Guild Wars 2

How about the devs take some time to fix the broken class mechanics instead of making throwback minigames every month? Most classes have one to two viable builds. Personally, these minigames are proof that ANet is not interested in fixing the problems. This is what we get for no subscription…Devs aren’t held accountable by the fan base.

Those “mini-games” are earning them the money. Fixing or balancing classes is not earning money. Nobody is paying for balancing stuff(it’s just not possible to only sell this for gems and everybody is getting it for free with patches).

“Mini-games” I think you mean the events like Super Adventure Box and the other seasonal stuff like Wintersday and Halloween. That usually is earning them money because they throw in costumes and stuff like that in the gem store which a lot of people are going to buy.

Most game development companies will have different teams.

1 team will develop new ideas.

1 team will write up the code for the new ideas that get approved for the game.

1 team will go through that code and fix glitches that arise after the new idea goes live.

1 team will work on class balancing and other long term fixes.

Chances are ANet has an idea development team and a bug fixing team and a class balancing team that work independently of each other. Meaning they can develop mini-games each month, fix glitches, and try to hone in on class balance better at the same time.

^ what this guy said… not to mention, I enjoy them.

They are funny to me

“**** YOU MONKEY!”

I’d rather see more refined camera mechanics than an 8 bit console game imbedded in an MMO. Apparently I don’t know what sells games.

Faux Play.6104:

I’d rather see more refined camera mechanics than an 8 bit console game imbedded in an MMO. Apparently I don’t know what sells games.

And the teams that would deal with camera mechanics is probably different than the team that deals with mini-games that come out monthly. We can have both without giving up on either.

We don’t have both now. The known issues with the camera mechanics have not been addressed along with the targeting mechanics. I don’t want pimp my video game. Before you add the fridge, big screen TV, and 20 inch wheels to my civic can you fix the brakes and engine?

Seera.5916:

Faux Play.6104:

I’d rather see more refined camera mechanics than an 8 bit console game imbedded in an MMO. Apparently I don’t know what sells games.

And the teams that would deal with camera mechanics is probably different than the team that deals with mini-games that come out monthly. We can have both without giving up on either.

It is funny how some people think 5 guys work in a dark room balancing, coding, creating, and those same guys stopped all that to make a mini-game.. Seriously people do some research. They are called teams, and the people doing SAB etc are the same team who do jumping puzzles and some spare people from Living story (I think).

Josh Foreman.8250:

Here is the core team:

The Super Adventure Box team, from left to right:

Daniel White is our programming magician. He gave us the power to swap out the UI, upgraded the missile code and combat system to get us that old school combat mechanic feel, and got our physics to work with wacky things like bounce mushrooms.

Lisa Davis is the one who brought everything together and made it go. She scripted all the creatures, skills, secrets, and figured out how to make it all work in one coherent whole. A truly magnificent feat!

Jeff Weber was our primary prop and creature artist. He built most of the walls, rocks, clouds, critters, and pretty much everything you see in SAB.

James Smith is our producer extraordinaire who somehow managed to heard all us cats in the same direction. Apparently we wore him out so he couldn’t make it for the picture. Photoshop to the rescue!

Josh Foreman built the maps and coordinated the project.

Trevor Howell brought all our boxy creatures to life with style. He also had to learn to breakdance before animating the spiders.

Jason Wiggin built the Super Adventure Box that sits in Rata Sum, made our weapon skins and the in-game items like the candle, bomb, pointy stick, etc., and the beautiful dancing flowers.

Byron Miller is our principal QA guy (or Secretsfindah) but most importantly, came up with the idea of the bee dog.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151445441444209&set=a.10151445441349209.1073741826.114036714208&type=1&theater

But we had a LOT of help from Maclaine Diemer and Leif Chappelle for music (Lief contributed weekends and evenings because he’s a designer here, not a musician) Jerry Schroeder and Drew Cady making our sound effects and environment sounds. Our effects team: Jens Hauch, Paul Whitehead, Patrick Axlen, Daniel Henley, James Showecker, Lee Bledsoe (Our whole FX department wanted in on the action!) Dave Beetlestone is our environment art lead and helped up navigate the fine line between retro and ugly.
And Peter Fries did our editing and wrote the best shopkeeper line: “I see now that all my hording has brought me only sadness.”

“The full list is:

Live security
Live response
PvP/E-Sports
Holidays and events
Mac and performance
Bonus teams
Commerce"

“A Live Security squad will smack bots, spammers and account thieves, while a Live Response crew will focus on fixing bugs, balancing and answering feedback.

The Living World team is responsible for new content, while a dedicated PvE or eSports cabal will develop Guild wars 2?s competitive side.

