Guild Wars 2

I think it’s obvious by now that the PVP team is heavily understaffed. I can’t really say if it’s the general impression coming from the forums, or if it is by their own admission in a SOTG, but it’s evident that there are problems with implementing changes and fixing things.

One thing stuck to my mind during the first SOTG: I don’t remember who was it, but one of the top players told the developers that we PvPers can help. If they need infos or feedback about this or that feature of the game, top players are very willing to help and give advice on what works and what doesn’t. And it’s not just the top players: even here on the forums we see a whole bunch of fellas willing to give plenty of advice and solutions to the common problems of the game.

That got me thinking: why not crowdsource the game? With the help of the community members, you can speed up the development process by having us playtest stuff and even write bits of code if you allow us. Other companies actually promote community participation in the form of letting players create addons for their games or providing a PTS to see the effect of future changes, why not do the same here?

If you give us a framework for addons, a ton of the minimal changes that people would see implemented (like small UI tweaks, inventory management, what have you) could fall entirely on the community while the staff can work on more important stuff. If we wanna go past that, I’m sure there’s tons of skilled programmers in here who could easily implement a “Right Click > Duel” fuction to the game or analyze and fix many of bugs every profession has.

So, what I mean to say is:

• Make a Play Test Server, so you can receive immediate feedback on the planned changes and fixes.
• Release parts of code to the community so we can help implementing what needs to be implemented asap.
• Allow us to create addons, so the small things or “utilities” can be taken care of by the community.

A community is a great resource. Don’t waste it.

Or, let us pvpers simply donate a few extra bucks for balance and moar manpower.
Money makes wonders, after all. Just look at pve.

I’d love to see some sort of a Mapmaker or for people to be able to implement MOD’s or sth. But I guess implementing those things would take time and ressources as well, which ANet doesn’t really have…

or hire more people for the pvp aspect of the game. kitten, they sold over 3 millions copies, I think they can afford to pay someone who is not totally brainless (any reference to Karl “The Legend” Mclain is purely random)

The community is the ultimate beta tester. Not only do we all work for free, but there’s lots more of us than Anet could ever hope to hire.

Makes me wish they had spent the first 6 months of release being more adventurous. More frequent changes, more community feedback. We would have made a lot more progress than the slow drip of “we’ll release it when we are satisfied”

How did paid tournaments get released if ANet only releases features when they are sure they are going to work? The 180 on paids demonstrates it’s possible to release something, get feedback, realize it’s not going to work and scrap it. Sure it was annoying to think QPs meant something and then all of a sudden they don’t, but it was fun while it lasted. They should take the same approach with other features – let the community test it as soon as possible, and be willing to admit when some things aren’t working.

Kultas Sunstrider.9218:

or hire more people for the pvp aspect of the game. kitten, they sold over 3 millions copies, I think they can afford to pay someone who is not totally brainless (any reference to Karl “The Legend” Mclain is purely random)

“Don’t criticize what you can’t understand”
How ironic. You know, Karl didn’t become a dev in one of the top game design companies just because of his beautiful ponytail hair. Chances are you have no idea how to right code, how to think on balance changes and it’s impact and you’re precisely criticising what you don’t understand.
I don’t get all this hate on the guy just because he was weird on sotg, maybe he was just nervous and didn’t get his ideas across well enough who knows, but if he’s the one responsible for balance tweeks its because he has the qualifications for it. It’s easy to call someone brainless when all you have to do in this game is enjoy it and go “BOOOO this sucks you brainless” when you don’t like something.

ahuba.6430:

Kultas Sunstrider.9218:

or hire more people for the pvp aspect of the game. kitten, they sold over 3 millions copies, I think they can afford to pay someone who is not totally brainless (any reference to Karl “The Legend” Mclain is purely random)

“Don’t criticize what you can’t understand”
How ironic. You know, Karl didn’t become a dev in one of the top game design companies just because of his beautiful ponytail hair. Chances are you have no idea how to right code, how to think on balance changes and it’s impact and you’re precisely criticising what you don’t understand.
I don’t get all this hate on the guy just because he was weird on sotg, maybe he was just nervous and didn’t get his ideas across well enough who knows, but if he’s the one responsible for balance tweeks its because he has the qualifications for it. It’s easy to call someone brainless when all you have to do in this game is enjoy it and go “BOOOO this sucks you brainless” when you don’t like something.

