Guild Wars 2

May Mike do great things for PvP and WvW

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/

inb4 sinking ship comments

Wow this list is growing, no wonder they’re slow to respond to the community

Joining some of his fellow colleagues
•Jon Peters
•Chris Whiteside
•Eric Flannum
•Steve Fowler
Jeff Grubb

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/43rwr8/jeff_grubb_leaves_anet/

Mike says they have a total of 210 devs working on the game

wut

Jesus, too many questions about PVE and WWW.

Where are the spvp questions?

Like everything is ok -.-

Oh man! the guy who acted like he actually cared about the game in interviews is leaving. Also if someone could please explain to me why they are on reddit more then there own forum?

Jesus, my smile return.

“Colin is a personal friend, leaving on good terms, and I wish him all the best.”

This line by itself just looks like:

“You all don’t really trust me, so I am saying this to try and not look like a shady individual.”

kdaddy.5431:

Oh man! the guy who acted like he actually cared about the game in interviews is leaving. Also if someone could please explain to me why they are on reddit more then there own forum?

Probably because it’s easy to reply to one comment multiple times without having to scroll through 20 pages of things.

twhite.9310:

kdaddy.5431:

Oh man! the guy who acted like he actually cared about the game in interviews is leaving. Also if someone could please explain to me why they are on reddit more then there own forum?

Probably because it’s easy to reply to one comment multiple times without having to scroll through 20 pages of things.

ok i can understand that but couldnt Anet just change there own forum page? Plus i believe that was a post and so they couldnt just copy and paste into there own forum?

I dont know, i just feel when there is something they want to comment on the devs and other Anet employees are right there on this forum page. Yet when its stuff they dont want to answer you can hear the crickets. For instance someone asking for Eir Stegalkin as a stronghold hero, boom 2-3 comments. People asking for there MMR, leaderboards, build diversity, etc etc.

It would be nice to at least see there thoughts on such subjects. I mean forum moderates have even said it be nice to hear something from them when they give weekly reports.

I put my ideas (and general idea) on reddit, if you agree with them, just upvote on reddit:

Spvp – Matchmaking. Solo vs Premades. It’s pretty clear matchmaking can’t be always perfect and there are some games decided by beginning like some unbalanced games from a roster size point of view (es. 41vs11111). I suggested to protect the solo player experience in this case with a no loss pip but a loss bonus streak (if present) if they lose the game .I can understeand you can’t filter any composition to not have long queues but at the same time you need to do something in this scenario. With a build template system maybe could be possible to use the meta builds in the matchmaking and balance the game with them. Thoughts?

Balance – 4 Major balance patch during a year more some minor fix is not bad but i think the minor shave needs to be more consistant to fix some overbuffed or overnerfed profession after the balance process (see the reaper rain in ranked).

Structure – OFF season needs some rework to not let player disappear for a month, this time needs to be spent for player to train for the next season. Arena 2vs2 would be great and at the same time utilize off season like placement for new season beginning could be an idea. Put new rewards (like Glorious hero armor pieces and/or the old armor pvp set) for people who already have the precursor backpiece from season 1.

Replay mode – I did a topic on the spvp forum about it: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/What-about-replay-mode/first#post6004184. I think is a crucial tool to improve spvp in this game, from a spectator and player side.

colin got a lot of things done, but failed the PVP and WvW community. PVE is important but never should take priority over PVP balance, in a game that is trying to be esports and taken seriously as a competitive game.

Mike is a visionary who serves his company best at the boardroom policy level. I sincerely hope this dual role as game director is a short-lived interim phase. GW2 needs an operative game director as soon as possible, and it should be someone with a stellar track record in operations management. I also hope the new director is passionate about PvP and WvW and understands their power for the longevity of GW2. If you design PvP & WvW right, this game will sustain itself far into the future on emergent gameplay alone. GW2 has the best combat system of any MMO I have ever played. It’s high time we had the infrastructure to match it.

My dream candidate for the job is circa 2006 Matt Firor before he was snatched by Zenimax. All those hard lessons learned from DAoC still fresh in mind, ready to revamp sPvP and WvW. All we need is a time machine.

