Guild Wars 2

What’s been really bothering myself and I suspect others is the lack of any Expansion news. Meanwhile, it seems as if every other game has announced a Boxed Christmas Expansion but GW2. Speaking for myself, I feel like we’re being punished. What we did that was so wrong? I’m kinda confused as I suspect others are.

Please don’t beat that dead horse “But Living Story…” as it does not meet my expectations for genuine content addition. Moreover, it fails to answer the question.

I’m expecting something along the lines of Factions, Nightfall, etc that became a regular feature of GW1. Oh and this silly shaving Frog Hairs about rather something is an True Expansion or Whatever is also distracting from the main point.

Love ya like family Gaile but how come everyone else is getting a Christmas present and we’re getting a lump of coal? Why are we being punished?

IRT the people asking for an expansion or demanding an expansion, I don’t think you can make them happy unless you have one ready. It is what it is, you practically have to just write them off.

As for myself, I don’t even care about an expansion. I’m one of the players that actually enjoyed what we got in the past and just wants more of the same except in a format that remains available. Presumably I’m a player you need to keep. But we’ve actually had significantly less as of late, so if a person is left without any choice but to extrapolate the future from what we’ve had the last few months, they would probably assume there really won’t be very much to look forward to and that they’d be better off simply finding something else to do for the next few months before coming back.

Or just discount my opinion totally and think about someone more prominent like WoodenPotatoes. All his videos lately have harped on the exact same thing, that we have no idea what we’re supposed to be waiting for. I feel like if such a huge champion of the game is feeling that way, there’s something seriously wrong going on.

I’m going to post one final thing, because I think this is a quick example of the problem. Halloween content is coming up. Presumably it is nearly finalized and the features for it have been known for a long time. You know what I know about it? The title. I could guess that it will be similar content, but nobody’s told me that. I could guess that there will be some new stuff, but nobody’s told me that either.

To be blunt, that SUCKS. I don’t even know the title because it just said “Blood and Madness returns”. Is that the same Blood and Madness? Is it a new iteration? Literally nobody playing your game knows. That’s SO frustrating.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think this post may be a valuable read: Mike O’Brien on Communication.

I’m sort of writing to think,

This is the crux of the lack of transparency and effective communication that is sensed by the community. If there was a cogent policy presenting a unified thought process across all lines of communication within the organization, there would be different community feedback in every line of communication.
I have always wished that there was a communications manager. I pray they let someone help them fix the problem. For the Brand of GW2, hire a communications expert to handle the Forums.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s not even transparency – it’s hype generating and PR talk. Throwing some exciting statements isn’t exactly fair if there’s no follow-up.
IF they had thrown those statements and then kept us updated – I would have seen it as transparency.
As it stands now I see it as a bait and switch : "stick with the game – more exciting stuff is coming by the end of 2013 " and then nothing comes.

It’s technically bait and switch.

That’s certainly a valid way of looking at it, but bait and switch implies that it’s deliberate. I am not assuming that they intended to mislead us.

I am.

Say it’s mean or unfair if you like, but it leads me to expect pretty much what we get from them, so it works. And when people have asked me about the game, I’ll tell them that.

set the topic to Q&A mode and mae Gaile’s first reply the answer so people can find her main response more easily

Communication is somehow taken to the extreme: people complain about Colin’s excessive information that met a problem, and people complain about “we can’t talk about it”. What I assume ANet doesn’t quite get is that we’d like to see the general direction of the game, not read the whole story summarised. There’s a big difference between, e.g., “Kasmeer is actually a man named Claudio, which is the brother of Anise” and “Something important will be revealed about a main character!”, one is a spoiler and the other is a teaser. That’s what we need.
Also, about for example the lag/FPS problem, we don’t know is it’s being worked on or not (even if support implies that the problem is on our end), but we know we will see the portal to Maguuma two months before it happens… Well, not to be mean but it has been known for a while… (Same as the portal in the Southeastern corner of Mount Maelstrom, but shhh spoilers).
The information given is nowhere close to a spoiler and barely a teaser, it’s just like showing Marjory instead of a portal. To me, the most effective way to communicate about LS2 would have been to release a picture (no need to be too detailed) every two weeks, that would have kept the magic happening! But we got a picture of a portal, and now nobody cares, because we all know we won’t get anything before, so why getting excited for, actually, nothing?
We are all passionate and we all somehow fear the game will bore us before we could have enjoyed it through the whole story, that’s why we would like to be “calmed down” by being shown something “not broken” is being worked on. We crave for a continuation of our story, but we only get unpredicted (and sometimes useless) changes. That would be ok if we had an idea what’s the top priority of the company. We don’t need details, we just need a general idea.
I have faith in you and I love the game, so don’t make me uninterested just because you want to play it all secret. This is not some kind of threat or “if you don’t do as I want I’ll leave”, I just fear I will never get to know what will happen to Tyria…

The passion in these posts is very real, I just wish everyone was able to see that it’s an expression of passion and not one of hate as they might first appear. I have two things in regard to communication. I was here for the release of the game and I distinctly remember how AMAZING the communication was. You guys and gals at Arenanet took care of us, you let us know what was going on at all times. If the game had to be shutdown or if maintenance was being done or the trading post was going to be worked on, we were aware of it. If you were going to do maintenance on the server, we knew more than an hour in advance, we could plan for it, the unfortunate thing is sometimes we are only lucky to get a 10 minute warning before the maintenance ensues. Bring that back communication, please, it was the most amazing thing.

