Guild Wars 2

I thought this post by a different poster was a good question. But it was locked because it was “not on topic”. So I just reworded it a bit to keep it on topic, kept the typos and ungrammatical bits:

Why is ANet so reluctant to give out information and plans for the future of GuildWars 2?

I think that everyone would be better off knowing what’s expected to come or even possible ideas for the games future.

We can all agree that this game doesn’t really have much hardcore diversity or reasonable longevity. Since ArenaNet has gave us like any information about the upcoming content, most players would rather quit.

Lets say they planned on adding raids or something, at least we’d know what to strive for and keep us playing so we were prepared for when that patch did come out.
I hardly want to play this game now because I know there really isn’t anything for hardcore gamers but if I’d know what is coming, maybe I’d play more.

Original post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-are-game-companies-secretive/first#post680826

If I were ArenaNet, I wouldn’t want to depend on hype and risk broken promises. For example, I remember when Diablo III came out, Blizzard stated they were working on a PvP system for patch 1.1. That has yet to happen. I had a lot of friends who actually bought Diablo III expecting a PvP system soon after launch.

I also remember EA talking about how they were working on guild capital ships for the Old Republic soon after the game was released. That has also yet to happen.

ArenaNet already talked about how they were considering things like a dueling feature and were working on guild battles, a ranking system, and more enjoyable dungeons. Not sure what else you want from them.

If Arenanet were to say something like
“we would love to have X for GW2 in the future”

People would read it as
“We promise you that you will have X in a few days”

So they just keep it for themselves.
Also company are usually secretive to avoid other companies of doing the same, faster than they can do it.

Turtlemilk.1064:

If I were ArenaNet, I wouldn’t want to depend on hype and risk broken promises. For example, I remember when Diablo III came out, Blizzard stated they were working on a PvP system for patch 1.1. That has yet to happen. I had a lot of friends who actually bought Diablo III expecting a PvP system soon after launch.

I also remember EA talking about how they were working on guild capital ships for the Old Republic soon after the game was released. That has also yet to happen.

ArenaNet already talked about how they were considering things like a dueling feature and were working on guild battles, a ranking system, and more enjoyable dungeons. Not sure what else you want from them.

They already risked things on hype and we got the broken promises. Now all thats left of the game are the fanatical devotees, the army of bots, and a game flawed beyond comprehension. “Mission Accomplished” as Bush once said.

I am sure they are talking about their plans. However it seems only about plans they can actually execute. Which is a reasonable thing to do. It’s healthy for both sides. Much more healthy actually if you think twice about it because it means players don’t have to deal with broken ‘promises’, with delays and cancellations and developers don’t have to deal with reading about their ‘lies’ on all forums while also trying to dismiss them as such, don’t have to deal with accusations of being slow and inefficient and especially do not have to deal with various conspiracy theories.

Ned Stark.9356:

Turtlemilk.1064:

If I were ArenaNet, I wouldn’t want to depend on hype and risk broken promises. For example, I remember when Diablo III came out, Blizzard stated they were working on a PvP system for patch 1.1. That has yet to happen. I had a lot of friends who actually bought Diablo III expecting a PvP system soon after launch.

I also remember EA talking about how they were working on guild capital ships for the Old Republic soon after the game was released. That has also yet to happen.

ArenaNet already talked about how they were considering things like a dueling feature and were working on guild battles, a ranking system, and more enjoyable dungeons. Not sure what else you want from them.

They already risked things on hype and we got the broken promises. Now all thats left of the game are the fanatical devotees, the army of bots, and a game flawed beyond comprehension. “Mission Accomplished” as Bush once said.

if this is “flawed beyond comprehension”, then said comprehension is a bit low on the bell curve. The game has its problems, its about 2 months old though…every game had its problems at 2 months old. They are rapidly advancing content and hopefully this Nov 15th patch hits bugs and class balance.

Turtlemilk.1064:

If I were ArenaNet, I wouldn’t want to depend on hype and risk broken promises. For example, I remember when Diablo III came out, Blizzard stated they were working on a PvP system for patch 1.1. That has yet to happen. I had a lot of friends who actually bought Diablo III expecting a PvP system soon after launch.

