Guild Wars 2

Most answers to suggestions here seems to be about “development time” I get that A-Net have previously explained that it takes time to build a feature into a game, but it seems like any idea, small once and big once, always turn to the familiar “I like the idea, but development time might be to long” answer.

I personally do not find this as being a real answer to anything. Most, if not all people answering sugguestions for anything in the game, dont know how they programmed it into the game or and how long it might take. Creating a new full grown map might take a few months, while a small feature adding to something in the black lion trading market might take longer, we simply dont know.

Even if they had a hunch of some sort, liking an idea, but not wanting it to be implemented because of time seems to be a sentence that contradict itself. Since in that sense, nothing will ever be implemented. Literally nothing, from glider, mounts to raids, SPvP maps, wvw rewards etc etc………You get the notion, I just dont really understand using that sentence as an answer to anything here, using it to people who are to impatient is understandable, but using it to shut down an idea seems….just wrong

There might of cause be something I have missed, and that is the reason almost every suggestion contains “not worth the time” answer? If there is, please do inform me.

zengara.8301:

Most answers to suggestions here seems to be about “development time” I get that A-Net have previously explained that it takes time to build a feature into a game, but it seems like any idea, small once and big once, always turn to the familiar “I like the idea, but development time might be to long” answer.

The GW2 development team has limited employees, who have limited work hours and limited budget. So of course they can’t do every nice idea that comes up and have to prioritize. Those ideas that will take a lot of development time to implement for not a lot of result are not going to happen unless a developer makes it a pet project to do on their own time.

So yes, there is such a thing as not having enough time.

i am one of the lucky few that kinda knows how things work in the gaming industry, not Anet specifically but in general.

that said, i think the whole “but the dev time is…” excuse is BS, when a feature is worth it then it actually is worth the dev’s time to add stuff in the game.
the thing is, a worthy feature, big or small, will bring money in the bank, adding new but exiting features in the game lures more players and existing players are more likely to spend some because this feature enhances their game experience.
better yet, good features brings existing players back in to the game, improvements will always shine.

You hit the nail on the head with the general statement that we just don’t know how much time or effort any particular feature would take to implement. Even for those of us that do development as a profession can’t say for certain because we don’t know the game’s code base.

We can make assumptions based on our own experience, but when a dev says its not on their radar due to time constraints, that’s an entirely valid (and often used) reason for why certain features just don’t happen right away (or ever).

There are only so many hours in a work day, and only so many people to do the work. As with all development, those features or suggestions we make have to be weighed against what Anet already has on their backlog / sprint calendar. Sometimes those things make it in, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they just get added to the list of things they’d like to do when they get ‘time’ to do them.

that is true, however, when a dev tell time constriction problems and when anyone else tells that excuse is another issue entirely.

i accept that when a dev tells me that, they know the schedule and know how long it’s gonna take to implant the idea.
when some regular jo tells me it’s gonna take really long while my experience tells me otherwise i tent to not take him/her serious.

Depends on the reason for using it. If it’s just a quick and easy way to dismiss a suggestion a player doesn’t like, then it’s just the same as the person who goes no /15 characters.

But if it’s “I think it’s a waste of time to add another class because they already can’t balance the classes that we do have.”, I would say that’s a valid usage of the not enough or waste of time argument.

waste of dev time

It’s a valid concern, however it’s also a stupid argument to use on the forum.

We don’t know the details of ArenaNet’s workflow, manpower, or how potent their devs tools are. Making statements as to how easy or hard something is to implement is guesswork at best, even for posters that have experience in the field.

Djinn.9245:

So yes, there is such a thing as not having enough time.

That’s true. On the other hand, whether something is worth that time is a highly subjective matter.

Now, arguments do not need to be objective at all (and indeed, most of them aren’t).

All I want is a flipping option to toggle health bars in open world, that way I dont spam heals as druid hoping I hit someone needing them.

A lot of Armchair Developers seem to have a firm grasp of what Anet can and cannot do, like they were an employee or something.

Which is why it’s always great to see them constantly being proven wrong. You had people claiming Anet didn’t have the “time” to preserve ranget pet names but they did eventually. If we kept listening to that same argument, nothing would ever be done.

