Guild Wars 2

dlonie.6547:

Thanks for sharing your views, and being reasonable in your tone about them

salute

Thank you, as well, for a reasonable and pleasant.

It might behoove ANet to deliver a broad plan, as I assume they have one, as most companies do. Just a general idea of where the game is going: “We’re focusing on casual PvE with the Living Story, and will be ramping that up, we’re building raiding to replace the dungeons, and we want to make competitive guild-focused PvP. The 5-man dungeons and fractals are on the back burner until further notice.”

Note that this is educated guesswork on my part, and in no way does it reflect a real ANet response.

Such a response would allow people to decide whether to stay or go. That may not be politically possible due to management constraints.

It won’t quell the avid forum warriors, though.

Tachenon.5270:

The Guild Wars 2 experience, presented as a pitch for an episode of the Twilight Zone.

The players are passengers on a plane flying toward regions unknown, a plane with no windows and one door marked ‘can i has ur stuff’. They are being shown over and over a movie that makes less and less sense with each repeat, and if anyone asks where the plane is going, the flight attendant just smiles and says “We are on course, maintaining altitude, the pilots are on board and unafraid, and all is well. This movie is entertaining, is it not?”

While this might make for an entertaining (or not) Twilight Zone episode, the reality is, why would anyone get aboard a plane with no destination posted on the flight information board?

Great analogy, the bolded part is still making me laugh :-) This and the restaurant/meal/appetizer analogy from earlier were both spot on!

Jeff.4680:

If they’re working on an expansion, why not just say it? They don’t need to give the details. By just announcing “An expansion is in the works” they would satisfy a massive amount of players.

Or expansion type content is in the works…

All they said so far is either it will come via LS or Expansion…
But this whole season is almost over and we’ve seen almost none of it sadly.

Astralporing.1957:

Arcade Fire.4895:

I still can’t get over the time when you guys flat out said no new dungeons because it’s too much work. The one thing that would add any replay value to this game that wasn’t completely a waste of time/effort (fractals) was “too much work”.

That depends on their plans and desired target population. If, hypothetically speaking, they decided to aim the game purely at casuals, then they might indeed decide that dungeons is not something they should be concentrating on.
…except the Raiding CDI was specifically aimed at the same part of the community dungeons earlier were being made for. That’s one of the communication mixed signals i was thinking of in my earlier posts. Each of these alone might make sense, and would tell us something about planned game direction. Taken together, suggest that the vision is either insonsistend and conflicted, or simply missing.

Which again brings us back to the problem of them telling us nothing.

I feel like we’re approaching a full circle here.

TL;DR I’m not a whiner, I’m a very satisfied customer, but more communication about where the game is headed over the next several years is needed to keep me (maybe more like me) around.

I just want to chime in here, for a couple of reasons. As everyone here seems to be, I’m a big fan of the game. I’ve been playing since head-start, I have 19 level 80 characters and I absolutely feel I’ve gotten my money’s worth, this include the box price and the several hundred dollars I’ve spent in the gem store. Love, love, love the game and am very satisfied with my experiences in it. I’m just mentioning this as a preface to my comments because I’ve seen many posters say things like “only the dissatisfied are posting here, people who like the game are playing.”

I play daily, often for hours, and thoroughly enjoy it, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t be unhappy with the way communication has been handled lately.

There are players out there like me, I’m sure, who love the game but can feel it waning. Yes, for some of us the content is getting played-out. It doesn’t mean we’re quitting, it just means that we’d really love a morsel from the devs about where the game is headed.

Is LS the only plan for the foreseeable future? I am actually thoroughly enjoying the story. But to be honest, the content has been shallow in terms of replayability, for me. I understand that a two-week release schedule addresses that concern by constantly introducing new things to do, and I love that idea, but the huge breaks in between “half seasons” really makes it feel like the LS model is a slow trickle, with way too much hype time in between, making the 30 minutes worth of instanced story content a let down when it is actually released (even though the story is fantastic!).

This is a buy to play game, so I’m very grateful to have been given what we have over the past two years. But here’s the thing, I love the game and I would love to throw money at an expansion box to play for another two years while continuing to throw money at the gem store. Expansion-level content is, in my opinion, what the game needs to bring it through several more years. I have seen red posts equating what LS and feature packs have delivered to expansion-level content, but many, many players have pointed out how this is not at all what we are looking for in an expansion.

If there is no expansion coming, you the devs may feel like revealing that may cause player loss. Here’s the thing: As huge a fan as I am, I will not be here much longer anyway. This is not intended as a silly “I’ll leave if you don’t give me what I want” threat. It’s just what’s going to happen and what I don’t want to happen.

On the flip side, an announcement that there are plans for an expansion would be revitalizing. New content would mean renewed motivation to progress my character(s) so that I’ve got more shinies to play the new content with. I have 3 legendaries, and if I knew expansion content was on the way, I’d keep making more. As it stands now, it’s hard to be motivated to start working for another when I’m feeling like I may not be here to wave it around.

Tachenon.5270:

McBrightside.6471:

Hands down, the thing people have been lamenting the absolute very most over the last two years is lack of end game content and options; something which Anet have been knocking out of the park with Season 2 of the LS. Players complained (maybe rightfully so) about lack of permanent end-game content, then as soon as that is remedied they start having issues with everything else, completely forgetting their previous focus.

