisely one line people could really poke holes in and that ship has sailed a long time ago.
The founding fathers of the US themselves were deeply flawed individuals like all people. But they were the elected representatives if the people, not a company that is in business to make a profit. I’m sure you can see the difference.
i would see the difference if they hadnt called it a manifesto.
and again im not comparing them im explaining the rationale behind people bringing it up. Most people probably dont want to think of this game as a business and even if its true that all they want to do is make money they can still make money while still listening to the community. How much money did ascended make them?? id like to know if that was really worth it.
ascended saved the game…..you know what else would have saved the game….cantha or new areas. But they shot themselves in the foot by sticking with LS instead of working on expanding the area and now they have to keep the grind up until they can bring out a new area or something.
ascended saved the game…..you know what else would have saved the game….cantha or new areas. But they shot themselves in the foot by sticking with LS instead of working on expanding the area and now they have to keep the grind up until they can bring out a new area or something.
There’s a whole lot of assumptions here on both parts. However, my assumptions are based on stuff said or done by the devs.
First of all, are you suggesting that it takes less time to make Cantha than institute some personal progression?
If people were leaving of the game back in November (which seemed to be the case) and they needed a quick fix, what in the world makes you think Cantha would have been ready in time to save the game?
The ascended gear was introduced as a panicked measure to dwindling numbers. I’m pretty sure they’d have needed a solution that was faster to implement.
ascended saved the game…..you know what else would have saved the game….cantha or new areas. But they shot themselves in the foot by sticking with LS instead of working on expanding the area and now they have to keep the grind up until they can bring out a new area or something.
There’s a whole lot of assumptions here on both parts. However, my assumptions are based on stuff said or done by the devs.
First of all, are you suggesting that it takes less time to make Cantha than institute some personal progression?
If people were leaving of the game back in November (which seemed to be the case) and they needed a quick fix, what in the world makes you think Cantha would have been ready in time to save the game?
The ascended gear was introduced as a panicked measure to dwindling numbers. I’m pretty sure they’d have needed a solution that was faster to implement.
Thats not what i said. I said that introducing permanent new areas consistantly would have kept the palyers playing. Instead they went with ls and people stopped playing either because of AP grind and dailies or boredom. Then they had to make the decision for ascended. Now its too late to go back but its not too late for them to start making some permanent additions. For the last few months there have been so many threads on whether ls is the right way for them to go. I mean people were leaving in november and continued to leave to this day. They just made ascended weapons i mean by this time they could have opened up the crystal desert or if they had told us that they were going to be working on cantha/ new areas earlier on i bet less people would leave.
ascended saved the game…..you know what else would have saved the game….cantha or new areas. But they shot themselves in the foot by sticking with LS instead of working on expanding the area and now they have to keep the grind up until they can bring out a new area or something.
There’s a whole lot of assumptions here on both parts. However, my assumptions are based on stuff said or done by the devs.
First of all, are you suggesting that it takes less time to make Cantha than institute some personal progression?
If people were leaving of the game back in November (which seemed to be the case) and they needed a quick fix, what in the world makes you think Cantha would have been ready in time to save the game?
The ascended gear was introduced as a panicked measure to dwindling numbers. I’m pretty sure they’d have needed a solution that was faster to implement.
Thats not what i said. I said that introducing permanent new areas consistantly would have kept the palyers playing. Instead they went with ls and people stopped playing either because of AP grind and dailies or boredom. Then they had to make the decision for ascended. Now its too late to go back but its not too late for them to start making some permanent additions. For the last few months there have been so many threads on whether ls is the right way for them to go. I mean people were leaving in november and continued to leave to this day. They just made ascended weapons i mean by this time they could have opened up the crystal desert or if they had told us that they were going to be working on cantha/ new areas earlier on i bet less people would leave.
The amount of work it takes to make a permanent area is STILL prohibitive. It takes more work. More time. By the time they could institute any new area, the game would have been a ghost town…or so they probably believed…and I’m not sure they’re wrong.
There were already 25 areas. They thought that would last people much longer than it did. How can you, in your wildest imagination, believe that they could keep up with new areas as fast as people consume them.
I say it’s not possible. Would it be better? Sure it would. Would it be possible? I sincerely doubt it.
The amount of work it takes to make a permanent area is STILL prohibitive. It takes more work. More time. By the time they could institute any new area, the game would have been a ghost town…or so they probably believed…and I’m not sure they’re wrong.