But the real reason is a lot of people of their own pet agendas and fear that other suggestions would delay them. Whether this fear is actually rational or not for the good of the game is a separate topic. Which is why the inevitable follow up is that “it would waste dev time to focus on real issues” of which ’real" issues is completely dictated by the user themselves, making all other issues outside of their scope fake issues. And you get these delusions of grandeur when people claim that “Nobody asked for these changes” when requests for it may have been popping up in plain view for years.

tl;dr narcissism.

ok thank you for your answers everyone, though I want to keep in mind that my third sentence is the primary argument of why it should not be used, since a few of the comments above seems to have glossed over that one

People should request whatever features they like in a game. As long as they don’t make claims that it’s easy or try to claim it’s what the majority wants. I frequently +1 the former and I just as frequently will post quotes/paraphrases from ANet or other relevant information about the latter.
—————————————————

I’ve never argued that something shouldn’t be requested because it would take too much dev time. I will continue to point out that ANet must prioritize among all the ideas we provide (both good & bad), and that includes considering whether something uses a lot of resources, as well as how many people would enjoy it.

As an example, people are going to keep asking for a replayable LS1: it was a memorable part of the game that a lot of people missed, there’s a ton of achievements, and for the unique rewards (less so from today forward, thanks to Memory Boxes). People will also ask for new races. I support that. I’m even on record saying that I would like those things.

I will, however, continue to step in when people claim “ANet should do this” or “this should be a priority” or “this wouldn’t be any harder than [fill in the feature]”.

The first set of statements are about personal preferences, about interests, about hopes for the game. The second set are statements about what’s practical, about what’s best for the community, about, well, priorities. People can have a preference, but it’s not okay to misinterpret facts in support of those preferences.

So for example, I can’t recall anyone actually saying, "ANet doesn’t have time to preserve ranger pet names. I paraphrased what ANet told us, which was that it was more complicated than we thought, it took more time than we thought, and it wasn’t likely to happen soon (which, keep in mind: it didn’t happen for a long, long time).

And while I trust ANet to know their business about the current state of the code, it surprised and disappointed me that they didn’t arrange the data to be flexible enough — even if we couldn’t have 40 pet names/character from day one, why did they set it up to make that more difficult to add later?

In short: I support people asking for whatever they want, regardless of effort involved. And, I also think it’s a good idea for us to point out when stuff is more difficult than people make it out to be.

I feel fairly sure I have used its might take too long before, but agree and try not to. For suggestions ANet can come back to any suggestion and provide that line and it be valid. The player base should focus on other aspects of suggestions, work/no work, helpful, harmful, addendum and such. Counter point though a response of think other ideas/issue would be a better use of time is not the same thing but some people treat them as interchangeable statements and they are quite different. 2 cents.

lol, its a trap!

Of course, its is a fair response when a poster states that it should be a “quick” change, then responses that it might take a while is fair.

I have never seen a post by ANET where they say this. This is a player side thing and I have said it myself. What every company does is have a list of what they want done, what can be done by time x and what would basically be fantasy. Everything has a priority whether you own company or not. Player are basically projecting what they think the priorities are.

After the double disaster that was the NPE and the garbage trait unlocking system, I don’t think anything else, comparably, could be considered a waste of the dev’s time.

Edit: Throw Stronghold and EOTM on that pile, too.

Companies exist for one purpose, and that is to generate profit for the owners of the company.

To generate profit, revenue must exceed expenses.

When considering changes to the company’s product, the following questions must be asked:

1. What will the change cost?
2. What will be the change in revenue?
3. What will be the change in expenses?
4. What will be the cost of doing nothing (i.e. lose clients if you don’t do it)?
5. Could the change cost be spent on something that would be more profitable (i.e. do we make more money if we do B instead of A)?

Once you have answered those questions, you can then decide if the change is profitable.

We, the players, cannot answer those questions accurately, but sometimes it is pretty safe to assume the answer.

For mounts, the change is profitable because ArenaNet can monetize skins in the gem store, which will lead to increased revenue that far outpaces the cost and expenses. It is also likely to be a change that is more profitable than doing many other things players have asked for, which makes it an ideal candidate for change.

For build saving, the change is likely not profitable because ArenaNet may have limited or no monetization options which means that there will be no increased revenue to offset the cost and expenses, so the only gain will be a stoppage of customer loss (which may be very minor over something like this).

These are guesses, but they are educated, safe guesses based on real life business factors.

They are not meant to imply that a suggestion is good or bad, merely that they may not be profitable enough to be realistic.