I never complained about endgame or lack thereof — until they started tampering with my endgame: creating alts. The trait system redesign is the worst of it, but elements of NPE and LS2 have contributed, and as a result I won’t be buying any new character slots. Even though I’d like to.

No new races, no new professions, no new weapons, no new weapon skills.

Too kitten much ‘no’ for a two-year old MMO.

Dead on with my feelings and situation. My endgame was alts – creating, outfitting (not in outfits), adventuring…I didn’t even pay much attention to my alt’s level. I had that much fun roaming the world. That was destroyed. I, too, will also continue to not buy any more new character slots because of this.

• no new playable races
• no new professions
• no new weapon types
• no new weapon skills
• no new available weapons for existing professions
• no new non-gimmick, full-size zones for exploration (like the rest of the world)
• no new full armor (non-outfit) sets released in months

With their having actively destroyed the areas of the game that I found enjoyment in, and with the continuing lack of the above-mentioned elements, I feel there is very little left keeping the remaining (tiny) bit of interest I have in the game’s future alive.

I’ve even stopped doing dailies over the last couple weeks, where previously I had missed maybe a handful total since launch. No longer able to enjoy venturing out into the world with a new alt for an adventure, and even no longer interested in putting the minimal effort needed to finish the daily, I’ve actually found myself resorting to sitting at the TP making many times more gold than I ever did out in the world. Just managed to go from zero (converted it all to gems before the gem exchange update) to 1k gold in 2-3 weeks. I see now why so many hang out at the TP all day.
Sadly, my wrist can’t take much more of that. :\

With my constant outfitting and re-outfitting all of my existing and new alts, I was frequently a bit short on gold. Now that I cannot enjoy alts anymore, I have more gold than I’d ever need. :\ How sadly ironic:
- I was too busy having fun to make the amount of money I needed when I needed it.
- Now I’m busy making more money than I’d have ever needed now that I no longer need it since there isn’t any fun left to be had and it’ll likely sit in my wallet long after I no longer play anymore due to lack of any of the things on that aforementioned list.

I usually don’t type out what I think or how I feel (or, rather, actually post what I type out and instead just +1 posts by users that mirror my feelings) as I know from the past that what I (‘we’, collectively) say really does not mean anything or have any effect at all on the changes they’ve made.

I very much would like to know what their plans are for the future of this game so that I may once again be excited to play it and look forward to what is to come…if it is something good that is to come, that is.

Jeff.4680:

If they’re working on an expansion, why not just say it? They don’t need to give the details. By just announcing “An expansion is in the works” they would satisfy a massive amount of players.

If. It’s equally (if not more) likely, that they are not working on an expansion (whether boxed or introduced through LS mechanic), but just don’t wan’t to admit it.

I was holding out hope LS2 would restore some of the fun and excitement I experienced the first two years. Even a fraction would have been fine. Living Story Season 2 is shaping up to be another disappointment. The content couldn’t get any thinner. Either there’s are a kitten ton of empty desks at ArenaNet, or the development teams are so disorganized nothing substantial can be finished. Either way, this ship is taking on water faster than ever. It’s a sad sight to behold.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ah, but see what you did there? I think, basically, you said something should not have been discussed until its implementation was absolutely confirmed. And isn’t that what the current policy states? We do not engage in a lot of predictive chatter about things that may not come; we reveal something — a feature, a fix, something new — when it’s assured. Not “this may happen” but “this will happen.”

The issue isn’t that the information should never have been given out…it’s that there was no follow on information. You can’t mention an upcoming feature and then never mention it again. That’s what frustrates players.

If you had been able to give periodic updates and explain why that feature wasn’t going to make it to the next patch and where it was in the state of development, players would understand. The community doesn’t expect promises, it expects to be informed on the state of current projects.

Precursor crafting isn’t an example of giving out too much information, it’s an example of floating one idea and then never following up with status reports on where that feature is in the development cycle.

I’m a grad student and my research is funded by grants. The organizations who offer my funding expect regular status reports on what I’m working on and what progress I’ve made. If I told the steering committee for those grants, “I’m definitely working on things, and they’re going to be good things, but I can’t tell you any specific information about what I’m working on now or in the future because my plans might change,” do you think my funding would be renewed? Hell to the no. Arenanet owes its sources of funding the same regular reports on its progress that any other organization offers to its backers.

tl;dr If you keep players informed about what is currently in the development cycle, and regularly update the progress being made they will understand when ideas aren’t ready for patches or need to be scrapped The issue emerges when management either keeps the community completely in the dark (as it’s doing now) or floats an idea for a feature and then never follows up by explaining at regular timepoints where that project is in the development cycle (as management has done in the past).

As I said long ago, some players are going to keep asking “Tell us what we want to know!” and Anet will continue to respond with “You’ll know when we want you to know.” It’s a tortured and beautiful dance. Spinning, twirling, for eternity.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I understand and sure, as a player, I’d like that info. But that isn’t what the company is doing right now, and we all know, under it all, that someone saying “to hell with policy” isn’t a professional stance to take. This is where we are right now. Not forever, but right now.

I fully and completely understand the frustration. I truly comprehend that players would like us — someone, anyone! — to “open the floodgates” on information. That’s not in the cards. However, I have some ideas that I am going to float internally to see if we can say a bit more while honoring the overall communications policy. I wouldn’t propose that we answer “the big questions” in a forum post, but I know that forum members are some of our most passionate and connected players and I do wonder if we can offer some information. Outcome of this decision is TBD, naturally.