Secondly, there is nothing more discouraging than seeing things in those update notes that is half true. I’m specifically talking about things relating to dungeons. The way in which some of this information is delivered is unsettling for people and makes them not know what to expect. For example, when the spider queen in AC was buffed, so that you could no longer stack in the location behind the stairs, the update notes simply said something along the lines of “Buffed the spider queen in AC to deal more damage”, however this is a pretty monumental change for anyone who runs the dungeon. I think a more elaborate description of what has been changed depending on the depth of the change would be very beneficial long term to hashing out some of these hard feelings that people have. If you would have said “Adjusted the Spider Queen in AC to deal more party-wide condition damage which may prevent stacking.” It tells you, “Okay, I need to find a new way to handle this Boss when I get into the dungeon.”

Thank you for all that you guys and gals do.

Absconditus.6804:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I don’t know. The forums bring up the whole Precursor Crafting thing again, and again. Yet the Devs posted about it being delayed, and then delayed again, and in fact, stated they had to basically start over with it.

Yet no one seems to remember, even though it’s been posted the Devs stated this many times.

Thus, I’m not sure ‘transparency’ does any good. It seems like many only hear (read) what they wish to, and ignore what they don’t. /shrug

I haven’t seen any mentions of it during 2014. If it’s in some random forum posts, yes, of course players will miss it. It’s not always about ignoring what you don’t want to hear, it can be that you haven’t even seen it, since it gets buried within hours as new topics and posts are done. Transparency should in majority come through official posts on the website, where they can have specific topics linked for discussion on what is being showcased, should that be desired by the development team. That way it’s less likely to fly past people. It’s not like Search works on these forums, it searches the active page (as if you were to do a Ctrl+F search through your browser), not the entire forum as a whole.

Now we do have the Dev Tracker, but that unfortunately has once in a while gotten flooded with responses in regards to tickets and delayed handling times (which surprise me, as I have always gotten a response within just 3-4 hours of submitting my ticket, their support team is the most stellar one I’ve ever encountered in this industry—ArenaNet, give those guys and gals some cake! They deserve it!), stuff not related to the game and its advancement. It’s also a bit out of context at times, and you sift through several posts where they are just being humans, interacting, which is awesome and I wouldn’t want that changed for the world. Even if it feels like there’s a lack of transparency at times, seeing all the communication they do, especially Gaile, is awesome nonetheless.

Here you go, took me a while to find:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

We want to let you know that the ability to build your precursor will not be in our upcoming Feature Pack. The way progression and rewards work in Guild Wars 2 have changed quite a bit since we initially talked about that feature, and our main horizontal progression systems are about to get some additional updates in the feature pack. Because of that, we are looking into several ways to integrate building your precursor into our new updated reward and progression systems we’re working on, which is requiring additional development time and iteration. As always, we’ll share details on this system once it’s far enough along in production we’re ready to discuss it.

There is also a post about leaderboards I came across in my search as well can’t remember right off hand where it is. Maybe I’ll look for it later.

Wanze.8410:

juno.1840:

Wanze.8410:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-events-in-guildwars2/

Exactly 1 month ago, they releaed their plans until the end of the year.

Not very impressive… and planning for “the end of the year” is the same as planning 3 months out at this point.

Halloween and xmas will be mostly recycled from the previous years, so nothing new in that “plan” except for the last part of LS2 (which is late considering it should be on a 2 week cadence instead of a month on, month off, month on, etc.)

OP asked for Anets future plans and here they are.
If they dont meet your expectations, thats a different discussion.
Fact is that they announced their plans 3 months in advance.

Then the future is not very bright.

DonQuack.9025:

tigirius.9014:

Gaile I understand as a veteran player of many an MMO over the years how it can degenerate into something unwanted however, in all of the MMOs I’ve ever played, transparency is absolutely a must, and in all of the MMOs I’ve ever played, GW2 has had the least amount of transparency.

I’m about to start STO’s Delta Rising for example. The expansion is free but they are selling ship upgrade packs. The reason I bought the pack isn’t because I needed it, it wasn’t because it was such a short time period for purchase and it wasn’t because I was forced into purchasing it by the design team, it was because of their transparency.

They did live streams for how these ships behaved in PVE. They posted weekly posts on what they were working on showing images, movies etc. They have a dev news blog that keeps people up to date, and their live streams give us answers to commonly asked questions and concerns.

