Guild Wars 2

Behellagh.1468:

They did fix the language issue over on the EU server cluster and that was legitimate feedback.

Automatically blocking languages other than the one used for your client without even warning players that this feature went live, nor saying them how to disabling it if they want to is fixing the language issue to you?

Behellagh.1468:

They did fix the language issue over on the EU server cluster and that was legitimate feedback.

That wasn’t much of a fix, in many respects it complicated the problem a bit since now ppl can’t even comunicate with each other if the players don’t share the same acount language and one of them has the filter activated.

Why the silence?

The best way to manage an online community is to ignore it. In another week over half of you malcontents will have moved on and stopped posting. Problem solved.

Izdubar.9540:

Why the silence?

The best way to manage an online community is to ignore it. In another week over half of you malcontents will have moved on and stopped posting. Problem solved.

The problems with the system will persist no matter how much they keep ignoring.

Hystery.8415:

Behellagh.1468:

They did fix the language issue over on the EU server cluster and that was legitimate feedback.

Automatically blocking languages other than the one used for your client without even warning players that this feature went live, nor saying them how to disabling it if they want to is fixing the language issue to you?

Except they did announce it in the forums before the patch hit and the patch notes after.

Behellagh.1468:

Hystery.8415:

Behellagh.1468:

They did fix the language issue over on the EU server cluster and that was legitimate feedback.

Automatically blocking languages other than the one used for your client without even warning players that this feature went live, nor saying them how to disabling it if they want to is fixing the language issue to you?

Except they did announce it in the forums before the patch hit and the patch notes after.

Yeah, because everyone knows that 100% of the players check the forum, right.

Another sign that they actually do not care much about their player base.

What do you want, a broadcast in game of the patch notes?

Behellagh.1468:

What do you want, a broadcast in game of the patch notes?

Actually, that’s not a bad idea. A small pop up box when zoning in to the game with just a brief list of fixes (or a link to the relevant web page), or major things like “New language filter in Chat Options” or something like that, would actually work. A lot of MMORPG’s use that kind of thing to notify players of important things.

Kallandra.2610:

Behellagh.1468:

What do you want, a broadcast in game of the patch notes?

Actually, that’s not a bad idea. A small pop up box when zoning in to the game with just a brief list of fixes (or a link to the relevant web page), or major things like “New language filter in Chat Options” or something like that, would actually work. A lot of MMORPG’s use that kind of thing to notify players of important things.

How about a frame that appears when first logging in, but before pressing the Play button that gives news about the game including the patch notes?

eisberg.2379:

Kallandra.2610:

Behellagh.1468:

What do you want, a broadcast in game of the patch notes?

Actually, that’s not a bad idea. A small pop up box when zoning in to the game with just a brief list of fixes (or a link to the relevant web page), or major things like “New language filter in Chat Options” or something like that, would actually work. A lot of MMORPG’s use that kind of thing to notify players of important things.

How about a frame that appears when first logging in, but before pressing the Play button that gives news about the game including the patch notes?

Its not Anets fault if the players do not check the forums for the patch updates. They knew there was a patch (hence the download) so while they are waiting for it to download they could you know actually read the patch notes? Players are humans therefor they are more than capable of going to the forums and reading the patch notes where they always been. No point in wasting resources for putting an ingame patch notes that the same people who couldnt waste the time to come to the forums will just ignore the patch notes already.

eisberg.2379:

They already said in the various feedback threads for this last patch they read the feedback and are checking into them and taking them into consideration. That is all they need to say.

Well actually this is an interesting point, and perhaps a slightly different issue.

If I’m unhappy about the Megaserver, I’m checking the Megaserver threads for dev responses to our questions.

So, I’m looking at 1) Feedback/Questions: MegaServer, 2) Game Updates: Guild World Events, Megaservers, WvW, 3) Megaservers and RP to see if there has been any indication that concerns about the servers are being heard.

Then, in case I missed something, I’m looking at: Dev Tracker

Last, I’ll check….. News (Here I see….article about Gem Store, article about Tournament of Legends, article about Gem Store.)

Where else should the community look to get assurance that what they’ve pointed out since April 15th has been read? Maybe I’m not looking in the right place. I see comments in the dev tracker saying “there already is a thread on this, so post there” but nothing in the official threads since the patch has dropped acknowledging that there has been a large amount of feedback on particular topics. People posting in the wrong place get more of a confirmation that their voice is being heard than people who try to post in the right place.

Hystery.8415:

Behellagh.1468:

Hystery.8415:

Behellagh.1468:

They did fix the language issue over on the EU server cluster and that was legitimate feedback.

Automatically blocking languages other than the one used for your client without even warning players that this feature went live, nor saying them how to disabling it if they want to is fixing the language issue to you?

Except they did announce it in the forums before the patch hit and the patch notes after.

Yeah, because everyone knows that 100% of the players check the forum, right.

Another sign that they actually do not care much about their player base.

Gotta be mentioned, that your needs may or not be that of what you deem “the playerbase” is.

Frankly I wouldn’t say anything myself if I was them-answering hastily to outcries will do nothing, and could even make things worse. They will address the issue as needed, rather than as requested by people on the forums. Customer service isn’t as easy as many think it is for a company that has to cater to several types of players and playstyles.