:-)

This is all I wanted to hear from you. Thank you, this was a much more satisfying response than your earlier ones.

Good luck working with the higher ups, any morsels you can share as that endeavor progresses would be awesome! Even if they’re “sanitized” to fall in line with policy. Follow through is important — please don’t just disappear after this and let that be the end of it. Let us know how it goes, even if it’s to say “They don’t want to change this, the silence policy will stay in full effect.” But just knowing that things are moving forward is a big, big relief.

(BTW, floodgates aren’t needed — something like Sytherek.7689 suggested above would be fantastic!)

Having read this thread daily, and taking the general comments from everyone on board, I’m not sure that I can provide anything more in this specific thread. I do feel I can provide more — we can provide more — elsewhere. And that’s what I’m going to pursue.

Again, thank you. You’re in an unenviable position on this issue, and I appreciate your efforts. I hope we can repair the negative attitude about this great game and its future — maybe even bring some people back with promises of future funtimes!

And everyone else, I know this isn’t what we really wanted to hear. But it’s what we can hear from Gaile under the current circumstances, and it’s as promising a reply that we could possibly get, given ArenaNet’s policies. Keep that in mind if you continue to post here

Well, I’m done with the forums now. It seems obvious we’re never going to get any meaningful information here.

By the way, Gaile, I don’t believe we ever heard back about getting kicked out of the Royal Terrace upon login.

So Anet wants us to invest more money/gems into the game…but won’t tell us anything about their plans. Yeah, Sure!

I wasnt expecting any info in this thread. I saw this thread as a way to make our communication concerns heard. Also to make them understand we dont need to know exactly whats coming. Just hints and general areas/directions they are focusing on. And for Gaile to try and get the higher ups to be a bit more transparent. It seems like she is doing so. Whether its a success or not remains to be seen. But im fairly happy with the outcome of this thread. Thanks Gaile.

Best result would obviously be a nice blog post some time soon with a few tidbits of whats coming.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• We are not “afraid” to lay out a roadmap. Quoting Mike again, “The intention of the CDI threads is to talk with you about the roadmap.” If you’re not participating, you’re missing out on a means of sharing your feedback and a method that we may use to give information, when the time is right.

If that is the intent, then from what I’ve observed it has failed miserably. A roadmap shows what a company is/will be working on and planned release dates for the foreseeable future (typically a few years). I have seen nothing in the CDI to indicate that you will be working on the topic of the CDI and Chris has actually posted several times that the CDI is not a promise of things to come and isn’t an indication that the devs are even going to work on it. And, of course, absolutely no mention of a production period or release date.

The CDI is just a large brainstorming session by the players that the devs occasionally ask a question about. People don’t participate because they feel it’s useless. Why should we put the effort into outlining a feature if the devs aren’t going to work on it? (I know things do come out of CDIs but this is the feeling people have about them.) The CDI is a lot of work for something you won’t commit to.

You can’t have a talk about the roadmap if you aren’t even willing to say something is on the roadmap. If you want it to even resemble an intention to talk about the roadmap then you at least need to commit to saying “We are going to start working on this.”

Of course, this doesn’t even touch on the issue that to talk about the roadmap you’d have to talk about what’s in development. On the face of it, that’s a mutually exclusive policy. Either we talk about what’s on the roadmap or we don’t talk about what’s in development. You can’t have it both ways.

Shen Slayer.3058:

So Anet wants us to invest more money/gems into the game…but won’t tell us anything about what we investing in. Yeah, Sure!

Who mentioned gems?

And let’s give Gaile a chance to shake something up in Bellevue and see what falls out. It’s been 15 minutes, for christsake.

I understand your frustration and the lack of faith that anything will change. But there’re enough players expressing this concern in this thread (and several others) that something just might be ready to happen.

Interesting thread, but I’ve little confidence that anything significant will be improved. I think I log in now about once every 2-3 months, play for an hour, and realize that fundamentally, nothing has changed. Basically, GW2 is just not fun.

Why do I keep trying? I loved Guild Wars more than anything else I’ve played. I keep hoping that ArenaNet will get back to trying to make a fun game instead of trying to annoy players into buying gems. I’d happily pay money for something fun. I’m playing a subscribtion game right now because the game is fun, and the writing is good, and the studio doesn’t seem to feel the need to shove a cash shop in my face – I can just play it and enjoy. Entertainment money well spent.

So yea. I’m playing other games now. I’ll keep logging on to GW2 from time to time, but if ArenaNet want me to stick around and spend money, I need to be having fun with it, not being constantly annoyed with it.

Annoying specifics are all over these forums. I don’t need to repeat them any more.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• No, the game is not lacking direction. Nor is it lacking vision or goals, plans, ideas, concepts, or any of the other properties that guide our future. The quiet now is not an indicator of anything other than the fact that, at this time, the company is not talking about the future but is, instead, working on it.

Understood. Keep in mind that in essentially any other industry dealing with customers one is expected to be able to speak to what one is working on. Of course Anet may not speak about the future of the product they want customers to continue to buy but that is a matter of choice not a function of not being able to talk about it because they are working on it instead.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• Game companies, like most major industries, experience a certain level of turnover, and hire to fill those spaces. They also hire for new or expanded roles. Nothing startling here whatsoever.