Mabye he is over-intelligent and super educated, mabye a genius in his area. The problem is we can only judge from the sotg and the actual balance that is happening. And what we see are 3 ppl on a screen searching for excuses because nothing is developed in time.
It’s clear that they are understaffed for pvp and trying to get e-sports (in this incomplete beta-state a nice joke) is for like 5 ppl just toooooo much to handle. For me it’s a fact: Get more ppl working on pvp (outsourcing, temporarily hire), get all the basics (wanted features = see the forum with tons of suggestions) and implement them into the game. Then you can let your 5 ppl make these features perfect. This would need like 3 months and you have a nice PvP and ppl that actually play it.

Finding some good C++ developers isn’t exactly easy…
(Read: You have to spend a loooot of money)

If Anet were an indie Dev I’d say the possibility of this happening to be extremely remote. With a Publisher breathing down their necks? No chance. Not at all.

Play test server maybe, but that doesn’t solve the problem. The rest won’t happen, ever.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Or, let us pvpers simply donate a few extra bucks for balance and moar manpower.
Money makes wonders, after all. Just look at pve.

I do believe I’ve given 200 or I’m closely approaching 200, to GW2
Where my Custom Arenas at?
Think I paid for Sharp to get some new Nikes…
Knowing most gave the 60$ treatment and finished I wonder if this money makes the world go round is really true or not…

If any of you played Quake1, than you know its the godfather of Online FPS games. One of the biggest things about its multiplayer is the grappling hook, its used in all the multiplayer games, and it didn’t come with the game, people created it and it was huge. It created an even faster gameplay then how fast Quake1 is played.

Aaaawwwww…. Quake 1.
Rocketjumping all day long

ensoriki.5789:

I do believe I’ve given 200 or I’m closely approaching 200, to GW2
Where my Custom Arenas at?
Think I paid for Sharp to get some new Nikes…
Knowing most gave the 60$ treatment and finished I wonder if this money makes the world go round is really true or not…

Well, it most definitely makes at least certain individuals’ world go ’round, hehe.

A public testserver will probably never happen. I mean, they can see the discussions on this forum, and do you really believe they will dig through thousands of posts about new balancing changes, when basically every thread will look the same:

• Person A says Ability Z is now OP
• Person B says Ability Z is now balanced
• Person C says Ability Z is still underpowered
• Person D, E and F say ‘You are all wrong. L2P! Yolo!! Swag!!!’
• Person G says ‘I like trains.’

Seriously, they won’t have the manpowerer to find those few gems posted on new changes under the pile of troll posts and just plain wrong informations (intented or unintented wrong informations).

Varonth.5830:

Seriously, they won’t have the manpowerer to find those few gems posted on new changes under the pile of troll posts and just plain wrong informations (intented or unintented wrong informations).

At least that’s just a matter of reading. I find the results of their “internal testing” to be extremely suspect most of the time.

mbh.8301:

Varonth.5830:

Seriously, they won’t have the manpowerer to find those few gems posted on new changes under the pile of troll posts and just plain wrong informations (intented or unintented wrong informations).

At least that’s just a matter of reading. I find the results of their “internal testing” to be extremely suspect most of the time.

A matter of reading and alot of manpower.
Just think about how many new posts are added while a bunch of devs read one post.
They would never stop reading unless they skip alot of these posts (that’s btw a reason ANet and other huge companies have community teams just to dig through all this).

If you add a PTS people expect that everything they post and suggest will be added before patch release. Which would be impossible. It is already impossible to keep up with the amount of posts added, how should they find a way to implement every single suggestion, especially with alot of suggestions probably being the complete opposites.
Count each oppinion, and which side had more voices gets implemented? So a troll-runned game, yes?

Varonth.5830:

A matter of reading and alot of manpower.
Just think about how many new posts are added while a bunch of devs read one post.
They would never stop reading unless they skip alot of these posts (that’s btw a reason ANet and other huge companies have community teams just to dig through all this).

If you add a PTS people expect that everything they post and suggest will be added before patch release. Which would be impossible. It is already impossible to keep up with the amount of posts added, how should they find a way to implement every single suggestion, especially with alot of suggestions probably being the complete opposites.
Count each oppinion, and which side had more voices gets implemented? So a troll-runned game, yes?

So you’re saying there’s absolutely no way to filter posts? Surely by now anet has figured out which posters on this forum they like and which they don’t. Some people on this forum rarely post anything other than antagonizing one liners and rhetoric to allude to some kind of superior understanding of the game. I’m also absolutely certain that the devs have the capacity to decipher which tl;dr posts have merit and identify useful discussion. We can safely assume that such a small community isn’t causing them problems in the manpower department. especially when acting like each post here is worth reading is wrong.