This is, however, not a personal attack, so feel free to disagree.

digitalruse.9085:

Klonex.4562:

just look at awesome dev that was in charge of SAB. it was amazing that he answered questions, told us a few things to try out, and helpful hints during the event. he went out of his way to communicate with the community and he got in trouble for it.

I just want to reiterate this. Josh’s posts during SAB Season 2 were some of the most useful, friendly, interesting, helpful, insightful, and meaningful comments/dev interaction to date. CDIs included.

Then to later hear he was admonished for this and then a new company policy that “all comments must be approved before posting” was instituted showed a huge level of tone deafness with the ANet/NCSoft leadership.

If there was more frequent and “down to earth” communication, most folks wouldn’t hang on every word like they do now.

Absolutely. When we do hear from ANet it’s, at best, half answers and, at worst, PR speak. It’s easy to question whether or not ANet is actually listening to us when they don’ talk to us. It’s easy to question whether ANet knows what they are doing in developing the game when they don’t have open discussion on what they are doing and, more importantly, why they are doing it. Note that I’m not saying ANet doesn’t know what they are doing, I’m just saying that it’s hard to have any confidence in that when the most communication we get about their development plans is patch notes.

Josh’s commentary and actual communication in the wake of the SAB2 release is the sort of thing all of ANet should be aspiring to. If we had even a fraction of that sort of interaction and had it on a regular basis then there would be a lot less complaint.

Suddenflame.2601:

eisberg.2379:

Kallandra.2610:

Behellagh.1468:

What do you want, a broadcast in game of the patch notes?

Actually, that’s not a bad idea. A small pop up box when zoning in to the game with just a brief list of fixes (or a link to the relevant web page), or major things like “New language filter in Chat Options” or something like that, would actually work. A lot of MMORPG’s use that kind of thing to notify players of important things.

How about a frame that appears when first logging in, but before pressing the Play button that gives news about the game including the patch notes?

Its not Anets fault if the players do not check the forums for the patch updates. They knew there was a patch (hence the download) so while they are waiting for it to download they could you know actually read the patch notes? Players are humans therefor they are more than capable of going to the forums and reading the patch notes where they always been. No point in wasting resources for putting an ingame patch notes that the same people who couldnt waste the time to come to the forums will just ignore the patch notes already.

You do realize I was talking about a system that has already been in place since the day the game released? =D

Suddenflame.2601:

eisberg.2379:

Kallandra.2610:

Behellagh.1468:

What do you want, a broadcast in game of the patch notes?

Actually, that’s not a bad idea. A small pop up box when zoning in to the game with just a brief list of fixes (or a link to the relevant web page), or major things like “New language filter in Chat Options” or something like that, would actually work. A lot of MMORPG’s use that kind of thing to notify players of important things.

How about a frame that appears when first logging in, but before pressing the Play button that gives news about the game including the patch notes?

Its not Anets fault if the players do not check the forums for the patch updates. They knew there was a patch (hence the download) so while they are waiting for it to download they could you know actually read the patch notes? Players are humans therefor they are more than capable of going to the forums and reading the patch notes where they always been. No point in wasting resources for putting an ingame patch notes that the same people who couldnt waste the time to come to the forums will just ignore the patch notes already.

When the language block was implemented, people kept chatting on map chats, even on English, but as their clients are non-english they were instant hidden from all others, i already whispered several people asking “Is anybody there?” on map chats when there is lots of people because they are being ignored by the system itself.

It’s sad because one thing like this should be have one those “Hint popups” when game starts that points to the little settings button saying that they added new option now enabled by default.

The China release is coming up in what…there weeks. They’re fixing some of the problems slowly but it’s been eight days since the released. 8 days.

During that time they need time for people to get used to the idea. There are times in the past where they introduced something, there was a lot of complaining and it all died down as people figured out how to get used to it.

There was a massive amount of complaining about the meta event trains on day one and two and now, most people figured out how to get to them and follow the scheduled and the number of complaints have dropped off sharply. There are still some, but nothing like what it was. It’s going to die out because most people don’t care. There are plenty of people doing the zone wide events now.

Anet needs to let the dust settle before commenting. In the mean time, there’s a major launch going on that IS taking up much of their time. There are only so many hours in a day.

And what do you really expect them to say? The megaserver is very important to them for a variety of reasons. It means less servers running over all which saves money. It solves the problem of low pop servers and even high pop servers in certain zones at certain times of day. It solves the problem to some degree of the complaints that surrounded the Marionette fight when people complained the couldn’t even get on their server. It works far better with the living world stuff they’ve been coming out with than the old system did.

It needs tweeking and I’m sure it will be tweeked. Until then, i"m not sure what people want them to say.

Because from my point of view there’s nothing they can say that won’t make it worse.

If they say get used to it, we’re not changing it…that will make it worse. And they’re not going to change it.

The only thing we can hope for is that the cities will be returned to server, insrtead of megaserver. That might happen. Or the RPers can at least be given their own chat channel.