A Holidays and Events posse is already hard at work on tan upcoming celebration (likely Halloween) as well as being responsible for world events, and techy types have been coralled off as Mac and Performance, focusing on building an OS-X client and improving the existing PC version.

Finally, the Commerce company is led by an economist and will keep a close eye on the Black Lion Trading Company.

Interestingly, in addition to these seven defined teams, ArenaNet will sometimes throw up what it calls bonus teams, to work on special features and events; the first product of a bonus team is due in November."

If any of the above has changed, I’m sure a red box will reply and fix it :P

GW2 needs a variety of content to attract new players to the game.

Geotherma.2395:

It is funny how some people think 5 guys work in a dark room balancing, coding, creating, and those same guys stopped all that to make a mini-game…

Like in sports some teams are effective and some are not. A lot of the success has to with how the resources are managed. The fact that porting to OSX-10 is part of the duties of the people that optimize game performance, and the fact that they had people programing a 16-bit game engine leads me to think Anet doesn’t think there are any performance issues with the game. I strongly disagree.

Looking at the list you posted this is my impression of the teams effectiveness:

Live security — B+
—A Live Security squad will smack bots, spammers and account thieves
Bots have been an issue, but I have seen a marked decrease since the beginning of the game.

Live response — C+
—Response crew will focus on fixing bugs, balancing and answering feedback.
There are some posts on the forums, but there a quite a few old threads that don’t have an updates. Follow ups such as we don’t think this is an issue, and this is why… We are planning to incorporate this but not in the near future… would be appreciated. As far as balancing I would say that there is quite a bit of polishing on the classes to be done — cough ranger pets

PvP/E-Sports — C
—a dedicated PvE or eSports cabal will develop Guild wars 2’s competitive side.
sPvP nuff said.

Holidays and events — B+
—A Holidays and Events posse is already hard at work on tan upcoming celebration (likely Halloween) as well as being responsible for world events
The changes to daily/monthlies and world events have put more people in zones that used to be ghost towns. This makes playing the plot line through more enjoyable as there are more people to do events with as you level. The glitchy execution of the one time only event brought the grade down.

Mac and performance — D+
—focusing on building an OS-X client and improving the existing PC version.
Camera and targeting need some serious polishing. Camera is still bad near walls. Most other games when you move your mouse faster it accelerates the turning here it slows it down making it feel sluggish. For the love of god allow me to turn off right click targeting! Using combo finishers with groups is very difficult to execute. Most of these issues were noted in beta or early launch and still no updates. I’m assuming there is a working MAC client otherwise an F.

Bonus teams — Incomplete. not clear what they have done so no grade.

Commerce — A
—the Commerce company is led by an economist and will keep a close eye on the Black Lion Trading Company.
Would be A+ if you could filter armor by light/medium/heavy. Other than that they nailed it. There is good transparency of quantity and buy/sell prices and you don’t have to play the auction sniping game to buy stuff. The economy has plenty of gold sinks in it and for the most part material/gem prices are stable.

Faux Play.6104:

Geotherma.2395:

It is funny how some people think 5 guys work in a dark room balancing, coding, creating, and those same guys stopped all that to make a mini-game…

Like in sports some teams are effective and some are not. A lot of the success has to with how the resources are managed. The fact that porting to OSX-10 is part of the duties of the people that optimize game performance, and the fact that they had people programing a 16-bit game engine leads me to think Anet doesn’t think there are any performance issues with the game. I strongly disagree.

Looking at the list you posted this is my impression of the teams effectiveness:

Live security — B+
—A Live Security squad will smack bots, spammers and account thieves
Bots have been an issue, but I have seen a marked decrease since the beginning of the game.

Live response — C+
—Response crew will focus on fixing bugs, balancing and answering feedback.
There are some posts on the forums, but there a quite a few old threads that don’t have an updates. Follow ups such as we don’t think this is an issue, and this is why… We are planning to incorporate this but not in the near future… would be appreciated. As far as balancing I would say that there is quite a bit of polishing on the classes to be done — cough ranger pets

PvP/E-Sports — C
—a dedicated PvE or eSports cabal will develop Guild wars 2’s competitive side.
sPvP nuff said.

Holidays and events — B+
—A Holidays and Events posse is already hard at work on tan upcoming celebration (likely Halloween) as well as being responsible for world events
The changes to daily/monthlies and world events have put more people in zones that used to be ghost towns. This makes playing the plot line through more enjoyable as there are more people to do events with as you level. The glitchy execution of the one time only event brought the grade down.

