Guild Wars 2

So I enjoy coming on the forums and checking what people are saying and what not and I’ve noticed something that is sorta bothering me.

Why is it that the devs only respond to threads that are either about “not being able to purchase gems” or “customer support tickets?”

Now I’ve seen in the past where a dev might say “We’re really busy doing blah blah blah. We do read the forums, it just takes a lot of time to respond.”

To me that just doesn’t make any sense. Why not respond to more than just two types of threads? Are they nervous to get involved? I know people can get upset sometimes but I don’t believe the forum community would bite their heads off…

I completely understand why Devs stay off the forum. A Dev says something sounds interesting, or they are working on something, or hope to have something soon and somehow that becomes a promise written in stone. Commenting on the forum is a no win for the Devs. and no one likes being on the losing end all the time.

Are you looking at the job title of the “devs” responding to the customer support tickets and/or the gem purchasing difficulty questions? Chances are, those are people who are paid to respond to those sorts of things. The actual game developers aren’t paid to interact here, and given the direction the game has taken recently, it’s no wonder they’re not choosing to spend extra time with the customers.

Not all red posts are made by the people addressing the game concerns you’re interested in.

(Reason for edit: A wild kitten appeared!)

If you are referring to customer support tickets, of which the ’can’t buy gems’ is in the support category it’s usually Gaile Gray in the Account Issues forum that responds. Since she is an Account Liason, that’s her job.

As for the other Devs, I expect they got tired of having their words taken out of context and endless threads made about them.

Well, since they are developers, I would hope that they are working on the game. Pretty sure the CCs are monitoring the forum and gathering stuff for the devs to look at.

As for why the devs aren’t posting as much, I would think it has to do with the reaction of the community. If a developer posts in basically any thread in Profession Balance, you’re just about guaranteed to see someone trying divert their attention to another profession or another issue. And if you look at John Smith’s posts in the BLTC subforum, you’ll see that a lot of people want to argue with him about the economy.

We’ve gotten to a point where the devs have a very hard time posting at all without it resulting in a derailment or being confronted by the players. And neither of those are very good motivators for you to make a lot of posts.

And when the developers do post, they cannot really say much because the playerbase seems completely unable to not take their word as holy gospel of unchanging truth. Just look at how much people are still complaining about the “Upcoming in 2013” post by Colin or the freaking pre-release MMO Manifesto.

The reason why you see the most dev activity with Gems and Customer Support is because those are extremely urgent areas. Gems deal with real money, so they have to keep it flowing as smoothly as possible. Customer Support tends to deal with the game being unplayable for reasons that are not directly related to the game, so it’s not something a player can be expected to fix on their own.

As an example of people taking Dev posts out of content, just look at all the threads about grind in the forums. The first set was based on one sentence from the Manifesto. This sentence, “We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2” was taken out of context and then numerous posts complaining about grind in the game made based on it.

So what did that sentence mean when it is read in context? Here is the whole paragraph.

“When you look at the art in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s visually stunning. I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ and then when you play the combat in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that.’ In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat."

Now, in context, what he is talking about is killing mobs repeatedly in order to level. This is the old definition of grinding. The key defining sentence is, “We want to change the way that people view combat”. What people did then Is take that single sentence, ignore the surrounding sentences which define and give it meaning, then made threads and posts, ad nauseum, about how grindy the game is because they have to repeat content to get their rewards.

Thats not what that sentence means.

It only takes a few incidents like this to discourage the Devs from posting.

And the I hate ANET crowd will go with Astral Projections example and keep running with it. It is worked over and over and a perfect example of why the devs don’t post anywhere.

last time I made a post,
The Lead Writer Bobby Stein came, and one guy was unhappy with the story in S2 so Bobby ask what kind of story he want ? The guy answered A story which is worth telling !

If i get Player responses like that I would also prefer talking to a Wall, then being here in forum.

But I feel there is a lot talking from the devs here I never got in any other game the feeling that the creators actually reading what i write.

ps wispher …. they like compliments i already learned that they come when u write something nice about them. So always put critic in sugar :P

I don’t really agree with the logic that the devs aren’t posting because people take their word as gospel. It carries several problems:

1) Just because some players take the devs words as gospel, that does not give good reason to end customer contact with the rest of the players.

2) Responding to the players who do take the devs word as gospel with silence is nonsensical from a PR point of view. “I don’t understand it, I told them we were thinking of inputting a highly sought game feature 18 months ago, and then when I didn’t do it I ignored them for 12 months and they’re STILL angry about it.” If a previous target was provisional, and problems have occurred, just explain it. Some might remain angry, but treating the whole playerbase as if they are incapable of reason is flat out disrespectful.

