I love the demonization of “white knighting”, like it’s the worst thing you can do to stand up for the work on a game you love by a game developer that has, by in large, done a very good job.
I don’t have a problem with people defending the good parts of the game. I have a problem with people that think that “standing up for a game they like” means they need to defend everything, even if it is bad. Blind defence is as bad as blind hate – and in the long run it hurts everyone, because it gives excuse for the devs to be sloppy and not fix anything.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
And rightly so. Because they have to worry about more than just us.
I managed a store and if someone came to me with concerns about my employees, I’d listen to them, and then generally defend my employees.
I wouldn’t necessarily say the customer was wrong, but the fact is, many times what the customer was complaining about wasn’t the fault of the employee. On a more important note, what if Chris didn’t defend the employee.
How would a customer feel if I said, look, I know Richie is a problem but he’s the best I can get?
As soon as you start blaming your employees people will start calling for heads, and that helps no one. Particularly if employees aren’t at fault. WHere does the fault lie? Management? Miscommunication? Sabotage even? No one really knows.
But yes, when employees see a manager stand up for them, in increases their loyalty to the company.
And you know, like it or not, Anet worked really kitten this patch and if I were an employee, I’d feel shattered. The fact is, just as a decency thing, I’d support an employee and if they did something wrong, I’d talk to them in private later. No one really deserves levels of ridicule and hate that are being poured on Anet employees right now.
No one asked Devs to defend or shame employees, it was their own choice. What people want to hear is:
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We had hard decisions to make, and I personally think we did the best we could in the given situation. My team was really helpful, thanks to them!
Here’re the reasons why we did this and once again diverted from our Manifesto to a Generic MMO: 1, 2, 3…
Here are the customers we need to keep providing you, veteran players included, with new non-sub content: 1, 2, 3.
Here’re the people who we used to test these changes: 1, 2, 3…
Here’s the behaviour data we’ve been seeing before the patch, here’s what we hope to see after the patch. Yes, these are the non-vocal majority. Here’re the people from vocal minority we’re ready to lose as a result of these changes. New data will come in a week, month – let’s compare it together.
Things A, B, C are bugs. They should only work for new accounts, we’re fixing it!
Here’re the reasons these bugs passed our QA. As you can see, it’s complicated and we were not able to test downscaling issues with the new system and huge XP losses.
Things D, E, F are intended; tell us what you think can be done better, we’ll compare it with our metrics and come to a compromise!
"
What people hear and equal to “silent”:
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We’re proud of the work we’ve done, it’s awesome!
Some minor fixes will make it even better.
Now we can talk about guilds.
"
Some of the really important things are hard to say from a PR point of view, but it has to be done if they want a loyal community which brings their friends to the game and keep it running! Otherwise, I can’t blame people for raging. Yes, a large part of the feature patch is awesome – but we’re not complaining about the awesome part, we’re complaining about how the whole spirit, the main idea of the game has been altered in a way which many people consider to be degradation, not evolution. The new patch came, and it was just as before – lots of small cool stuff… and a big letdown which nullifies my overhyped trust and makes me hide my wallet again.
I love the demonization of “white knighting”, like it’s the worst thing you can do to stand up for the work on a game you love by a game developer that has, by in large, done a very good job.
I don’t have a problem with people defending the good parts of the game. I have a problem with people that think that “standing up for a game they like” means they need to defend everything, even if it is bad. Blind defence is as bad as blind hate – and in the long run it hurts everyone, because it gives excuse for the devs to be sloppy and not fix anything.
That is usually up for debate, really. There are those who defend the game out of genuine love of it and there are those who defend the game simply because they seek some form of validation of what they invested in whether it be through the time they played, the money they spent or both.
I love the demonization of “white knighting”, like it’s the worst thing you can do to stand up for the work on a game you love by a game developer that has, by in large, done a very good job.
I don’t have a problem with people defending the good parts of the game. I have a problem with people that think that “standing up for a game they like” means they need to defend everything, even if it is bad. Blind defence is as bad as blind hate – and in the long run it hurts everyone, because it gives excuse for the devs to be sloppy and not fix anything.
Have you seen quality of responses?
Have you seen the number of people who just jump on bandwagon without actually knowing what they talk about (but could be found out with minimal research). And funy thing is it actually validates what they have done, wheter you like it or not.
So question is – why do you support (even encourage) such behaviour?
White knoghting is bad – as bad as missinformed and ignorant (lazy responses)
Now go back and look at ratio of one to another. Even devs had to step in to clear this missinformation/ignorance but it did very little to actually stop missinformation/ignorance.
Colin Johanson: “Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the
best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base.”