Completely agreed.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• The silence is decidedly not a distraction effort. As Mike O’Brien said, "We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: “We don’t talk speculatively about future development. We don’t want to string you along. Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t; sometimes we go back to the drawing board over and over before we get something right. If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers. So when we attend a trade show or give an interview, we’re there to talk about what we’re getting ready to ship, not to speculate on what we might ship someday.”

By not speaking to the future/direction development of the game you (the company, not you personally) are stringing us along. This is a player retention tactic not an accident.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• Living World and holidays are important, yes. They are not the only thing on which the team is working, quite clearly, when you see substantial updates coming out on a regular basis. (Case in point: feature packs, the coming PvP update, etc.)

Of course, “substantial,” is a matter of opinion. Removing functionality or content might lead one to consider such updates to be net losses for players.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• We are not “afraid” to lay out a roadmap. Quoting Mike again, “The intention of the CDI threads is to talk with you about the roadmap.”

This is incorrect. It may have been said but it is incorrect. A disclaimer stating that the entire process is speculative or for discussion purposes only means that it is, by definition, not a roadmap. Without a statement to the effect of, “the direction we are going,” or, “what we intend to do,” or something of the sort by Anet a CDI is not a discussion of a roadmap.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• In general, with nearly anything, there are ebbs and flows in communication. If we’re in an ebb right now, you can count on there being a flow in the future. That’s just logical.

I disagree. Counting on there being more substantive communication in the future when there is not a solid precedent for such is the antithesis of logical.

Gaile Gray.6029:

If you’re saying “the whole thing is broken” I’m going to call that hyperbole and move on. If you can detail exact, quantifiable elements that were and remain broken, I’m all ears! Because I can try to track things down if given sufficient details, but I surely can’t go into a room and say “stuff’s broken” and expect to get the information that you’d like to have, and that I’d like to share. (Please don’t post details in this thread. If you’d like to report the issues, would you please do so in the Bugs Forum? I will look for a thread if you care to share it!)

This makes me sad. It really does. Mainly because it implies that Anet is unaware of multipage threads that go into detail about problems with recent updates. Having NPCs greet me as if I were an old friend before I meet them for the first time in a later chapter of the story for example. Not everything that is, “broken,” is due to a bug.

For what it is worth, it is not hyperbole to say that something is broken because an integral part of it is broken. Not every system of your car needs to be non-functional for, “my car is broken,” to be a reasonable statement.

Torsailr.8456:

If that is the intent, then from what I’ve observed it has failed miserably. A roadmap shows what a company is/will be working on and planned release dates for the foreseeable future (typically a few years). I have seen nothing in the CDI to indicate that you will be working on the topic of the CDI and Chris has actually posted several times that the CDI is not a promise of things to come and isn’t an indication that the devs are even going to work on it. And, of course, absolutely no mention of a production period or release date.

The CDI is just a large brainstorming session by the players that the devs occasionally ask a question about. People don’t participate because they feel it’s useless. Why should we put the effort into outlining a feature if the devs aren’t going to work on it? (I know things do come out of CDIs but this is the feeling people have about them.) The CDI is a lot of work for something you won’t commit to.

The CDI is probably as close as we the players can get to the process by which ArenaNet itself comes up with ideas for the game. It allows people to not only provide suggestions, but to work with the developers to try to bring those ideas from a “It would be cool if…” state to one in which a proposal can be made to actually try to bring them into the game. They don’t promise that these things will make it in because it’s a preliminary step and untested. But a concept that has had developer feedback and input and discussion in order to direct the way it could fit with the game has a better chance than forum threads filled with “please add X” and that makes them immensely valuable.

I’d like to have more short-term information too, if only because we’ve seen several instances where something big and controversial was both announced and released within a period of a week or so and the upheaval might have been easier to contain with more advance warning and more room for discussion. But on the other hand, a lot of the trouble with something like the tutorial overhaul was only resolved when people were able to actually get in game and play it.

There’s also sort of a weird space where ArenaNet is not only not giving advance information, but also remaining neutral on whether or not players should be looking forward to big, exciting things in the future. This is understandable because players are as critical of “hype” as they are anything else; when the blog post came out saying that the end of season two would be big and to be sure not to miss it, the overall response I saw was “Meh, it’s just hype, no point in trusting it” even though ANet blew up a major city at the end of season one and that whole plotline was pretty exciting and well-received. But when ArenaNet avoids teasing or dropping hints, it leads to unsatisfying interviews and gives players the impression that they’re not working on anything (since a lot of other studios are open-handed with the wink-nudge comments when something big is on the design table).

It’s probably not a great position to be in, and it’s not really fun or exciting from the perspective of a fan, but I can see why the policy is there because ArenaNet tried making roadmaps, they tried giving ballpark release dates, they tried updating us when stuff wasn’t going to be coming around when they expected it would be (i.e. precursor crafting), and from what I’ve seen players overwhelmingly responded to that with, “You don’t get to make excuses, you should have had the content out the door when you said you would.” They’ve even told us they’re working on big projects apart from the living world several times—which conceivably might be taking resources that would otherwise go to stuff further down the priority list—and we go, “Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it” (I’m guilty of doing this myself).