3) Not having a clear idea of where the game is going is hurting their profits. The traits thread, so far on 29 completely ignored pages, is littered with people who have stopped buying gems, playing or recommending the game. This is not a unique example.

4) Dev feedback has gone a long way to fixing problems in the past. Remember when SAB World 2 came out along with the infinite continue coin? A much more difficult world and a gem store item that was semi-required to do it in trib mode? Now no word whatsoever on world 3 and that gem store item sat useless for ten months. If the dev hadn’t been around to explain his reasoning and discuss and react to feedback, that would have been a huge issue.

Except for Gaile, who handles Account Issues, such as Gem purchases and Customer Support tickets, and the CCs, the Devs post on the forums on a voluntary basis. Many Devs read the forum/sub-forums and find it less than inviting. Chris Whiteside addressed this a few times in the CDIs. If a Dev isn’t particularly thick-skinned, I think they shy away from the forums. Only those Devs that feel comfortable posting in the forums do so. Much like the rest of us.

Using the Account Issues sub-forum as an example of the only place that gets a lot of ‘Dev’ interaction isn’t exactly fair. Responses from the Liaison is what that sub-forum was created for….unlike the rest of the forum.

Given that it is currently midnight in Seattle, I hope that the devs are at home asleep. If not, I hope they’re out having a good time. I do not expect developers to respond to posts, and I completely understand why they would not want to. When they’re working, I’d rather they were thinking about my posts than responding to them. I’m happy when something I want is implemented — like the return of LC.

Astral Projections.7320:

If you are referring to customer support tickets, of which the ’can’t buy gems’ is in the support category it’s usually Gaile Gray in the Account Issues forum that responds. Since she is an Account Liason, that’s her job.

As for the other Devs, I expect they got tired of having their words taken out of context and endless threads made about them.

Yeah. There’s usually a reason why PR exists and companies hire PR people to do the communicating.

Olba.5376:

We’ve gotten to a point where the devs have a very hard time posting at all without it resulting in a derailment or being confronted by the players. And neither of those are very good motivators for you to make a lot of posts.

In the story forum we get a dev post every now and then. Although I guess there’s less reason to be confrontational in regard to the lore.

Balsa.3951:

last time I made a post,
The Lead Writer Bobby Stein came, and one guy was unhappy with the story in S2 so Bobby ask what kind of story he want ? The guy answered A story which is worth telling !

If i get Player responses like that I would also prefer talking to a Wall, then being here in forum.

Yeah that was a plain silly waste of a good opportunity. Actually it got even more silly when (not sure if the same person) remarked “It’s not my job. If they want me to write stories they should hire me”, or something along those lines.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

1) Just because some players take the devs words as gospel, that does not give good reason to end customer contact with the rest of the players.

Oh they still have customer contact, it’s simply that it now mostly occurs through official channels (facebook, twitter, PR reps etc.)

CrashTestAuto.9108:

3) Not having a clear idea of where the game is going is hurting their profits. The traits thread, so far on 29 completely ignored pages, is littered with people who have stopped buying gems, playing or recommending the game. This is not a unique example.

In Finland I learned a saying, words are silver, silence is golden (or something like that). Simply because they’re not speaking doesn’t mean they’re not listening or considering.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

2) Responding to the players who do take the devs word as gospel with silence is nonsensical from a PR point of view. “I don’t understand it, I told them we were thinking of inputting a highly sought game feature 18 months ago, and then when I didn’t do it I ignored them for 12 months and they’re STILL angry about it.” If a previous target was provisional, and problems have occurred, just explain it. Some might remain angry, but treating the whole playerbase as if they are incapable of reason is flat out disrespectful.

I agree that, well, logically this makes sense. But it’s PR 101 to say nothing in the face of criticism. Defending yourself is the beginning of the end. ANet saying nothing, while disrespectful of their customers, is a sound PR strategy. Or at least, the people they pay to give them advice on this type of thing think it is.

Pretty much what a lot of people have said, the devs usually get hit with a bunch of derailing questions, and simple words become the holy gospel and when its not met the community comes out and goes QAQ wth this didn’t happen!

But Tbh if you look at the changes we’ve had I’d say Anet does listen to the playerbase, look @ QD train, look at Bobbleheads look at a lot of things they do to try to “balance” the game. Now I’m not trying to defend Anet, because there are a lot of things I agree could go better, but i think its acceptable if Devs dun post, because of the toxic community.