By the Five, I love Charleston Chew.1209’s clever responses so much! The way he retaliates with his salty, zealous fanboyism to anything that remotely threatens his GW2 is priceless. I hope you and your likeminded peers continue to play this game for years to come, you deserve it.
“Gentlemen, I wash my hands of this weirdness”.
— Every heartbroken Guild Wars fan on GW2
By the Five, I love Charleston Chew.1209’s clever responses so much! The way he retaliates with his salty, zealous fanboyism to anything that remotely threatens his GW2 is priceless. I hope you and your likeminded peers continue to play this game for years to come, you deserve it.
Those of us up in arms that are truly POed love this game a lot more than his type does. His fanboyism is blindness to a rotting edifice.
By the Five, I love Charleston Chew.1209’s clever responses so much! The way he retaliates with his salty, zealous fanboyism to anything that remotely threatens his GW2 is priceless. I hope you and your likeminded peers continue to play this game for years to come, you deserve it.
We do deserve to play a game we’re enjoying. Thanks. I agree.
Is their silence… There is not one industry that would have this happen and then turtle up like this and not respond to what their paying customers are talking about..
Not one.. The fact that they can not even have someone from their company say something along the lines of “we hear you, we are taking it all in” is embarrassing.
Mistakes happen… We ALL do them. They need to understand the next few days is critical for them. Get in front of this mess. Fine, you messed up… Your paying customers are telling you what you did wrong.. Listen up.. Be transparent. Tell us what your plans are to fix it.. That will buy you the time you need to get control of this trainwreck..
I think it would be a great idea to send Totalbiscuit questions about about current affairs and see if he can publicly discuss the current state of Affairs at Anet.
I think he would do a fantastic job in interpreting how a company gets here what it can do to change and whats its major flaws are, I’m sure all the answers are even in this forum.
By the Five, I love Charleston Chew.1209’s clever responses so much! The way he retaliates with his salty, zealous fanboyism to anything that remotely threatens his GW2 is priceless. I hope you and your likeminded peers continue to play this game for years to come, you deserve it.
God forgive me I enjoy the game you don’t. How dare I. Surely there must be something fundamentally wrong with me.
For those that say ‘Arenanet must take into account the voices of their customers’, I agree. However, I also believe that we, as forum goers, and ‘veteran players’ aren’t in a position to ‘know’ what non gamers and new players need in the way of introduction/help in learning a new game.
We know what we know because we play games…a lot. Now look at your grandparents. People MY age. Many would love to learn to play. Many have free time and certainly have the money. What they do not have is the experience of 5+ years of gaming experience and they have to put up with attitudinal crap and disrespect from those that ‘know better’.
Game companies have learned a harsh fact that the 2% doesn’t like. The market around the median is way more lucrative, because that where 70% of a market is located. What all these developers have come to understand is that their expected baseline is set way to high to attract these people. Even in a game as simplistically designed as GW2 (in the veterans eyes). So now vets, what do you do? Leave, complaining that your feels are hurt, that the dummification of games is hurting your fun times? Or do you reach out and help those that need it and bring them to a level, that might not be as high as yourself, but would be much higher than the expectations of those new to gaming? You either can lead the charge to help others or you can be the cause of another games industry crash, bigger than the one that happened when I was your age. You have the choice to make a difference…whichever decision you make.
For those that say ‘Arenanet must take into account the voices of their customers’, I agree. However, I also believe that we, as forum goers, and ‘veteran players’ aren’t in a position to ‘know’ what non gamers and new players need in the way of introduction/help in learning a new game.
What are you talking about? We were ALL in that position at one point or another. We ALL know what non gamers and new players need because we were ALL one of those types. We weren’t born with Atari joysticks or Nintendo controllers in our hands.
For those that say ‘Arenanet must take into account the voices of their customers’, I agree. However, I also believe that we, as forum goers, and ‘veteran players’ aren’t in a position to ‘know’ what non gamers and new players need in the way of introduction/help in learning a new game.
What are you talking about? We were ALL in that position at one point or another. We ALL know what non gamers and new players need because we were ALL one of those types. We weren’t born with Atari joysticks or Nintendo controllers in our hands.
Because no one remembers how noob they really were. I was playing with a brand new 60+ year old player and was amazed at the things that were confusing them. This was someone that didn’t know how to truly use WASD. You know one of those ‘kittened, 6 year olds’ the patch was supposed to help. Please, when you remember that you didn’t know how to move in a game and you want someone to undnerstand that a key can let you dodge out of damage AND that it doesn’t work every time AND …AND..AND… that’s when you understand why these changes are happening in this game and every other one out there. More people know NOTHING about games and would be willing to spend their money, at any age IF the games were more accessible and forgiving as they learned the basics..and I do mean BASICS.