Time vs return is certainly an explanation. I’m an animator, say some one offers me a contract for work that pays $500,000. That sounds great! That’s some serious bank but lets say that the scope of the contract would involve 500,000 hours of work. Sounds bad, I’m making $1 an hour. I’d decline the contract simply because the return wouldn’t be worth the investment regardless of how exciting the work might be.

So yes saying the development time wouldn’t be worth the return is a valid position. If the change takes one dev 100 hours of work and the effective return is zero then from a business perspective you are operating at a loss. You could have put that dev on a project during those hours that would return revenue to the company.

Now Anet seems to have a great many passionate developers that I would suspect dedicate down hours or free time to pet projects. Which is why I suspect we do get so many great quality of life changes. So I suspect suggestions are always welcome but be aware “no” is a valid answer.

No its not

Primarily because this game lacks a PTR systems

Everyone is their own island but thinks that their king of the entire ocean what is or isn’t a waste of dev time isn’t for individuals to decide its a paltry argument. I for one belive you can’t build a proper house without a strong foundation. However Anet and others seem to want to decorate the home instead of worrying about whats under. Look at the Mirage for instance many of its issues are fundamental issues with the core mesmer. They wanted to keep adding instead of fixing and fine tuning. A person talks about PoF and the people will remember HoT as nothing has really changed. People say templates and others say its a waste of time in the end not covering your bases has led to a more toxic community.

The add and they neglect ignore all things that show the lack of connection with a community something that and honest to goodness PTR system would fix. We had a demo not a beta the feedback wont do much if anything at all. It releases in a month and what you see is what you get.

Considering they continue to build on a bad foundation they themselves refuse to repair I’d say the devs themselves don’t even know what is or isn’t a waste of time. For instance they continue to add to the story and yet new players have this giant black hole nestled were season 1 was supposed to be.

mtpelion.4562:

Companies exist for one purpose, and that is to generate profit for the owners of the company.

To generate profit, revenue must exceed expenses.

When considering changes to the company’s product, the following questions must be asked:

1. What will the change cost?
2. What will be the change in revenue?
3. What will be the change in expenses?
4. What will be the cost of doing nothing (i.e. lose clients if you don’t do it)?
5. Could the change cost be spent on something that would be more profitable (i.e. do we make more money if we do B instead of A)?

Once you have answered those questions, you can then decide if the change is profitable.

We, the players, cannot answer those questions accurately, but sometimes it is pretty safe to assume the answer.

For mounts, the change is profitable because ArenaNet can monetize skins in the gem store, which will lead to increased revenue that far outpaces the cost and expenses. It is also likely to be a change that is more profitable than doing many other things players have asked for, which makes it an ideal candidate for change.

For build saving, the change is likely not profitable because ArenaNet may have limited or no monetization options which means that there will be no increased revenue to offset the cost and expenses, so the only gain will be a stoppage of customer loss (which may be very minor over something like this).

These are guesses, but they are educated, safe guesses based on real life business factors.

They are not meant to imply that a suggestion is good or bad, merely that they may not be profitable enough to be realistic.

I used to go to a business school (ZBC), and what you seem to be mentioning is something like the SWOT analysis, and my brother literally is gonna start this month programming where he will get 5.5k$ each month. I do not know how A-Net or the Gw2 team colaborate, but I find it very unlikely that the developers actually take measures like the SWOT analysis before implementing an idea, furthermore, I do not know if NC soft controls the gem store or not. But I am about to enter my bachlor, which I hope will proovide me with enough knowledge to find these out.

Though I would look at their press conference call, and the powerpoint, it indicates that they do distribute money
http://irsvc.teletogether.com/ncsoft/ncsoft2017Q2_eng.php
http://irsvc.teletogether.com/ncsoft/pdf/ncsoft2017Q2_eng.pdf

(They do talk in japanese, and translate it to english in the call)
It is basically saying that the mobile genre, will be huge, and the powerpoint shows that Gw2 is earning the least, but it really showcases how it all works.

Which remind me, that using money as the reason of why developers implement ideas, should not be a reason either. Since again, it is not like devs are like “we prob will make a huge chunk of money by making this” At least not according to the work my brother have done so far, there are of cause much more to it, but it almost seems like people believe that devs just make stuff for the reason of getting money, while the fact seems to indicate otherwise.