That’s what should be happening here in GW2. This has literally been the only MMO in which transparency and a time table have been abscent. Every time any other title has come out with updates or new expansion level work, not only are they transparent about it, but they also have a clear time table. Part of the frustration is we’re still not hearing about things that were promised 8 months ago like the Engineer hobosacks or the Rewards Revamp, even now we’re not hearing about how those should be the next items to focus on especially since they have gone by the wayside and there isn’t a clear deadline. So people will start asking questions like, “is this game going somewhere? Why haven’t they done anything about things they already said were coming? What are they doing?”

Clearly wasnt around at the launch of STO. or season 1, 2, 3,

Actually I’m a real veteran, I’ve been there since early beta and haven’t left since. I’m very vocal there about their mistreatment of science something that’s central to the trek universe even existing in the first place and I’ve been a critic of their practices early on of only catering to the Tactical Career (much like Arenanet has been about the Warrior class here). So really, the next time you’d like to criticize someone you might want to learn a bit about them first then you won’t look so Vaadwaur in your comments.

Part of the reason STO has been so successful over the past few years has been directly due to their transparency. They too tried to be silent as you pointed out but they almost lost everything because of that silence.

It’s time for Arenanet to learn from the other game developers around them, transparency is always preferable to silence and always restores the confidence of the players even those that disagree with the direction of the game.

The community is pretty in unison with the idea about transparency as I can see from the posts here and in older reddit posts. Now it looks like it would be the easiest thing to change: just talk.

There has to be a reason why Anet has decided to stay in secrecy, and I’m not sure if it’s “only” because of earlier announcements that couldn’t fit into the schedule and the resulting community-feedback (mostly the outcry of the vocal minority).

I know they can’t spoiler the story, but I think talking about design-choices is kind of another beast.

I really love what they do with the CDIs and I’m an active contributer there (it’s really fun and constructive nowadays) but not knowing about future plans drains a bit of motivation for me personally.

Building hype isn’t always a good thing, but imho sometimes it’s needed. Especially during longer breaks. We just need more things to talk about, long for and dream about, guys.

Wanze.8410:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-events-in-guildwars2/

Exactly 1 month ago, they released their plans until the end of the year.

That’s the problem actually, ANet is great when it comes to blogged presentations which are very slick and exciting in the ever popular marketing corporate-speak way of communicating. Alas, the problem is that the shiny hype often camouflages the vagueness which lies at root of the problem.

Players are informed of a “new package” of changes coming out within two weeks or so; the devil is in the details though.

Variations on this theme have been staple since two after launch, we have seen it with the advent of Ascended Tier, Fractals Reset, Trait Unlocks, and the most recent Level Gating of Skills/Abilities.

There’s something wrong.

Either:

ANet is “testing” its intended changes using an overly small sampling of play-testers

Or:

ANet is just winging it on one-dimensional Metrics and a Prayer.

Sadly, a third possibility is that ANet isn’t being fully honest about the overall motivations of such changes.

I am hesitant to suggest it, but it would explain a lot. ANet could be having to cave into pressures based solely on the business side of the house.

Don’t misunderstand, no reasonable person should hold the maintenance and growth of profitability against any gaming company. However, there is a balance to be struck and better ways to introduce large scale changes on the player-base.

One basic rule to follow: keep pulling the carpet out from under your player-base to a minimum. Unfortunately, ANet seems to prefer the inverse.

Retooling GW2 to throttle player progression so that the average player has to jump through more hoops appears to be the common goal linking all the major changes that have roiled through the game.

Increasing gold sinks and time sinks also increases the probability that players will be exposed to more opportunities of spending money in the Gem Store.

This isn’t such a nefarious motivation, but when coupled with ANet’s established method of communicating its intentions along with a general reluctance to see that killing the goose is no way to secure the supply of golden eggs; it becomes a rather self-defeating endeavor.

Ascended Tier:

Players widely expressed concerns of a dearth of end-game progression opportunities, so instead of ANet implementing (let’s say) a fully fleshed bevy of “Elite Traits” and a engaging system of acquisition to the game; they gave us instead a dungeon treadmill (Fractals) and the poorly realized Ascended Tier.

Fractal Level +30 Reset:

Fractals became the new corridor of progression and plenty of players lined up and started grinding them out in the understandable confidence that ANet had adequately planned out the path ahead. Unfortunately, it had not.

ANet revised the entire system, and changed the rules.

I never had a dog in this fight, but it was another “thrashing” dev change inflicted on players that could be categorized as “major”.

Trait Unlock:

Players, still hungry for progression opportunities, clamored for something that the original Guild Wars had offered: Elite Skill Hunting/Acquisition.

It was a great idea that would allow the players at 80 to have a full spectrum of new and varied challenging (perhaps, ever-growing number of) opportunities to acquire NEW “elite” Traits to top off the existing core Trait lines.