There were already 25 areas. They thought that would last people much longer than it did. How can you, in your wildest imagination, believe that they could keep up with new areas as fast as people consume them.
I say it’s not possible. Would it be better? Sure it would. Would it be possible? I sincerely doubt it.
No game developer has ever been able to keep up with players who throw days at a time at their games. This was as true of GW as it is of any other game. People in my Alliance were finished with Factions less than a week after it came out. One of them finished EotN the day after it came out. These feats were followed by the obligatory, “I’m bored, there’s nothing to do.”
MMO’s, or CORPGS that attract an MMO audience are all going to provide tasks for such players to work at long term. The question becomes, “Are those tasks anything other than time sinks?” This is the question GW2 has yet to answer, largely because they are still experimenting to see what works.
If you look at the NCSoft quarterly earnings reports, http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx GW2 is shown as bringing in ~19% less in Q2 2013 than in Q1. When the Q3 report publishes, I guess we’ll see if that is a fluctuation or a trend. Q2 was the time of lots of “click X” stuff in the LS updates which I submit are time sinks. Whether you do them all at once or as the mood strikes you, there is nothing compelling about this type of task, and the best that can be said about them is they can be managed to be less tedious.
well gw1 had factions a year after release. gw2 has….one new dungeon path that took the place of an old one and changes to already existing bosses.
+ascended weapons
since everything else is temporary im not going to count that but if you want to go right ahead.
(oh forgot about FoTM)
If only combat was like they described in the manifesto. Currently it doesn’t resemble it at all. There isn’t much room for intelligent encounters, in pve you just use zerker and zerg down the mobs in pvp you spam skills.
Its also a lie that gw2 skill system is flexible. If it was everyone would have more than one optimal build.
Amd Ryzen 1800x – Amd Fury X -64GB of ram
Windows 10
Windows 10
In a town of hamburger joints, a lot of people were excited to see "Coming soon: Hot Dog Hut! Home of the World’s Best Hotdogs!’
Hot Dog Hut opened. They made some pretty good hot dogs. After a very short while, burgers started appearing on the menu. Fewer and fewer hot dogs were offered.
Wiener aficionados complained. They pointed to the name of the restaurant and said, “What the…?”
The management said the “burgers” weren’t really burgers, they were patty-shaped, burger flavored hot dogs. They said the intention all along had been to provide burgers. They said they were going to work on improving the burgers.
But the hot dog lovers aren’t allowed to complain. After all, clearly there weren’t enough of them to support Hot Dog Hut, and, as a business, it needed to change. Besides, no one needs to order a burger, because there’s still a hot dog or two left on the menu.
And the name of the restaurant is irrelevant, obviously. It was chosen way back before they even broke ground on the building.
No matter how much the cheer squad try to deflect people’s thoughts on the “manifesto” it remains :
1. A published statement of their intended meta for the game.
2. People believed ANet would be able to deliver on what were pretty clear statements of intent.
3. Many people made their purchase of the game on those beliefs.
4. People are ENTITLED to voice their disappointment that the game does not meet their expectations created by 1 and 2 and 3.
5. ANet has failed in communicating changes in a meaningful and timely fashion.
6. Player communications are largely ignored.
7. Players feel abandoned on many issues, ie play breaking bugs which have been evident since beta…this destroys player confidence in the development team…especially when they are not even acknowledged.
8. As a result of a lot of these issues, rightly or wrongly, people have lost trust in ANet to deliver.People are allowed to feel misled and voice that opinion, and should not be howled down for doing so.
All the counterposts and weaving will NOT change how people FEEL.
The old sayings “words are cheap” and “actions speak louder than words” may hold more truth here than they appear to.
3 days after the manifesto to give clarification on the very stuff people have been bringing up lately isn’t a timely manner? 3 years ago Anet gave clarification on what they were talking about in the manifesto, and 3 years later people are saying that Anet lied, even though Anet gave clarification 3 years ago. Not Anets fault that people decided to watch JUST the manifesto but never read anything else from them in 2 years prior to the release of the game.
In a town of hamburger joints, a lot of people were excited to see "Coming soon: Hot Dog Hut! Home of the World’s Best Hotdogs!’
Hot Dog Hut opened. They made some pretty good hot dogs. After a very short while, people stopped going to Hot Dog Hut because they wanted burgers. Burgers started appearing on the menu, but the same number of hot dogs remained on the menu.
