Guild Wars 2

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

What are we working on right now? Feature Pack 2 (in ~two more weeks), Season 2 of the Living World (coming back this fall), the WvW Fall Tournament, and the World Tournament Series PvP global tournament are just some of the things we are currently working on that we can tell you about right now.

After the end of the tournaments, the game will be the same since it was released!
Players really want:

• New Dungeons/Fractals
• New Dungeon/Fractal Rewards
• PvP modes/maps
• Guild Halls (GvG)
• New Legendaries
• New Weapon and Armor skins (No RNG)
• Precursor Crafting

Please, stop tournaments and living story, We want more permanent content!
We’ve spent years asking and you don’t listen us!

Thanks for reading and responding.

Didn’t you get the memo, this is a PvP focused ESport game!

If you disagree then Anet wants you to leave.

Keep your expectations low for this feature patch.
From what they have revealed so far it’s about forcing e-sports into this game.

I wouldn’t expect any new areas/dungeons/skins unless they are coming attached to Living Story or Gemstore patches.

honestly, in its current state, this game would not be worth paying a sub fee for

Godzzila.3752:

Keep your expectations low for this feature patch.
From what they have revealed so far it’s about forcing e-sports into this game.

I wouldn’t expect any new areas/dungeons/skins unless they are coming attached to Living Story or Gemstore patches.

That is what people said for the last feature patch…

what is the point of feature patches if they never bring new desirable features to the game???

The game desperately needs an expansion to give the game new life, but it seems the whole team is just focused on working on new living story content. If Arena.net finally listens and releases an expansion with new dungeons, new areas, & new world bosses, new pvp and wvw maps, they would make a ton more money selling expansions than “nickel and dime”ing players through the gem store who log in to do their bimonthly living story update.

All the permanent content has hardly changed since the game has been released, and players are leaving left and right because they are tired of doing the same dungeons, same wvw maps, and pvp modes for 2 years now. How about working on some content that brings longevity to this game, rather than living story stuff you play once and never again?

Honestly, I’m pretty sure the “esports” community is tiny here. Only ONCE have I heard somebody mention it in LA chat, and they were promptly told that nobody cares.

As for the living story, they SHOULD finish season 2, but drop it afterwards like a potato that caught on fire. It’s hogging up resources for superior content that has superior replay value such as what the OP mentioned, alongside WvW and SAB.

“What are devs working on ?”

Living story .. that’s all “we” want .. and of course gem store items.
There are no other modes in this game, only the next episode of “rumble in the jungle”.

I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it
I’m about to lose control and I think .. I’ll go to bed now.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

What are we working on right now? Feature Pack 2 (in ~two more weeks), Season 2 of the Living World (coming back this fall), the WvW Fall Tournament, and the World Tournament Series PvP global tournament are just some of the things we are currently working on that we can tell you about right now.

What are doing the 250 others people for a year now ? Is anet like blizzard and has huge management problem ? You should fire 5-10 middle managers, the guys that do nothing but hold off stuff. Stop promoting a dev to manager, increase his pay but a good dev might not be a good lead. Cut off your management, do something with this big team of your. Get to work, or stop wasting your work in things that will never make in game. This so-called feature pack is atm nothing, it could have take 1 dev/day for each “feature”. Did a team really worked on that ?

They’re working on “How to make more money”.

I love pvp to death here in GW2 and GW1, but I’ve never been interested in the e-sports aspect in GW2. I have yet to hear it in my guild chat either (large guild) or in other various chats. This makes me wonder how many other players are in this boat.

I’d be very interested to hear just how popular the e-sports aspect of gw2 actually is, what scale is it on, and what good comes of it (publicity?) considering anet is putting off quite a bit of development for it.

Domino.1359:

I love pvp to death here in GW2 and GW1, but I’ve never been interested in the e-sports aspect in GW2. I have yet to hear it in my guild chat either (large guild) or in other various chats. This makes me wonder how many other players are in this boat.

I’d be very interested to hear just how popular the e-sports aspect of gw2 actually is, what scale is it on, and what good comes of it (publicity?) considering anet is putting off quite a bit of development for it.

They want the revenue of LoL – but it’s not going to happen in this game. But they’ll keep trying.

JoluMarti.9165:

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

What are we working on right now? Feature Pack 2 (in ~two more weeks), Season 2 of the Living World (coming back this fall), the WvW Fall Tournament, and the World Tournament Series PvP global tournament are just some of the things we are currently working on that we can tell you about right now.