Aereniel.7356:

Mike is a visionary who serves his company best at the boardroom policy level. I sincerely hope this dual role as game director is a short-lived interim phase. GW2 needs an operative game director as soon as possible, and it should be someone with a stellar track record in operations management. I also hope the new director is passionate about PvP and WvW and understands their power for the longevity of GW2. If you design PvP & WvW right, this game will sustain itself far into the future on emergent gameplay alone. GW2 has the best combat system of any MMO I have ever played. It’s high time we had the infrastructure to match it.

My dream candidate for the job is circa 2006 Matt Firor before he was snatched by Zenimax. All those hard lessons learned from DAoC still fresh in mind, ready to revamp sPvP and WvW. All we need is a time machine.

Sorry to burst your bubble but Mike is the star of a famous video on youtube where he says “wvwers are really into pve”.

Tontonino.9736:

Mike says they have a total of 210 devs working on the game

wut

At least 210, it’s funny how all the script kiddies on these forums think software development is easy. It’s magic, it just works! “I wrote a few hundred lines of code in college, including Hello World!”

I write more code in a normal work week than in 4 years of college. It takes hundreds of programmers and millions of lines of code to make GW2 work.

Archon.6480:

Tontonino.9736:

Mike says they have a total of 210 devs working on the game

wut

At least 210, it’s funny how all the script kiddies on these forums think software development is easy. It’s magic, it just works! “I wrote a few hundred lines of code in college, including Hello World!”

I write more code in a normal work week than in 4 years of college. It takes hundreds of programmers and millions of lines of code to make GW2 work.

Dev is a nebulous term – it may refer to designers rather than programmers.

Archon.6480:

Tontonino.9736:

Mike says they have a total of 210 devs working on the game

wut

At least 210, it’s funny how all the script kiddies on these forums think software development is easy. It’s magic, it just works! “I wrote a few hundred lines of code in college, including Hello World!”

I write more code in a normal work week than in 4 years of college. It takes hundreds of programmers and millions of lines of code to make GW2 work.

because not having a test server makes whole lot of sense… Seriously, you dont need to be a pro game programmer to know what’s ideal dev environment and what’s not. I’m a full stack developer in finance industry in NYC, we have a staging test servers and run unit testing before merging / pushing code changes, you’d think it’s pretty common for gaming company to do something similar. For the amount of developers Anet claim they have, they sure suck at having a system for handling their internal QA. More often than not, they break old stuff and introduce new bugs. There are plenty good software development concepts like Agile, perhaps Anet should adopt one of them and hire capable people to write user stories to improve their development processes.

Zetsumei.4975:

Sorry to burst your bubble but Mike is the star of a famous video on youtube where he says “wvwers are really into pve”.

You’re not doing yourself any favours by omitting context. Darkness Falls was PvE and it was some of the universally most liked content in DAoC. Now Trials of Atlantis on the other hand, there was a poopstorm of epic proportions.

Who would you want to head GW2 and why?

Rome.7124:

because not having a test server makes whole lot of sense… Seriously, you dont need to be a pro game programmer to know what’s ideal dev environment and what’s not. I’m a full stack developer in finance industry in NYC, we have a staging test servers and run unit testing before merging / pushing code changes, you’d think it’s pretty common for gaming company to do something similar. For the amount of developers Anet claim they have, they sure suck at having a system for handling their internal QA. More often than not, they break old stuff and introduce new bugs. There are plenty good software development concepts like Agile, perhaps Anet should adopt one of them and hire capable people to write user stories to improve their development processes.

I hate to burst your bubble, but I would say to you a little knowledge is dangerous. It leads you to have a false sense of security in what you think you understand but don’t. You clearly have little knowledge of their SDLC, which is most certainly, and glaringly obvious, agile. Living world seasons one and two being the most obvious examples of this.