JackDaniels.1697:

Anet always responds, and it’s only been 7 days since the patch, you honestly think they won’t respond at all?

Fractured? Does that ring a bell?

It’s not an easy situation for them. If they don’t say anything they get criticized for that.

But if they do say anything they get the OMG BROKEN PROMISES crowd. What are they gonna do? Response is negative either way.

Max Lexandre.6279:

Hello there.

One thing that is certainly causing many discussions about “how awful our community is” is when people give “tsunamis” of feedback, questions and reports about several things and since the patch, one incredible silence involved all ArenaNet team, if they reply threads is to warn the thread may be blocked or actually block/merge the thread.

Why so much silence? Why don’t make community know you are aware of certain issues and working on them? Or discuss alternatives with the community of points you’re open to make changes?

I think things several times scale to the points moderators need to step in due abuses, people feel they are not heard, that specific groups of players are with problems with the patch and they try to report or ask to something to be done about it and it’s just… silence, like they are not even reading.

Why don’t ANet does a simply reply on a thread just saying something like: “We know there is some issues with guild missions after the patch and we’re are working to fix them.”? (just one example)
Not only that, try to ask for constructive feedback about the things that need changes, the mega-threads can’t address specific issues.

I honestly believe when it comes to create one Healthy Community, that is a process that takes several years, the team that is behind interact with the community on this forums is not taking steps to make that happen.

Sorry my English.

They already stated that they are not going to show their hands any more and this was due to the LS. They said a lot and people were figuring out what was going on. They want some thing for players to figure out themselves.

Most games, now a days, do not have healthy communities. Why is that? Too many players feel they are ‘OWED’ something and most are just plain snarky. This attitude means they complain about EVERYTHING, just to complain. A great example is the wardrobe system, people wanted it and the same people are complaining about it.

You can’t change players. A.Net has done all they can, now it is up to the players. A.Net can change the game all they want to foster a good community but players have the ultimate responsibility in this. ASK THE PLAYERS, NOT A.NET.

TheDaiBish.9735:

If they did say ‘we are aware of the issues and are looking into it’, do you honestly believe that people would stop posting / whining about the same thing on a daily basis?

That was /thread right there, pretty much.

It’s been eight days. Not eight weeks.

Yes, a lot of stuff is clearly borked and ridiculous and so on (Trait unlocks particularly), but they’ve put up multiple giant feedback threads and are no doubt reading them, and trying to decide what they can do to fix this stuff, and what they can prioritize. They are also probably internally debating whether individual problems fall into:

A) “They’ll get used to it.”

or

B) “Yeah that does need changing.”

So it would be dumb for them to be saying too much. That said, I do hope we hear some preliminary stuff soon-ish, certainly by this time next week. I don’t expect fixes, but they could give us some feedback on our feedback!

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Dosvidaniya.3260:

And their army of white knights.

And always, a jab at the people who, for their own reasons, enjoy the game…

If people who like the game keep jabbing at those who criticise it, prepare to be jabbed back.

But anyway, not all of the complaints are without merrit. There’s nothing wrong with constructive criticism. Some people criticise the game because they care.

As for the actual whining threads, nothing to do about that I’m afraid. No matter how good the game is there will always be threads like that.

Nage.1520:

The China release is coming up in what…there weeks. They’re fixing some of the problems slowly but it’s been eight days since the released. 8 days.

During that time they need time for people to get used to the idea. There are times in the past where they introduced something, there was a lot of complaining and it all died down as people figured out how to get used to it.

There was a massive amount of complaining about the meta event trains on day one and two and now, most people figured out how to get to them and follow the scheduled and the number of complaints have dropped off sharply. There are still some, but nothing like what it was. It’s going to die out because most people don’t care. There are plenty of people doing the zone wide events now.

Anet needs to let the dust settle before commenting. In the mean time, there’s a major launch going on that IS taking up much of their time. There are only so many hours in a day.

And what do you really expect them to say? The megaserver is very important to them for a variety of reasons. It means less servers running over all which saves money. It solves the problem of low pop servers and even high pop servers in certain zones at certain times of day. It solves the problem to some degree of the complaints that surrounded the Marionette fight when people complained the couldn’t even get on their server. It works far better with the living world stuff they’ve been coming out with than the old system did.

It needs tweeking and I’m sure it will be tweeked. Until then, i"m not sure what people want them to say.

Because from my point of view there’s nothing they can say that won’t make it worse.

If they say get used to it, we’re not changing it…that will make it worse. And they’re not going to change it.

The only thing we can hope for is that the cities will be returned to server, insrtead of megaserver. That might happen. Or the RPers can at least be given their own chat channel.

And yet they were pretty happy about posting blog post after blog post before the patch went live.

The thing is- there are some real problems with this patch, it is not going to blow over because it is not a case of ooh I don’t like this.

The fact that they made all the feedback threads and never replied to any of them is very worrying because a lot of is address legitimate concerns.

They cannot just leave it.

The lighting speed with which they rolled out Megaserver to all maps- when they were supposed to monitor the impact- leaves me speechless- the initial roll out already highlighted some problems- common sense to me would be to address those before rolling out the rest.