After the end of the tournaments, the game will be the same since it was released!
Players really want:

• New Dungeons/Fractals
• New Dungeon/Fractal Rewards
• PvP modes/maps
• Guild Halls (GvG)
• New Legendaries
• New Weapon and Armor skins (No RNG)
• Precursor Crafting

Please, stop tournaments and living story, We want more permanent content!
We’ve spent years asking and you don’t listen us!

Thanks for reading and responding.

Word of advice, just because you are saying you want these improved, doesn’t mean they will work on it immediately. They are already releasing the feature patch next month. So just wait for the next feature patch to come by.

@colin

maby you should than not make a blogpost with things you will give us this year BUT

a blogpost with things you work on

i guess people would be happy to read things like: we work on housing but far from release, we have 3 dungeons in beta status, we had to restart work on precursor crafting and its back to alpha status ………

something like this

ColinJohanson.2394:

…and are just regular Gw2 players like a lot of you…

Thanks for posting Colin.

This part of your whole post really resonates with me. I was a long time Daoc player and when I read a dev interview for that game, back in the day, about how he went home after a day of Daoc game creation to spend the night playing WoW I really wasn’t happy. I’ve left my input here and there on the forums about how I don’t need to hear from you guys to play GW2 (can’t imagine playing anything else) but I do like to hear that you guys and girls play your own game. So thanks.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romek.4201:

@colin

maby you should than not make a blogpost with things you will give us this year BUT

a blogpost with things you work on

i guess people would be happy to read things like: we work on housing but far from release, we have 3 dungeons in beta status, we had to restart work on precursor crafting and its back to alpha status ………

something like this

That would also break the company policy of what we’re allowed to discuss in regards of what is in development

Though I wonder if we went a little more broad and kept a rolling “top categorical issues” the community team communicated or owned that summarizing high level things the development team is aware of and might or might not be working on, but see’s as core fundamental issues to address, and players just had constant brainstorm threads on those topics – if it’d at least get us halfway there.

What is the reasoning behind the company policy to talk about things only when they are nearly finished.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romek.4201:

@colin

maby you should than not make a blogpost with things you will give us this year BUT

a blogpost with things you work on

i guess people would be happy to read things like: we work on housing but far from release, we have 3 dungeons in beta status, we had to restart work on precursor crafting and its back to alpha status ………

something like this

That would also break the company policy of what we’re allowed to discuss in regards of what is in development

Though I wonder if we went a little more broad and kept a rolling “top categorical issues” the community team communicated or owned that summarizing high level things the development team is aware of and might or might not be working on, but see’s as core fundamental issues to address, and players just had constant brainstorm threads on those topics – if it’d at least get us halfway there.

Company policy needs to change.

You cannot “communicate” when you are not allowed to communicate anything.

I can promise you that you will accomplish nothing more than making people feel like the wool is being pulled over our eyes once again.

Telling us that you can’t tell us anything is going to make things worse.

Either you can tell us you’re working on new content, or you can’t – if you can’t, then people will go right on complaining about the lack of new content.

I highly recommend that you go to your superiors (whoever “they” are – the one’s telling you what you can’t talk about) and have the take a serious look at this policy.

It will only cause more confusion.

You should at least be able to tell people what kind of content you’re working on (if any).

For example, “We’re working on the design of some new maps to be added later but have no date set for it yet” – would be better than saying nothing at all.

Many people just want to know that new content is in the pipe – that it’s coming someday.

That alone is enough to keep us going.

No word at all makes us assume the worst – which is why you get threads constantly talking about how there is no new content and everything revolves around the gemstore.

Same ole, same ole.

I think a lot of people feel like “communication” merely means “placation” – because, in your own words, you can’t talk about anything.

So what’s the point? You come here just to tell us you can’t actually talk about anything?

Can you see why there’s a conflict in that?

What you say you cannot do, is the only thing we actually want you to do.

We want to know what’s being developed, so we can decide whether it’s worth investing our time further in this game.

If new content is at least being planned (even without knowing how long it will take, exactly what form it will take – though a general idea would be nice, like “dungeons”, or “open world zones”, or “fractals” would at least give us a heads up as to what kind of material to expect eventually) then we can say to ourselves,

‘Hey, I don’t know when I’m going to get it – but I know they are on the same page and are working on it’

Right now, it seems like the answer to, ‘Is there going to be new content or not’, is simply ‘no’ (*unless you love Living Story and e-sports).