The most we’re likely to get is insight from the developers on what they feel the game could use and what they feel is important on a personal level, and the CDI threads have quite a bit of that kind of commentary.

dlonie.6547:

And let’s give Gaile a chance to shake something up in Bellevue and see what falls out.

Nah, it’s pretty clear that this is the best we’ll ever get. They promised better communication but they have no intention if actually following through.

dlonie.6547:

It’s been 15 minutes, for christsake.

Actually it’s been 3 months. We were promised better communication back in the “Communicating with you” thread. It’s the reason the CDIs were started back up…until they got stopped again for whatever reason, or something?

Sorry, but no more chances. No more time. ANet was given their chance and they have blown it. There is absolutely zero reason at this point to have any faith whatsoever that things will improve. There aren’t going to be roadmaps. There isn’t going to be communication. We’ll never truly know if traits are going to be fixed, if more dungeons are being made, or if SAB is actually going to return before any of us are old and grey.

Sorry you feel that way, but I understand <3 I’ve been there myself, more than once. TBH, I swing in and out of that feeling of hopelessness re: GW2 fairly regularly. We’ll see what will happen, I just want Gaile to know someone is rooting for her in this ;-)

BTW, I updated the opening post with the current status of the issue, and plan to continue doing so as we hear more.

And I will start nagging if we don’t. ;-P

“Luck favors the prepared Darling…” E. Mode

Gaile Gray.6029:

I understand and sure, as a player, I’d like that info. But that isn’t what the company is doing right now, and we all know, under it all, that someone saying “to hell with policy” isn’t a professional stance to take. This is where we are right now. Not forever, but right now.

Well, what you(anet) are doing now isnt a professional stance either. I cant believe your marketing division agreed to this policy . Were they even consulted? You are not building space ship with new Warp drive technology that has to be kept secret because otherwise governments and competitors will steal it. You are not a secret service. You are not a terrorist organisation. You are not planning world domination (at least i hope not).

“Not telling our customers what we have in store for them? Sounds great, that would make us more mysterious, chicks dig it and so do gamers. Everyone knows that!”

-Wrong! It doesnt build hype, it doesnt bring in new players, it doesnt make us tell our friends about the game, it doesnt give us a chance to stop you from making a mistake or appreciating your efforts, it gives us nothing to look forward to. It also gives us nothing to complain about and focus on, except your silence. What it does, is alienate players who are emotionally invested in your game, and make people who are not that invested move on. I cant believe you have to be told that by your customers.

Since we are on the topic of “communication”.

Gaile, could you by chance figure out if aything in this thread – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Brainstorm-Key-Discussion-Points/first – is still going to be used for anything that was talked about? It was a direct result of the communicating with you thread but it seems currently like it was just all hot air? is this still the case?

Status of expansion/actual content updates instead of these flimsy ls episodes and dev feedback kind of feels like this

furiousfunk.6897:

Agreed. I am sick of the same thing over and over. I don’t care one drop about the living story updates. I have like 4 of them undone and I have no idea how to even start doing them and I also have no interest in looking up how to do them. There was one recently announced, I looked and saw new achievements, no clue how to do them or start it. Give us new races and new maps. I hate Dry Top and Silverlake is repetitive and not worth our time since they ruined the chest farms. I have world map completion on 16 characters. For the last few weeks I login just to do the daily and daily craft the ascended materials. GW2 is about to lose me and I played the first one for 6 years before I got this bored. New areas and new races and maybe some new professions. Shove the living story crap up the quaggan it dropped out of.

Please don’t talk as if everyone agrees with you. They do not.

The Living Story zone is very busy, plenty of people have said they like the current LS updates, and I (for one) enjoy LS.

I have only limited interest in new races. And the LS updates contain new zones. Given that you don’t play them, I wonder how you can complain about “no new zones” when there are new zones you won’t play.

Perhaps you are in a minority?

New races, new classes, new zones. I keep waiting. I was/am happy for the three new zones we’ve gotten the last twenty-eight months. However, if that’s it, meaning a few zones here and there, is all we have to look forward to over the next twenty-eight months, than I want to know and I’ll find another game that better fits what I like to do.

Anet’s poor ability (policy or not) to answer simple questions is annoying and frustrating.

I hate when an mmo going to single player mode. Living story is a single player, and MMO died long time ago (don’t compare ls with wvw and pve which have stayed like this from the start, here and there minor changes…).

We want more MMO with new dungeons, new skills, new weapons something to hope for.

With SOOO many new games coming out (and are already out!) that have taken my attention away it seems that GW2 needs more than a small injection of content(LS) in order to keep me and probably many others happy.
People want to races, zones, dungeons etc but we just keep getting bi-weekly updates that can usually be completed relatively quickly. Add in the gemstore items and it has become apparent over 2 years that GW2 is just going to stick with it’s monotonous plan. Come play the update and hope people buy stuff with gems. Wait 2 weeks, rinse and repeat.
It is really too bad since GW2 has a TON of potential to be the best MMO out there. After 2 years Anet, don’t you think that people are sick of the same dungeons and world events? Fighting the same servers in WvW(if people do it anymore)?
MMO themepark rule #1 is that people crave constant content injections but the LS just isn’t cutting the mustard.
Personally I hope you guys figure it out and fast because I have already invested into another game. I think that GW2 is on the 11th hour of either becoming more stagnant than it already is now or on the precipice of a big big change(maybe xpac) that could save it’s “skin”.
GL GW2 you need it.