China- it is not a secret that they are launching in China, they have known it for months- it is their job to allocate resources to the China launch and the rest of their game.
If it was going to be problem they should have thought about it beforehand- project management is a thing you know

I think you are going to have to wait for it to start sinking in popularity before you hear anything from Anet. People are still playing with the shiny stuff so there has been an increase in popularity. But its starting to fall again. I think when it all shakes out it will sink like a stone below Hearthstone into the range of SWTOR or Minecraft. Then you’ll hear something.

They are probably trying to work out which Dev will address these issues, cause im sure when they got together to decide this update, it went something like, the community will love this megaserver……

The China debate has come up a good few times now on the voice servers I use for the game, stating that people are nearly 100% convinced the NA/EU client is just 1 big beta test for the Chinese release, so they can test what will and what wont work in China before pulling the plug on NA/EU, because lets get real, China could produce more players in a single location ( whom have to pay to play this current disaster ) than both NA/EU combined, couple that with the nearly complete silence on the forums from the entire dev team, there actions speak for themselves.

It truly feels like they are putting all eggs into the china basket hoping its a success out there.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/devtracker

Max Lexandre.6279:

Why we hear nothing but Silence from ANet?

Because they are part of a company and can’t speak on behalf of it at their own free will.
Because the ones that are actually working on the issue aren’t the ones monitoring the forums.
Because most of the users are childish and immature and will hold anything a dev says against them if anything gets side tracked.

Pick one or all of the above, they aren’t payed to chat with you, if there is a known issue that’s been reported they’re likely working on it, why do do you feel to need to have someone saying “we’re working on it Max, don’t you worry about a thing”?

Morrigan.2809:

Nage.1520:

The China release is coming up in what…there weeks. They’re fixing some of the problems slowly but it’s been eight days since the released. 8 days.

During that time they need time for people to get used to the idea. There are times in the past where they introduced something, there was a lot of complaining and it all died down as people figured out how to get used to it.

There was a massive amount of complaining about the meta event trains on day one and two and now, most people figured out how to get to them and follow the scheduled and the number of complaints have dropped off sharply. There are still some, but nothing like what it was. It’s going to die out because most people don’t care. There are plenty of people doing the zone wide events now.

Anet needs to let the dust settle before commenting. In the mean time, there’s a major launch going on that IS taking up much of their time. There are only so many hours in a day.

And what do you really expect them to say? The megaserver is very important to them for a variety of reasons. It means less servers running over all which saves money. It solves the problem of low pop servers and even high pop servers in certain zones at certain times of day. It solves the problem to some degree of the complaints that surrounded the Marionette fight when people complained the couldn’t even get on their server. It works far better with the living world stuff they’ve been coming out with than the old system did.

It needs tweeking and I’m sure it will be tweeked. Until then, i"m not sure what people want them to say.

Because from my point of view there’s nothing they can say that won’t make it worse.

If they say get used to it, we’re not changing it…that will make it worse. And they’re not going to change it.

The only thing we can hope for is that the cities will be returned to server, insrtead of megaserver. That might happen. Or the RPers can at least be given their own chat channel.

And yet they were pretty happy about posting blog post after blog post before the patch went live.

The thing is- there are some real problems with this patch, it is not going to blow over because it is not a case of ooh I don’t like this.

The fact that they made all the feedback threads and never replied to any of them is very worrying because a lot of is address legitimate concerns.

They cannot just leave it.

The lighting speed with which they rolled out Megaserver to all maps- when they were supposed to monitor the impact- leaves me speechless- the initial roll out already highlighted some problems- common sense to me would be to address those before rolling out the rest.

China- it is not a secret that they are launching in China, they have known it for months- it is their job to allocate resources to the China launch and the rest of their game.
If it was going to be problem they should have thought about it beforehand- project management is a thing you know

Blog posts were written further out from the China live patch though. The closer they get to launch the busier they are. Do you know when those posts were written? Do you know who wrote them? Was it even developers?

Anyone can come on and post banalities, but companies need to talk with one view. It’s not like you pick up a phone and call a company. You speak to one person in a company. The response needs to be a unified company response, which means figuring out how to handle things, it means meetings, it means time.

You don’t just say the first thing out of the gate, because that’s how you really get in trouble. You may not like it, but that’s how companies have to work.

Dean Calaway.9718:

Max Lexandre.6279:

Why we hear nothing but Silence from ANet?

Because they are part of a company and can’t speak on behalf of it at their own free will.
Because the ones that are actually working on the issue aren’t the ones monitoring the forums.
Because most of the users are childish and immature and will hold anything a dev says against them if anything gets side tracked.

Pick one or all of the above, they aren’t payed to chat with you, if there is a known issue that’s been reported they’re likely working on it, why do do you feel to need to have someone saying “we’re working on it Max, don’t you worry about a thing”?

I have a better question for you. Why not title all the feedback threads the “round file?”

Nage.1520:

Morrigan.2809:

Nage.1520:

The China release is coming up in what…there weeks. They’re fixing some of the problems slowly but it’s been eight days since the released. 8 days.

During that time they need time for people to get used to the idea. There are times in the past where they introduced something, there was a lot of complaining and it all died down as people figured out how to get used to it.