Dont know where devs are, but i’d like to have some news about state of the game, there is alot of complain topics (i’ve made one too) cause game need a big shake in pve and spvp, me and others wrote alot of good suggestions but it seems they dont care… i’m pretty disappointed on it, we wrote it we love the game but we feel game doesent satisfy alot of players… they r losing alot of money for that… btw lets hope they r working on a sostantial patch will change the game… and not in some ls ver and over…

Lian Olsam.9541:

Dont know where devs are, but i’d like to have some news about state of the game, there is alot of complain topics (i’ve made one too) cause game need a big shake in pve and spvp, me and others wrote alot of good suggestions but it seems they dont care… i’m pretty disappointed on it, we wrote it we love the game but we feel game doesent satisfy alot of players… they r losing alot of money for that… btw lets hope they r working on a sostantial patch will change the game… and not in some ls ver and over…

Let’s pretend they implemented your suggestions. How do you know it wouldn’t drive away other players that think differently? We see this all the time. I regularly see suggestions that I wouldn’t personally support.

Just because your suggestion isn’t taken doesn’t mean devs don’t care.

Vayne.8563:

Lian Olsam.9541:

Dont know where devs are, but i’d like to have some news about state of the game, there is alot of complain topics (i’ve made one too) cause game need a big shake in pve and spvp, me and others wrote alot of good suggestions but it seems they dont care… i’m pretty disappointed on it, we wrote it we love the game but we feel game doesent satisfy alot of players… they r losing alot of money for that… btw lets hope they r working on a sostantial patch will change the game… and not in some ls ver and over…

Let’s pretend they implemented your suggestions. How do you know it wouldn’t drive away other players that think differently? We see this all the time. I regularly see suggestions that I wouldn’t personally support.

Just because your suggestion isn’t taken doesn’t mean devs don’t care.

I meant also other suggestions, not only mine… btw usually my suggestion was an implementation not revolutions, for allow player like the game as it is now and player who dont, to have different way, allowing everyone to play as they wish… for example 50% dungeon with no stacking no corner no full zerk metas.. or same dungeons with “rush” mode and “alternative mode” there is alot of way for make happy all players…
Or for spvp ALL player wanna new gamemode lke capture the flag death match duels 3v3 etc etc

Lian Olsam.9541:

Vayne.8563:

Lian Olsam.9541:

Dont know where devs are, but i’d like to have some news about state of the game, there is alot of complain topics (i’ve made one too) cause game need a big shake in pve and spvp, me and others wrote alot of good suggestions but it seems they dont care… i’m pretty disappointed on it, we wrote it we love the game but we feel game doesent satisfy alot of players… they r losing alot of money for that… btw lets hope they r working on a sostantial patch will change the game… and not in some ls ver and over…

Let’s pretend they implemented your suggestions. How do you know it wouldn’t drive away other players that think differently? We see this all the time. I regularly see suggestions that I wouldn’t personally support.

Just because your suggestion isn’t taken doesn’t mean devs don’t care.

I meant also other suggestions, not only mine… btw usually my suggestion was an implementation not revolutions, for allow player like the game as it is now and player who dont, to have different way, allowing everyone to play as they wish… for example 50% dungeon with no stacking no corner no full zerk metas.. or same dungeons with “rush” mode and “alternative mode” there is alot of way for make happy all players…
Or for spvp ALL player wanna new gamemode lke capture the flag death match duels 3v3 etc etc

Well, since we know for a fact that some suggestions have been taken, what is there to say? They didn’t take your suggestion. But many other suggestions they have. Maybe they simply don’t have the time to implement every suggestion.

Working on the contents,gameplay mechanics,lore,etc…oh wait…we got nothing new :-O then it’s a Good Question.

Vayne.8563:

Lian Olsam.9541:

Vayne.8563:

Lian Olsam.9541:

Dont know where devs are, but i’d like to have some news about state of the game, there is alot of complain topics (i’ve made one too) cause game need a big shake in pve and spvp, me and others wrote alot of good suggestions but it seems they dont care… i’m pretty disappointed on it, we wrote it we love the game but we feel game doesent satisfy alot of players… they r losing alot of money for that… btw lets hope they r working on a sostantial patch will change the game… and not in some ls ver and over…

Let’s pretend they implemented your suggestions. How do you know it wouldn’t drive away other players that think differently? We see this all the time. I regularly see suggestions that I wouldn’t personally support.

Just because your suggestion isn’t taken doesn’t mean devs don’t care.