Wiener aficionados complained. They pointed to the name of the restaurant and said, “What the…?”
The management said that there were so many people that wanted burgers that it was the only way they could stay in business. The hot dogs are still there if that’s what you want.
But the hot dog lovers whined that they were losing hot dogs even though it was clear they weren’t. Clearly there weren’t enough of them to support Hot Dog Hut, and, as a business, it needed to change; and it was hard to take the hot dog enthusiasts seriously because they were resorting to raw emotional hyperbole rather than rational observation. Besides, no one needs to order a burger, because there’s still the same number of hot dogs on the menu.
And the name of the restaurant is irrelevant, obviously. It was chosen way back before they even broke ground on the building. It’s an unfortunate circumstance of the market not allowing things to change too much all at once.
Fixed that to reflect a more accurate analogy. You’re welcome.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
3 days after the manifesto to give clarification on the very stuff people have been bringing up lately isn’t a timely manner? 3 years ago Anet gave clarification on what they were talking about in the manifesto, and 3 years later people are saying that Anet lied, even though Anet gave clarification 3 years ago. Not Anets fault that people decided to watch JUST the manifesto but never read anything else from them in 2 years prior to the release of the game.
That kinda IS Arena.net’s problem… because they should know how people are.
When a publication runs a massive headline that turns out erroneous, how many people actually read the very small correction the publication makes on the back page a day later? You can even directly SHOW people where the correction is, and a good many of them won’t believe it because it isn’t in big print on the front page.
If you’re going to offer clarification and/or corrections, you kinda have to make it as big and as loud as the original statements if you expect people to process and retain it.
3 days after the manifesto to give clarification on the very stuff people have been bringing up lately isn’t a timely manner? 3 years ago Anet gave clarification on what they were talking about in the manifesto, and 3 years later people are saying that Anet lied, even though Anet gave clarification 3 years ago. Not Anets fault that people decided to watch JUST the manifesto but never read anything else from them in 2 years prior to the release of the game.
That kinda IS Arena.net’s problem… because they should know how people are.
When a publication runs a massive headline that turns out erroneous, how many people actually read the very small correction the publication makes on the back page a day later? You can even directly SHOW people where the correction is, and a good many of them won’t believe it because it isn’t in big print on the front page.
If you’re going to offer clarification and/or corrections, you kinda have to make it as big and as loud as the original statements if you expect people to process and retain it.
It wasn’t a very small correction. First of all, that correction was around for well over a year. Subsequently Anet went into tremendous detail about dynamic events, about personal story…and anyone who followed the game knew pretty much what they were about.
There’s no one you can sound bite the dynamic event system. But they did a good job of explaining that events would repeat. And they did a good job in explaining the personal story. Sure the manifesto, all five minutes of it, was sound bites. It was five minutes to describe an entire game. They did what they could in that time.
The detail followed…and there was plenty of it.
No matter how much the cheer squad try to deflect people’s thoughts on the “manifesto” it remains :
1. A published statement of their intended meta for the game.
2. People believed ANet would be able to deliver on what were pretty clear statements of intent.
3. Many people made their purchase of the game on those beliefs.
4. People are ENTITLED to voice their disappointment that the game does not meet their expectations created by 1 and 2 and 3.
5. ANet has failed in communicating changes in a meaningful and timely fashion.
6. Player communications are largely ignored.
7. Players feel abandoned on many issues, ie play breaking bugs which have been evident since beta…this destroys player confidence in the development team…especially when they are not even acknowledged.
8. As a result of a lot of these issues, rightly or wrongly, people have lost trust in ANet to deliver.People are allowed to feel misled and voice that opinion, and should not be howled down for doing so.
All the counterposts and weaving will NOT change how people FEEL.
The old sayings “words are cheap” and “actions speak louder than words” may hold more truth here than they appear to.
3 days after the manifesto to give clarification on the very stuff people have been bringing up lately isn’t a timely manner? 3 years ago Anet gave clarification on what they were talking about in the manifesto, and 3 years later people are saying that Anet lied, even though Anet gave clarification 3 years ago. Not Anets fault that people decided to watch JUST the manifesto but never read anything else from them in 2 years prior to the release of the game.
The Manifesto is to this day easily found on the GW2 website. Can you find the clarification there? Go look. But be warned: even Manifestopholes had difficulty tracking down a copy of the Sacred Writ of Clarification.