There was a massive amount of complaining about the meta event trains on day one and two and now, most people figured out how to get to them and follow the scheduled and the number of complaints have dropped off sharply. There are still some, but nothing like what it was. It’s going to die out because most people don’t care. There are plenty of people doing the zone wide events now.

Anet needs to let the dust settle before commenting. In the mean time, there’s a major launch going on that IS taking up much of their time. There are only so many hours in a day.

And what do you really expect them to say? The megaserver is very important to them for a variety of reasons. It means less servers running over all which saves money. It solves the problem of low pop servers and even high pop servers in certain zones at certain times of day. It solves the problem to some degree of the complaints that surrounded the Marionette fight when people complained the couldn’t even get on their server. It works far better with the living world stuff they’ve been coming out with than the old system did.

It needs tweeking and I’m sure it will be tweeked. Until then, i"m not sure what people want them to say.

Because from my point of view there’s nothing they can say that won’t make it worse.

If they say get used to it, we’re not changing it…that will make it worse. And they’re not going to change it.

The only thing we can hope for is that the cities will be returned to server, insrtead of megaserver. That might happen. Or the RPers can at least be given their own chat channel.

And yet they were pretty happy about posting blog post after blog post before the patch went live.

The thing is- there are some real problems with this patch, it is not going to blow over because it is not a case of ooh I don’t like this.

The fact that they made all the feedback threads and never replied to any of them is very worrying because a lot of is address legitimate concerns.

They cannot just leave it.

The lighting speed with which they rolled out Megaserver to all maps- when they were supposed to monitor the impact- leaves me speechless- the initial roll out already highlighted some problems- common sense to me would be to address those before rolling out the rest.

China- it is not a secret that they are launching in China, they have known it for months- it is their job to allocate resources to the China launch and the rest of their game.
If it was going to be problem they should have thought about it beforehand- project management is a thing you know

Blog posts were written further out from the China live patch though. The closer they get to launch the busier they are. Do you know when those posts were written? Do you know who wrote them? Was it even developers?

Anyone can come on and post banalities, but companies need to talk with one view. It’s not like you pick up a phone and call a company. You speak to one person in a company. The response needs to be a unified company response, which means figuring out how to handle things, it means meetings, it means time.

You don’t just say the first thing out of the gate, because that’s how you really get in trouble. You may not like it, but that’s how companies have to work.

Seriously?
Yes the blogs were written by dev’s- it says by who one each blog.

I repeat- China is not news for them- allocating their resources appropriately is their job.
The rest of the game does not stop because China is releasing.

They timed the roll out of this patch not the players.

About companies- they know what their view is. Do you really think I am suggesting that 5 different people come here and post opposing things?
What?

All that is needed is for one person to come here and say-

There are issues, we know and we are looking at your feedback- some things can’t be changed but we will see how we can make everyone’s experience as good as possible.

There- it took 1 min to type and didn’t need a team of writers.

I have worked for various companies my whole adult life- I am well versed in PR speak vs internal speak.

Morrigan.2809:

Nage.1520:

Morrigan.2809:

Nage.1520:

The China release is coming up in what…there weeks. They’re fixing some of the problems slowly but it’s been eight days since the released. 8 days.

During that time they need time for people to get used to the idea. There are times in the past where they introduced something, there was a lot of complaining and it all died down as people figured out how to get used to it.

There was a massive amount of complaining about the meta event trains on day one and two and now, most people figured out how to get to them and follow the scheduled and the number of complaints have dropped off sharply. There are still some, but nothing like what it was. It’s going to die out because most people don’t care. There are plenty of people doing the zone wide events now.

Anet needs to let the dust settle before commenting. In the mean time, there’s a major launch going on that IS taking up much of their time. There are only so many hours in a day.

And what do you really expect them to say? The megaserver is very important to them for a variety of reasons. It means less servers running over all which saves money. It solves the problem of low pop servers and even high pop servers in certain zones at certain times of day. It solves the problem to some degree of the complaints that surrounded the Marionette fight when people complained the couldn’t even get on their server. It works far better with the living world stuff they’ve been coming out with than the old system did.

It needs tweeking and I’m sure it will be tweeked. Until then, i"m not sure what people want them to say.

Because from my point of view there’s nothing they can say that won’t make it worse.

If they say get used to it, we’re not changing it…that will make it worse. And they’re not going to change it.

The only thing we can hope for is that the cities will be returned to server, insrtead of megaserver. That might happen. Or the RPers can at least be given their own chat channel.

And yet they were pretty happy about posting blog post after blog post before the patch went live.

The thing is- there are some real problems with this patch, it is not going to blow over because it is not a case of ooh I don’t like this.

The fact that they made all the feedback threads and never replied to any of them is very worrying because a lot of is address legitimate concerns.

They cannot just leave it.

The lighting speed with which they rolled out Megaserver to all maps- when they were supposed to monitor the impact- leaves me speechless- the initial roll out already highlighted some problems- common sense to me would be to address those before rolling out the rest.