Tone deaf as always, ANet decided to rework the ENTIRE Trait system as well into the introduced system. This changed the game in a fundamental way, I won’t delve into if it was good or bad; but let’s agree it was a HUGE game changer.

NPE’s Level Gating:

In response to a “dire” need to retain new players that presumably were quitting due to the game’s complexity, ANet added further layers of progression complexity.

Where once, an elegant and intuitive system existed, a clunky, inconsistent and plodding progression curve was introduced.

Stepped and widely spaced attribute gains led to some serious peaks and valleys in what had used to be a smooth progression.

Skills and abilities were level gated in off-putting and non-complimentary ways. (Example Off-hand usage and Weapon Swap)

Any player who knew better would immediately equip a 2h weapon ASAP so that they could mitigate the “nerf” of not having the benefits of two Sigils/enhancements.

What had been clear was now a confusing jumble of level caps and restrictions. Coupled with the Trait Unlock system…the change to the game was enormous for any leveling character.

What’s my point?

ANet needs to stop using the hammer on the game and start doing surgery, the patient can’t take much more.

Gaile Gray.6029:

And a few are garbage.

yikes.

Yikes, you guys act like we’re dealing with VALVe, Activision, or EA up in this #%$&*. From my experience, ArenaNet is the best at communicating content, updates, and/or changes aside from Blizzard.

Go submit a ticket to VALVe on a game issue and have fun waiting two weeks for them to get back to you. Seriously…go do it. Like…now.

in 2013 they said precursor crafting is one of their major plan for the game but nothing happened not even word about it, whether they canceled it or still working on it, that is the kind of confusion and lack of communication i hate, the major plans for the game that change the game play must be at least discussed with the community /players for feed back and all.
other games have pts or play test server before they go live with major updates, while this game developers are silent about it for no reason in my opinion just making players confused about the future of the game.

saye.9304:

in 2013 they said precursor crafting is one of their major plan for the game but nothing happened not even word about it, whether they canceled it or still working on it, that is the kind of confusion and lack of communication i hate, the major plans for the game that change the game play must be at least discussed with the community /players for feed back and all.
other games have pts or play test server before they go live with major updates, while this game developers are silent about it for no reason in my opinion just making players confused about the future of the game.

Actually, you can read what the Devs said about it on the previous page in this very thread. /smh

As stated before, even though the statement has been quoted in countless threads, players seem to ignore what the Devs announce. Thus, they may be reluctant to announce anything , as what good does it do? I’m neither for or against the practice, but there surely is evidence for their stated reasoning.

saye.9304:

in 2013 they said precursor crafting is one of their major plan for the game but nothing happened not even word about it, whether they canceled it or still working on it, that is the kind of confusion and lack of communication i hate, the major plans for the game that change the game play must be at least discussed with the community /players for feed back and all.
other games have pts or play test server before they go live with major updates, while this game developers are silent about it for no reason in my opinion just making players confused about the future of the game.

Actually they told us well before the end of 2013 that it would not be added in 2013. They also told us this year that they would have to change their plans about it, due to the reward system being changed. So they HAVE told us what is going on with it.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

saye.9304:

in 2013 they said precursor crafting is one of their major plan for the game but nothing happened not even word about it, whether they canceled it or still working on it, that is the kind of confusion and lack of communication i hate, the major plans for the game that change the game play must be at least discussed with the community /players for feed back and all.
other games have pts or play test server before they go live with major updates, while this game developers are silent about it for no reason in my opinion just making players confused about the future of the game.

Actually, you can read what the Devs said about it on the previous page in this very thread. /smh

As stated before, even though the statement has been quoted in countless threads, players seem to ignore what the Devs announce. Thus, they may be reluctant to announce anything , as what good does it do? I’m neither for or against the practice, but there surely is evidence for their stated reasoning.

what they said in this thread and others was they announce it once it is ready to go live , what i said is they must be crystal clear as what their plans for major updates are like pre crafting. like other games announcing major feature and content, for example rift announced new souls months before or swtor announced housing mini expansion month before or wow announced expansion months before, this thread is about transparency, read it again if you did not get what is it all about.

lordkrall.7241:

saye.9304:

in 2013 they said precursor crafting is one of their major plan for the game but nothing happened not even word about it, whether they canceled it or still working on it, that is the kind of confusion and lack of communication i hate, the major plans for the game that change the game play must be at least discussed with the community /players for feed back and all.
other games have pts or play test server before they go live with major updates, while this game developers are silent about it for no reason in my opinion just making players confused about the future of the game.

Actually they told us well before the end of 2013 that it would not be added in 2013. They also told us this year that they would have to change their plans about it, due to the reward system being changed. So they HAVE told us what is going on with it.

they said it MIGHT not happen in 2013 and what reward system they are talking about, you see the problem not just we do not know about pre crafting, they added new problem on top of it which is new reward system. LACK OF TRANSPARENCY, read thread you are commenting on please.

saye.9304:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

saye.9304:

in 2013 they said precursor crafting is one of their major plan for the game but nothing happened not even word about it, whether they canceled it or still working on it, that is the kind of confusion and lack of communication i hate, the major plans for the game that change the game play must be at least discussed with the community /players for feed back and all.
other games have pts or play test server before they go live with major updates, while this game developers are silent about it for no reason in my opinion just making players confused about the future of the game.