And to put a real end to this “devs should/is make(ing) this for profit”

As you know, this have been suggested for literally 4 years or longer now, though the most common answer is, that there is not enough time, nor will it benefit the developers in cash. There are literally 100 things they could have done, if they wanted a increase in profit, making mounts where you can only dye top half half, does not seem to be a good reason. Again, idk how much you can customize these mounts, but based on the things they have showcased, it really does not seem to be worth it.

On this link you can see the……massive number of people who thought it wouldnt be worth it, and how much time it would require is not worth it…..
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mounts-merged

Sorry, I got a bit out of hand here, but using logic like “profitable” “time” etc, where there is really no telling how much time it would take, how profitable it really is from our point of view, and you using swot analysis kinda “wrong”, also triggered me a bit if I have to be honest

zengara.8301

I used to go to a business school (ZBC), and what you seem to be mentioning is something like the SWOT analysis, and my brother literally is gonna start this month programming where he will get 5.5k$ each month. I do not know how A-Net or the Gw2 team colaborate, but I find it very unlikely that the developers actually take measures like the SWOT analysis before implementing an idea, furthermore, I do not know if NC soft controls the gem store or not. But I am about to enter my bachlor, which I hope will proovide me with enough knowledge to find these out.

Though I would look at their press conference call, and the powerpoint, it indicates that they do distribute money
http://irsvc.teletogether.com/ncsoft/ncsoft2017Q2_eng.php
http://irsvc.teletogether.com/ncsoft/pdf/ncsoft2017Q2_eng.pdf

(They do talk in japanese, and translate it to english in the call)
It is basically saying that the mobile genre, will be huge, and the powerpoint shows that Gw2 is earning the least, but it really showcases how it all works.

Which remind me, that using money as the reason of why developers implement ideas, should not be a reason either. Since again, it is not like devs are like “we prob will make a huge chunk of money by making this” At least not according to the work my brother have done so far, there are of cause much more to it, but it almost seems like people believe that devs just make stuff for the reason of getting money, while the fact seems to indicate otherwise.

And to put a real end to this “devs should/is make(ing) this for profit”

As you know, this have been suggested for literally 4 years or longer now, though the most common answer is, that there is not enough time, nor will it benefit the developers in cash. There are literally 100 things they could have done, if they wanted a increase in profit, making mounts where you can only dye top half half, does not seem to be a good reason. Again, idk how much you can customize these mounts, but based on the things they have showcased, it really does not seem to be worth it.

On this link you can see the……massive number of people who thought it wouldnt be worth it, and how much time it would require is not worth it…..
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mounts-merged

Sorry, I got a bit out of hand here, but using logic like “profitable” “time” etc, where there is really no telling how much time it would take, how profitable it really is from our point of view, and you using swot analysis kinda “wrong”, also triggered me a bit if I have to be honest

This is not a SWOT, but a CBA (Cost-Benefit Analysis).

Profitability is always considered, just not maybe by someone at your brother’s pay grade. His bosses’ bosses’ boss is likely doing that and sending the yes/no decision on development direction downstream to your brother’s desk. Depending on the size of the organization and the culture, there may be a focus on customer enjoyment where it is OK to ignore a degree of unprofitable decisions if the end result is a much happier customer, but that culture almost always changes as the company grows (big companies attract big investors and big investors care about making big dollars right now).

I’m also going to reiterate that we don’t have the data that ArenaNet does, and thus cannot say for certain what is and is not profitable. We can make guesses, and sometimes those guesses are very close to being 100% accurate due to the information at hand. A complete redesign of the game’s engine is definitely unprofitable, for example, since it would cost millions of dollars and generate 0 dollars in revenue.

Well whether or not it’s “a waste of dev time”, priority does set what a dev can do on the clock. So in the end it’s not as much of a waste of time but not having the time to implement some idea that’s the limiting factor.

There seems to be a general rule of thumb, on pretty much all MMORPG forums.

If it is something “I don’t want”, “have no interest in”, (E.G. mounts, housing, fishing, raids) then “your suggestion would be a waste of dev time”.

If is “something I’d like to see in game”, then “there are many good reasons why the devs should add this feature” (new class, race, build saver, weapon type).

More often than not when a player uses the excuse “not worth the dev time” they really mean “I want them to do something else first”. Its really a rather selfish excuse for the most part.