Mac and performance — D+
—focusing on building an OS-X client and improving the existing PC version.
Camera and targeting need some serious polishing. Camera is still bad near walls. Most other games when you move your mouse faster it accelerates the turning here it slows it down making it feel sluggish. For the love of god allow me to turn off right click targeting! Using combo finishers with groups is very difficult to execute. Most of these issues were noted in beta or early launch and still no updates. I’m assuming there is a working MAC client otherwise an F.

Bonus teams — Incomplete. not clear what they have done so no grade.

Commerce — A
—the Commerce company is led by an economist and will keep a close eye on the Black Lion Trading Company.
Would be A+ if you could filter armor by light/medium/heavy. Other than that they nailed it. There is good transparency of quantity and buy/sell prices and you don’t have to play the auction sniping game to buy stuff. The economy has plenty of gold sinks in it and for the most part material/gem prices are stable.

I believe it said that bonus teams are people who are moved to various areas to help on projects other teams are working on. Like “extras”? I could be wrong.

Faux Play.6104:

We don’t have both now. The known issues with the camera mechanics have not been addressed along with the targeting mechanics. I don’t want pimp my video game. Before you add the fridge, big screen TV, and 20 inch wheels to my civic can you fix the brakes and engine?

Seera.5916:

Faux Play.6104:

I’d rather see more refined camera mechanics than an 8 bit console game imbedded in an MMO. Apparently I don’t know what sells games.

And the teams that would deal with camera mechanics is probably different than the team that deals with mini-games that come out monthly. We can have both without giving up on either.

But the thing is, unlike the car mechanic, multiple people can work on different aspects of the game without losing any efficiency.

So they can fix the brakes the engine while adding the luxury items.

Now, do they have the right number of people on each team? We don’t know and won’t ever get the answer to that question.

And we also don’t know how many glitches they get that are rightfully more important than tweaking the camera some. And who knows, maybe they are working on it but every time they tweak it one way, they make the camera worse. We just don’t know.

Onshidesigns.1069:

GW2 needs a variety of content to attract new players to the game.

Or keep the existing players too. I can’t stand that 8 bit “old style” crap, and all the childish stuff they introduce in the gem store like the quaggan backpack… for god sake we are fighting dragons and zombies with a quaggan plush backpack ? seriously ?

I hope Anet stop doing this childish content and focus on more serious content or at least improve the dungeons or make more serious armors and weapons.

Roktar.2497:

Onshidesigns.1069:

GW2 needs a variety of content to attract new players to the game.

Or keep the existing players too. I can’t stand that 8 bit “old style” crap, and all the childish stuff they introduce in the gem store like the quaggan backpack… for god sake we are fighting dragons and zombies with a quaggan plush backpack ? seriously ?

I hope Anet stop doing this childish content and focus on more serious content or at least improve the dungeons or make more serious armors and weapons.

This is what the game is. If you want serious, elder scrolls online comes out later this year.

You missed the point of the analogy. In pimp my ride they took an old beater car, spent a ton of money on it, but they only added cosmetic things. It still had the same engine w/ 150k miles on it, but it had a 10k stero, 20" rims and a custom leather interior. A solid targeting system, good camera mechanics (even inside or near walls), first person view are things that come standard on most high end MMOs. GW2 is not there yet.

Seera.5916:

Faux Play.6104:

We don’t have both now. The known issues with the camera mechanics have not been addressed along with the targeting mechanics. I don’t want pimp my video game. Before you add the fridge, big screen TV, and 20 inch wheels to my civic can you fix the brakes and engine?

Seera.5916:

Faux Play.6104:

I’d rather see more refined camera mechanics than an 8 bit console game imbedded in an MMO. Apparently I don’t know what sells games.

And the teams that would deal with camera mechanics is probably different than the team that deals with mini-games that come out monthly. We can have both without giving up on either.

But the thing is, unlike the car mechanic, multiple people can work on different aspects of the game without losing any efficiency.

So they can fix the brakes the engine while adding the luxury items.

Now, do they have the right number of people on each team? We don’t know and won’t ever get the answer to that question.

And we also don’t know how many glitches they get that are rightfully more important than tweaking the camera some. And who knows, maybe they are working on it but every time they tweak it one way, they make the camera worse. We just don’t know.

I’m not sure what the problem here is. They have a team of over 200 people. Over one month, they had 8 or so working on SAB, with a few more occasionally putting some time to it. What makes you so certain that this has any kind of impact on their progress with the sort of updates you say you want?

It only took 8 people 4 weeks to put SAB into the game, but some how the team of 200+ has not had the time over the last seven+ months to add an option to disable right click targeting?

Primal Zed.9714:

I’m not sure what the problem here is. They have a team of over 200 people. Over one month, they had 8 or so working on SAB, with a few more occasionally putting some time to it. What makes you so certain that this has any kind of impact on their progress with the sort of updates you say you want?