I also remember EA talking about how they were working on guild capital ships for the Old Republic soon after the game was released. That has also yet to happen.

ArenaNet already talked about how they were considering things like a dueling feature and were working on guild battles, a ranking system, and more enjoyable dungeons. Not sure what else you want from them.

This is exactly how I view the situation. If you watch the market, other games that have been too forward with revealing what projects they have going on behind the scenes have had some severe backlash when they did not deliver quickly(or ever).

I think anet is doing a fair job at keeping people informed. Some people expect them to be on the forum 24/7. While that would be fantastic, when would they work on the game?

PS. Reopening a topic that was closed is likely to end badly.

Ned Stark.9356:

Turtlemilk.1064:

If I were ArenaNet, I wouldn’t want to depend on hype and risk broken promises. For example, I remember when Diablo III came out, Blizzard stated they were working on a PvP system for patch 1.1. That has yet to happen. I had a lot of friends who actually bought Diablo III expecting a PvP system soon after launch.

I also remember EA talking about how they were working on guild capital ships for the Old Republic soon after the game was released. That has also yet to happen.

ArenaNet already talked about how they were considering things like a dueling feature and were working on guild battles, a ranking system, and more enjoyable dungeons. Not sure what else you want from them.

They already risked things on hype and we got the broken promises. Now all thats left of the game are the fanatical devotees, the army of bots, and a game flawed beyond comprehension. “Mission Accomplished” as Bush once said.

Funny…
If anything, GW2 delivered what i was expecting as base content for the start of another GW adventure and then some more.

Having played all GW releases since 2005, i became extremely happy when in 2007, GW2 was announced. I followed development news to get an idea of what was coming but never deluding myself with unrealistic expectations.

GW2 came, i play(ed), (got around 950h clocked in) and i was/am very happy with the foundations of another great GW saga.

Yes, there was/are some things which could/can be a bit frustrating (bugs,bots,content tweaking and whatnot) but for me, the positives aspects of the game clearly outweighs the negatives and it has certainly delivered the fun i was expecting prior to release.
Having played the previous GW releases, i know GW2 will be continuously under observation to fix, improve and balance game mechanics and content – so, i practice my patience and give Anet feedback and time to get them sorted.

Having said this, I’m sure Anet will let us know of new content and features when they are sure they can deliver them.

Basically, what i’m trying to convey in the post is to have a bit of patience and good things will eventually come to you.

I don’t buy the stuff about broken promises and people being disappointed, besides, people are already disappointed. I know I’d much rather hear about their hopes for the game, even if those things may never get put in, or might not be added any time soon. That’s better than this silence.. often they’re not even telling players about half the stuff they are adding or changing, suggesting they’re not just keeping quiet but actively hiding what they’re doing, or at least it can seem that way. That just breeds conspiracies, and you can already see it in threads about magic find or the economy.

I’m glad someone brought this up again…

I was like, what the heck.

Someone hear the X-Files theme music ah playin’? Geeze, not everything is ah conspiracy; sometimes they don’ tell ya ‘cause they don’ think it’s a big deal ya know every bit ah code what was changed, I’m guessin’. An’ they did tell us we were gettin’ a big update in November. They haven’ told us what it is, ‘cause they wanna create suspense … I’m all over that; suspense me up.

Why should they hafta come on here an’ tell ya about every little idea they have? If ya don’ like what’s goin’ on right now, ya can always come back later an’ see after it’s been done. No one’s ah stoppin’ ya. Better that than long paranoid threads about who shot Logan from the grassy knoll. (or if they even shot first)

I think part of it probably has to do with the competition as well. You can’t give your players “ideas” of new content too early because there is a chance that other companies might develops this faster than you and take away from your player base.

Best not to reveal too much of anything until you have a more concrete timeline on a feature’s release, because something more pressing may come up. Suddenly, your extremely tentative timeline just got thrown out the window, or features that you may want to implement end up not working out as planned and need to be axed or reworked entirely, making that extremely early preview completely irrelevant.

