Guild Wars 2

(or: Why Arenanet won’t listen to us a lot of the time).

Even within the strongly enforced guidelines of forum etiquette, the forum still manages to see a lot of negative commentary about the game. A good portion of the comments over the past 2 years have involved complaints about persistent bugs, broken events, and other “broken” aspects of the world of Tyria. Yet as time marches on, we never seem to see these things fixed. Nor does Arenanet take the time to advise us that they are even working on such things other than to say “it’s not off the table.”

Something that people who come to the forum to complain need to recognize is that Arenanet only cares, and can only afford to care, about the majority, and what the majority thinks. Unfortunately, this means your complaint may get completely ignored.

Let’s take the one day sales for an example. That I recall, there were several people who complained about the one day sales that Arenanet has had. The complaints started right after the one day sale of the black wings backpiece.

While these were valid complaints, one merely needed to stand in Divinities Reach during peak hours near the bank, or in Lions Arch near the mystic forge, to see what the majority thought of the one day sales. It was like a scene from an Alfred Hitchkitten movie.

Arenanet made bank on that one day sale, and in the case of one day sales, money talks. No matter how much you hate it, no matter how eloquent you are with your criticism of it on the forums, nothing will change the fact that one day sales are a big money maker for Arenanet. As a company, it’s a no brainer.

This also filters down to other issues, unfortunately, because Arenanet has to juggle their resources to apply to various areas of the game. If there are a small group of 30 or so people on the forum raising a fuss over a broken event in Straits of Devistation that prevents people from getting a collection item, it means absolutely nothing to Arenanet, because it’s only 30 people. The majority of players are happy with the game as it is. When the majority is happy, bugs like that get thrown into the cosmic void of “some day” and “not off the table”.

One would be tempted to think “hey, the forums are the only outlet where people can complain about things, how else is Arenanet supposed to know if the players are unhappy with things?”. This is true, except those instances like the New Player Experience, where a group of unknowns were consulted as to what was the best thing.

The truth is, those of us on the forum are not the only people Arenanet is gathering information from. The NPE changes are strongly indicative that Arenanet is ignoring our voices completely and relying on …who knows who.. to guide where the game goes.

Regardless of the existence, or not, of ghost critics, the one day sales issue, along with many others, simply point to the fact that the silent majority in GW2 is the reason a lot of these things get no attention at all. Because that majority is silent.

If you really want something fixed or changed in this game, you need to get 10,000 players upset about it, and you need to get them talking about it here on the forum. Otherwise Arenanet is just going to listen to the silent majority, or worse, the ghost critics.

The announced upcoming NPE changes are strongly indicative that Arenanet IS listning .

the real life skill " patience " will be required to see these eventual changes .

off the top of my head , lets take diving goggles for example . it was broken with NPE . it was fixed with out an announcement and never officially acknowledged as needing fixing . they just slipped it in with some larger stuff .

they have a 12 year plan (or longer ?). the plan is very extremely likely to change faster than they can announce any of it . they see a bigger picture they don’t want to show you because it would ruin the surprise .

how many people missed the green text being st. patty’s day fun , and thought it was a bug ?

count me among the happy .

zcearo.1897:

The announced upcoming NPE changes are strongly indicative that Arenanet IS listning .

the skill " patience " will be required to see these eventual changes .

I’m not saying they aren’t listening. I’m saying they aren’t listening to the forum. They are listening to the playerbase*

*and possibly some un-named outsiders

zcearo.1897:

The announced upcoming NPE changes are strongly indicative that Arenanet IS listning .

I missed that announcement. Anyone got a link?

zcearo.1897:

how many people missed the green text being st. patty’s day fun , and thought it was a bug ?

Actually that one was a bug:

Update – March 31, 2015

General
Fixed bug in which text appeared green in chat bubbles created by player chat.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates

zcearo.1897:

The announced upcoming NPE changes are strongly indicative that Arenanet IS listning .