The table is a fable.
Fixed that to reflect a more accurate analogy. You’re welcome.
No need, I’d covered all that with “But the hot dog lovers aren’t allowed to complain. After all, clearly there weren’t enough of them to support Hot Dog Hut, and, as a business, it needed to change. Besides, no one needs to order a burger, because there’s still a hot dog or two left on the menu.
And the name of the restaurant is irrelevant, obviously. It was chosen way back before they even broke ground on the building.” I’ve read the forums enough to see how people who see things your way feel about it.
Funny, the defenders of the about face keep asserting that the player base was tanking because of the original vision, so it had to be scrapped or the game was going to crash and burn.
Perhaps if Hot Dog Hut just came out and said “hot dogs weren’t selling, so we’ve decided to become another burger joint”, these manifesto threads wouldn’t keep popping up. Nobody’d point at the things they said they wanted to do with the game because it’d be over and done.
Instead, they keep implying that nothing has really changed, and that they are still on course with the original vision, while letting people who don’t care much about the original vision defend their departure from it by asserting that they had no choice due to the mobs with pitchforks and torches clamoring for burgers.
So these discussions just keep spinning perpetually.
You think the hot dogs are all on the menu, but unlike the analogy, it’s just not possible.
Hot Dog – Easily attained BiS gear, cosmetics for endgame longterm goal.
Burger – BiS gear is endgame, long term goal.
Hot Dog – Crafting produces useful stuff along the way.
Burger – Craft a lot of stuff where the mats are worth more than the finished product so that you can level your tune and eventually get BiS gear.
Hot Dog – Play the parts of the game you like, and get rewarded just as much as other areas.
Burger – In order to get BiS gear you’re going to have to spread your play over several areas of the game.
Funny, the defenders of the about face keep asserting that the player base was tanking because of the original vision, so it had to be scrapped or the game was going to crash and burn.
Because there really isn’t a better explanation. The “Hot Dog Lovers” simply want to chalk it up to… reasons… something something hates us…. something something money. Why would a company do a 180 on a majority of their customers and expect to make money out of it?
The answer… they wouldn’t. That makes no sense.
Arena.net had the metrics, and claim they were hemorrhaging players a couple months after launch as players devoured their content, rushed to 80, then started quitting because there was no progression, or endgame, or anything to do like traditional MMOs.
It makes sense to me because I watched my original guild (a 40 man guild, mind), and 39 of them left for precisely those reasons. To a man.
The GW1 veterans simply weren’t enough to sustain the higher overhead of Guild Wars 2.
From my perspective, the Living Story is an attempt to keep players logging in. Ascended Weapons (and eventually armor) are just busy work. Keep players in game while they fashion the endgame content that the MMO market demands. From there… who knows?
I’m not entirely fond of it, but… I know MMO players, and I also know Arena.net has to try and cater to them (at least to some degree) if GW2 is going to have a place in the market.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
It would be nice to see a vision of what arena net would consider “end game”. I’m not fond of that term either but, I don’t think this living story is going to cut it. I foresee quite a bit of recycled stuff in the future; in addition to ascended grinds.
I think Tequatl is an attempt to see if raids can be an open-world thing rather than instanced.
I suspect they’ll discover players will only go so far with that. We’ll see 10-man “raid” instances at some point in 2014, I’m sure.
I always thought the manifesto was purely an exercise in talking smack about other developers.
Or some sort of comedy skit. “all the ways MMOs should be better, not that we’re gonna do any of them either…”
Because you do not come out with a straight face and make fun of gameplay where you swing a sword over and over, then publish the button 1 autocast snooze fest some of the classes here devolve into. Right?
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
No matter how much the cheer squad try to deflect people’s thoughts on the “manifesto” it remains :
1. A published statement of their intended meta for the game.
2. People believed ANet would be able to deliver on what were pretty clear statements of intent.
3. Many people made their purchase of the game on those beliefs.
4. People are ENTITLED to voice their disappointment that the game does not meet their expectations created by 1 and 2 and 3.
5. ANet has failed in communicating changes in a meaningful and timely fashion.
6. Player communications are largely ignored.
7. Players feel abandoned on many issues, ie play breaking bugs which have been evident since beta…this destroys player confidence in the development team…especially when they are not even acknowledged.