China- it is not a secret that they are launching in China, they have known it for months- it is their job to allocate resources to the China launch and the rest of their game.
If it was going to be problem they should have thought about it beforehand- project management is a thing you know

Blog posts were written further out from the China live patch though. The closer they get to launch the busier they are. Do you know when those posts were written? Do you know who wrote them? Was it even developers?

Anyone can come on and post banalities, but companies need to talk with one view. It’s not like you pick up a phone and call a company. You speak to one person in a company. The response needs to be a unified company response, which means figuring out how to handle things, it means meetings, it means time.

You don’t just say the first thing out of the gate, because that’s how you really get in trouble. You may not like it, but that’s how companies have to work.

Seriously?
Yes the blogs were written by dev’s- it says by who one each blog.

I repeat- China is not news for them- allocating their resources appropriately is their job.
The rest of the game does not stop because China is releasing.

They timed the roll out of this patch not the players.

About companies- they know what their view is. Do you really think I am suggesting that 5 different people come here and post opposing things?
What?

All that is needed is for one person to come here and say-

There are issues, we know and we are looking at your feedback- some things can’t be changed but we will see how we can make everyone’s experience as good as possible.

There- it took 1 min to type and didn’t need a team of writers.

I have worked for various companies my whole adult life- I am well versed in PR speak vs internal speak.

Considering they have to balance their own goals and plan, and they are sifting through feedback from the forums, and from several different teams…

That’s a lot of information to sort through. Then come up with a new direction, which takes team meetings, assessments, and decisions. Then they can finally announce.

You’d be ticked if they said one thing, then changed it a week later.

Add on that a majority of the kvetching is rude, mean-spirited, and rife with entitlement, and they have very little incentive to give any scraps to the mongrel pit. -_-

tl;dr – It takes time to come up with a full, informative response.

@Morrigan

If you’ve worked for companies, you well know that often stuff published in someone’s blog isn’t necessarily written by the person who’s name is on it. Nor do we know when these were written. But I’m pretty sure stuff like this wasn’t written the day it was published. It was written weeks ago (at the very least).

More to the point, what do you really think Anet should say? Let’s say they said we see you’re unhappy and they’re looking into it, but then after they look into it, they decide NOT to do anything. Would that make you happier? Unless they know they’re going to change something, there’s no point in telling anyone they’re looking into it. That’s bad communication right there.

More to the point, it’s been a week since the patch went up, during which time we’ve had several new builds, we’ve had a holiday weekend and we still have the China launch. I’m sure everyone is flat out.

They need time to go through, collate and categorize comments (there are several issues here, not one or two) and then decide IF they’re going to do anything, which does take people getting together.

Using a simple platitude, “we’re looking into this” fixes absolutely nothing.

It is odd that we have not heard anything from Chris Whiteside in weeks, let alone nothing from any of the other higher-ups in months. Colin instead posts on reddit, and we have not heard a lot from the actual game devs in quite awhile.

Silence must fall when the question is asked.

Nage.1520:

@Morrigan
More to the point, it’s been a week since the patch went up, during which time we’ve had several new builds, we’ve had a holiday weekend and we still have the China launch. I’m sure everyone is flat out.

This is the thing that leaves a really bad taste in my mouth and why I’ve been so upset with their course over the last couple of months. I totally agree that it is there product and they can do what they want with it but the fact of the matter is I am completely ticked off that the support I’ve given them through the gem shop has been rerouted into this. It is irresponsible and greedy to take away resources from players in NA and EU to push the China product through and there is no doubt that is exactly what has happened.

Why should we care about China and their release it means nothing to us as a players in NA or EU, except that they have taken potential content from us to pave the way for more sales in another country and the quality of what we have received has suffered. Had the resources not been pulled we would have had a major expansion by now. In my opinion this whole LS exercise was nothing but a clever ploy to keep us all placated while pulling the main force of the developers to complete the launch for China because there is no way that 300+ developers could only achieve the content given to us these last 18 months.

Once I realized this was the case I did the only thing I could do which was stop buying gems and as mentioned will keep my wallet closed until they release an expansion, we get the proper amount of support on current bugs and in game issues.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Players complain when Anet says nothing.
Players complain when Anet says something.
Players complain when Anet does anything.

There’s an easy to see pattern.

This and if the players visitng this forum had a little less of an ego, they would have seen the same thing.

“We’re looking into your complaint” is not the desired response, because what it’s usually followed by is “We looked into this problem and determined it’s not actually a problem at all.”

What we’d like to hear is “Here are what specific parts of this we see as problems, and are working on, and here are what parts of it we think are right on target, whether or not you like it.”

That would let me know if I should wait and see, or if I should abandon ship now. I’m draining resources without buying anything from them either way, so it’s not like they’ve got any incentive to obfuscate and keep me around.

Headline: Angry Mob Demands Target of Protest “Be Reasonable and Come Join Us”

If you want more dev interaction on these forums, it’ll take months of you guys exercising self-control and not attacking them or their work.

These forums haven’t been respectful enough to earn further dev interaction. If I worked for ArenaNet, I’d NEVER come here.

