it’s like the devs are deliberately trying to tank their own game. they let bugs fester, they don’t give a good chunk people what they actually want, they implement/execute features rather poorly in most cases or shortsightedly and they are ALWAYS seem to misinterpret feedback and data and apply some skewed logic to it.
someone recently asked if i could be a newbie right now, would i want to play this game. the answer i would give to that question is a resounding “No!”. for people who would say well you are biased because you have a different frame of reference having played GW2 from BWEs, that might be true but i am a veteran gamer and if i were to jump into a new game the ONLY source i would trust is NOT that of the devs (they are here to sell the game to make money after all) but that of players themselves and if i did that for this game, yeah i would completely skip it now as a newbie.
ANet seem to have lost a great deal of goodwill capital (capital that can be used by devs when they fail to implement a proposed feature or have to delay or change other anticipated ones) at least from me. the current team does not feel like it’s the same team that developed the game; i no longer feel the passion and heart in the work they put out and while there maybe a few gems strewn about, they are far too few and occur so infrequently that it is sometimes even hard to notice that they are even there among all the other “meh” content and features.
i have been thinking about how ANet can foster more goodwill from the playerbase and instill greater confidence in developing this game (because from my own perspective it’s as though they have bitten off more they can chew and are now struggling to find a coherent sense of direction and purpose) and one great way is just by starting with basic things like fixing the kittening bugs that exist in the game. now people may say cut ANet some slack, bugs take a while to identify, replicate and then squash and to them i say that is utter bullkitten. ANet this past year has shown that they are willing to under-take huge sweeping gameplay flow/enjoyment altering changes if they deem it necessary like the awful kittening trait revamp and the NPE (these are two great examples of ANet’s misinterpretation of feedback and also their poor implementation and execution). ANet is a company i thought prided itself on attention to detail and would scrap anything that was not up to their standards and start again from scratch if need be to make it perfect, but we still have bugs in the game from release, condis in PvE are still capped and inferior to direct damage and Necros are still bottom tier in all PvE scenarios. /sigh
another thing they can start doing which i thought they were going to do is start talking to us more like people and not treating us like children. i read some of the dev comments and the amount of condescension in the tone is mind-blowing; ANet the vitriol and bile being spewed towards you is WELL earned and it is a result of poor decision making, poor and often times slow gameplay/feature implementation/execution and a shortsighted and naive company policy that turns gamers into the enemy meant to be dealt with rather than collaborators and companions that an MMO REQUIRES not only to live, but to thrive. where is the ANet from pre-launch that was eager to talk with us about the current state of content and features, whether they made it into the final release or not at least we heard about it first (usually) which made us feel like we were not only part of the process, but also afforded ANet A LOT of goodwill from the players as we could understand the reasons why certain things were not in, changed or postponed. /sigh
the next thing that i feel ANet will have to change which i think is much harder for them to implement is a change in culture where actually figuring out what players want trumps data analytics. i mean look at the fiasco with the gem/gold conversion and hey as a player i realize ANet is made up of people and they make mistakes but what left a really bad taste in my mouth and made never want to spend another dime of actual money in the gem store was their reaction to the situation. not only did ANet let the issue fester and develop into a crisis they also DID NOT take any action to rectify the situation until AFTER online news outlets picked up the story of how the veteran GW2 players were unhappy with the change. why should it take a crisis to effect change in the devs? the commander tags is another example of misinterpretation of feedback, poor implementation and subsequently required a crisis to bring about change. /sigh