Ragnarox.9601:

I hate when an mmo going to single player mode. Living story is a single player, and MMO died long time ago (don’t compare ls with wvw and pve which have stayed like this from the start, here and there minor changes…).

We want more MMO with new dungeons, new skills, new weapons something to hope for.

• New maps from Living Story: Drytop & Silverwastes (heavy focus on group-oriented zonewide cooperation in order to work on reward-tiers and open up worldbosses).
• Each story mission can be played with 2-4 other players
• a huge criticism of season 1 LS was the story-distribution and writing. LS S2 was extremely well received in this department.
• calling EotM, the Borderland ruins, the implementation of WvW-skill-trees minor changes is just insulting. Grow up.

We want?! Speak for yourself, I’m more than happy to get a new map instead of a dungeon. Sure, more skills, weapons, etc. will be nice when we get them, but dissing the things we actually get (which aren’t few) is biased presentation.

The direction of the game is qute clear. Its making money via gem shop.
The rest of the game is what doesnt earn money, so it only gets lucklaster updates.
Thats the only explanation I can come up with. I cant find any other reason why Anet sometimes does good and sometimes bad updates. But regardless of what feedback they got from the last “content” update, they keep on trying something different and “new” every time.
The gemshop however, gets its new items every other week, and most of the time you know what to expect and what it will cost you. If that isnt a obvious scheme then I dont know what is.

Errant Venture.9371:

I’m a grad student and my research is funded by grants. The organizations who offer my funding expect regular status reports on what I’m working on and what progress I’ve made. If I told the steering committee for those grants, “I’m definitely working on things, and they’re going to be good things, but I can’t tell you any specific information about what I’m working on now or in the future because my plans might change,” do you think my funding would be renewed? Hell to the no. Arenanet owes its sources of funding the same regular reports on its progress that any other organization offers to its backers.

This analogy is valid until you consider that GW2 is not subscription-based. They don’t offer pre-orders on up and coming content. You buy the game as-is and then optionally purchase existing upgrades. Why do you feel that they owe you a report? When new content is released you’ll have the option to purchase new skins and additional storage. No one is demanding “funding” from you right now on speculative content, despite these implications you’re making.

Yeah I think it’s time to walk away for the season and be back to pick up Story Journal unlocks. At the least, to just depart the forums (and Reddit) altogether . . . there’s nothing satisfying here to someone who likes the game, and just wants to see more of it rather than scream at developers all day.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

• New maps from Living Story: Drytop & Silverwastes (heavy focus on group-oriented zonewide cooperation in order to work on reward-tiers and open up worldbosses).
• Each story mission can be played with 2-4 other players
• a huge criticism of season 1 LS was the story-distribution and writing. LS S2 was extremely well received in this department.
• calling EotM, the Borderland ruins, the implementation of WvW-skill-trees minor changes is just insulting. Grow up.

We want?! Speak for yourself, I’m more than happy to get a new map instead of a dungeon. Sure, more skills, weapons, etc. will be nice when we get them, but dissing the things we actually get (which aren’t few) is biased presentation.

Wait..you can get story done in 10 mins. and whats the point of 4 others doing it because it it easy even for 1 player.
Whats the point of Eotm? Its small WvW.
Whats the point of the new maps?Its just for grinding gold which gets borring after 1hour.

Grow up? Man how many hours did you played? Did you play this game from a start? Do you farm SW or dry top just for fun or the GOLD? This whole game become grindfest. Dont be white knight, ppl hate those.

So that your arguments for a 2yo game is valid? Some other games had 2 expansions in 2 years (eg. 10 maps, 20 levels, 20 dungeons, 4 classes, 4 races…)

Actually Gaile Gray is the one shining light for me on these forums.

I am not really a forum warrior but it is rather apparent from the myriad of comments that there is something missing from GW2. I hope that you guys figure it out

I think the problem is that not knowing what the plans for the future are is indistinguishable, on the player’s side, to not having plans for the future. The player doesn’t know if you’re not talking about plans because you don’t have them, or because you don’t want to. But it’s all the same. There’s no future to the game. There’s nothing to be excited about, or look forward to, or plan for, until you drop it on us 1 month before it goes live. Sometimes, 1 week before it goes live. And then you get a massive kittenstorm over stuff like charging 300 gold for each color of the new commander tags. A problem that could’ve EASILY been solved if you had asked us. And I bet you probably could’ve gotten us to pay 200 gold to unlock the new colors, making a nice gold sink in the game that needs them. How is any of this good communication?

Sytherek.7689:

No one (almost) demands Ford have a public detailed five-year plan, or that an architect make detailed plans available to everyone who might someday walk into the new building.

I was under the impression that Ford does, and that architects are required to.

That said, we as customers have no right to make demands of Anet. We have what we paid for. The base game. The question is whether or not Anet wants us to continue spending money on the game. For some players the willingness to spend in an ongoing manner is dependent on having a sense of the future of the game.

Sytherek.7689:

People have unrealistic expectations of software companies that they do not apply to car makers, TV shows, authors, construction, or other industries. No one (almost) demands Ford have a public detailed five-year plan, or that an architect make detailed plans available to everyone who might someday walk into the new building.