Fix engineer or mesmer base class issues? No, can’t have them waisting time on that, they could otherwise use to make another elite spec.. yea, I’ve actually seen this resp8nse before… people actually use the “not worth the time” excuse to say no to fixing things that have ben broken since launch and then say they would prefer they use the time for a new elite spec… which inevitably ends up suffering from the broken mechanics that are left ignored.

Basic rule: if you can’t quote a dev making an official statement about time constraints in reguards to the specific suggestion, then you have zero reason to claim that it will take to long.

Its one thing to say “I don’t think it’d be worth the time or effort” as that purely your personal opinion and is presented as nothing more. But when you omit yourself from the statement it turns into a grand statement that is being presented as a fact rather than the opinion that it really is. No player can factually claim any suggestion to be a waste of dev time, when the statement comes from a player it will always be an opinion.

The same is true of the equally popular “not profitable” excuse from the playerbase.

zengara.8301:

Most answers to suggestions here seems to be about “development time” I get that A-Net have previously explained that it takes time to build a feature into a game, but it seems like any idea, small once and big once, always turn to the familiar “I like the idea, but development time might be to long” answer.

Here’s the thing: dev time is only half the argument. Let’s look at an example: build templates. Obviously I don’t know Anet’s code, but I think it’s fair to say that implementing templates would take quite some work. But nobody says “dev time might be too long” to that suggestion. Why? Because people understand that’s the kind of feature the game could sell x-pacs on. It’s not just about time, it’s about time vs reward.
When someone makes this argument, it isn’t just about the complexity of the feature, it’s about whether Anet, as a company, can justify dedicating that time to adding. Generally, new features/improvements need to have some end purpose in improving/expanding the playerbase or revenue. So if someone suggested Anet overhaul crafting, I would argue that the amount of work put in by the devs to do that would not have a worthwhile conversion into “player satisfaction.”

The thing is we are in a forum. A group of people who love gw2. If someone makes a suggestion and we like it. Just agree. If you don’t, just leave it alone or say why not in a respectable manner. All suggestions are good. Because it gives the devs another idea to add. But if you have the majority of the players who want that idea to also happen you should respect it. Because the devs are sooner or later going to implement it into the game. We should have a suggestion page or request feature page in the forum where everyone just votes. Or denies in a respectable manner. So the devs can just tally it. And later on they might make it, to make the players happy. Now if they do have that page let me know. But I agree. Saying it’s the waste of time for devs is B’s. Very few people actually know what it takes to develop a feature in the game. Let alone make one.

Gotta love all the ‘pro indepth analasys’ going on, even in this thread. hehe

If it’s any consolation, unless it comes from an ANet employee, it’s nothing but pure speculation. I find it annoying as well that people speak for ANet when they literally know nothing of the subject they pretend to be an authority on. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter because they aren’t ANet.

Of course, there are plenty of instances where a person is simply relaying what an ANet employee previously said. For example, I’m told that ANet has said they don’t plan to add more worlds to SAB due to the amount of resources required to create and maintain that project. Too bad! I’d LOVE to see more worlds for SAB!

Request what you want to request. Ignore non ANet employees comments about whether or not the request is possible, feasible, etc.

I seem to remember plenty of people arguing that ANet would never add mounts to GW2 when the feature was, frequently, requested.

Behellagh.1468:

Well whether or not it’s “a waste of dev time”, priority does set what a dev can do on the clock. So in the end it’s not as much of a waste of time but not having the time to implement some idea that’s the limiting factor.

This. No matter how involved or trivial the suggestion would be to implement, the devs will not be able to do everything suggested. Ahat people are really saying is that they’d rather the devs work on something that they want than something they don’t.

The only instance where this is truly valid is the argument about the often-toted DX12 capability; the amount of time investment and cost to do this would be so large for such minimal gains (requires further optimization afterwards and most lag issues aren’t related to it; doesn’t affect actual graphic/polygon fidelity to make the game really look any better, changes system requirements for the game in general, needs multi-client options/DL server configuration/resources, etc.). For ANet, this truly would be a waste of time given the fact it really wouldn’t change much of the game and we can knowingly say it’d be a huge resource investment. Better to work on that for GW3 or future ANet titles.

