Guild Wars 2

Dear Anet,

Since there is no monthly subscription requiered to play the game and you therefor (should) have less income I wonder what course you will be sailing.

Will you keep developing the game and bring us new content with patches or will you rather fix bugs, etc and keep everything as it is but make sure it all works smooth witha push of the button.

I understand you might not want to disclose your strategy but I wonder if it is usefull to make suggestions or not.

Thank you for your answer!

The content designers (The Living World Team) aren’t the same people who do bug fixes with the programming (The Live Response Team), so they’ll be able to create new content alongside the optimisation and bug fixes

Tzko, take a look at the Halloween update. That pretty much answers your question for you.

@Endless Dreamer: thanks for the info but it does not really answer. I mean, I see it as a timed event which will be over soon. Something that offers mainly cosmetic things and does not change something about the game on a permanent base. thanks for your input tho.

What I wonder if any permanent changes are planned based upon suggestions by players made on the forum. By that I mean things like camerabehaviour, town clothes, barbershop, etc…

Er, no. The things in the Halloween update, other than the event itself, are permanent. The new DEs, the new jumping puzzles, etc.

As for permanent planned things, there is an appearance changing item that appeared in the database, but when it’ll come out, no one knows. They said they have plans for town clothes and they’re trying to fix camera issues. They just also have a lot of more important things on their plate like trying to get a hold on some major bugs.

I read my OP again and I see I should have written improvements instead of content.

I suppose they are fixing and straightening out all bugs so the game runs perfect. And that is how it should be and I support them in that. I just wonder what will happen after that…will they work on an expansion or will they install improvements in the game enhancing gameplay: FOV adjustement, skinclosets, …etc

It seem to me that because we don’t pay subscription fees Anet has less money available to hire loads of people to work on new stuff while other fix the existing bugs and so on. It seems they will have to prioritize, fixing bugs should be top and that leaves me wondering how much budget/time they have to read forums, evaluate suggestions, make a design, iomplement, test and release, etc… Is there a point in us offering suggestions?

No subscription fees, of course, but they do have an income from gem transactions. I imagine they’re doing fine on that front, and we’ll continue to see plenty of additions and improvements.

TheDaiBish.9735:

The content designers (The Living World Team) aren’t the same people who do bug fixes with the programming (The Live Response Team), so they’ll be able to create new content alongside the optimisation and bug fixes

I get this, and you’re probably right. But why?

I know you “can’t take 9 women to make a baby in 1 month” in dev, but you can often times allocate knowledgeable devs (such as those working on new content) to areas that are in critical state (broken DE’s, broken skill points, bots, broken spawn timers, no custom binding of loot/rez/NPC interaction, FOV…just to name a few…even content creators can go through and, say, fix all the issues with Norn (see: Troll Garden jumping puzzle) and the like).

Then, put them back onto new content. Sure the new content will be a month behind or they’ll have to skip a planned event (no October event), but it will stave off some of the bleeding — these critical things are happening NOW. First impressions matter. Current players getting frustrated with months old issues matter.

garraeth.3267:

I get this, and you’re probably right. But why?

Parallel development.

Each team has their specialties.

Content Designers aren’t necessarily programmers. Content Designers (i.e. The Living World Team) say “I need a tool that allows me to do this”, and the programmers (Live Support) then make the tools for content designers to accomplish this. If something has gone wrong (i.e., broken skill points and events), then it’s an issue with the tool made to use it, meaning that the programmer’s are more likely to fix the issue.

However, they can fix issues such as there not being enough room for Norn which, chances are, they have individuals that focus on correcting content.

Bots need monitoring before their banned, meaning someone has to sit there and monitor their activity. That’d be down to Live Security.

TL:DR – Each Team Has Their Own Speciality

AH. Fair. MUCH different reading it that way. My bad, sorry.

I feel like they are working on sprucing up current content and making it work better. It just takes time.

TheDaiBish.9735:

garraeth.3267:

I get this, and you’re probably right. But why?

Parallel development.

Each team has their specialties.

Content Designers aren’t necessarily programmers. Content Designers (i.e. The Living World Team) say “I need a tool that allows me to do this”, and the programmers (Live Support) then make the tools for content designers to accomplish this. If something has gone wrong (i.e., broken skill points and events), then it’s an issue with the tool made to use it, meaning that the programmer’s are more likely to fix the issue.

However, they can fix issues such as there not being enough room for Norn which, chances are, they have individuals that focus on correcting content.

Bots need monitoring before their banned, meaning someone has to sit there and monitor their activity. That’d be down to Live Security.

TL:DR – Each Team Has Their Own Speciality

QFT. The entirety of the GW2 development staff isn’t just one “team” set on one goal. There are multiple teams, each working on their own goals.

Resource management is a tough gig. Knowing what resources to assign to which goal, and when.

OP, look at this article for more info on the different teams working on GW2:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-outlines-guild-wars-2-live-game-development/