That IS the communication problem – you’re not communicating anything.

Colin, I suggest that the upper management watch this old Twilight Zone episode and realize keeping people in the dark due to lack of communication is only making things much worse than backtracking on statements when an idea doesn’t pan out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street

Without communication, those who are unhappy start spinning the most fantastic stories about your priorities with no way for those who enjoy the game’s more relaxed pace a way to disprove them. You are isolating your supporters while letting your critics run open loop.

And just like that episode, your policy of silence about development is rapidly becoming your own worse enemy.

We don’t mind disappointment if you are straightforward, honest and timely with us. We simply don’t like being strung along only to be surprised that the features we were hoping for were long since canceled early in the development stage and we are just finding out about it now. That causes genuine player rage, even among the so called “white knights” on the forum.

Nobody likes to be treated like mushrooms.

ipan.4356:

Can you see why there’s a conflict in that?

What you say you cannot do, is the only thing we actually want you to do.

We want to know what’s being developed, so we can decide whether it’s worth investing our time further in this game.

If new content is at least being planned (even without knowing how long it will take, exactly what form it will take – though a general idea would be nice, like “dungeons”, or “open world zones”, or “fractals” would at least give us a heads up as to what kind of material to expect eventually) then we can say to ourselves,

‘Hey, I don’t know when I’m going to get it – but I know they are on the same page and are working on it’

Right now, it seems like the answer to, ‘Is there going to be new content or not’, is simply ‘no’ (*unless you love Living Story and e-sports).

That IS the communication problem – you’re not communicating anything.

I think you might want to change, “we,” for, “I,” in your second sentence. Either that or identify the we as being people you know personally rather than attempting to speak for everyone else.

I, and others here, have no problem posting what we do and do not like about the game (or developer communication) here. I have been called a hater, shill for Anet’s competition, or troll, etc entirely too many times because I post what I hold to be true/accurate (for me) regardless of popular opinion for anyone else to presume to speak for me.

Ryan.9387:

What is the reasoning behind the company policy to talk about things only when they are nearly finished.

The reason is pretty simple. It’s the same one for why they don’t make internal deadlines public knowledge or talk about future plans beyond ifs and maybes. Because when things change it is hard to retract any statements made and they will be viewed as broken promises regardless of how they were originally communicated.

The easiest comparison to make is probably to think how you feel if a game that you have been waiting to play announces a set release date but then as that date comes closer they announce a that the game has been delayed. It never looks good. Same reactions would be at play if ANet made announcements about future plans and had to later retract them.

However, I will criticize this policy on one front. Things you talked about before this policy came in place those have now just been left hanging in the aether. It would be lot better for you to take the blow and explain what came of those if anything rather than leave this perpetual uncertainty looming over the playerbase. Because, this uncertainty can’t be much better than the alternative since this uncertainty will never go away while any possible disappointments will only last for a while.

Essentially by not clearing up your old statements from before you stopped talking about things you are just misleading your userbase.

Pretty much what the above said. If its not much you can talk about. No reason to jump on the forums just for us to see the little red arena in a post, just to get a disappointing answer. The lot of the things we were to expect were either scrapped or push further back. And that list keeps getting longer. It leaves us in the dark, more often then usually, and we (the community were so called), question rather or not is it even being worked on…

Crise.9401:

Ryan.9387:

What is the reasoning behind the company policy to talk about things only when they are nearly finished.

The reason is pretty simple. It’s the same one for why they don’t make internal deadlines public knowledge or talk about future plans beyond ifs and maybes. Because when things change it is hard to retract any statements made and they will be viewed as broken promises regardless of how they were originally communicated.

The easiest comparison to make is probably to think how you feel if a game that you have been waiting to play announces a set release date but then as that date comes closer they announce a that the game has been delayed. It never looks good. Same reactions would be at play if ANet made announcements about future plans and had to later retract them.

However, I will criticize this policy on one front. Things you talked about before this policy came in place those have now just been left hanging in the aether. It would be lot better for you to take the blow and explain what came of those if anything rather than leave this perpetual uncertainty looming over the playerbase. Because, this uncertainty can’t be much better than the alternative since this uncertainty will never go away while any possible disappointments will only last for a while.

Essentially by not clearing up your old statements from before you stopped talking about things you are just misleading your userbase.

Why would they have to retract them in the first place?