There’s nothing that’s really a true “waste” of time if it improves the product, but the real matter is about precedent and return for the labor. Money in needs to be less than money out. If we can definitively say some feature would be a huge time investment, such as dynamic PPT and matchmaking via data-driven AI that uses a huge number of heuristics to create balanced matchups weekly for WvW, it’ll take a lot of programming staff, and might only interest a smaller portion of the existing and potentially future playerbase. The same programmers could make some new engine API’s, fix bugs, and make performance optimizations that affect all players via new systems, stabilizing gameplay, and making the game into the future look and behave better, which keeps revenue happening for longer. Would such WvW change be a big deal in the WvW community and keep people playing the format and spending money on the game? Surely. The question is a matter of how much it would in the contet of the whole game. A business needs to recognize and prioritize that. Perhaps they’ll work on both projects with the WvW one in the background for developers who maybe finish early other tasks or use free time if they have an interest in AI on to fiddle with into the future until the precedent for the change overshadows other ideas.

Really, unless we know who works on what projects specifically, and the expected RoI of each backlog task ANet has, we can only at best make predictions. That said, there’s definitely a valid argument about which things should take precedent when factoring in all areas for desired improvement in the game, and stacking those against each other as a prioritized list.

From what I gather, most of the armchair devs on the forums here have no experience in the industry and further have little knowledge about it in general, and can’t distinguish what different people in the gaming industry actually do (engineer/content developer/artist/marketer/management/economist/etc.) and subsequently make a lot of downright untrue statement and assumptions about resource management and budgeting.

Excelsior.

No, this is not and will never be an excuse. They are paid developers to develop, right? If paid developers won’t develop anymore because everything is requiring time and staff (ressources, money – you name it), then they – ironically – unemployed soon. Feedback from customers is mandatory and I often do listen to my customers and spend a few hours at something even though my bosses don’t like that I am doing that. (Or writing a handy real-worklife guide for my trainee – oh boy, don’t get caught sitting on the PC writing stuff in Word because “daz not reel workz, not wurth it!”, but when my both bosses read it, they copied for further references it because it was helpful – WTF…Ambivalence much?) But in the end, the customers, my colleagues and even the supervisor liked it. Yes, video game industry works different than my profession, but this “forbidden time” was worth it, that’s what I want to say. If you never try and come up with “no time”, why do you even get up in the morning?

It does not matter if the developers of whatever kind themselves say that or their bosses and people that plan the budgets/funds – the excuse is cheap in any form, like a big chicken-and-egg problem in its core.

All the other stuff people will talk in this thread basically revolves around those two basic statements I did.

EDIT: I am talking about the very basic idea of employment/work motivation, not about stupid “QoL” suggestions that pop up here and there. It often reads just like people – not necessarily linked to this thread – never do more than the very least because they claim it’s not worth any time, but then, why do they get up in the morning?

My idea of wasted dev time is….

Dev time spent on Temp content… in every single game…

so for example season 1 was a HUGE amount of wasted dev time in long term.

I personally wouldn’t put much stock in any “waste of dev time” arguments.

That’s a matter for ArenaNet to decide, not anyone on these forums. Make your suggestion but be aware that, as others have said, ArenaNet have limited resources and a very busy schedule so even things that seem quite simple might never be addressed because there will always be something that has a higher priority.

zengara.8301:

There might of cause be something I have missed, and that is the reason almost every suggestion contains “not worth the time” answer? If there is, please do inform me.

I think if something is worth it or not, depends on what other things would be sacrificed to make that suggestion. When you try to implement a new feature to a game, it means development time will be taken from some other feature. Especially true for features that are known and confirmed to be hard to implement, like build templates. Even the devs want them but they are not easy to do and they’ve said so on multiple occasions.

Take the mounts for example. Many suggested adding mounts to the game for years, yet they never added them. Now we get them in Path of Fire, but they are not just an addition to the game, but an integral part of the expansion. Before Path of Fire, they were a waste of development time as their purpose wasn’t clear and they would’ve been relatively useless. Now that mounts got a real purpose as an expansion feature, they are no longer a “waste”.

What’s a waste and what is not depends on so many factors but I agree using that phrase on everything is tiring and a waste of post letters.

zengara.8301:

is “waste of dev time” a real arguement?

