In one year, we’ve seen Custom Arenas, Spectator Mode, Solo and Team Arenas, Paid tournaments come and go, Permanent stops, new maps, and many, MANY QoL issues addressed. Not to mention the many changes coming in from the Balance team.
You know why there’s a disconnect between your long list of stuff and players saying you haven’t done anything in the past year? Because with all those things, the game hasn’t actually improved very much.
Custom arenas? I mean I guess they’re cool and all, but they’re not much different than old hotjoins. You left out the most important feature people were looking for from them (turning off nodes).
Spectator mode? Does anyone actually use that outside of tournaments? It’s only available in hotjoins, which isn’t exactly the most competitive of modes and there’s no way to find the top players to watch them.
Arenas? Ya, that was an improvement. Solo queue was definitely needed. But there’s also a real feeling here of… why wasn’t this included at launch instead of the paid tournament system which never had a chance of success?
Permanent stomps? I mean I guess that’s cool; it’s good to get some fluff in pvp. Personally I’ve never even used a rank stomp. It doesn’t have much effect on the game.
New maps? I’m surprised you brought that one up lol. Have you noticed how well those new maps have been received? I think the general opinion of the newer maps ranges from neutral to infuriated.
QoL changes? Hard to say without knowing specifically what you are referring to, but I can tell you as an elementalist, every single time I play this game my experience is worsened by bugs and glitches. Every. Single. Time. So it’s hard for me to get excited about QoL stuff when these problems which have been reported since before launch are still there.
And balance changes? That’s another one I’m surprised you brought up considering the recent events on the forum. Balance has not been getting better over time. It just hasn’t. The gap between worst and best isn’t smaller. There aren’t more viable builds. Certain builds are still complete must haves at high levels. And then the fact that balance changes come so incredibly slowly, and then were halted completely for months due to PAX. No one is impressed by the balance changes.
This is why you so often see players say nothing has changed in the past year. From your perspective, you’ve been working hard and adding tons of stuff, but from the perspective of many players, their experience has not actually improved from your efforts, and the things that more directly impact their enjoyment go largely ignored and unchanged.
This is also why you hear so many players say you completely ignore your playerbase. When people are asking for stuff like new game modes, more frequent and better balancing, improved incentives, reduced rank grind, leaderboard improvements, etc etc etc, you give us Skyhammer, torment, and burning. That doesn’t make people go yay thanks anet! It makes people collectively say ‘wut?’