And if you’re so entitled as to think they “owe” us that interaction, there’s not really anything I can say. You’re wrong. Your $60 bought you a game, not the ability to force people to listen to you yell about how much you hate them and the work they’ve done.

timmyf.1490:

Headline: Angry Mob Demands Target of Protest “Be Reasonable and Come Join Us”

If you want more dev interaction on these forums, it’ll take months of you guys exercising self-control and not attacking them or their work.

These forums haven’t been respectful enough to earn further dev interaction. If I worked for ArenaNet, I’d NEVER come here.

And if you’re so entitled as to think they “owe” us that interaction, there’s not really anything I can say. You’re wrong. Your $60 bought you a game, not the ability to force people to listen to you yell about how much you hate them and the work they’ve done.

You play on NA- I am not sure how I can possible explain to you what it is like trying to play this game on EU servers at the moment.

there is nothing disrespectful about bringing problem associated with this patch to their attention

Entitlement has nothing to do with it.

timmyf.1490:

Headline: Angry Mob Demands Target of Protest “Be Reasonable and Come Join Us”

If you want more dev interaction on these forums, it’ll take months of you guys exercising self-control and not attacking them or their work.

These forums haven’t been respectful enough to earn further dev interaction. If I worked for ArenaNet, I’d NEVER come here.

And if you’re so entitled as to think they “owe” us that interaction, there’s not really anything I can say. You’re wrong. Your $60 bought you a game, not the ability to force people to listen to you yell about how much you hate them and the work they’ve done.

If you think this is about “hate”, you should leave the discussion, because you clearly are not reading what people are saying. It is about criticism and dissatisfaction, and many people here have spent far, far more than $60. Whether they are “owed” a response isn’t the question. The question is whether it is smart to stay silent. I figure the devs have a week, at the outside, before people get really frustrated, so they need to respond by then if they want to avoid hurting the game.

Also, a guild leader who can’t distinguish “hate” from criticism is a guildsplosion waiting to happen, so you might want to look into that.

Eurhetemec.9052:

timmyf.1490:

Headline: Angry Mob Demands Target of Protest “Be Reasonable and Come Join Us”

If you want more dev interaction on these forums, it’ll take months of you guys exercising self-control and not attacking them or their work.

These forums haven’t been respectful enough to earn further dev interaction. If I worked for ArenaNet, I’d NEVER come here.

And if you’re so entitled as to think they “owe” us that interaction, there’s not really anything I can say. You’re wrong. Your $60 bought you a game, not the ability to force people to listen to you yell about how much you hate them and the work they’ve done.

If you think this is about “hate”, you should leave the discussion, because you clearly are not reading what people are saying. It is about criticism and dissatisfaction, and many people here have spent far, far more than $60. Whether they are “owed” a response isn’t the question. The question is whether it is smart to stay silent. I figure the devs have a week, at the outside, before people get really frustrated, so they need to respond by then if they want to avoid hurting the game.

Also, a guild leader who can’t distinguish “hate” from criticism is a guildsplosion waiting to happen, so you might want to look into that.

I’d prefer to leave my guild out of it, if that’s okay with you.

These forums are incredibly confrontational to developers. While some developers receive positive responses, others are met with huge amounts of vitriol every time they post. There are threads with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of posts, and there are dozens or perhaps hundreds of threads.

There are people who have the job of reading those posts. They are not developers. They are community managers or moderators. They collect feedback and give it to the developers.

The developers themselves are busy building the game, not browsing forums. They’ll pop in to the forums to read, maybe comment occasionally, but they’re busy. And even if they have the time to respond, it’s not always their call. ArenaNet, as a company, has a policy of not talking about future features or current development. It’s up to a select few developers – when authorized – to share that information.

I have no doubt that Anet is discussing Megaserver and potential changes. The discussion are unlikely to be finished. They could very well decide that it works fine. They CLEARLY think some changes need to be made as they’ve already been playing with the language options for you guys in the EU.

What I tire of is the constant demands for attention. We sound like a bunch of 3-year olds. While some threads and some posts are simply presenting relevant feedback in a way that can be consumed, the vast majority are just “ANET PLZ” threads that provide no real actionable information for the developers.

That is why we hear nothing but silence.

Edit: I re-read this post and feel terrible for saying that developers have “real jobs,” potentially implying community managers and moderators do not. Being a CM is a hard, often thankless job, and those of us who have worked a bit in the real world know the crap you have to deal with regularly. Love you guys, especially Danicia for the impromptu dance session yesterday at Balthazaar. Good running into you. :-D

They are ninjas. They stealthly fix and break stuff since launch. IF they reply they say “we’re looking into it” and then after 1 year it’s ninja fixed. Or ignored. Ninja!

Speaking from a logical perspective

I think the key reason is that they need to be very careful about what they post.
I’m sure before the team posts anything concerning the game development, it is heavily scrutinised by the ‘higher ups’. ‘Developer X’ may want to post desperately about some magical changes to rangers (lol), but the higher-ups may tell him not to, under penalty of death.

I guess they want to avoid posting something, which later proves to be inaccurate and then have the community blow up about it. They don’t want to raise anyones’ hopes, or disappoint anyone either. Even if the devs posted with the best of intentions, if they posted something that didn’t come to pass, I am sure that many people would brand them liars/evil/moo faces etc. This has happened quite a lot in the past!

