The problem is the difference between professions. That’s why people feel left in the cold.
Revenant: Best communication ever (and don’t say Roy is good at communicating because of this, i mean he is, at this very moment, but at launch, post launch, balance patches, Roy was quite silent to be honest. It seems he evolved into a better developper. Wich can only be commended).
Necromancer/Mesmer: Passion shown by Robert, feels like he put more time in it then other devs (like even at home he’s brainstorming how to make them) cause he was way faster ready with them then any other developpers. But that’s not really the point, the point is, he communicated well, though not incredible much; But hey that’s all we player want. We dont need 50 post answering 50 feedbacks. Even ONE would be enough.
Adding onto that: Tempest/Dragonhunter and Karl Mcclain. He didnt communicate like hell, but he started two ‘general DH/Tempest’ discussions, to assemble all feedback, and said he would read it all good start. He even had some limited comments (like – Feedback A is already implemented and being tested, Feedback B we are thinking about). Relative short posts, but they mean a huge difference to the community.
Still Karl but Daredevil: Pretty sure this got overhauled quickly (they might still use their first idea for later rifle spec, but they last minute changed to staff (to many indicators of that being so). That however is not that bad, the idea is great, and most important we got it before the launch date announcement and BWE 2. Karl communicated pretty well here (if i have to choose from his 3 profession, this is his best communication effort).
Warrior: Haven’t really looked deep into it and seems interesting. Anyhow Warrior is hardest profession ever to give specialization, cause they already got the most weapons, it will be huge challenge in future. Roy did communicate minimally but okish. The idea of berserker seems rushed, but how it’s worked out is actually quite well. Not amazing, but hey not all core profession traitline/weapons ‘shine’ either. Perfection doesn’t exist.
Now Druid/Hammer engineer
What is there to say about it? Delayed like a lot. A lot of silence. No feedback. And then they launch HoT sooner then expected. (Signs showed to november/december). And then people watch the other professions feedback, and see how much gets implemented (especially revenant is crazy in here how much player feedback clearly got used). There is no way to overcome the bad feeling, when thinking about the silence on these professions.
There’s some possible scenario’s:
Druid got overhauled and is now in alfa stage. But why be silent about it, sure some people will rage, but forums have always raging people, no way around it. In fact it could open a feedback loop from players to faster get brainstorming going, faster get on the right track, and finalize good ideas, and idealy test them to finetune the feedback. But now there is silence, in this case definitely not good idea, even though admitting it, would also perhaps feel bad for anet.
Druid is complex to finalize. Huh why complex? My thought is, rangers have at the moment something like 25-40 pets. (not gonna count them for this post). All with 4 skills, and their own stats (of course there ‘s a lot overlap, but still), that’s 25 textures to make, and about 60 unique skills. Now there’s talk about facets. If facets replace every pet, then it would mean they have to work on 25+ facets. Pretty much. But is silence the way to go here? Maybe, to be honest of all the option to be silent, this is the one I would understand it the most. Still, silence, slows Anet brainstorming down, slows, correcting them, and the many bugs (more features – or choices rather aka facets), means more bugs anet will not detect, and more work to fix. To pipeline this into efficiency, they should include the player somehow to help/test it before Launch. Everyone knows postlaunch people go on vacation, do something else, take other responsibilities and end up only fixing the major bugs. This is another reason why peopled are worried.
Last option (unlikely in my opinion): Druid is so crazy amazing, that they want to fill the last void of the weeks before HoT with some small hype first, ending with big hype, with a huge specialization announcement. Now some problems with this situations. First of all: How can it be amazing, without server wide bug testing? We all know, that test servers with very low numbers of players, will never replicate or show all bugs. Keeping druid secret till last week, will end up (very likely) to release a lot of bugs. Another mistake in this, is that instead of hyping people, you are worrying people. You had no scare to tease other specializations, why not show Druid? It shows certain kind of fear. For instance Tempest is far from perfect (in my opinion and many others) at the moment. But is that a reason not to show it on POI? On contrary! Look at rebound already being changed. Changing a skill to completley do something else, will rarely happen once it’s launched. This opportunity only existed, cause tempest was released on time and people were allowed to have feedback. Druid might be perfect in eyes of Anet, but players (they are to many and to creative) will always find stuff that Devs won’t. To strong builds, to weak builds, good feedback for simple quality of life improvements. In fact in this case it would be overconfidance that would seem to be the problem.
This is all hypothetical and speculating. The opinion on the hypothetical situations however are not speculations, and carried by a lot of players. It’s meant as feedback to Anet, so they understand why the players feel this is the wrong action.
Needless to say but will anyways, I’m estatic about it.