Actually, you can read what the Devs said about it on the previous page in this very thread. /smh

As stated before, even though the statement has been quoted in countless threads, players seem to ignore what the Devs announce. Thus, they may be reluctant to announce anything , as what good does it do? I’m neither for or against the practice, but there surely is evidence for their stated reasoning.

what they said in this thread and others was they announce it once it is ready to go live , what i said is they must be crystal clear as what their plans for major updates are like pre crafting. like other games announcing major feature and content, for example rift announced new souls months before or swtor announced housing mini expansion month before or wow announced expansion months before, this thread is about transparency, read it again if you did not get what is it all about.

What you said is that there was no word from the devs. The guys above pointed out that there was word and it was pretty conclusive – they are working out how it will fit in the new rewards scheme. That’s a reasonable update on the situation.

Crystal clarity isn’t actually what a lot of people are asking for in this thread. There is an understanding why that cannot be the case and in fact few publishers can ever be that clear. What is being asked for is just something to grab onto, even if it is next year.

Garbage? I love Garbage! Back in 1998 their song, ‘The Trick is to Keep Breathing’, (from the album Version 2.0) blew the woofers out of my (at the time) 18-year old Pioneer speakers.

I would like to know what anet is planning to do about the trait system redesign. If anything. And if the NPE has seen all the changes it’s going to see – were the changes and the woopsies ever officially sorted? And I’m sure a lot of folks want to know if there are any plans to repair the continuity of the personal story. If these things have been addressed elsewhere, the addressing must surely have been so transparent I didn’t see it.

Randulf.7614:

saye.9304:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

saye.9304:

in 2013 they said precursor crafting is one of their major plan for the game but nothing happened not even word about it, whether they canceled it or still working on it, that is the kind of confusion and lack of communication i hate, the major plans for the game that change the game play must be at least discussed with the community /players for feed back and all.
other games have pts or play test server before they go live with major updates, while this game developers are silent about it for no reason in my opinion just making players confused about the future of the game.

Actually, you can read what the Devs said about it on the previous page in this very thread. /smh

As stated before, even though the statement has been quoted in countless threads, players seem to ignore what the Devs announce. Thus, they may be reluctant to announce anything , as what good does it do? I’m neither for or against the practice, but there surely is evidence for their stated reasoning.

what they said in this thread and others was they announce it once it is ready to go live , what i said is they must be crystal clear as what their plans for major updates are like pre crafting. like other games announcing major feature and content, for example rift announced new souls months before or swtor announced housing mini expansion month before or wow announced expansion months before, this thread is about transparency, read it again if you did not get what is it all about.

What you said is that there was no word from the devs. The guys above pointed out that there was word and it was pretty conclusive – they are working out how it will fit in the new rewards scheme. That’s a reasonable update on the situation.

Crystal clarity isn’t actually what a lot of people are asking for in this thread. There is an understanding why that cannot be the case and in fact few publishers can ever be that clear. What is being asked for is just something to grab onto, even if it is next year.

you do know what word TRANSPARENCY means,dont you?google it then, that is what this thread is all about, they are NOT transparent about new reward system and also precursor crafting, not clear and transparent word on any of those, just know it might happen or might not, that is not right way to talk to their player base,they are working on it or they might cancel it, you do not know that is problem,and all the mmos i play like those i mentioned have transparent developers only gw2 developers talk with mystery.

Obviously, you haven’t read what the Devs said about it. No matter, just proves the point. /shrug

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Obviously, you haven’t read what the Devs said about it. No matter, just proves the point. /shrug

would you be so kind and tell what they said other than it might happen in future with new reward system,but the reward system itself is unclear, if you know more than this then tell us.no transparency in what they say if you understand the point of the problem.
/shrug

Does Anet email out news to its playerbase? I get plenty of emails about things going on in different mmo’s – from weekend events, to in store offers, to roadmaps ahead. Some of them work on me and entice me back. I have never been emailed by Anet (yes Ive checked my spam folder)

Now I’m not a player needing “enticing back”, but looking at what has been happening in GW2 recently and upcoming, how many casually minded players aren’t aware of;

- the recent pvp tourament and chance to win a precursor from watching the twitch stream
- Halloween and the start date
- WHen S2 re-starts.

Sure it’s on the homepage, but is it being more widely advertised? I know it’s a bit away from the transaprency being asked for, but it might be useful to those who wouldn’t think to visit the main site.

The quote I posted above was from March 19th of this year (2014). It can be found here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/gw2-precursor-recipe-scavanger-hunt-news/3780700

I don’t think we will ever be privy to the transcribed notes from every Dev meeting where they discuss possible content implementation or changes to the game. There may be 30 different schools of thought being considered. Should they list each one and wait for player feedback on each? Players already find the process less than speedy.