Honestly, I didn’t care about a PTS before I heard some suspect conclusions being drawn from their internal testing. Now I just wish that pvp had been released with some kind of custom map design engine.

their internal testing?

you mean with drone one reads the forums and listens to in game pms before implementing “necessary” balance fixes?

I do not think community map making is feasible since it’s 3d. Wouldn’t it be too complicated? To my knowledge all community map makers were for 2d games? Obviously I mean in terms of gameplay, not graphics (e.g. SC2 has 3d graphics but 2d gameplay).

Balance is something that should be left to the devs since they have the raw data. I’m not sure why there isn’t a test server though.

Bottomline though is that they have to find a way to monetize sPvP better, since if sPvP generated more revenue I’m sure they would devote more staff resources toward it. The only way I see that happening is by making the sPvP side of the game free-to-play to increase the playerbase, and add a TON of aesthetic things to purchase such as skins and dance animations. Perhaps the ability to use custom artwork for guild emblems. Custom servers will be great too obviously, whenever that gets put in.

The only way I can see ANet leveraging community development would be through custom servers if enough customizable options are made available, and UI mods.

Skyro.3108:

I do not think community map making is feasible since it’s 3d. Wouldn’t it be too complicated? To my knowledge all community map makers were for 2d games? Obviously I mean in terms of gameplay, not graphics (e.g. SC2 has 3d graphics but 2d gameplay).

Balance is something that should be left to the devs since they have the raw data. I’m not sure why there isn’t a test server though.

Bottomline though is that they have to find a way to monetize sPvP better, since if sPvP generated more revenue I’m sure they would devote more staff resources toward it. The only way I see that happening is by making the sPvP side of the game free-to-play to increase the playerbase, and add a TON of aesthetic things to purchase such as skins and dance animations. Perhaps the ability to use custom artwork for guild emblems. Custom servers will be great too obviously, whenever that gets put in.

The only way I can see ANet leveraging community development would be through custom servers if enough customizable options are made available, and UI mods.

Unreal Tournament games have level editors.
Basically everything done in the Source Engine of Valve can get costum maps.

The real difference is, that this game is a MMO. The maps have to be on the server, and you definitely do not want that basically everyone has access to the servers to upload map files.
The amount of possible security leaks is so astronomically high…

UI Mods will not happen either.
Just the amount of work required to implement a modding API on top of their current UI would be years of dev time required.
Not to mention that the UI is mostly solid, and just certain things needs to be fixed (hi, right click targeting anyone).
Mods in this game wouldn’t feel right. This isn’t WoW or a WoW-clone you know.

As a software developer (I’m a Technical Lead / PM), finding C++ developers is rather easy. Finding good C++ developers is a whole other story.

They would never in their right mind release the source code to this game, not even snippets of it. It’s just incredibly bad business (competitors suddenly have access to snippets of your code or how certain things work).

Also, in regards to the UI. I’ve spoken to devs in the past in regards to their UI and how it’s structured. Creating a modifiable UI is basically impossible – I was told they would have to start from scratch to even have that option.

i don’t know how could this be even possible. gw2 sold well and they aren’t exactly an indie dev…

KarlaGrey.5903:

Or, let us pvpers simply donate a few extra bucks for balance and moar manpower.
Money makes wonders, after all. Just look at pve.

Not putting any money in this pvp anytime soon thats for sure.

Skyro.3108:

Balance is something that should be left to the devs since they have the raw data. I’m not sure why there isn’t a test server though.

I’m going to forcibly lay some common sense on you. That’s right, I’m gonna meow up in that kitten without any purring consent.

The devs have a responsibility to the game as a whole, because of this they can’t make big boy changes to pvp. Assuming that it is impossible to separate skills into pvp/pve versions the biggest thing to note is that there isn’t anything which will be bad for pve that comes as a result of pvp changes. Sure, maybe glitching dungeons would take a little longer, but ultimately you can use just about anything in pve and get through the content. So, we’ve discovered that being worried about how pvp changes will impact pve is stupid, but we’re still left with the problem that devs can’t change the game that way because of a higher power. Thems be some tied up hands behind some backs.

Now let us untie the hands of the devs by allowing community generated content. Maybe the content wouldn’t happen all that fast and maybe it would have to be a collective effort, but the devs could work on balance under the guise of community generated content and not have to do some Quasimodo version of balance. Or some paragon of balance would emerge from the rubble of our community and accomplish that.

mbh.8301:

Skyro.3108:

Balance is something that should be left to the devs since they have the raw data. I’m not sure why there isn’t a test server though.

I’m going to forcibly lay some common sense on you. That’s right, I’m gonna meow up in that kitten without any purring consent.

You almost made me spit out the sip of tea I took while reading. Haha.