Actually they said that the trait system is getting an overhaul. They’ve announced no confirmed changes for the NPE. As far as we know it’ll be the exact same.

but they are listening to the forum . they are filtering out the nonsense and the things that don’t fit into the parts of the picture that you can’t see . they are not announcing that some ones idea is awful or awesome because nothing is off the table and it would be bad form to tell they customer their idea is kitten , no matter how politely it’s worded

clearly , they are taking chances and being creative with their product . witch is i think is awesome . sometimes their crazy experiments don’t work as well as they hoped , or they get results they didn’t expect .

they even announced “fixing” the green text that was complained about so much in these very forums .

Mojo Gris Gris.5941:

zcearo.1897:

The announced upcoming NPE changes are strongly indicative that Arenanet IS listning .

I missed that announcement. Anyone got a link?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Traits-Part-2/first#post4776953

Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Merchant Of Shadows.1526:

zcearo.1897:

The announced upcoming NPE changes are strongly indicative that Arenanet IS listning .

Actually they said that the trait system is getting an overhaul. They’ve announced no confirmed changes for the NPE. As far as we know it’ll be the exact same.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Personal-Story-Restoration-update

there was something else as well . i’ll keep an eye out for it . i thought it had to do with traits . it may have been an off hand remark or or a few words acknowledging dis-satisfaction .

TheDaiBish found it while i was typing !

Considering how many forum-users lump the Traits revamp in with the NPE (no idea why, there were released six months apart), it is not surprising some state ArenaNet announced a ‘fix/changes’ to the NPE.

zcearo.1897:

Merchant Of Shadows.1526:

zcearo.1897:

The announced upcoming NPE changes are strongly indicative that Arenanet IS listning .

Actually they said that the trait system is getting an overhaul. They’ve announced no confirmed changes for the NPE. As far as we know it’ll be the exact same.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Personal-Story-Restoration-update

there was something else as well . i’ll keep an eye out for it . i thought it had to do with traits . it may have been an off hand remark or or a few words acknowledging dis-satisfaction .

TheDaiBish found it while i was typing !

That’s not changing the NPE. That’s fixing what they broke. they are just restoring the story steps that no longer work.

remember that big picture i mentioned . . . .

traits and personal story do effect a New Players Experience . if we are down to semantics it’s time for me to bow out .

zcearo.1897:

remember that big picture i mentioned . . . .

traits and personal story do effect a New Players Experience . if we are down to semantics it’s time for me to bow out .

I will stipulate that the Personal Story changes were a part of the NPE, but the traits were most certainly separate. Still, this is much less than I had hoped.

how can it be much less than you hoped ?

it doesn’t actually exist yet . a small part of a larger thing has been announced to being worked on . it’s still partly just idea .

i’m going to log out and go get lunch , it probably will be less filling than i hope . and i bet the drink cup will only be half full . . .

My beliefs about complaints and negativity:

-People like to complain. Not even necessarily give constructive criticism. Some people complain about the smallest things, but I kinda believe that it’s a way of escapism for some people. If they can fixate on these tiny issues, then they don’t have to think about the more important things.

-Building on this, a lot of people use this game as an escape, a de-stresser after a hard day at work or school. They expect things to be perfect and easy, and when it’s not it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. This would certainly explain some of the responses that appear to be disproportionate.

-People like to jump in and agree with people who complain. I guess it’s an easy conversation starter. I get the impression people are more supportive about things they are annoyed with than things they actually enjoy.

-The majority of people won’t spend the time to write a post if they aren’t fuelled by some sort of anger or frustration. A lot of the posts I see about specific complaints are from people who I haven’t seen post before, rather than forum regulars.

-I think the forums (and sticking around on them) takes an aquired taste, because you see a lot of negativity. I’ve begun to just expect people to be negative- of course, it’s still wonderful to see positivity. I’ve learnt to see it in the smallest forms

Yep. Across the board for online games, forum users account for a minuscule percentage of the players. It’s so frustrating to see people on here complaining about how “ANet never listens to the players!!” when they fail to see that the discrepancy lies in their belief that the consensus on the forums is representative of the entire player-base, rather than the tiny percentage of players who felt strongly enough about a given issue to come voice their thoughts about it.

ANet sees a much bigger picture than any of us, and if you’ve ever worked in a similar environment, you can easily understand how things must work over there. Business is a slow process, there are a lot of people to satisfy, and they do have their own vision for the game that they want to see manifest. It all comes down to money, although we must not forget that customer satisfaction is no small part of that equation.