Personally I think that listing some things being worked on, or at least listing priorities, would be a good thing. These would ideally be included in a stickied thread so that there is never a matter of disappeared posts being misquoted as promises and the like. If the message remains front and center it is much easier to point out that certain things were listed as being, “worked on,” or, “in consideration,” rather than, “promised,” or something of the sort.

Updating this, “developer’s corner,” on a monthly basis so that, even if it is not specific, players have some sense of progression and direction might be very helpful IMO.

The community on these forums have proven repeatedly that if a dev says what they’re working on then the community treats it as a promise. And if it’s not delivered, they get kittened about it. They’re right to have the policy they do. It’s the only way to deal with how this community treats them when they do say anything.

Ashen.2907:

Personally I think that listing some things being worked on, or at least listing priorities, would be a good thing. These would ideally be included in a stickied thread so that there is never a matter of disappeared posts being misquoted as promises and the like. If the message remains front and center it is much easier to point out that certain things were listed as being, “worked on,” or, “in consideration,” rather than, “promised,” or something of the sort.

Updating this, “developer’s corner,” on a monthly basis so that, even if it is not specific, players have some sense of progression and direction might be very helpful IMO.

This exactly^^

@Colin answers questions and people still keep asking them over and over. We have to be more understanding and stop thinking about ourself and then pretend that we are saying it for the benefit of all. Having said that I think the original list is great only thing i’d take out are precursor crafting legendaries are legendaries for a reason. Should be an epic accomplishment.

ipan.4356:

Why would they have to retract them in the first place?

Example: long long time ago, ArenaNet made a statement about alternative methods to acquire precursors. Going so far as to say that there was a designer working on such system at a high level.

Now unless that designer has been working on said system for the past year without getting anywhere (which means they have some problems to address in their management of of their development resources) then they really ought to address that old statement in some way other than evading the subject whenever it is brought up.

I know that every development decision made is always backed by a reason, some of those reasons can’t necessarily be made public but if that is not the case then these old lingering statements that the community from time to time likes to cling to should be cleared up.

It might be disappointing to hear f.ex. that the precursor changes are not coming for the foreseeable future or at all. But it is still better than this false hope that if not this feature pack then maybe next. At least if backed by some reasoning, that not maybe everyone can agree on, but the fact that those reasons are out there would make it lot easier to swallow than just having to draw that same conclusion regardless from all this evading and dodging they are now forced into doing.

Then if the plans change again, or they can resolve some of those reasons or problems at a later date, we can all be pleasantly rather than saying “It’s about god kitten time”.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romek.4201:

@colin

maby you should than not make a blogpost with things you will give us this year BUT

a blogpost with things you work on

i guess people would be happy to read things like: we work on housing but far from release, we have 3 dungeons in beta status, we had to restart work on precursor crafting and its back to alpha status ………

something like this

That would also break the company policy of what we’re allowed to discuss in regards of what is in development
…

than change it^^

Torsailr.8456:

The community on these forums have proven repeatedly that if a dev says what they’re working on then the community treats it as a promise. And if it’s not delivered, they get kittened about it. They’re right to have the policy they do. It’s the only way to deal with how this community treats them when they do say anything.

Most of the time people merely want to know why – an explanation.

Did a volcano just erupt? Did local city ordinances change the way games are developed?

Did Obamacare force you to switch from Geico?

People just want the rationalization behind cancellation.

Let’s put it this way.

The dev’s tell us they are working something (let’s say a new dungeon for arguments sake).

Two months later, we get a note saying they are no longer working on that dungeon – it’s been scrapped.

Well, ok, but why?

Did money run out? Did upper management cancel it in favor of something else? Were there personal emergencies that reduced time spent on development (like pregnancies, family deaths that take people away for funerals, wedding, etc.)?

Did it simply fail internal testing and get scrapped for a more promising idea?

If the dev’s take us with them on each little step, explaining why some things end up on the cutting floor and others don’t, and where their priorities are shifting – I can guarantee you that people will be FAR more forgiving.

No one’s asking for content development to be the Ten Commandments – just treat us like we’re along for the ride – fill us in.

At bare minimum give us a general, vague development roadmap, as in “We plan to make x amount of new maps” or “Y amount of new dungeons” or “None of that at all – all we’re doing for the foreseeable future is Living Story”.

Because at least then I’d know what Anet considers a priority.

I know then, that if the only thing they think is important enough to spend time and resources is on Living Story, and nothing else, then I can move on – I can say, ‘Hey, they have a different vision than I do for this game, and that’s cool – I’ll go find another game’.