Yes. It’s a business and dev time costs money. At its core it’s a decision of where to invest these money. You can spend them to develop feature A, content B or whatnot. And because its a business you evaluate the profitability of each choice in order to decide. Some might produce better profit immediately while others may serve to increase the playerbase, thus indirectly increasing the profits of other features/sales. And some are just cool ideas which won’t have a big impact. They might still get implemented, as long as they don’t cost much.

mtpelion.4562:

zengara.8301

This is not a SWOT, but a CBA (Cost-Benefit Analysis).

Profitability is always considered, just not maybe by someone at your brother’s pay grade. His bosses’ bosses’ boss is likely doing that and sending the yes/no decision on development direction downstream to your brother’s desk. Depending on the size of the organization and the culture, there may be a focus on customer enjoyment where it is OK to ignore a degree of unprofitable decisions if the end result is a much happier customer, but that culture almost always changes as the company grows (big companies attract big investors and big investors care about making big dollars right now).

I’m also going to reiterate that we don’t have the data that ArenaNet does, and thus cannot say for certain what is and is not profitable. We can make guesses, and sometimes those guesses are very close to being 100% accurate due to the information at hand. A complete redesign of the game’s engine is definitely unprofitable, for example, since it would cost millions of dollars and generate 0 dollars in revenue.

Ohh ok, because using a SWOT here would not make much sense. The biggest problem is in general, that we simply do not know how they cooperate, we do not know how much control NCsoft got over the game or the devs. I get that we can make guesses, but if you think about what have been implemented since HoT, most of these implemented ideas comes from something people guessed wouldnt have been worth it in time or money for Gw2 (from GH, SPvP/WvW maps/updates, gliders, Raids, mounts etc).

What I am saying is, using that argument in anyway is just ironically unesecary waste of time, and a very wild guess, as explained previously. Simply because they really do not know. To explain it simpler.

A-Net have already changed majorly since beginning, most of the things they explicitly said they would not do, they did (if not all).

It is as if they have chosen the things people said “Gw2 will never have this because time and money not worth” and did it.

I get people think they know what A-Net will or will not have the time to make, but as explained previously, small things like changing rewards in WvW, which is nothing visible took a looooooong time to do, while putting a new map in, with hearts to do, conversations, new monsters/bosses buildings….you name it, took around 2-3 months.

So using that infamous argument just seems out of place, and waste of time, since it is literally a guessing game that rarely ever hits close to the 100% or even 5-10% based on the people saying “raids wont happen” or “Mounts wont happen”.

And just for the people who are using this argument as an “I want them to work on my stuff, not PvP or WvW” They have already explained on stream countless times, that they got groups set up to do the different tasks, PvP team, Raid team, PvE team etc. (They said this, because people got mad Raids got more “attention” than other parts of the game)
It is not like they all gather around and make a new PvP map and then might find a bug someplace then all work on that and then they think “lets make a new raid” and then do that.

If you do not like an argument, using valid reasoning to not get it build is good, using “I need them to work on something else” or “A-Net do not have time to do that” is just plain wrong…..and I mean completely wrong

Well, depends, there’s a thing called priorities…..

How priorities are established that depends the companies workflow, and what developers thinks what is critical VS what provides resources/income.
Even if they have several teams, it means nothing if those teams cant find solutions or the solutions they present when deployed are crap.

Remember the pvp team…. could not do a thing besides forecelly remove trinkets from game????
Cause balance classes was out of question….

Zedek.8932:

Excelsior.

No, this is not and will never be an excuse. They are paid developers to develop, right? If paid developers won’t develop anymore because everything is requiring time and staff (ressources, money – you name it), then they – ironically – unemployed soon. Feedback from customers is mandatory and I often do listen to my customers and spend a few hours at something even though my bosses don’t like that I am doing that. (Or writing a handy real-worklife guide for my trainee – oh boy, don’t get caught sitting on the PC writing stuff in Word because “daz not reel workz, not wurth it!”, but when my both bosses read it, they copied for further references it because it was helpful – WTF…Ambivalence much?) But in the end, the customers, my colleagues and even the supervisor liked it. Yes, video game industry works different than my profession, but this “forbidden time” was worth it, that’s what I want to say. If you never try and come up with “no time”, why do you even get up in the morning?

It does not matter if the developers of whatever kind themselves say that or their bosses and people that plan the budgets/funds – the excuse is cheap in any form, like a big chicken-and-egg problem in its core.

All the other stuff people will talk in this thread basically revolves around those two basic statements I did.