8. As a result of a lot of these issues, rightly or wrongly, people have lost trust in ANet to deliver.People are allowed to feel misled and voice that opinion, and should not be howled down for doing so.
All the counterposts and weaving will NOT change how people FEEL.
The old sayings “words are cheap” and “actions speak louder than words” may hold more truth here than they appear to.
3 days after the manifesto to give clarification on the very stuff people have been bringing up lately isn’t a timely manner? 3 years ago Anet gave clarification on what they were talking about in the manifesto, and 3 years later people are saying that Anet lied, even though Anet gave clarification 3 years ago. Not Anets fault that people decided to watch JUST the manifesto but never read anything else from them in 2 years prior to the release of the game.
The Manifesto is to this day easily found on the GW2 website. Can you find the clarification there? Go look. But be warned: even Manifestopholes had difficulty tracking down a copy of the Sacred Writ of Clarification.
Right, because it’s, ready for this…three years old.
The clarification was released BEFORE the dozens of other interviews and articles that tell specifically what a dynamic event is and what the personal story is. It was NEEDED back then.
Today, the only people who really complain about the manifesto are the people who are ignoring the other stuff. But back then, when it was made, there WAS no other stuff.
You have entire pages on the website describing exactly what’s going on in game. Videos from conventions. Fan sites explaining.
And you still can’t tell the difference between a dynamic event and personal story?
Give me a break.
Anet promised you Eden to sucker you in. Now that you bought their game, welcome to Bangladesh.
/thread
Anet makes a manifesto, a series of ideals.
Used as part of the marketing for the game. An advertisement used to sell the game.
There is precisely one line people can legitimately complain about, and that’s “everything you love about Guild Wars 1”. As I’ve already pointed out, here and elsewhere different people like different things. So you have to be pretty naive to take a line like that at face value…but some people are.
Probably the most negative thing that I have seen you say about ANet, “you have to be pretty naive to,” believe what ANet says. A few years ago I would have scoffed at that opinion. Now I share it. Anything that ANet says should be taken with a grain of salt and met with skeptical consideration.
Simple example is Ree saying “the boss you killed spawned ten minutes later”. Three days after the manifesto, Anet published a clarification that said she was talking about the personal story, not the persistent world. Do people still bring this up, regardless of the fact that Anet took the time to explain it? Sure they do.
I can face the same boss that I killed in a personal story encounter ten minutes later. Even if we are to believe this clarification (remember that it is naive to believe them though) it remains inaccurate even under the terms of the revision. Keep in mind that ANet opted to NOT revise the manifesto and kept using it as a form of advertisement for the game right up until launch. The supposed, “clarification,” was something you would have to hunt for.
And then there’s the line about “we don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2”…a line continually and consistently taken out of context. When taken with all the lines around it, the entire paragraph, there’s not one mention of grind or gear grind. And when you look up grind in something like wikipedia, the first and prime defintion is killing mobs over and over again to level. He was talking about combat and making combat interested, instead of this “boring grind” which he already referred to.
And that boring grind exists. One may very well have to grind through levels in order to get to the fun stuff.
(edited by Ashen.2907)
No matter how much the cheer squad try to deflect people’s thoughts on the “manifesto” it remains :
1. A published statement of their intended meta for the game.
2. People believed ANet would be able to deliver on what were pretty clear statements of intent.
3. Many people made their purchase of the game on those beliefs.
4. People are ENTITLED to voice their disappointment that the game does not meet their expectations created by 1 and 2 and 3.
5. ANet has failed in communicating changes in a meaningful and timely fashion.
6. Player communications are largely ignored.
7. Players feel abandoned on many issues, ie play breaking bugs which have been evident since beta…this destroys player confidence in the development team…especially when they are not even acknowledged.
8. As a result of a lot of these issues, rightly or wrongly, people have lost trust in ANet to deliver.People are allowed to feel misled and voice that opinion, and should not be howled down for doing so.
All the counterposts and weaving will NOT change how people FEEL.
The old sayings “words are cheap” and “actions speak louder than words” may hold more truth here than they appear to.
3 days after the manifesto to give clarification on the very stuff people have been bringing up lately isn’t a timely manner? 3 years ago Anet gave clarification on what they were talking about in the manifesto, and 3 years later people are saying that Anet lied, even though Anet gave clarification 3 years ago. Not Anets fault that people decided to watch JUST the manifesto but never read anything else from them in 2 years prior to the release of the game.