Instead of being strung along update after update – hoping for something substantial, and constantly being let down.

This last LS was the worst – I was incredibly excited when Dry Top opened up – only to find out it was extremely tiny, like really only 1/2 a new map, and that there were no additional maps. I was actually expecting 4-5 new maps – an entire region to open up – not necessarily all at once, but with each episode maybe.

I was looking forward to lots more exploration. But it didn’t materialize.

If Anet had announced, ‘With this next season, we won’t be opening many new areas – just a small one’ – I could have easily not bothered to log in to begin with, thus preventing the disappointment, thus preventing me from coming to the forums to talk about it.

A little communication actually would have gone a long way.

Crise.9401:

ipan.4356:

Why would they have to retract them in the first place?

Example: long long time ago, ArenaNet made a statement about alternative methods to acquire precursors. Going so far as to say that there was a designer working on such system at a high level.

Now unless that designer has been working on said system for the past year without getting anywhere (which means they have some problems to address in their management of of their development resources) then they really ought to address that old statement in some way other than evading the subject whenever it is brought up.

They did, earlier this year.

Ashen.2907:

Crise.9401:

ipan.4356:

Why would they have to retract them in the first place?

Example: long long time ago, ArenaNet made a statement about alternative methods to acquire precursors. Going so far as to say that there was a designer working on such system at a high level.

Now unless that designer has been working on said system for the past year without getting anywhere (which means they have some problems to address in their management of of their development resources) then they really ought to address that old statement in some way other than evading the subject whenever it is brought up.

They did, earlier this year.

It just wasn’t front page like the original statement. Which meant most everyone missed it.

Ashen.2907:

They did, earlier this year.

Did they really, because it honestly doesn’t feel that way. If they really did address precursor acquisition in some way that goes beyond their usual PR speak then they really should work on getting such points across to the wider community better.

Just let them do whatever they want. When something like Commander Icon Colour swap is consider big changes you don’t expect more from them. Just let it go and move on. Much better option out there. Cheers~!

Hello Colin,

Regarding company policy, I feel like one important point that cannot be understated is that ANet needs to be in control of the debates and speculations surrounding the game. If ANet isn’t guiding the debate then speculation WILL run wild and unfounded expectations WILL be set.

I fear that the current policy at ANet is frankly wishful thinking. Lack of communication does not mean lack of expectations from the playerbase. It just means more frustration as speculations appear to be off the mark. So again ANet needs to take control over this.

Now how do you do this?

• Interaction : Players need to feel that they are being listened to. Their concerns need to be aknowledged and more importantly discussed. Internal discussions are good and necessary obviously but some form of public debate on core issues is also important. It doesn’t have to be in the form of forum posts though, which brings me to my second point:

• Consolidation : Right now there is no platform for players to go to and easily have an idea about ANet’s stance on various issues. A simple fix would be regular blog posts summarizing the issues brought forward in the forums and then discussing them. The discussion shouldn’t be about features or promises, rather developers and designers can use the opportunity to explain their thought process about the issue, what they think might be problematic about it, things that players might not be considering, etc.

• Predictability : Incertainty is frustrating, this is just our human nature. We like to know, it makes us feel good. So far, the feature and content updates have been pretty messy in terms of release schedules to say the least. Living Story is starting to follow a predictable cycle which is very nice, but outside of that we don’t really know what to expect until it’s at our door steps. You don’t need to tell us exactly when every single thing will happen but I feel like having at least some form of roadmap with very vague date ranges for the important milestones (feature patches, holidays, wvw seasons, ls seasons) might appease the community and foster a healthier interaction. It’s also important to communicate on such roadmap and make sure that people are actually seeing the whole picture.

• State of the Game : You said that the SotG posts created expectations that couldn’t always be met and that in turn made people frustrated, which is a totally valid argument but I feel like this is a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water. In my opinion the reason SotG didn’t work was because it wasn’t done enough! State of the Game shouldn’t be only about the things you’re working on, it should also be about stuff that didn’t work out and stuff that you’re restarting from scratch. Of course some people will be upset but those people won’t be less upset if you stay silent (as I said people will always set expections themselves because it makes them feel good). But if you communicate more and make sure people are updated on features that might be taking more time and the reasons behind such decisions, then you’re taking control over the narrative and ultimately players will feel reassured.