Well, I do work for a software company and our customers do expect to know what is coming soonish, and what it coming later. If we told them we cannot promise so we cannot tell you they wouldn’t be our customers. We treat our customers like, well… adults.

I’m not saying ANet should have the same policy as we do. I’m pointing out that the expectation is not unreasonable. Some customers will not dedicate their time to something unless they have a good idea of the roadmap.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I like you Gaile, I do. And I respect the near herculean effort both you and people like Chris Whiteside have done for the community in the past. You get communication.

But to me, this isn’t just a communication issue, it’s a trust issue. And I don’t trust Arenanet anymore, as it has given me no reason to do so and a lot of reasons not to.
And this ‘policy’, of essentially keeping the player base in the dark, neither telling them what is going on with the game or where it is heading, is a fundamental violation of trust.

Arenanet doesn’t trust it’s player base enough to be open and honest with it, and yet somehow you expect us to trust you in return? To nod our head, to continue supporting you through rough times, and to give you our money. To obey and never question, is that it?

Well, I for one don’t trust you. I’ve long since quit the game, and every bridge along the way has been burnt to the ground. To have supported you guys all this time, since Guild Wars, to not only have you chronically under delivered, but then turn around and have the gull to keep players in the dark, has been nothing but a complete and utter betrayal of everything I thought you once stood for.

Everything I ever went to Arenanet for is dead and buried. And all that remains is this corporate husk. Now every time I think of the game, all I can think of is the betrayal. It makes me so irate that I just don’t want to think about it anymore or give it the time of day.

And as much as people like you and Chris get communication, ultimately it doesn’t matter if we can’t trust what you say. And I can’t support people I don’t trust.

Gaile Gray.6029:

That’s not in the cards.

Time to throw away those cards and invest in a new deck. I recommend the Rider-Waite pack. A tried and true classic.

Gaile Gray.6029:

This is a sweeping statement that is difficult to analyze. Which feature pack. What specific element is broken? How is it broken? Are you certain that whatever was broken remains broken? (IOW, are you tracking bug fixes, etc?)

April 2014 Feature pack

• Trait system redesign
  Feels like we moved onto the right track but still not near the final destination.
  It fels fundamentally broken since launch, and I made posts regarding it during beta.
  Reducing trait points from 70 to 14 nice visual improvement and more user friendly.
  Refunding traits at no cost out of combat something that’s been asked for a long time.
  New traits, mixed opinions but nicer diversity.
  Higher level to unlock trait tiers, severely mixed opinions generally received poorly.
  The way trait unlocks are now has received major criticism since it’s release and we’re still in the dark about anything regarding this. Some minor fixes, but overall still in a bad place.

• Balance and build diversity
  Ferocity is a nice unification of how stats work. Slight nerf to it to bring it back in line a little. Nicely done.
  Celestial slightly boosted. There’s deeper underlying problems to stats that don’t boost your offence much so it’s hard to judge.
  Every rune set rebalanced, yet we’re still stuck with only a handful of useful runes.
  So many are still in an absolutely terrible place. Same with sigils.
  Some nice QoL changes on how they work fundamentaly, but still broken in some aspects (underwater comes to mind).
  Much needed pet and turret AI improvements but they’re still not where many people want them to be.
  Skill balance updates are too far in between and too few.
  Still many skills are not even close to any usability this day. Same with traits.

• Account-wide wardrobe and dyes
  Finally a nice way to store skins. Pretty much an idea that was already spinned up ever since gw1. Really wish we had this upon release, probably the saddest seeing this wasn’t there.
  Done nicely, except that there’s several screw ups around it. For instance several towns clothing becoming armor skins. But these things were removed prior to the implementation of it with absolutely no indication that they would become armor skins. Or the severe displeasement with purchased gemstore skins not becoming free to apply that didn’t get addressed.
  Transmutation charges are now, in my opinion, too easy to obtain. But this balances out that there’s hardly any free skins. Funny how two bads become a good.
  Account bound dyes is another thing I wish I’d seen upon release. Pretty messy solution to make it work, but I don’t think at that point there was a clean solution.
  Harder to get dyes to compensate less need for dyes. People really miss finding dyes themselves now and pretty much you just buy them off the TP.
  Might as well have a merchant selling the non gem-store dyes at this point…

• Social Play
  Last login of member login, finally. Essential feature of a guild missing since release.
  Some minor improvements that not many people probably cared about.

• Account bound
  World experience going account bound, finally. Again, something that should’ve been there since release.
  Legendary and ascended gear becoming accound bound is very nice, especially for more casual players.

• Structured PvP
  PvP equiment finally gone. Bad system since launch where a game is about skins and yet it’s so hard for PvE players to show off in PvP and vice versa.
  Yet this brought in a lot of unfair issues, where for instance the Dwayna’s Longbow was super easy to obtain in PvP and now people can use it in PvE as well.
  Several other overlooks that I’ll spare you. I’m surprised there wasn’t much more of an outrage.
  Reward Tracks are nicely done, some more quirky loot for PvP players that set a nice base for new skins/rewards to be added to PvP. Mixed opinions on how you can get dungeon specific rewards from it though…
  PvP Build UI is nicely done. Still missing builds there… something we’ve been asking for since launch. Still not in the game.
  PvP rank points rebalanced. Major screw up. Many people who just afk farmed got to rank 80 now. Any prestige in rank has been gone since. Or to put it more precisely, the issue derrived from farming rank points has been greatly increased by this.
  Daily Achievemeny unification is good, not feeling too strong about it either way.