In addition to this, I would be extremely surprised if they have less than eight different environments. They could easily have ten or twenty.

cosmicegg.8502:

Wow this list is growing, no wonder they’re slow to respond to the community

Joining some of his fellow colleagues
•Jon Peters
•Chris Whiteside
•Eric Flannum
•Steve Fowler
Jeff Grubb

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/43rwr8/jeff_grubb_leaves_anet/

Multiple employees mass leaving any organization usually indicates a disconnect between leadership and the employees doing the work. This is especially true when the people leaving are managers and/or team leaders.

Bearded.6485:

cosmicegg.8502:

Wow this list is growing, no wonder they’re slow to respond to the community

Joining some of his fellow colleagues
•Jon Peters
•Chris Whiteside
•Eric Flannum
•Steve Fowler
Jeff Grubb

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/43rwr8/jeff_grubb_leaves_anet/

Multiple employees mass leaving any organization usually indicates a disconnect between leadership and the employees doing the work. This is especially true when the people leaving are managers and/or team leaders.

Generally it is also a good indication that either :

A: Those ‘leaving’ were Incompetent
B: The management above them are Incompetent

Using agile development methods, TDD/BDD, Git, CI, and having a test server(s) and a QA team in no way guarantees that you will not introduce new bugs when fixing existing ones. That is the ideal you strive for, but any developer knows that this idea is simply a function of time and costs. Costs and time will grow exponentially the closer you come to realizing that bug-free software development dream.

There are plenty of criticisms I have of Anet, but (obviously) without ever having seen it, I personally don’t feel they have a glaringly bugged or rigid code-base. I have much more of a beef with the terrible decision making process that leads to over buffing and/or over-nerfing of things, which can never amount to a balanced system.

If i make honest post here i would get perma banned.

Daroon.1736:

Bearded.6485:

cosmicegg.8502:

Wow this list is growing, no wonder they’re slow to respond to the community

Joining some of his fellow colleagues
•Jon Peters
•Chris Whiteside
•Eric Flannum
•Steve Fowler
Jeff Grubb

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/43rwr8/jeff_grubb_leaves_anet/

Multiple employees mass leaving any organization usually indicates a disconnect between leadership and the employees doing the work. This is especially true when the people leaving are managers and/or team leaders.

Generally it is also a good indication that either :

A: Those ‘leaving’ were Incompetent
B: The management above them are Incompetent

Typically if those leaving were Incompetent then they would be fired, not just leaving.

Bearded.6485:

Daroon.1736:

Bearded.6485:

cosmicegg.8502:

Wow this list is growing, no wonder they’re slow to respond to the community

Joining some of his fellow colleagues
•Jon Peters
•Chris Whiteside
•Eric Flannum
•Steve Fowler
Jeff Grubb

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/43rwr8/jeff_grubb_leaves_anet/

Multiple employees mass leaving any organization usually indicates a disconnect between leadership and the employees doing the work. This is especially true when the people leaving are managers and/or team leaders.

Generally it is also a good indication that either :

A: Those ‘leaving’ were Incompetent
B: The management above them are Incompetent

Typically if those leaving were Incompetent then they would be fired, not just leaving.

Upper and Middle management never get fired, they ‘leave’ or ‘move on to other projects’

Rome.7124:

Archon.6480:

Tontonino.9736:

Mike says they have a total of 210 devs working on the game

wut

At least 210, it’s funny how all the script kiddies on these forums think software development is easy. It’s magic, it just works! “I wrote a few hundred lines of code in college, including Hello World!”

I write more code in a normal work week than in 4 years of college. It takes hundreds of programmers and millions of lines of code to make GW2 work.

because not having a test server makes whole lot of sense… Seriously, you dont need to be a pro game programmer to know what’s ideal dev environment and what’s not. I’m a full stack developer in finance industry in NYC, we have a staging test servers and run unit testing before merging / pushing code changes, you’d think it’s pretty common for gaming company to do something similar. For the amount of developers Anet claim they have, they sure suck at having a system for handling their internal QA. More often than not, they break old stuff and introduce new bugs. There are plenty good software development concepts like Agile, perhaps Anet should adopt one of them and hire capable people to write user stories to improve their development processes.

You can’t compare the resources of a company in tech/finance to the resources of a game developer.
One venture capitalist could fund GW2 for a lifetime, and that’s only the bottom level of funding.