EDIT: I am talking about the very basic idea of employment/work motivation, not about stupid “QoL” suggestions that pop up here and there. It often reads just like people – not necessarily linked to this thread – never do more than the very least because they claim it’s not worth any time, but then, why do they get up in the morning?

That is an interesting ideology, but it does not really touch the subject at hand?
Edited what I wrote, since I saw your edited post in the end

zengara.8301:

Most answers to suggestions here seems to be about “development time” I get that A-Net have previously explained that it takes time to build a feature into a game, but it seems like any idea, small once and big once, always turn to the familiar “I like the idea, but development time might be to long” answer.

Ressources, like developer-time are limited. So yes, if a developer works on feature A he can not work on feature B at the same time, so there is some truth in the above sentence, because company-management and development-team have to prioritize what will be developed and what not.

But the development-time (which equals development-cost aka money) is not the only factor for priorization and we (as players/customers) have not all the internal informations that are used for their priorization and decisions and we can not decide for the company.

We can only tell A-Net what we like and dislike and it is up to A-Net, what they are doing with our input. At the end, A-net wants to sell a product/service so they want to make their customers (most of them) happy, because it is our decision to buy it (or not).

So if another player writes, something is “a wast of dev time” he/she usually means that he/she does not like your suggestion/idea and wants “instead” something different developed. You can ignore such “it is a waste of dev time” responses.

zengara.8301:

If you do not like an argument, using valid reasoning to not get it build is good, using “I need them to work on something else” or “A-Net do not have time to do that” is just plain wrong…..and I mean completely wrong

“I need them to work on something else” is perfect valid reasoning. It’s like you are saying that if I don’t like a feature then saying that I want them to work on something that I actually like is a bad thing.

Of course always within reason, saying “I don’t want them to make gem store outfits and instead add more cats” is invalid because there are different teams working on those things. Same with saying “I don’t want them to add more Fractals, I’d rather they add more WvW maps”, different teams, different things. So it depends on the suggestion. There are those where it is valid, and those that it is invalid.

maddoctor.2738:

zengara.8301:

If you do not like an argument, using valid reasoning to not get it build is good, using “I need them to work on something else” or “A-Net do not have time to do that” is just plain wrong…..and I mean completely wrong

“I need them to work on something else” is perfect valid reasoning. It’s like you are saying that if I don’t like a feature then saying that I want them to work on something that I actually like is a bad thing.

Of course always within reason, saying “I don’t want them to make gem store outfits and instead add more cats” is invalid because there are different teams working on those things. Same with saying “I don’t want them to add more Fractals, I’d rather they add more WvW maps”, different teams, different things. So it depends on the suggestion. There are those where it is valid, and those that it is invalid.

Well, we already know so far they they are split into groups for doing stuff in the game (Like SPvP have their own group), so using it as 1 aspect of the game vs another, is I explained previously, plain wrong (seems like you agree here).
Where we do not agree, seems to be using the dev time line, to get another idea you like better ahead. But the problem here is again, we do not know how much time each takes to be implemented in games, for me it is just a waste of text, unless if the devs did say it wont happen or will take a long time (even though they already did say that with mounts etc)
Because devs ultimately not only decides, but also mainly the only once who have an idea of how long it might take (again, the whole "Reward for wvw took a loong time even though nothing big visually came from it, while making a new raid path took very little time to implement). So using the text that would have used by saying “Devs dont have time for that” seems better used by giving constructive criticism to the actual idea.

Using it in any sense, beside dev said it, or that the person asking is impatient (I want it before xx) just seems wrong to me

maddoctor.2738:

Of course always within reason, saying “I don’t want them to make gem store outfits and instead add more cats” is invalid because there are different teams working on those things. Same with saying “I don’t want them to add more Fractals, I’d rather they add more WvW maps”, different teams, different things. So it depends on the suggestion. There are those where it is valid, and those that it is invalid.

Yes, we know of some A-Net employees/devs that are/were at some teams at some point in time.

But ressources/people are re-assigned to other tasks and teams related to priorities and there are also “shared ressources” that can become bottlenecks for multiple-teams.

We do not know all the teams and the workload of all employees all the time.

And we do not know the internal constraints and dependencies of the GW2-software with all its parts and services as a whole.

So in reality, we normally can not find out, from the outside, as players/customers, if the development of feature-A blocks or delays feature-B, or not. Until A-Net tells us about it.