• Megaserver system
  I think it was a very wise decision to get this done at that time. Personally really positive about it, even though it has some big negative effects (RP / easy zerg worldbosses).
  But, we’re still missing a proper que system that can’t be cheated on. Again, something that’s been missing since release.

• World bosses
  Personally like it, even though there’s several pro’s and cons to it. This I feel is a pure judgement call and I’m not in the position to judge whether it worked out how you envisioned.
  Bigger issue is that many of them are still just easy mindless zerg fests.

• Waypoints
  Pretty much all of this from the feature pack has been revisioned, for better. Still think the contested waypoint system is in a bad spot right now, waypoints in general are in a pretty bad spot to be quite honest.

• Guilds and World versus World
  Can’t really remember what these changes were supposed to be.

• Open world champions
  Feeling pretty neutral about it. Better scaling is always good.
  Still several issues with scaling persist (biggest examples being: slow to downscale, upscaling when it shouldn’t happen)

• Miscellaneous
  Free armor repair. I still think the whole concept of repairing armor is a bit outdated. Running back from a waypoint is enough of a punishment in my opinion.
  Balanced gold from champ bags. Sure.
  Daily AP capped to 10k and monthly to 5k. Brilliant. No need for achievement hunters to log on every day to do every achievement. Really nice.

My post for September 2014 just got messed up, I’m too sleepy atm to post it again.
Reserving this post for now.

Sytherek.7689:

Gaile,

Don’t let the obsessives and forum warriors get you down. There are millions of people enjoying the game and playing. Happy players are playing, not posting.

Well, I’m posting as a counterpoint (probably lost in the rancor) to the incessantly unhappy. Nothing ANet does will satisfy the hardcore dissatisfied.

I’d love to know what’s coming. I understand why you don’t tell us. People have unrealistic expectations of software companies that they do not apply to car makers, TV shows, authors, construction, or other industries. No one (almost) demands Ford have a public detailed five-year plan, or that an architect make detailed plans available to everyone who might someday walk into the new building.

TL;DR

Pretend you’re Marvel Studios and announce the titles of your movies through 2018. It pays off. Seriously.

I too want to thank and congratulate Gaile. She’s fantastic and wonderful and I love seeing her posts everyday.

I’m of a different mind when it comes to roadmapping. I work as an artist and admin for a theatre company and I liken a player base to a patron base. Comparing a game to Ford is a bit different because you can’t realistically expect someone to buy a car every year. Ford’s business model doesn’t function with that expectation.

I get exactly what you’re saying that people on the outside (our patrons) don’t need to know every detail of what we have planned. They don’t need our production meeting schedule, or our design schematics, or the prompt book, or all the director’s notes.

12 months out, you can bet we don’t have a cast, or designs, or probably anything staged; we probably have a director and if it’s early in the season, we may have a concept that we can talk a little bit about. But patrons need a hook, so we announce details when we can. We do NOT wait until opening night to announce the title or who’s in the cast.

No, Guild Wars isn’t subscription-based, and so it’s not a perfect analogy. Once someone buys the game, Anet has their money and since it’s free to play after, they don’t have to work as hard at retention.

But someone is most likely to go to a show or pick up a game if 1. there’s major name recognition involved (branding or advertising) or 2. their friends recommend it. Not having enough of a preview or exciting your base is a sure way to kill name recognition and word-of-mouth, or worse, turn it all negative.

Gaile Gray.6029:

snip

Tbh gaile, I think more people were agitated by the silence after the announcement of the scavenger hunt rather than it back burnered. There was also the loot bug going on, in which case it was responded to once by a French community manager before left alone for another long period of time.

So, while some of us were angry at no scavenger, I think the lack of communication at that point of time was what was really fueling the anger. Granted, as said earlier, no matter what anet says or does, someone will be unhappy, but I have some belief(I hope I don’t regret saying that) the community wouldn’t have reacted as it did or does if a post was made explaining why it was on hold (it was stated that things can change in the blog, this was a perfect example to say ‘sorry, things changed’).

A prime example of done right was the CDI update, with someone asking, “where is the gvg cdi?”, and the response ’we are working on a new home for it". Great! People now know and can use that for ref. And if something like 2 months go by, and no word on it till someone asks, give an update! “Ran into some issues, still working”. Note, not like every week, I know that would be impossible.

Finally, the issue I have with the current policy can be exampled by the commander tag fiasco. If it had been known earlier in the week about the decision to charge for each color, then perhaps the two guys that worked the weekend wouldn’t of have to have come in. I guess what I am saying is, letting us know when its already ready, seems bad if the community sees a problem or doesn’t like one aspect, and then the devs need to scramble to fix.

Hm, maybe something more than just a week’s headsup on a new feature, rather than " here’s a new feature, comes out next week!"

But I do want to say thank you for communicating more now, and staying in touch.

You know what I find amusing, this isn’t exactly a new policy on A.nets part, most people don’t seem to remember, but this isn’t the first time they’ve said they wouldn’t talk about anything until it was ready for show. So I for one completely understand, it’s been used before in GW1 and it’s being used now for GW2…but I do understand everyone else’s frustration…it just doesn’t apply to me personally.