The people who consistently complain about this game really need to discover some more things to do in life. I treat video games as nothing more than entertainment. Something to be enjoyed. If you don’t enjoy it, you’re wasting your time continuing to engage in it. You wouldn’t keep watching a TV show you don’t like, so why would you keep playing a game you don’t enjoy? It’s all about priorities, really, and until you reach a certain point in your life, you’ll have a difficult time understanding that. Namely, the point at which you have to start providing for your own sustenance, i.e. get a job.

And then there’s the argument that if you really care about the game, you should be invested in making it better. That’s a pretty poor argument, really, and most often it is used to veil an unwarranted sense of entitlement, the notion that you, as the player, deserve more than what you have received. However, I guarantee that if you simply try to enjoy what is, rather than dispute what should be, you will never find yourself dissatisfied with the game. Could it be better? Absolutely. Should you care? Never. Again, if you don’t like it, you’re free to do something else. If you do like it, just take it for what it is. Follow this simple rule, and you will never be disappointed.

zcearo.1897:

but they are listening to the forum .

How do you know if they are listening to the forum, or if it is merely coincidence that the forum complaints happen to be the same as the data they are receiving from in game, sampled from thousands of users?

That’s part of what I’m getting at here. The forum complaints only appear to get addressed. What is actually going on is simply coincidence.

zcearo.1897:

how can it be much less than you hoped ?

One single announced fix to the Personal Story doesn’t address half of the issues complained about from the NPE. I’ve seen a lot more detractors than defenders of the NPE, and I don’t even necessarily agree with all of the complaints. That said, I have seen evidence that Anet actually DO listen to forum posters on SOME issues. In fact, the original trait changes were made due to forum feedback. I can’t even guess why they make some of the decisions they make, but I can say that if no one complains about what they don’t like, Anet won’t know.

I’m not trying to turn this into yet another NPE thread so I’m out.

Neural.1824:

zcearo.1897:

but they are listening to the forum .

How do you know if they are listening to the forum, or if it is merely coincidence that the forum complaints happen to be the same as the data they are receiving from in game, sampled from thousands of users?

That’s part of what I’m getting at here. The forum complaints only appear to get addressed. What is actually going on is simply coincidence.

On the flip side, how do you know that it’s merely coincidence if nothing is being said otherwise?

If they really just wanted to listen to the playerbase they could send ingame surveys.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

If they really just wanted to listen to the playerbase they could send ingame surveys.

I wish they would!

Send an in game survey with a booster as a reward for finishing it or something. It’s the easiest way to get an idea of where your playerbase sees the game, and since it is done in game for a reward, far more people will take the survey.

The problem with the whole vocal minority vs. silent majority thing is that its a bad argument for why fixes dont come in. Sure there are a ton of threads over things that are stupid and unnecesary that come from a vocal minority of players but there are also really important threads as well. Those threads represent a common view in the majority of players, the problem is a majority of the players wont come on the forums to talk about it. Nor should they have to. There are things that affect the game that would obviously bother most players. Ascended crafting had a vocal minority in opposition to the way it worked and to this day i have never met a person who liked ascended crafting (really good for character progression right?). Dungeons are more popular than before and yet are riddled with bugs that can basically ruin paths. There are others ofc Traits, NPE, SAB, and others. A company shouldnt require a majority of its players to come to the forums to change something.

That being said atm they are working on HoT so its understandable they dont make changes quickly, although some of these things have been around for a while.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

If they really just wanted to listen to the playerbase they could send ingame surveys.

This has been suggested for two years now… on the forums so you know.

Nyx.7342:

Ascended crafting had a vocal minority in opposition to the way it worked and to this day i have never met a person who liked ascended crafting (really good for character progression right?).

:waves: Hi!

zcearo.1897:

remember that big picture i mentioned . . . .

traits and personal story do effect a New Players Experience . if we are down to semantics it’s time for me to bow out .

Traits aren’t part of the NPE. That was a totally different update. And I realllllly don’t think lvls 60-80 story are all about the NPE. Everything else is the same. Leveling is the same. Skill unlocks are the same. The only difference is once you get past the incredibly boring parts you can hit lvl 60 and get a new mission. Yay..