I meant also other suggestions, not only mine… btw usually my suggestion was an implementation not revolutions, for allow player like the game as it is now and player who dont, to have different way, allowing everyone to play as they wish… for example 50% dungeon with no stacking no corner no full zerk metas.. or same dungeons with “rush” mode and “alternative mode” there is alot of way for make happy all players…
Or for spvp ALL player wanna new gamemode lke capture the flag death match duels 3v3 etc etc

Well, since we know for a fact that some suggestions have been taken, what is there to say? They didn’t take your suggestion. But many other suggestions they have. Maybe they simply don’t have the time to implement every suggestion.

Problem this is not my suggestion only, if u take a look of this section and dungeon one, u will see alot of ppl dont satisfy about this, we feel pve isnt deep, doesent have end game, doesent have mechanics, just full dps on everything… they can solve this problem as they prefear, someone like me just try to give some suggestion how to do it they can try it or lf a new way, doesent matter, but alot of ppl ask for it and we have only some farming living story… i already have a job, i wanna have some fun with e game, a bit of farm for ascended is also good, but after that u feel game empty and poor of mechanics… i really love gw2 world and combact mode, i also love how casual coudl be with no “forcing” u to farm something every day of your life as other game do, but isnt enough for alot of ppl and ppl after 2 years whould lke to see something new in this direction or listen a word from dev they r working for it…

I have mainly seen Gaile Gray doing her sterling work helping with accounts, and Booby Stein often posts on questions regarding the storyline. Sometimes other creative department staff members will comment on specific things, or a bug-hunter will say that a particular issue is being looked at.

I agree, however, that community relations have really hit rock-bottom. When it comes to actual game issues, there appears to be no response. We have several threads which were collected together with the intention of using them for feedback to the devs, and the devs are now ignoring them. When we do what they ask us to (tell them what we want a do not want), they seemingly don’t want to know anymore, or it at least feels that way.

It does seem that the community laison team has been drastically cut down and / or is not properly able to do their jobs other than deleting posts and threads which raise criticism*. Whether this is due to their operational abilities being restricted due to a poor down-flow of information, or simply not wishing to wade into the shark soup unarmed, I don’t know. But they are being held back from being able to fully engage with us.

This has left me, and I am sure many others, feeling that we are not valued as customers. I personally feel that the lack of response to some very legitimate issues with the April 15 patch has led to me losing interest and faith in Guild Wars 2. I won’t go into the issues here, they are more than well documented in the appropriate threads.

Basically, from being a player who was eager to get home from work so I could log in, socialise and work on dailys/monthlys/roleplay/making new characters, I now think twice before I doubletap the launch icon.

We are now approaching the 3rd month mensiversary of the April 15 patch, with no feedback or even recognition of our concerns. If it becomes a 4th, I am not sure if I will be around to read whatever feedback does arrive, if it finally does.

*I appreciate and understand that my comments which led to GuzziHero.2467 being suspended were out of order and inappropriate. I apologise unreservedly for those comments, and intend to be far more considerate and reserved in my forum postings from here on.

Playing Wildstar

Roundabout.1752:

I completely understand why Devs stay off the forum. A Dev says something sounds interesting, or they are working on something, or hope to have something soon and somehow that becomes a promise written in stone. Commenting on the forum is a no win for the Devs. and no one likes being on the losing end all the time.

Threads like this :
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Broken-Intentions-It-s-been-6-months/first

are the best example why they don’t say much anymore

I’m sure the Devs have their reasons. Only they can tell us what those reasons are, all we can do is speculate.

For me, regardless of the reasons, I can’t accept their lack of communication and poor client relations. No reason justifies going this long without word to your customers. If they were to come out and say that talking to us about what they’re working on, whether our concerns are being addressed, would then cause the sky to fall and the world to explode…. I would say that I choose to play in a fantasy world – I don’t live in one.

TL;DR : Speculation is devs best friend

I believe one of the reasons devs do not post often is also due the fact they can’t talk much about their work with players and only reveal details when they are ready.

Personally, I like to speculate and don’t want all the details right away. There must be something major that they are working on since they are so tight lipped. They reveal little bits of information to suggest just what it is they might be working on. I remember seeing a video of a dev saying iirc that they are working on optimizing the client but it is no easy task and is very laborious. And that reminds me also of how they speak of a major project they are working on that is separate from LW. So I would like to speculate that they might be going as far as rewriting the game engine which would solve a lot of issues with optimization and make it more flexible to give them a better ability to create the content they want. Sure they have not fixed certain bugs but what has the coders so seemingly busy that certain things seem overlooked. If I was a dev and was really passionate about the GW2 something so major is within reason. And it would be difficult not to talk about something I am so passionate about so best to observe in silence with the satisfaction of knowing just what is in store for the players. No I am not getting my hopes up but I know if I was a dev I would like to do the best I can but I know there are limitations to what can be done.