You stated there has been no word whatsoever, and that was proven to be false. Now you have changed your complaint. I can offer nothing but what the Devs have stated twice about the subject in the past. If you wish to comment on what has transpired, at least try to be accurate.

The Devs announced possible plans, stated they would be delayed, stated, later, that they were heading back to the drawing board. That’s where we are now. I understand you would like more information, I’m sure many players would, but exaggerating what has transpired or making false statements probably won’t motivate the Devs to be more forthcoming with information. Wouldn’t you agree? =)

Here is the dev post about fractal leader boards from December 17th of last year:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re holding the leaderboard for now to see if we can’t decide on a better way to help differentiate people on it who are all at the same tier, other than just the first who got there . Once we have decided that, we’ll need to code, test, and vet it and then update the leaderboards to reflect the new tracking.

It can be found here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-happen-to-Fractals-Leaderboard/3388587

Gaile Gray.6029:

Thank you for finding those links, Robert. It’s helpful for everyone to see real resources, and those who missed them (or forgot about them) may enjoy reading them.

No problem, my pleasure

That’s honestly something that I consider to be the biggest issue – There’s no consolidation of information. If you have to go and dig through all the drek, you’re never going to find what information exists, and players are going to end up frustrated and believe that there’s nothing..

Togashi Jack.9531:

That’s honestly something that I consider to be the biggest issue – There’s no consolidation of information. If you have to go and dig through all the drek, you’re never going to find what information exists, and players are going to end up frustrated and believe that there’s nothing..

I see where you’re coming from but other than copying and pasting past posts, what could they do better? Obviously a working search engine would help but that’s already been commented on.

hmm Colin suggested a kind of sticky where devs post their updates about ongoing thoughts/changes… not sure anymore. Are there any updates about this, Gaile?

this would probably help getting such infos in sight of everyone

edit: found the post/thread:

Colin Johanson:

This is a thread to discuss the idea of adding a sticky to the top of each of the big forum threads (PvP, dungeons, WvW, General discussions, etc.) where we help provide a very high level list of stuff the Gw2 Dev team is aware of with the game, and what questions/thoughts we’re giving those areas to help guide your discussions – and provide visibility into the very top tier stuff we’re aware of.

Feedback on just the idea itself as a concept please, thank you!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Brainstorm-Key-Discussion-Points/first#post4328508

Robert.4197:

Here is the dev post about fractal leader boards from December 17th of last year:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re holding the leaderboard for now to see if we can’t decide on a better way to help differentiate people on it who are all at the same tier, other than just the first who got there . Once we have decided that, we’ll need to code, test, and vet it and then update the leaderboards to reflect the new tracking.

It can be found here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-happen-to-Fractals-Leaderboard/3388587

And that’s been it for 10 months?!? Holy Christ, no wonder players are torqued!

Palador.2170:

Robert.4197:

Here is the dev post about fractal leader boards from December 17th of last year:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re holding the leaderboard for now to see if we can’t decide on a better way to help differentiate people on it who are all at the same tier, other than just the first who got there . Once we have decided that, we’ll need to code, test, and vet it and then update the leaderboards to reflect the new tracking.

It can be found here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-happen-to-Fractals-Leaderboard/3388587

And that’s been it for 10 months?!? Holy Christ, no wonder players are torqued!

Yeah, I would guess it’s on the back burner or still haven’t figured out what to do yet.

And such is the problem with refusing to talk about things in development. It looks exactly the same as if those things were being completely ignored.

But I don’t want to be negative, I want to offer helpful suggestions and solutions, and for this particular problem, Gaile, maybe you should create a sticky FAQ for people who want to know the last announced status of different features that are frequently requested.

On some other matter.
Maybe Gaile can answer this for me.

About the breaks between releases and the communication about what those breaks mean for us (players). I don’t really know the reasons behind those breaks, I can guess, but I don’t know.

What I would like to know, is if what happened this year is how it’s supposed to be, or if this was just a period of adjustment. I ask this, because what I really want to know is, if next year we will have more releases than this year, like in 2013.

I try to follow the news and comments from the team closely, but I don’t recall any substantial information regarding this. Players tend to talk about how feature patches affect LS releases, and how it’s normal to have this kind of breaks, others say no, most releases on last feature pack were from the China release so it doesn’t make sense, etc.
Gaile asked for a case where an answer could satisfy the customer, well, this are two yes/no questions, and knowing the answers will at least leave me comfortable.

is it normal?
will we have more releases (more than this year) next year?

Even if the answer is more complicated than yes or no, I would appreciate an answer, at least for the first question, if the second cannot be answered for x or y reason.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think this post may be a valuable read: Mike O’Brien on Communication.