The Manifesto is to this day easily found on the GW2 website. Can you find the clarification there? Go look. But be warned: even Manifestopholes had difficulty tracking down a copy of the Sacred Writ of Clarification.
Right, because it’s, ready for this…three years old.
The clarification was released BEFORE the dozens of other interviews and articles that tell specifically what a dynamic event is and what the personal story is. It was NEEDED back then.
Today, the only people who really complain about the manifesto are the people who are ignoring the other stuff. But back then, when it was made, there WAS no other stuff.
You have entire pages on the website describing exactly what’s going on in game. Videos from conventions. Fan sites explaining.
And you still can’t tell the difference between a dynamic event and personal story?
Give me a break.
They could have taken it down instead of using it over and over as a marketing ploy/advertising tool.
Why didn’t they take it down or modify it if they clarified everything? And why weren’t the clarifications thrown in the spotlight as the Manifsto was?
“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
– Euripides
– Euripides
Why would a company do a 180 on a majority of their customers and expect to make money out of it?
The answer… they wouldn’t. That makes no sense.
The cynical version is: GW2 sold more copies to traditional MMO fans than ANet expected. Keeping those people became more of a priority because, well, they have other games to go to. Where can someone who believed the sales pitches and preferred that model go? ANet gambled that they could retain more of the MMO fans and still retain a significant portion of their old fan base, leading to a bigger pool for gem store purchases.
The idealistic version is: GW2 will soon be released in the East, and NCSoft fears that GW2 will not have enough of what eastern players are used to. They are pushing ANet to put in more progression and grind and ANet is taking a compromise approach to try to please grinders east and west, while holding on to some of their ideals.
Either version supports a change in direction and an expectation to make money.
No matter how much the cheer squad try to deflect people’s thoughts on the “manifesto” it remains :
1. A published statement of their intended meta for the game.
2. People believed ANet would be able to deliver on what were pretty clear statements of intent.
3. Many people made their purchase of the game on those beliefs.
4. People are ENTITLED to voice their disappointment that the game does not meet their expectations created by 1 and 2 and 3.
5. ANet has failed in communicating changes in a meaningful and timely fashion.
6. Player communications are largely ignored.
7. Players feel abandoned on many issues, ie play breaking bugs which have been evident since beta…this destroys player confidence in the development team…especially when they are not even acknowledged.
8. As a result of a lot of these issues, rightly or wrongly, people have lost trust in ANet to deliver.People are allowed to feel misled and voice that opinion, and should not be howled down for doing so.
All the counterposts and weaving will NOT change how people FEEL.
The old sayings “words are cheap” and “actions speak louder than words” may hold more truth here than they appear to.
3 days after the manifesto to give clarification on the very stuff people have been bringing up lately isn’t a timely manner? 3 years ago Anet gave clarification on what they were talking about in the manifesto, and 3 years later people are saying that Anet lied, even though Anet gave clarification 3 years ago. Not Anets fault that people decided to watch JUST the manifesto but never read anything else from them in 2 years prior to the release of the game.
The Manifesto is to this day easily found on the GW2 website. Can you find the clarification there? Go look. But be warned: even Manifestopholes had difficulty tracking down a copy of the Sacred Writ of Clarification.
Right, because it’s, ready for this…three years old.
The clarification was released BEFORE the dozens of other interviews and articles that tell specifically what a dynamic event is and what the personal story is. It was NEEDED back then.
Today, the only people who really complain about the manifesto are the people who are ignoring the other stuff. But back then, when it was made, there WAS no other stuff.
You have entire pages on the website describing exactly what’s going on in game. Videos from conventions. Fan sites explaining.
And you still can’t tell the difference between a dynamic event and personal story?
Give me a break.
They could have taken it down instead of using it over and over as a marketing ploy/advertising tool.
Why didn’t they take it down or modify it if they clarified everything? And why weren’t the clarifications thrown in the spotlight as the Manifsto was?
Because they couldn’t look 3 years into the future and expect that people would act like this. It’s ridiculous.
Even if the game doesn’t match something written 3 years ago, I believe most people do know that MMOs evolve and change. And since the manifesto does mention stuff like vertical progression, the change from the manifesto to what we have is miniscule compared to what people are making it.
And they ARE ignoring everything published about the game subsequently. At the very least that makes them bad consumers (or good consumers if you’re a corporation I suppose).