I think that players already have enough to go on to predict what will be coming in GW2’s future based on their philosophy, dev posts, and what we’ve seen so far. Granted they don’t give out specifics and timelines, but I’m good to get what comes when it does.

The quoted OP makes a remark that he or she would stick around and play more if they knew what was coming in order to “prepare” for it. I don’t understand how one would prepare for upcoming content in a game with horizontal progression, especially when the new content would most likely add elements that are independent from ones already introducing. We wouldn’t be needing to do X dungeon or get X item to gain access to the new content, because we just will get access.

That perspective feels more in line with vertical progression game, specifically ones with sub fees. Whenever a player loses interest in the current content there is nothing to lose when you stop playing for awhile, and you can always pick up when new content is added. Anet doesn’t need to give too much info on future updates in order to maintain a large concurrency.

@OP i’ve been askign myself this question myself.

the way anet has acted about alot of this, in particular seems to be polar opposite of this post:

http://www.arena.net/blog/the-golden-rules-of-guild-wars-2

Respect the player

We respect you—as a player, as a human being. This game we’re making may end up competing with your real life. It might fight for your free time alongside your friends, your family, your work, and whatever else you might be doing. Because of that, we want to give you a meaningful experience, not one that is a vapid waste of your time. Whatever your reasons for spending time in Tyria, we don’t want to waste it by doing stuff that isn’t fun.

That’s why we make our content epic. That’s why we have giant nightmare demons to fight, global allegiances to form, immense keeps to siege, and giant catapults to fire. Tyria is a place that will foster relationships with new friends, and provide you a rich experience to share with old ones. It’s our version of a playground on the grandest of scales.

Finally, we are building an online world, but we are always careful to leave space for its most important element, the one we designers would like to step out of the spotlight for: its heroes—you.

Purpose: To keep us honest.

deciet through lack of being upfront is not respectful. is it not honest. what happened to the anet that made that blog post?

pdg.8462:

I thought this post by a different poster was a good question. But it was locked because it was “not on topic”. So I just reworded it a bit to keep it on topic, kept the typos and ungrammatical bits:

Why is ANet so reluctant to give out information and plans for the future of GuildWars 2?

I think that everyone would be better off knowing what’s expected to come or even possible ideas for the games future.

We can all agree that this game doesn’t really have much hardcore diversity or reasonable longevity. Since ArenaNet has gave us like any information about the upcoming content, most players would rather quit.

Lets say they planned on adding raids or something, at least we’d know what to strive for and keep us playing so we were prepared for when that patch did come out.
I hardly want to play this game now because I know there really isn’t anything for hardcore gamers but if I’d know what is coming, maybe I’d play more.

Original post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-are-game-companies-secretive/first#post680826

But….but….I DON’T CARE FOR RAIDS!….(“OMG! Burn him!”). Ya, I really don’t give two-behinds for raids. The current raids in-game right now are good enough, and those are the 5 temples of the Human Gods in Orr and the 3 dragon generals throughout Tyria. They’re open, they require players to do things together, but aren’t at all restrictive, mind wracking, or heavily time consuming (I think the Temple of Balthazar takes 1hr to do all the steps in it).

What I care about:

-Jumping puzzles! They’re fun and they’re challenging and they are different than that of other MMO games.

-Mini-dungeons. Similar to jumping puzzles, except they’re publicly scaling dungeons that anyone can enter and jump right into to assist. Bosses at the end, mobs in locations, puzzle parts, and rewarding.

-World vs World. Great section of the game, but it needs a few things done. For example: zergs can’t be stopped capping a supply camp without another zerg. There has to be a solution to zergs.

-Mini-games! Need more of them because they’re fun and interesting. I really wish that the mini-game Reaper’s Rumble would make it back into the game.

-More crafting recipes…

However, the game is pretty awesome as it is…so no need to throw a fit and quit the game. I don’t get how people don’t understand that THIS….GAME….WAS…NEVER…ABOUT…RAIDING! Seriously, the developers have said this, the beta testers have said this: it’s something well known. Want a raiding game? Go play one.