There are plenty of MMOs that regularly have dev interaction with the community.
Even older MMOs than gw2 like DCUO, RS, WoW, swtor, , etc have regular dev blogs/posts.

ANY interaction from the devs directly to the community is a positive.
There are people in every MMO community that will always try to spin the words , so thats a bs excuse for a dev NOT to post.

No one is asking for dev posts everyday or even every week. But there have been months with silence on countless big issues. That needs to change. I understand they can’t answer each and everything but they are certainly capable of doing a better job communicating than what we currently have.

Right now, I’m assuming devs aren’t posting anything until its ready… unfortunately thats going to mean being really patient

Sir K E V.1027:

I don’t believe the forum community would bite their heads off…

Oh yes they absolutely would. It’s very risky practice to directly respond to everything. Most things people post about are either controversial or involve features still in development. You want an example of how bad things can get when a company opens it’s mouth too much, check out Ubisoft over the last month.

Xenon.4537:

Sir K E V.1027:

I don’t believe the forum community would bite their heads off…

Oh yes they absolutely would. It’s very risky practice to directly respond to everything. Most things people post about are either controversial or involve features still in development. You want an example of how bad things can get when a company opens it’s mouth too much, check out Ubisoft over the last month.

Ubisoft’s executives are clueless , but thats a completely different problem than what we are seeing here in gw2. We aren’t asking from NCsoft higher ups to come here and post something. Just interactions from anet’s devs about glaring issues/bugs

If I were a dev and had the option out of opting out of replying to some sad stuff on these forums, I would opt out. It never ends well, unless you have thick skin.

Heck, even Colin has the thickest skin of them all and we haven’t heard of him in months (he last posted on reddit)

Whiteside no longer posts here even with those CDI’s considering people get angry that their suggestion wasn’t included

SkiTz.4590:

Xenon.4537:

Sir K E V.1027:

I don’t believe the forum community would bite their heads off…

Oh yes they absolutely would. It’s very risky practice to directly respond to everything. Most things people post about are either controversial or involve features still in development. You want an example of how bad things can get when a company opens it’s mouth too much, check out Ubisoft over the last month.

Ubisoft’s executives are clueless , but thats a completely different problem than what we are seeing here in gw2. We aren’t asking from NCsoft higher ups to come here and post something. Just interactions from anet’s devs about glaring issues/bugs

Yeah, Ubisoft aren’t in trouble for speaking, they’re in trouble for doing stupid things.

The attitude that “some customers are unreasonable and rude, therefore we shall treat every customer as if they were unreasonable and rude” is the antithesis of how a company should react.

I remember last time I was in Starbucks and a customer shouted at the barista because they wouldn’t let her jump the queue. The barista calmly acknowledged her and explained the situation, and then another customer had a go at the queue jumper for being rude instead. The barista came out looking great, and the customers all took his side.

The ANet version of that is for the barista to decide that everyone in the coffee shop needs to be completely ignored, and to just walk away from the counter while everyone questions if and when they might get some coffee.

I love GW2, and I love many aspects of ANet (even their customer service, when dealing with tickets, is fantastic), but the lack of open communication is a serious problem.

Vol.7601:

If I were a dev and had the option out of opting out of replying to some sad stuff on these forums, I would opt out. It never ends well, unless you have thick skin.

Heck, even Colin has the thickest skin of them all and we haven’t heard of him in months (he last posted on reddit)

Whiteside no longer posts here even with those CDI’s considering people get angry that their suggestion wasn’t included

the ranger CDI showed devs truely should not have even bothered making a CDI for ranger community…. it was sad how little the class changed even after the CDI, which had a bountiful amount of suggestions. not a single improvement at all besides a somewhat quicker F2 pet skill response. So yea, there’s going to be backlash if you ask the community for suggestions in form of a CDI and than proceed to do absolutely nothing even though there was 50+ pages worth of ideas

CDIs didn’t help at all with anything, it was false hope. Thinking the community is actually getting a say in but in reality, devs will just do whatever takes the least amount of resources/time so they can continue to focus on LS+gemstore

I wouldn’t be surprised if devs had secondary accounts for personal freedom. At least I would have.

Kanebrake.6192:

The million dollar question.

“Where are the devs?”

I can tell you where they are not. Engaging with the customer’s here.

Developers are well, developing. We are in the middle of LS2 and will get the next chapter next week. They are busy with work.