Well that’s pretty much it for my 2 cents

ColinJohanson.2394:

We also have a lot of people at ArenaNet and you’ve only seen what some them are working on this last year or two. Since we can’t share a road map of what they’re doing per our company policy, all I can answer is I hope when we’re able to show you what all we’ve been doing in total someday in the future – you’re as excited as we are about it.

Ekhm. Expansion?

Quo Vadis, Domine Johanson ?

Louder Than Words

Communication is never easy when it comes to games and gaming communities. Having observed the process for quite some time, it rarely amounts to anything other than a no-win scenario, regardless of how well done.

ArenaNet has made some major changes, and the China launch has been a very big deal for the company. Shifting from the disastrous “throw-away” content model of Living World Season One to the far more sustainable model of Season Two is a HUGE improvement, but its cumulative effects will take time to become more apparent.

The Feature Packs make sweeping and significant changes, and another one will be here very soon. I’m very impressed by the last one (though I think the trait system revamp needs some serious adjustment), and am excited about the next. These are literal game-changers, and quite welcome.

And though it would be nice to hear more about ArenaNet’s plans and proposals, what matters most is what actually happens.

Talk is cheap. Let’s see this stuff in-game.

ColinJohanson.2394:

That would also break the company policy of what we’re allowed to discuss in regards of what is in development

Change your company policy, stop using it as a crutch. It is the source of the consternation and frustration felt by the community. Change it, simple as that.

ColinJohanson.2394:

The simple answer is: unless it’s nearing completion, we cannot talk about it. You can read Mo’s post titled “communicating with you” which covers in detail how we’ve been asked to message as of about a year ago in relation to what is in development.

What we can talk about is what we think tough problems are for the game to solve, what questions we think about regularly development wise about the game, or amazing ideas for what aspects of Gw2 can be – CDI’s are a great place for that discussion in particular. But we can’t answer what exactly we’re working on, what we might work on next, or what progress we’re making on stuff we are working on.

The reality is things like these sort of lists of “what is the team doing” like my old state of the game blogs created expectations. When plans, or implementation details changed, or we threw out whole systems because they weren’t good enough – I left the team looking bad for making them break those expectations. I’ve been asked to no longer do those blogs and instead focus on only doing the type of announcements we’ve done this year of stuff that is guaranteed to ship in a reasonable time-frame after we announce it. Things like the living world journal, structure of content for season two of living world, feature packs one, feature pack two, etc.

For everything you’re not hearing about…I can only say don’t assume that means we’re not working on it, most of us who build the game all day play the game constantly all night, and are just regular Gw2 players like a lot of you. We’re looking for a lot of the same things out of the game that you are, and we read the feedback from the community constantly. Heck I just flew in from being out of town for a couple weeks and I’m reading your thread at 10:30pm on a saturday, there ya go real proof!

Now that China has launched we’ve freed up a lot of development resources back to get to those things. We also have a lot of people at ArenaNet and you’ve only seen what some them are working on this last year or two. Since we can’t share a road map of what they’re doing per our company policy, all I can answer is I hope when we’re able to show you what all we’ve been doing in total someday in the future – you’re as excited as we are about it.

Colin,. there are a lot of people posting on the forums quite vocally that seem not to get what you’re saying, even though you’ve been saying it forever. Keep in mind, many of us do understand.

Some of you need to realize they can’t speak of certain things because of competition. Other companies steal ideas all the time.

I have to admit, that i did like Colin’s blog posts, because they gave a “roadmap” to where the game is headed, but some stuff was delayed or never came to fruition, so i can understand why he doesn’t do them anymore.

However, the things they are allowed to speak about, has been very sparse on other areas of the game, which leads people to believe that there isn’t anything being worked on. Season 2 & Feature Pack 2, is pretty much all the information that we have gotten since the Chinese release. This is great for people that like Living Story, but not so much for others.

So far, the Feature Pack 2 info has been very disappointing to WvW players. Players were left in the dark since the CDIs on WvW, then they find out that there’s a price hike on separate colored tags, a siege disabler, and a golem mastery update. Did these 3 features really need to be hidden from the public?

Not only this, but more info from Gamescom interviews feels as though the devs aren’t going to focus on existing dungeons anymore, since it would take too long to restructure or whatever, and they would prefer to add a fractals dungeon instead, which is understandable.
http://youtu.be/umpR6LhBhW4?t=4m17s

Again, this left dungeon players in the dark for over a year(?), but did they really need to be? The QOL changes can’t be talked about at all? This is why players are getting frustrated, because Anet doesn’t talk about the small things that could be talked about, such as changes to the Party/Group system, or the “Meta End-Game” (aka Berserker playstyle), or Rewards vs. Risk, etc. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the major projects.

nexxe.7081:

Some of you need to realize they can’t speak of certain things because of competition. Other companies steal ideas all the time.