Because where the devs say they are working on something and it does end up happening for one reason or another everyone freaks out big time.

Most MMOs don’t talk about future stuff until it’s almost done, Because people will quote some old dev post for 3 years ago and freak about how it didn’t happen

Haishao.6851:

If Arenanet were to say something like
“we would love to have X for GW2 in the future”

People would read it as
“We promise you that you will have X in a few days”

So they just keep it for themselves.
Also company are usually secretive to avoid other companies of doing the same, faster than they can do it.

this ^^ right here and it makes total sense
I for one would rather here from them when they have it ready for deployment rather than the in the future line like Stun Wars and many others used to do and never deliver !

Latinkuro.9420:

Haishao.6851:

If Arenanet were to say something like
“we would love to have X for GW2 in the future”

People would read it as
“We promise you that you will have X in a few days”

So they just keep it for themselves.
Also company are usually secretive to avoid other companies of doing the same, faster than they can do it.

this ^^ right here and it makes total sense
I for one would rather here from them when they have it ready for deployment rather than the in the future line like Stun Wars and many others used to do and never deliver !

while that would certainly be a contributing factor, i feel it’s a poor excuse. game companies overall have become so distant from the player base that it’s almost like they’re too concerned with board meetings than meeting the players.

for me, anet’s lack of information/interaction borders on the paranoid. i thought when the game was released they might open up a little. relax a bit. i don’t think it’s necessary to talk about what MIGHT be in the game later. sometimes it’s ok to talk about what’s in it NOW.

i felt the halloween thing was quite “there you go. we’ve uploaded some stuff. now kitten off and figure it all out yourself. we’re not telling you anything.”

it’s like they’re not proud of what they’re doing. sure, i don’t want my hand held. but i don’t really feel like i want to google or wiki everything. i kind of wish anet would just relax a bit sometimes is all. put on a friendly face rather than a poker face.

There could be several reasons for that.

1. ANet itself has no idea what to do in the future.
2. ANet doesn’t want to raise expectations which it then has to meet.
3. Every new feature will also alienate some other players (“this makes the game too easy” or “why don’t you fix X first”) so they simply don’t announce anything
4. They don’t have a (good) PR guy who takes care of community relations and marketing.

Y’all dont know what “secretive” is if you aint played Star Wars the Old Republic. Bioware wont tell their PAYING customer base ANYTHING!

Personally, I think that the reason ArenaNet aint saying much is because they dont want to raise our expectations and/or make promises that they’ll be unable to keep.

I’ve only been playing GW2 for a month and I’m greatly impressed and I’m sure that ArenaNet will upgrade content as time goes on. Hell, this game aint even been out 3 months yet, give it time.

dirtyklingon.2918:

@OP i’ve been askign myself this question myself.

the way anet has acted about alot of this, in particular seems to be polar opposite of this post:

http://www.arena.net/blog/the-golden-rules-of-guild-wars-2

Respect the player

We respect you—as a player, as a human being. This game we’re making may end up competing with your real life. It might fight for your free time alongside your friends, your family, your work, and whatever else you might be doing. Because of that, we want to give you a meaningful experience, not one that is a vapid waste of your time. Whatever your reasons for spending time in Tyria, we don’t want to waste it by doing stuff that isn’t fun.

That’s why we make our content epic. That’s why we have giant nightmare demons to fight, global allegiances to form, immense keeps to siege, and giant catapults to fire. Tyria is a place that will foster relationships with new friends, and provide you a rich experience to share with old ones. It’s our version of a playground on the grandest of scales.

Finally, we are building an online world, but we are always careful to leave space for its most important element, the one we designers would like to step out of the spotlight for: its heroes—you.

Purpose: To keep us honest.

deciet through lack of being upfront is not respectful. is it not honest. what happened to the anet that made that blog post?