Customer Relation people deal with us – not developers.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

SkiTz.4590:

Xenon.4537:

Sir K E V.1027:

I don’t believe the forum community would bite their heads off…

Oh yes they absolutely would. It’s very risky practice to directly respond to everything. Most things people post about are either controversial or involve features still in development. You want an example of how bad things can get when a company opens it’s mouth too much, check out Ubisoft over the last month.

Ubisoft’s executives are clueless , but thats a completely different problem than what we are seeing here in gw2. We aren’t asking from NCsoft higher ups to come here and post something. Just interactions from anet’s devs about glaring issues/bugs

Yeah, Ubisoft aren’t in trouble for speaking, they’re in trouble for doing stupid things.

The attitude that “some customers are unreasonable and rude, therefore we shall treat every customer as if they were unreasonable and rude” is the antithesis of how a company should react.

I remember last time I was in Starbucks and a customer shouted at the barista because they wouldn’t let her jump the queue. The barista calmly acknowledged her and explained the situation, and then another customer had a go at the queue jumper for being rude instead. The barista came out looking great, and the customers all took his side.

The ANet version of that is for the barista to decide that everyone in the coffee shop needs to be completely ignored, and to just walk away from the counter while everyone questions if and when they might get some coffee.

I love GW2, and I love many aspects of ANet (even their customer service, when dealing with tickets, is fantastic), but the lack of open communication is a serious problem.

I’m not totally with you on the coffee shop analogy because I don’t go to starbucks lol. But I think I follow you. I would say the actual Anet version of that is to silently sit behind the counter listening, possibly jotting notes down. They somehow have the fortitude to sit there and endure the cacophony of all the belligerent customers screaming at each other across the counter, and not make a peep. The notion that Anet doesn’t listen is absurd. How many months did people ask for a wardrobe, and magically we now have a wardrobe? Mouths are for talking. Ears are for listening. You don’t need both to do one or the other. Anet is perfectly capable of listening without talking.

Oh and I love this refrain: “it’s a serious problem”

Can we just admit the truth that we are bored and have nothing better to do than beg for insider info? What good would it do anyway? What’s your end goal here? You guys are like a dog chasing a car. What would the dog actually do with the car if he could actually catch it? At best the dog will sniff the car and immediately lose interest. At worst the dog will scratch the paint with his claws and pee all over the tires. Maybe leave a steaming pile of something on the hood. I doubt Anet likes the sound of that.

Wethospu.6437:

I wouldn’t be surprised if devs had secondary accounts for personal freedom. At least I would have.

They have,but we won’t see them.I just hope they get backstabed then heartseeker spammed in pvp,get passed by warhorn GS sword warri or nuked by a hambow warrior,kittened by mesmer and engi and I hope they also play as a ranger!

Amnariel.3659:

Wethospu.6437:

I wouldn’t be surprised if devs had secondary accounts for personal freedom. At least I would have.

They have,but we won’t see them.I just hope they get backstabed then heartseeker spammed in pvp,get passed by warhorn GS sword warri or nuked by a hambow warrior,kittened by mesmer and engi and I hope they also play as a ranger!

How childish. “I hope the devs get slaughtered because they don’t talk to me on the forums!”

Xenon.4537:

Amnariel.3659:

Wethospu.6437:

I wouldn’t be surprised if devs had secondary accounts for personal freedom. At least I would have.

They have,but we won’t see them.I just hope they get backstabed then heartseeker spammed in pvp,get passed by warhorn GS sword warri or nuked by a hambow warrior,kittened by mesmer and engi and I hope they also play as a ranger!

How childish. “I hope the devs get slaughtered because they don’t talk to me on the forums!”

You understand wrong.I just wish for them to play their own game and fight against something they actually call ‘’Works as intended’’.

Edit:and yes if I could slaughter their character in PvP or WvWvW,I should do it if I can if not I would try it until I can.

See OP the reason why the devs don’t post here is exactly because of the second reply to your thread. Even though he is implying he wants the devs to interact with the community that one sentence is laced with hostility and aggressiveness that if the devs were to post here it wouldn’t go down well.

Devs do post, you can go into the Lore section or Living World section and you will see the Devs posting on calm and well constructed threads that aren’t lashing out at their staff members. However the reason why they don’t post here often is because of the terrible negativity some groups bring on the forum. People who come into the forums with negative views on content tend to argue with the devs rather than work with them. I remember when Super Adventure Box part 2 released and Josh Foreman was constantly on the forums adressing people’s issues with the “super-difficult and frustrating” content. He was constantly telling people how to improve on it or what they could do to make it better, that he would fix some specific issues, etc. Except people were lashing out at him so bad that in literally every post he made on the huge thread you can see him start trying not to break down from anger and frustration.