I have to admit, that i did like Colin’s blog posts, because they gave a “roadmap” to where the game is headed, but some stuff was delayed or never came to fruition, so i can understand why he doesn’t do them anymore.

However, the things they are allowed to speak about, has been very sparse on other areas of the game, which leads people to believe that there isn’t anything being worked on. Season 2 & Feature Pack 2, is pretty much all the information that we have gotten since the Chinese release. This is great for people that like Living Story, but not so much for others.

So far, the Feature Pack 2 info has been very disappointing to WvW players. Players were left in the dark since the CDIs on WvW, then they find out that there’s a price hike on separate colored tags, a siege disabler, and a golem mastery update. Did these 3 features really need to be hidden from the public?

Not only this, but more info from Gamescom interviews feels as though the devs aren’t going to focus on existing dungeons anymore, since it would take too long to restructure or whatever, and they would prefer to add a fractals dungeon instead, which is understandable.
http://youtu.be/umpR6LhBhW4?t=4m17s

Again, this left dungeon players in the dark for over a year(?), but did they really need to be? The QOL changes can’t be talked about at all? This is why players are getting frustrated, because Anet doesn’t talk about the small things that could be talked about, such as changes to the Party/Group system, or the “Meta End-Game” (aka Berserker playstyle), or Rewards vs. Risk, etc. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the major projects.

I agree somethings can not be shared for whatever reasons but it seems that many players just want a bit more information. Regardless I hope this issue gets resolved because I love GW2, it is my MMO ever since GW1 and I want to see it keep growing and i’d like to be along for the ride!

Hey Colin! Nice to see you’re ok, I was worried where have you been.
As for that post, things not being good enough – perfection can never be achieved.
I don’t know if that would work, but, what about releasing “sub-par” content and improving it as time goes with the feedback from the players?

ColinJohanson.2394:

The simple answer is: unless it’s nearing completion, we cannot talk about it. You can read Mo’s post titled “communicating with you” which covers in detail how we’ve been asked to message as of about a year ago in relation to what is in development.

What we can talk about is what we think tough problems are for the game to solve, what questions we think about regularly development wise about the game, or amazing ideas for what aspects of Gw2 can be – CDI’s are a great place for that discussion in particular. But we can’t answer what exactly we’re working on, what we might work on next, or what progress we’re making on stuff we are working on.

The reality is things like these sort of lists of “what is the team doing” like my old state of the game blogs created expectations. When plans, or implementation details changed, or we threw out whole systems because they weren’t good enough – I left the team looking bad for making them break those expectations. I’ve been asked to no longer do those blogs and instead focus on only doing the type of announcements we’ve done this year of stuff that is guaranteed to ship in a reasonable time-frame after we announce it. Things like the living world journal, structure of content for season two of living world, feature packs one, feature pack two, etc.

For everything you’re not hearing about…I can only say don’t assume that means we’re not working on it, most of us who build the game all day play the game constantly all night, and are just regular Gw2 players like a lot of you. We’re looking for a lot of the same things out of the game that you are, and we read the feedback from the community constantly. Heck I just flew in from being out of town for a couple weeks and I’m reading your thread at 10:30pm on a saturday, there ya go real proof!

Now that China has launched we’ve freed up a lot of development resources back to get to those things. We also have a lot of people at ArenaNet and you’ve only seen what some them are working on this last year or two. Since we can’t share a road map of what they’re doing per our company policy, all I can answer is I hope when we’re able to show you what all we’ve been doing in total someday in the future – you’re as excited as we are about it.

Wow Colin, your in for a rude awakening if this is what you think.
I covered this mostly and more expansively in the ‘Communicating with you’ thread, so I will try to be brief here, but if you could check it out you might get an insight into the toxicity that your brewing here on the forums and in your player base.

I can understand you position that you don’t want to disappoint people or get attacked when an idea or something your working fails for whatever reason, I get that.
But the reason you get attacked on something like that is that the problem is never explained or conveyed to the player base in any way when it did fall through, so we’re left to figure it out ourselves often times a very long time after the fact. We’re given no explanation, it just appears that you just ‘stopped’.