Honestly, I feel that any of the stuff they said before prepurchase doesn’t apply to the game anymore. Those ideas died and were buried in the same grave as “We don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2” and “The most important thing in any game should be the player”. Most people defending the game have probably never even heard of these ideas and simply bought the game because it was the next “cool thing”. Otherwise, I can’t explain to myself why they aren’t disappointed with the game, given the obvious differences between what it is and what it was marketed as.

Your question is vague. There are many ways to be secretive. ArenaNet has said on numerous occasions that they prefer to be as transparent as possible (which, compared to most other MMO developers, they have been doing a great job of), but they will not release information unless it is 100% absolutely true and going to happen. This is why you often do not see information about upcoming content, balance changes, and so on. They are working on it, but there is not enough information that is absolutely set in stone to release to everyone. They don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up.

Then there is the idea of keeping certain information, especially algorithms, secretive for the purpose of reducing abuse and exploits. From my point of view, this is a logical reason as to why they should keep certain information purposely secretive.

A lot of what people complain about is not only being acknowledged and often being worked on by ArenaNet, but is also their opinion – which is sometimes not the opinion of the majority of the community. “The content sucks. ArenaNet why’d you tell us the content would be good? You lied!”

Ned Stark.9356:

They already risked things on hype and we got the broken promises. Now all thats left of the game are the fanatical devotees, the army of bots, and a game flawed beyond comprehension. “Mission Accomplished” as Bush once said.

I’ve played games that were flawed beyond comprehension, and this, sir, is no game flawed beyond comprehension.

Perfect? No. Are some people disappointed? Sure, and I understand their reasons, even if I don’t agree with all or most of them.

But flawed beyond comprehension? Exaggeration like that just makes your post look.. well, flawed beyond comprehension.

All I want is the game I paid for working that is it. Eg Orr chains bugged most of the time.
Expansion and new content is up to Anet. Should they discuss it maybe not until it is close to ready because people do over react.
But they should be up and out about the vision and direction and over state of the game.
These guys are much better at communication then Tor (my only other mmo) but still condescending which I dont like.If they say the will look at something and update then do it. At the guild summit in Tor a ready check and guild ships where promised and to be updated by none other than J.Ohlen. He hasnt been seen since that day except his office.
This is why gamers over react and hyper react because rarely do we get proper communication and follow thru.

My real hope now that as we hit the 3rd month things have settled down at HQ that they will be a little more forthcoming about what is in store or at least give us simple little updates. It doesnt take much really.

TIN FOIL HAT:
They do it for the economy as well – people speculate on what is needed for future and hoard it in hopes of making gold.

also i’ll note that raids are not right for gw2. raids are over done as is, and few of the games that keep going with the endgame raid model of eq/wow/wowclones do a decent job of it.

there certainly does need to be more content/areas/stuff for level 80s to engage themselves with, as opposed to day after day in orr or spending so much time in wvw that they burn themselves out completely.

as well there should be more cosmetic type items, like the cultural gear, but unlike the t3 gear, should be at a reasonable obtainable price. the t3 itself needs to go back to headstart level pricing- which teh change was an obvious knee jerk reaction to early youtuber/streamer/etc marathoners exploiting and such, and not really well thought out.

but there needs to be more skins for each armour type to choose from. and i’d even suggest that they change from tyhe current transmutation system to something that encourages us to get as many different outfits as we wish- because as is you get a skin for the stat set(s) you want and bam any other looks beyond that you are pretty much destorying the ability to wear the looks you already obtained, or grinding stat sets you already have just to have them to paste the looks you want onto.

i’d love to get a full wardrobe of different outfits to wear overtop my set- i’d grind them all out over time(casually). but right now there’s no point because it would destroy my current looks or involve duplicating stat sets.

there does not be more open world content to grind all this out in too. orr is such a anti climax after dealing with zombies for too much of the leveling process already. it’s like “hey you know those zombies you’ve been fighting since level 20? well here they are for the next 300 hours too, but now with high frequency long lasting cc and high spawn rates in a high density spawn formation” there’s a lot of cool mobs/species that get underused in this game as is.

One of the things I’ve liked about the ongoing process with the Planetside 2 beta is just how upfront SOE has been with their plans for release and beyond.