Then his final post on that thread was that he was no longer told to interact with the forum. That’s why the Devs don’t comment on hot button topics. It’s not because they are selfish- it’s because the community will jump on them like rabid skritt regardless of what they say.

tl;dr: We are the reason the Devs can’t show us nice things.

Amnariel.3659:

Xenon.4537:

Amnariel.3659:

Wethospu.6437:

I wouldn’t be surprised if devs had secondary accounts for personal freedom. At least I would have.

They have,but we won’t see them.I just hope they get backstabed then heartseeker spammed in pvp,get passed by warhorn GS sword warri or nuked by a hambow warrior,kittened by mesmer and engi and I hope they also play as a ranger!

How childish. “I hope the devs get slaughtered because they don’t talk to me on the forums!”

You understand wrong.I just wish for them to play their own game and fight against something they actually call ‘’Works as intended’’.

Edit:and yes if I could slaughter their character in PvP or WvWvW,I should do it if I can if not I would try it until I can.

The developers do play this game and have their own WvW guild. As expected, they play better than the average good player.

Xenon.4537:

CrashTestAuto.9108:

SkiTz.4590:

Xenon.4537:

Sir K E V.1027:

I don’t believe the forum community would bite their heads off…

Oh yes they absolutely would. It’s very risky practice to directly respond to everything. Most things people post about are either controversial or involve features still in development. You want an example of how bad things can get when a company opens it’s mouth too much, check out Ubisoft over the last month.

Ubisoft’s executives are clueless , but thats a completely different problem than what we are seeing here in gw2. We aren’t asking from NCsoft higher ups to come here and post something. Just interactions from anet’s devs about glaring issues/bugs

Yeah, Ubisoft aren’t in trouble for speaking, they’re in trouble for doing stupid things.

The attitude that “some customers are unreasonable and rude, therefore we shall treat every customer as if they were unreasonable and rude” is the antithesis of how a company should react.

I remember last time I was in Starbucks and a customer shouted at the barista because they wouldn’t let her jump the queue. The barista calmly acknowledged her and explained the situation, and then another customer had a go at the queue jumper for being rude instead. The barista came out looking great, and the customers all took his side.

The ANet version of that is for the barista to decide that everyone in the coffee shop needs to be completely ignored, and to just walk away from the counter while everyone questions if and when they might get some coffee.

I love GW2, and I love many aspects of ANet (even their customer service, when dealing with tickets, is fantastic), but the lack of open communication is a serious problem.

I’m not totally with you on the coffee shop analogy because I don’t go to starbucks lol. But I think I follow you. I would say the actual Anet version of that is to silently sit behind the counter listening, possibly jotting notes down. They somehow have the fortitude to sit there and endure the cacophony of all the belligerent customers screaming at each other across the counter, and not make a peep. The notion that Anet doesn’t listen is absurd. How many months did people ask for a wardrobe, and magically we now have a wardrobe? Mouths are for talking. Ears are for listening. You don’t need both to do one or the other. Anet is perfectly capable of listening without talking.

Oh and I love this refrain: “it’s a serious problem”

Can we just admit the truth that we are bored and have nothing better to do than beg for insider info? What good would it do anyway? What’s your end goal here? You guys are like a dog chasing a car. What would the dog actually do with the car if he could actually catch it? At best the dog will sniff the car and immediately lose interest. At worst the dog will scratch the paint with his claws and pee all over the tires. Maybe leave a steaming pile of something on the hood. I doubt Anet likes the sound of that.

You just answered it… a lot of people have moved on from GW2 or patiently waiting doing other things because well, there’s nothing to do lol.

New LS2 story /achievements? the story gets done in a short amount of time and all there is left to do is hop around a desert on a pogo stick, zerging the events or going for achievements that have abysmal rewards. Ya thats going to excite people….

Still no word about PvP/WvW changes which is what the endgame is to a lot of people. it seems to be completely ignored by anet since they only want to focus on LS+gemstore…

I will say this is just the beggining of LS2 so maybe there will be some sweet changes like a new dung, acquiring new skills/weapons/runes to at least add some diversity and flavor into the game instead of purely new cosmetic rewards…

Xenon.4537:

I’m not totally with you on the coffee shop analogy because I don’t go to starbucks lol. But I think I follow you. I would say the actual Anet version of that is to silently sit behind the counter listening, possibly jotting notes down. They somehow have the fortitude to sit there and endure the cacophony of all the belligerent customers screaming at each other across the counter, and not make a peep. The notion that Anet doesn’t listen is absurd. How many months did people ask for a wardrobe, and magically we now have a wardrobe? Mouths are for talking. Ears are for listening. You don’t need both to do one or the other. Anet is perfectly capable of listening without talking.