And it comes across that you don’t trust us enough to tell us the truth, that your not being honest with us, and you undermine our trust in you as a result.

But then instead of rectifying that mistake you double down on it, and make it your official policy to keep everyone in the dark on most everything. Where we are given no information on almost anything, and communication has broken down almost entirely.

And if you think for a second that you won’t be attacked if we just don’t know anything, your bloody kidding yourself. When all we have is ignorance and wild speculation instead of facts, we are going to continue to attack you, ruthlessly and relentlessly until the end of time. People are viscous little buggers, and if their grievances aren’t addressed, they will magnify and spread wildly without restraint.

If you don’t defend yourself, how can we ever take your side? If you don’t trust us, how can we ever trust you?

If your goal with this policy was to avoid toxicity, then you have failed, completely and utterly. All you have done with breed wild speculation, confusion, anger and resentment. Because we don’t know WTF is going on because you will not tell us!

Is it really such a mystery why they’ve stopped talking about content that’s in development?

Look at what happened when they did tell us what they were planning long-term. People are still going on (and on) about precursor crafting and how we were “lied to” because we were told it was being developed but it hasn’t been released, which obviously means they were never working on it at all. No matter how many times we’ve been told the system they had was no good and is still being redeveloped.

It’s been happening ever since GW2 was first announced. They announced it literally just after deciding to make it, kind of out of necessity to explain Eye of the North, and it caused no end of trouble. According to some people the game was endlessly delayed, even though the actual development time was about average for an MMO and every time there was an announcement that wasn’t “We have finished this, this and this and they will be in the final game exactly as we’ve described here” it was proof that Anet was struggling or lying to us.

Personally I think it’s a very good move to avoid telling us what they’re working on until they’re sure it’s going to come out soon and what it’s going to be like. There’s a reason that’s what most developers do (in fact most people who make new products of any kind, do you really think Apple announce new iPhones when they’ve just decided to work on them?). It avoids disappointment and confusion, which is exactly what we’ve seen previously when new ideas were announced early.

As for what all the Anet staff who aren’t developers do that shouldn’t even be a question. Think about your own employer. Or your clients or your parents jobs. Does everyone in that company all work directly on making and selling new products? Of course not.

I work for a very small organisation which does everything it can to keep overheads low (not always by choice) and even then about 1/2 the staff work “behind the scenes” doing things like processing sales, customer support, maintaining the database and servers the whole company uses, doing the finances and other admin to make sure we all get paid and yes managing teams. And you know what? Those of us who do work ‘on the front lines’ doing what the public probably considers our real work absolutely could not do our jobs without them.

I’m sure plenty of outsiders would look at my organisation and say we don’t need an Office Administrator for example, that it’s a useless middle management job. But if she wasn’t doing it all the thousand and one ‘tiny’ things she does would still need to be done and it would take time away from other peoples work to do them.

I think it is great that they are finally giving PvP some love and are trying to promote it.
They are just putting all their eggs there for now which I don’t think it’s fair to the PvE players. However, for a massive period of time, they’ve been focusing only on Living Story and PvE stuff which I think was not fair towards us PvP players and that it’s sorta wrong from you guys to complain just because 1 or 2 patches won’t have anything to do with PvE now.

ColinJohanson.2394:

The simple answer is: unless it’s nearing completion, we cannot talk about it.

The problem with this approach is that you’re practically asking for massive waves of negative feedback, as demonstrated extremely well by the response to the last feature patch (especially megaservers). You go and design all these things, but you don’t get any feedback from the player base until it’s completed and ready to go. I’m sure the devs have the best intentions, but your track record of giving players what they want has been pretty terrible. Even when it’s an idea that’s almost universally desired (like the different-coloured commander tags), there’s usually some aspect of the implementation that attracts large amounts of outrage (like charging 300g per colour). Now in this case, that detail was mentioned soon enough, and the fix was simple enough, that the dev team was able to react to feedback before release. Most of the time, however, that doesn’t happen.

So the overall effect to players is this: massive, game-changing “features” are announced, our of nowhere, maybe two weeks before they’re implemented; and then we’re stuck with them, no matter how many people complain. If Anet returned to telling people what they’re thinking about and working on, there would be negative feedback, but probably no more than there is with this policy. And players would probably respect you more. And most importantly, player feedback could be taken into account at the design phase, rather than tacked on at the end (if at all). Which would make for a better game.