Also, look at NCSoft’s 2015 Q4 financial statement.
Taking a look at retained earnings of the previous year, current year, and net income of current year. Using that and converting currency (should do at 2016 rate), NCSoft paid nearly $60 million USD in dividends.
They’re still keeping a portion of income for the company, but you can’t forget that NCSoft looks for quarterly profits.
If they aren’t profitable, GW2 will be dropped. That’s why ArenaNet tries to be profitable, not sustainable.

Despite all the gem store sales, it might be profitable in the short run, but highly unlikely to be sustainable in the long run, where a company needs to invest in R&D to stay relevant, and R&D in this case would be test servers and new developers.

Daroon.1736:

Bearded.6485:

Daroon.1736:

Bearded.6485:

cosmicegg.8502:

Wow this list is growing, no wonder they’re slow to respond to the community

Joining some of his fellow colleagues
•Jon Peters
•Chris Whiteside
•Eric Flannum
•Steve Fowler
Jeff Grubb

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/43rwr8/jeff_grubb_leaves_anet/

Multiple employees mass leaving any organization usually indicates a disconnect between leadership and the employees doing the work. This is especially true when the people leaving are managers and/or team leaders.

Generally it is also a good indication that either :

A: Those ‘leaving’ were Incompetent
B: The management above them are Incompetent

Typically if those leaving were Incompetent then they would be fired, not just leaving.

Upper and Middle management never get fired, they ‘leave’ or ‘move on to other projects’

sinking ship —> people leaving —> sinking even worse —> damage control firings —> … sunk, most likely.

I just wonder what amazon is building to be honest.

cosmicegg.8502:

I just wonder what amazon is building to be honest.

google

Scalyon.7028:

cosmicegg.8502:

I just wonder what amazon is building to be honest.

google

Thanks I was wondering if they were creating new franchises. Lumberyard and Game Lift look like a good fit for them. Developers with access the the new engion for free gives developers a lot of room to be creative.

nativity.3057:

Rome.7124:

Archon.6480:

Tontonino.9736:

Mike says they have a total of 210 devs working on the game

wut

At least 210, it’s funny how all the script kiddies on these forums think software development is easy. It’s magic, it just works! “I wrote a few hundred lines of code in college, including Hello World!”

I write more code in a normal work week than in 4 years of college. It takes hundreds of programmers and millions of lines of code to make GW2 work.

because not having a test server makes whole lot of sense… Seriously, you dont need to be a pro game programmer to know what’s ideal dev environment and what’s not. I’m a full stack developer in finance industry in NYC, we have a staging test servers and run unit testing before merging / pushing code changes, you’d think it’s pretty common for gaming company to do something similar. For the amount of developers Anet claim they have, they sure suck at having a system for handling their internal QA. More often than not, they break old stuff and introduce new bugs. There are plenty good software development concepts like Agile, perhaps Anet should adopt one of them and hire capable people to write user stories to improve their development processes.

You can’t compare the resources of a company in tech/finance to the resources of a game developer.
One venture capitalist could fund GW2 for a lifetime, and that’s only the bottom level of funding.

Also, look at NCSoft’s 2015 Q4 financial statement.
Taking a look at retained earnings of the previous year, current year, and net income of current year. Using that and converting currency (should do at 2016 rate), NCSoft paid nearly $60 million USD in dividends.
They’re still keeping a portion of income for the company, but you can’t forget that NCSoft looks for quarterly profits.
If they aren’t profitable, GW2 will be dropped. That’s why ArenaNet tries to be profitable, not sustainable.

Despite all the gem store sales, it might be profitable in the short run, but highly unlikely to be sustainable in the long run, where a company needs to invest in R&D to stay relevant, and R&D in this case would be test servers and new developers.

kitten son, that’s a good comment.

Hmm this might have a big impact on the game. This ‘back to roots’ approach could be very good for PvP if it’s realised.

For him to take over… Sounds like drastic measures. I hope they pay off.

Good luck Colin. I didn’t read all the deats, but if as the above suggests you are moving to Amazon that sounds like exciting stuff.

Maybe gw1 can finally update its engine now.