Oh and I love this refrain: “it’s a serious problem”

Can we just admit the truth that we are bored and have nothing better to do than beg for insider info? What good would it do anyway? What’s your end goal here? You guys are like a dog chasing a car. What would the dog actually do with the car if he could actually catch it? At best the dog will sniff the car and immediately lose interest. At worst the dog will scratch the paint with his claws and pee all over the tires. Maybe leave a steaming pile of something on the hood. I doubt Anet likes the sound of that.

Except there isn’t a cacophony of belligerent customers. There are some belligerent customers, and some customers who have been patiently asking whether or not they are going to get any coffee for many months. I’m not sure how having the baristas behind the counter not speaking to the customers and silently taking notes on them is supposed to be good though :S

Personally, I’d use information on whether more changes to the trait system are coming to decide if I’m going to buy a new character slot, and whether or not it’s worth going around collecting the traits. At thirty pages so far of almost exclusively criticism, and it being impossible to deduce how the new system accomplishes goals it was supposed to without any explanation from ANet, it seems that hoping for change is reasonable.

I might also bother making an engineer look, if I had word that hobosacks were going or not (an even longer thread).

Other people have bigger concerns. Do RPers simply have to leave for another game now? Should people blow all their gold on a legendary they kind of want, or are new ones coming soon? (Of course, after this amount of silence on that one, announcing anything now would be a shock to the economy, which could have been avoided)

Dusty Moon.4382:

Kanebrake.6192:

The million dollar question.

“Where are the devs?”

I can tell you where they are not. Engaging with the customer’s here.

Developers are well, developing. We are in the middle of LS2 and will get the next chapter next week. They are busy with work.

Customer Relation people deal with us – not developers.

I’ve not seen any development happening on wvw… Could not possibly careless about the living story nonsense. Of course I understand that there are those who find it enthralling but not I.

But you bring up a good point. Customer relations are pretty much nowhere to be found either. Well except when it comes to people having issues with the gem store. Then CR is all over it.

Probably the main reason why I started this thread was that myself (and I’m sure everyone else) just wants to feel like Anet actually gives a kitten about their current customers. It does seem like the devs will be more likely to respond to the threads that aren’t “FIX the game u n00bs!” I can totally see why they don’t reply to those. That’s a car crash waiting to happen.

Honestly I can’t stand when a dev replies in the response, “That’s all I can say about blah blah for now.” or some other bull crap like that. To me that’s just a waste of a reply. You get people so excited to see that a dev took time to respond, but then you’re shot down with their vanilla answer.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want them to respond to us, but I also want their responses to actually mean something. I can understand where a lot of you are coming from though.

After reading some threads in here I understand why devs don’t bother reading them.

Ascimator.6735:

After reading some threads in here I understand why devs don’t bother reading them.

Exactly!

Ascimator.6735:

After reading some threads in here I understand why devs don’t bother reading them.

Oh they bother reading them, and you can tell they do, because they make references to at least some of them. They make references to things said on reddit as well. During the various twitch streams. So they do read. They just don’t respond anymore. And I sure as hell can’t blame them for that.

The forums have become a toxic environment for the devs. Whether they respond or not they will get negative responses either way lol.

Too much negativity in these forums from the players imo.

Gizmo.9178:

The forums have become a toxic environment for the devs. Whether they respond or not they will get negative responses either way lol.

Too much negativity in these forums from the players imo.

And non-players as well. Totally true Gizmo.

Gizmo.9178:

The forums have become a toxic environment for the devs. Whether they respond or not they will get negative responses either way lol.

Too much negativity in these forums from the players imo.

But the thing is that yes we are “players” but more importantly than that we are paying customers. Regardless if you bought the game for yourself or someone gifted it to you you are still a paying customer. Everyone seems to lose sight of that fact and act like it’s ok because this is a game and not some other product.

Arena Net is a business and businesses deal with unhappy customers. They deal with negative feedback. They don’t bury their heads in the sand and tell their paying customers how to give proper feedback, they don’t pass out infractions like they’re lording over a school room, they don’t accuse people of being “toxic”. The way they interact with their customers is horrible.

The game for all of its problems is good. Not great, good. But the customer service is probably some of the worst I’ve ever experienced.