Faux Play.6104:

It only took 8 people 4 weeks to put SAB into the game, but some how the team of 200+ has not had the time over the last seven+ months to add an option to disable right click targeting?

Primal Zed.9714:

I’m not sure what the problem here is. They have a team of over 200 people. Over one month, they had 8 or so working on SAB, with a few more occasionally putting some time to it. What makes you so certain that this has any kind of impact on their progress with the sort of updates you say you want?

It would seem they have other priorities, yes.

The things you’re bringing up here seem very mundane, too. Disable right click targeting? Is this something that’s been widely demanded, and I just never heard of it? Why should that be a thing?

Maybe the team decided that there wasn’t enough data to suggest that enough people want right click targeting disabled to warrant making an option for it.

Yes, in an ideal world, if one person wanted something like that it would be added. But this isn’t an ideal world. The teams have to take all of the suggestions and decide which are viable suggestions (ie: possible for them to do), which fit their vision for the game, what percentage of the game populace they feel would want that, and what priority level the suggestion should have. Because they only have so many people on the coding team and only so many hours in the day to work.. So yea, some good ideas probably get shelved for a lot longer than one would think.

Maybe that suggestion was considered low priority over other tweaks like that so they haven’t gotten to it yet as more important things have come up.

The team that would work on SAB is not the team that would work on the camera tweaking. Surely, you don’t want ANet to lay off their development team just so they can say they’re 100% focused on tweaking code. Because trust me, you don’t want 200+ people working on the same problem. Too many cooks in the kitchen and all.

They should all be locked in the cellar and whipped until they sort out the specific bugs each player deems is the most important!

Yes even those that don’t have the skills and knowledge for those specific problems! How dare they work on things that they actually know and are employed to do!

Of course you have the issue of each player having a different opinion on what needs to be done first so they should do them all at the same time!

Unless Anet is really badly managed the fact that they have people working on stuff like SAB and on cosmetic “fun” items (yeah I hate the plus too but meh) doesn’t suddenly mean they aren’t working on other things.

What it does mean when the specific thing you want is not coming out when you want it is a) its low priority b) its a much more complex issue than you think or c) your expectations are outside of reality and even a team of 200+ people working on the problem wouldn’t manage to get it done and out in that time frame.

Now if your issue was that people are working on Plush quaggan backpacks rather than working on Awesome Backpack of Death skins then your slightly more valid, but then it comes down to what Anet wants to put in, the best we players can do is suggest things and state how much we’d like to see it.

Rythus.5078:

Most classes have one to two viable builds.

Highly subjective.

Also, ArenaNet area big enough company to have people working on mini-games and monthly events while other, still sizeable teams work on balance, upgrades and other improvements. They have stated this many times, and we have seen it in action over the last updates.

The right click targeting is a 7 month old thread with 11.5k views and 350+ posts. The issue is the camera move is the same button as the target so you can switch targets when you move the camera.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/An-option-to-disable-right-click-targeting

Also, the camera mechanics near was and in caves/buildings is very awkward. If the camera hits a wall it automatically readjusts. There is no first person view so you can’t avoid this. Having some control over what you are looking at and what you are targeting are two fundamental things for any MMO type game.

Primal Zed.9714:

Faux Play.6104:

It only took 8 people 4 weeks to put SAB into the game, but some how the team of 200+ has not had the time over the last seven+ months to add an option to disable right click targeting?

Primal Zed.9714:

I’m not sure what the problem here is. They have a team of over 200 people. Over one month, they had 8 or so working on SAB, with a few more occasionally putting some time to it. What makes you so certain that this has any kind of impact on their progress with the sort of updates you say you want?

It would seem they have other priorities, yes.

The things you’re bringing up here seem very mundane, too. Disable right click targeting? Is this something that’s been widely demanded, and I just never heard of it? Why should that be a thing?

Yes, the thread is a long with numerous replies and views. But what % of that thread is for it and is it truly indicative of what the majority of game players want? A minority of players will post on the forum.

Then they have to figure out would they prefer right click targeting or right click camera movement as the one that can’t be toggled on or off.

While it is a pain, it doesn’t stop you from playing the game and I’d personally call it a minor hindrance for the targeting and a minor issue for the camera movement itself.

So while to you you would put it as a high priority, ANet might not classify it as a high priority problem to solve.

Nor does it mean that development of new things for the game be stopped for it. How many threads do you see clamoring for new things to do? Should they get told nope, no new things because this group of people, which numbers fewer than you want camera control. So we’re going to have to have our development team take a few week vacation while we fix things.

You just need to convince ANet that camera movement and right click targeting are higher priority items than they initially thought. So that they get to it sooner or change their mind on whether or not it’s something they should work on or not.