Obviously, there is the courtesy of posting ‘we are looking into this’, which would be appreciated. Again though, it goes back to the issue of

“Dev Y said that you were looking into Elementalist issues!!! You totally lied and failed to deliver with this patch, I’m quitting GW2 forever now trolol!!!”
(and let’s be honest, this happens a lot).

However, as they have mentioned in the past, they do say that they are constantly reading the forums and ‘just because you don’t see a red post, doesn’t mean we don’t care!’. It’s obviously the ‘blanket formality statement’ and I’m not being completely gullible because I am sure it is impossible to filter through everything. However, I do genuinely believe that they do pay attention in many cases.

Whether they actually act on all feedback is a different matter. Whether they actually post on a particular case… is a different matter also. I love feedback! I love seeing the dev’s post and I want to see more. I think the OP makes a very valid point. However, I just don’t think it is realistic to expect more than we are getting for aforementioned reasons.

However, I do think it would be absolutely ideal if we saw more dev input.

timmyf.1490:

And if you’re so entitled as to think they “owe” us that interaction, there’s not really anything I can say. You’re wrong. Your $60 bought you a game, not the ability to force people to listen to you yell about how much you hate them and the work they’ve done.

Yep I bought a more or less working game over one and a half year back. I didn’t pay 50 Euro to become a laboratory rat for their mega-server-project. Atm we may leave some feedback which might or might not be read while the project itself got forced on all maps way faster than announced. Now we are experiencing some on the fly changes that might or might not solve our problems.

Since ArenaNet staff do actually read the forums (despite insistences to the contrary), I’m pretty sure they already know what the weaknesses of the major changes in the feature release were. They might not know what they’ll do about them yet, since they are really complicated to solve – which would explain a lack of comments in their PR releases/interviews to that effect (that and it’s only been a week) – but I really don’t think the sky is falling yet.

I do think they probably unloaded on themselves a great deal more refund requests from the gem store than they really wanted to. That one’s going to have to be a priority. Either that or just weather it and assume it’s a one-time problem, I guess that’s an option. The talk of people wanting to mix-and-match (and dye) outfit pieces seemed fairly compelling though.

Pirlipat.2479:

timmyf.1490:

And if you’re so entitled as to think they “owe” us that interaction, there’s not really anything I can say. You’re wrong. Your $60 bought you a game, not the ability to force people to listen to you yell about how much you hate them and the work they’ve done.

Yep I bought a more or less working game over one and a half year back. I didn’t pay 50 Euro to become a laboratory rat for their mega-server-project. Atm we may leave some feedback which might or might not be read while the project itself got forced on all maps way faster than announced. Now we are experiencing some on the fly changes that might or might not solve our problems.

This is a great example of the problem.

“forced on us way faster than announced”

ArenaNet talked to us, but their plans changed. You use that as ammunition. THIS IS WHY THEY DON’T TELL US STUFF.

Anet created all those feedback threads and, since then, hasn’t uttered a peep. I’m assuming that they’re reading and gathering information and brainstorming solutions. I figured a week would be long enough for them to at least post something resembling a PSA that they’re aware of items X, Y, and Z. Hopefully we’ll hear from them by the end of the month.

These changes have been pretty monumental. Most of them have been great, some meh, and some downright bad. I think it’s pretty obvious which ones are unpopular with the player-base. Yet nothing’s been said. For now, I’m focusing on the positives and avoiding the negatives until I know where Anet thinks they may go with this.

The german devs posted a status report about Megaservers, so if you’re an optimist, you can hope the english department will have a post ready in the near future?

timmyf.1490:

I have no doubt that Anet is discussing Megaserver and potential changes. The discussion are unlikely to be finished. They could very well decide that it works fine. They CLEARLY think some changes need to be made as they’ve already been playing with the language options for you guys in the EU.

About that fix- you know how it works?
it is an auto enable so you can only see the langauge in chat from your client.

This is honestly almost worse.
Why?

Because people in game do not know about it and it is auto enabled.

Because you have people with German, French, English etc clients on one map and now they can’t even see each other talk.

Because several people in EU actually speak more than one language and could understand and explain in events.

Now you have people who can’t even see the chat running around oblivious.

I find it absolutely amazing that people from NA think the mega server is fine- I am sure it is for you.
What I do not understand is how Anet drooped the ball on this- I mean they set up the different language servers in the fist place

Don’t scream please.^^ And yes they change their plans no matter how many concerns got raised before polishing the system and forcing it on all maps.

When the Mega-Server got announced I had concerns but I didn’t make alot of drama. When it went live I was willing to give that stuff a chance. I encountered some weired stuff but anyway I thought “hey they got plenty of time to polish it until it gets released everywhere”. And dumb as I was I really thought they would take all the concerns that got raised into consideration before they spread it on all maps.

Haha, I was pretty wrong. I came back from my easter-hollidays and everything is turned into a Megaserver. They try to change a few things but I have my doubts that they care enough to make it likeable for everyone.

Tbh, I don’t expect them to talk I expect them to care.