Gaile, please read the following knowing that I have nothing but love and admiration for you:

I didn’t find Mike O’Brien’s post a valuable read in the slightest. In fact, It is quite telling that a thread titled “Communicating With You” was started by a man who has exactly two posts to his entire post history (TWO! Including the above linked post.).

Mr. O’Brien started that thread with a “this is our policy and it is not open for discussion” chip on his shoulder, and then never returned to the thread again. Not once. Those are hardly the actions of a person who takes communicating with customers seriously.

In regards to transparency, it has already been said, but I will add my voice to chorus:
The problem is not that you may miss a deadline and upset people.
The problem is that no one ever communicates when situations change.
This is all about managing customer expectations. It really isn’t rocket science, and it isn’t all that difficult either…unless you have a gag-order policy like ANet.

I have to admit, ANet’s communication policy is a serious obstacle to me developing any sense of customer loyalty or brand appreciation. It reveals a level of disdain and mistrust of it’s own customers. It doesn’t feel good.

And I truly, honestly, don’t believe it is good for the long-term health of the game.

My 2 cents.

Baltzenger.2467:

On some other matter.
Maybe Gaile can answer this for me.

About the breaks between releases and the communication about what those breaks mean for us (players). I don’t really know the reasons behind those breaks, I can guess, but I don’t know.

What I would like to know, is if what happened this year is how it’s supposed to be, or if this was just a period of adjustment. I ask this, because what I really want to know is, if next year we will have more releases than this year, like in 2013.

I try to follow the news and comments from the team closely, but I don’t recall any substantial information regarding this. Players tend to talk about how feature patches affect LS releases, and how it’s normal to have this kind of breaks, others say no, most releases on last feature pack were from the China release so it doesn’t make sense, etc.
Gaile asked for a case where an answer could satisfy the customer, well, this are two yes/no questions, and knowing the answers will at least leave me comfortable.

is it normal?
will we have more releases (more than this year) next year?

Even if the answer is more complicated than yes or no, I would appreciate an answer, at least for the first question, if the second cannot be answered for x or y reason.

My guess is that people were complaining about the pacing of the living story and also how it interfered with wvw tournaments. Also, it’s my guess that anet is releasing maps as they are progressed and not when they are completely done which is why we see a quarter of a map released with each living story chapter. Having said that though, I do hope they are taking the time to work on an expansion but because of their policy, they can’t say.

minbariguy.7504:

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think this post may be a valuable read: Mike O’Brien on Communication.

Gaile, please read the following knowing that I have nothing but love and admiration for you:

I didn’t find Mike O’Brien’s post a valuable read in the slightest. In fact, It is quite telling that a thread titled “Communicating With You” was started by a man who has exactly two posts to his entire post history (TWO! Including the above linked post.).

Mr. O’Brien started that thread with a “this is our policy and it is not open for discussion” chip on his shoulder, and then never returned to the thread again. Not once. Those are hardly the actions of a person who takes communicating with customers seriously.

In regards to transparency, it has already been said, but I will add my voice to chorus:
The problem is not that you may miss a deadline and upset people.
The problem is that no one ever communicates when situations change.
This is all about managing customer expectations. It really isn’t rocket science, and it isn’t all that difficult either…unless you have a gag-order policy like ANet.

I have to admit, ANet’s communication policy is a serious obstacle to me developing any sense of customer loyalty or brand appreciation. It reveals a level of disdain and mistrust of it’s own customers. It doesn’t feel good.

And I truly, honestly, don’t believe it is good for the long-term health of the game.

My 2 cents.

I have seen conversations on the forums where people got upset over Anet missing a deadline. I have seen Anet communicate on why things have changed or been delayed (ex. precursor hunt/crafting) and people still got upset. Not the first time and won’t be the last time. What I don’t understand is why various groups of people feel that they “know” the ideal solution for communication issues like this. It’s my opinion, and certainly there is growing evidence to support, that there really is no ideal. There have been conflicting ideals presented by the playerbase on what is acceptable communication in threads like this one that line up almost identically to what Gaile presented earlier. If anything, Mike took a stand on how they choose to communicate (CDIs, when it’s ready, etc.) and made it clear why. He communicated and people still got upset. The reality is though, that some people were satisfied with that answer, some people weren’t, and others continue to ask for more. That being said, there is always room for improvement in almost anything that Anet does and I’m sure they love to hear suggestions on how they can improve as Gaile has pretty much said. I personally just wish that we, and I include myself in this, could remember that there are pros and cons to (almost) every suggestion.

I can’t emphasize enough how helpful the CDIs are for us, and how much we value the input everyone provides. Please stayed involved — or get involved! — and share your thoughts — they really do make a difference.

And yet, one of the only concrete things that a developer claims resulted from the CDIs was the trait overhaul, which nobody actually wanted. The CDIs are interesting to participate in, but they cannot actually achieve anything of value so long as the developers only listen and direct the conversation, without giving anything of their actual planning. All that can result is misunderstandings, where the developers believe they understand what we want, come up with a plan to resolve it, work for months on that plan, and release it only to find that we never wanted any of that and they could have saved months of effort merely by talking to us about it.

