Guild Wars 2

Not to say anyone at A-net should break whatever agreements for revealing content ect ect ect.

But I do feel this kind of transparency is good. The community not only knows whats coming so certain groups that have uncertainties will be content, since they already know the outcome of whatever is intended. Along with that pre discussion and feedback can be given from the community steering the future updates in the right direction.

“But all the QQers and Whiners will just complain before the content comes out and it’ll be annoying GRRRRRRRRRR SO MUCH HATE AND INTOLERANCE!!!”

That is true however I also think this opens the channels a bit more, and creates communication opportunities. We get devs talking to us occasionally on the forums, and sometimes even players get approached in game, but a lot of the “why” behind intent is left unknown. SOTG videos are good to have, but a lot of them IMO seem to be “We have X, Y, Z in the works. What else do you think we need?” but it doesn’t give us to much reasoning behind the design. So I think communication of the design intentions with early notes would be great, so people can get an understanding and maybe it can be discussed with the playerbase. <- A PTR would work too for communicating information but since we don’t have that… I don’t think this would be a bad idea.

And yes they have given rational behind changes before and I love that I’m shouting “MOAR OF THAT PLZ!” except in a less silly way.

“But we would rather make the game than talk on the forums.” As we are reminded from time to time from the devs, and this is a valid point. But as a solution I gotta say a few things to that.

1. Hire people to be your voice. I can see problems with this mostly when people either say to much or say the wrong thing. So I suggest disclaiming them in their dev sig saying something along the lines of “what is said by this user may or may not be the direct opinions of the developers ect ect ect.”

2. It doesn’t need to be something long, If you don’t have the finances to hire people it could be something short. You notice a something in the upcoming notes that you are currently working on becomes a hot topic, and theres lots of debate and trash talk ect ect. After taking in some of the feed back respond with the rational behind it, and then allow people to talk about the idea behind the change.

3. Take Volunteers, I’d have a hard time believing finance for something like this would be a major set back, but what do I know? If the responses take up to much time and are not a feasible way to proceed and cannot spare the time… Get some eager volunteers, most likely would have to be from around the area if you wanted to give information by word of mouth (since I’m sure a skype call would be more troublesome than just posting, but maybe not.) and just have them scribe or Summarise the rational to the community when something is heated.

What are your thoughts on this?

Lack of communication between Anet/players is a huge reason for the current meta. Any relatively experienced player with some common sense could have told them this was coming. Assuming we get a balance update every 2 months, how much time out of that is spent making decisions and how much is spent working on code? Is there a window of opportunity to throw ideas to the playerbase and receive feedback?

Leuca.5732:

Is there a window of opportunity to throw ideas to the playerbase and receive feedback?

The game is far beyond that.
If, in the first few months Anet more went to that notion and it ended bringing quick, actually a helpful patches…. GW2 could have had a shot at bringing enough progress to work out the kinks and be popular….

But the devs…
A year later and GW2 is still in the same shambles as at launch.
I mean, openness can only do some much, more openness now… Anet is far too set in their way of ‘one step at a time and see how it plays out for a few month’ balancing… that alone kittens up any chance of the game coming back. To boot they don’t seem like the kind of guys who will actually take forums criticism seriously, unless the critique is something they already thought of beforehand.

Leuca.5732:

Lack of communication between Anet/players is a huge reason for the current meta. Any relatively experienced player with some common sense could have told them this was coming. Assuming we get a balance update every 2 months, how much time out of that is spent making decisions and how much is spent working on code? Is there a window of opportunity to throw ideas to the playerbase and receive feedback?

I would not say that exactly when I brought this up months ago ostrig eggs was arguing with me and he was 1 in over all wins at the time. He just kept saying don’t nerf me bro there is no problem with my aoe necros aoe just needs a buff.

Edit: “With some common sense” sry missed that part.

Thesilentflute.8761:

I would not say that exactly when I brought this up months ago ostrig eggs was arguing with me and he was 1 in over all wins at the time. He just kept saying don’t nerf me bro there is no problem with my aoe necros aoe just needs a buff.

Edit: “With some common sense” sry missed that part.

A large number of the pvp community saw this snowballed condi meta coming. The last balance patch pretty much saw all of our fears realized.