They also do a very good job at communicating with their player base and willing to tell them a straight ‘no’ when something they demand doesn’t fit the game. Smedley and the developers are always tweeting changes they are planning and considering and react quickly to opinions of players. I’ve never seen more communications between a developer and its player base.

ArenaNet does talk with us, but they are very secretive. It’s quite a contrast from SOE. Straight talk and openness goes along way in build trust with players, I hope ArenaNet learns that one day.

I’m not being funny, but they give us details on updates once Anet have confirmed that they’re deffinatly going to do it. We was told last month about custom arenas, paid and free tournaments. As for alot of ideas such as raids they have said they’re looking into it. Would you prefer them to saying next year we might add a raid, next year comes and oh wait no they scraped that idea long ago and then more people moan saying they give false information.

Not sure why Anet does this, but they did it in GW1 as well and I dont see them changing now.

dirtyklingon.2918:

also i’ll note that raids are not right for gw2. raids are over done as is, and few of the games that keep going with the endgame raid model of eq/wow/wowclones do a decent job of it.

there certainly does need to be more content/areas/stuff for level 80s to engage themselves with, as opposed to day after day in orr or spending so much time in wvw that they burn themselves out completely.

as well there should be more cosmetic type items, like the cultural gear, but unlike the t3 gear, should be at a reasonable obtainable price. the t3 itself needs to go back to headstart level pricing- which teh change was an obvious knee jerk reaction to early youtuber/streamer/etc marathoners exploiting and such, and not really well thought out.

but there needs to be more skins for each armour type to choose from. and i’d even suggest that they change from tyhe current transmutation system to something that encourages us to get as many different outfits as we wish- because as is you get a skin for the stat set(s) you want and bam any other looks beyond that you are pretty much destorying the ability to wear the looks you already obtained, or grinding stat sets you already have just to have them to paste the looks you want onto.

i’d love to get a full wardrobe of different outfits to wear overtop my set- i’d grind them all out over time(casually). but right now there’s no point because it would destroy my current looks or involve duplicating stat sets.

there does not be more open world content to grind all this out in too. orr is such a anti climax after dealing with zombies for too much of the leveling process already. it’s like “hey you know those zombies you’ve been fighting since level 20? well here they are for the next 300 hours too, but now with high frequency long lasting cc and high spawn rates in a high density spawn formation” there’s a lot of cool mobs/species that get underused in this game as is.

What do you expect new content daily? They add new mini dungeons puzzles at halloween, we have a new map coming on the 15th, there is also another update to come in december. This also ties in with the more armor skins, yeah more will most likely be released in time, but i’m pretty sure that they’ve had bigger issues to worry about then oh we don’t have enough armor skins in this game, quick we must fix this.

Also, it’s funny how people moan about there is nothing to work towards in the game because all the gear has the same stats yet so many people moan because T3 is too expensive… You’re suppose to work for it not get it handed on a plate for a day farming orr.

People need to stop expecting everything straight away and wait for the new content to come out which it will. MMO games are farming, you name any mmo that doesn’t consist of farming the same stuff daily, hell atleast this game gives me a reason to go out and farm, 90% of my time spent on wow which i played for about 6 years was sat in org, shatt or dalaran depending on the expansion.

Ned Stark.9356:

They already risked things on hype and we got the broken promises. Now all thats left of the game are the fanatical devotees, the army of bots, and a game flawed beyond comprehension. “Mission Accomplished” as Bush once said.

Man, could you have possibly spun that to sound worse? This guy should work for foxnews.

ANet always says that they don’t talk about things until they are in a state that is close to release. Does that mean that there is nothing close to release? I really want to know if we will get a better LFG or what exactly they are planning on releasing. Hopefully the lost shores event will give us some idea of where they are going.

Ravenblade.7685:

I am sure they are talking about their plans. However it seems only about plans they can actually execute.

They aren’t really, IMHO their communication is as bad as Bioware’s was on SWTOR. They could be saying a lot more without talking about plans that might not eventuate.