Until the CDI is a truly two-way street it cannot be anything more than a distraction.

Actually they told us well before the end of 2013 that it would not be added in 2013. They also told us this year that they would have to change their plans about it, due to the reward system being changed. So they HAVE told us what is going on with it.

But not the details. If they’d told us what they’d originally planned, and how the changes would impact that plan, then we could have offered suggestions to get the program back on track. In any case, it’s near the end of 2014 now, and so many months of radio silence on the topic are completely unforgivable.

I have to say, while I disagree very fundamentally with their business model, you know who has fantastic dev/community interaction? Marvel Heroes. They announce months in advance that they are adding new characters, costumes, settings, etc., and hint at much more along the way. They also constantly iterate their content, completely overhauling characters that aren’t working right if necessary, and constantly looking for focused community input. They are an excellent example of what a company can achieve if they actually interact with their customers, whatever you might feel about the game itself or it’s ridiculous pricing.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Thank you for finding those links, Robert. It’s helpful for everyone to see real resources, and those who missed them (or forgot about them) may enjoy reading them.

To be blunt, why let the player community waffle around and provide this information, while community reps comment on the quality of the posts in this thread?

EDIT: check out Blizzard’s D3 forums which are arguably as toxic as these forums. Yet they have multiple community reps responding with real information (not fluff) almost daily (no less than weekly). Their PTR forums were a remarkable collaboration between devs and players resulting in many player driven changes within weeks that ultimately ended up in patch 2.1. Night and day…

Ohoni.6057:

I can’t emphasize enough how helpful the CDIs are for us, and how much we value the input everyone provides. Please stayed involved — or get involved! — and share your thoughts — they really do make a difference.

And yet, one of the only concrete things that a developer claims resulted from the CDIs was the trait overhaul, which nobody actually wanted. The CDIs are interesting to participate in, but they cannot actually achieve anything of value so long as the developers only listen and direct the conversation, without giving anything of their actual planning. All that can result is misunderstandings, where the developers believe they understand what we want, come up with a plan to resolve it, work for months on that plan, and release it only to find that we never wanted any of that and they could have saved months of effort merely by talking to us about it.

I refuse to believe that the devs are so stupid that they thought the trait revamp was what we wanted.

Someone at ANet may have read that CDI first and gotten the start of an idea there, but what they made is their own thing for their own purpose. The CDI is simply a scapegoat excuse for what they did.

They’d have to be dumber than dirt to think what they did is what players were asking for.

I refuse to believe that the devs are so stupid that they thought the trait revamp was what we wanted.

They said as much, and have yet to clarify the statement, bragged about it even, as if the trait overhaul was something to be proud of, and this was after the community outrage over it. I’d post a link, but of course it’s buried in the boards.

Robert.4197:

Togashi Jack.9531:

That’s honestly something that I consider to be the biggest issue – There’s no consolidation of information. If you have to go and dig through all the drek, you’re never going to find what information exists, and players are going to end up frustrated and believe that there’s nothing..

I see where you’re coming from but other than copying and pasting past posts, what could they do better? Obviously a working search engine would help but that’s already been commented on.

I mentioned STO above and STO actually literally used the same system for a number of years in fact they still do when it comes to things they mentioned but specifically made it known that these items weren’t for any time frame and might never come to pass, however, everything else is well documented now. There’s no longer a need to go look up wikis in STO because they have not only kept a system of news updates and dev blogs, but they’ve used modern systems of communication like live feeds for every aspect of the game especially when new patches are on the horizon to answer questions they missed on AMA dev threads in forums and interviews. So really, there’s no excuse these things should be consolidated into a single news style system of updates with links to live feeds on the patches, there should be live feeds with questions answered on PVE (I’ve not seen many mostly PVP stuff), and I’ve only seen news feeds on things that are very very close to being released and while they did release more this last feature patch we need to know more about what’s coming over the bend especially in feature patches that change whole dynamics of the game play like it did for alts for veterans.

Ohoni.6057:

I refuse to believe that the devs are so stupid that they thought the trait revamp was what we wanted.

They said as much, and have yet to clarify the statement, bragged about it even, as if the trait overhaul was something to be proud of, and this was after the community outrage over it. I’d post a link, but of course it’s buried in the boards.

It’s in the last 5 pages or so from the Traits topic, I think.

And I feel the overhaul was a good concept, executed badly. Which they’ve acknowledged, also in the Traits topic.

And I feel the overhaul was a good concept, executed badly. Which they’ve acknowledged, also in the Traits topic.

But they seem to feel that they “executed it badly” merely by attaching traits to the wrong events. Where, in fact, they executed it badly was in pushing the trait tiers back by 20 levels each, and by requiring you to do various activities before unlocking them. The launch traits should not be behind unlocks, they should all unlock at each tier. If they want to incentivize players to run various content, they should do so in a way that does not involve traits.