Guild Wars 2

+1. Dev posts in the wvw sub-forum are rarer than a funny episode of Scrubs.

bump

We’re into the largest WvW event but hey, apparently, there’s nothin for ArenaNet to engage us with on the WvW front. What has it been? One post from Devon Carter about megaservers and Allie telling us she’s quitting?

This is a problem and it needs fixing. I don’t expect it to be fixed overnight but I don’t think people should be expected to be quiet over it until it is fixed.

Or you know, people can start pullin up the pre-launch posts off Guru and talking to them next.

This is how the WvW forum cycle goes:

1) WvW forums are neglected by ANET.

2/3) Players get frustrated at the company focusing on the gem store and PvE.

2/3) Players make hundreds of threads about how to improve WvW, all are ignored.

4) Months later, ANET sends a person over to talk to the people, not do anything, just talk.

5) The players, who have been ignored and frustrated for months, tear into the new staff member on the block.

6) Staff member doesn’t have thick enough skin to repair the damage caused by ANET.

7) Staff member never posts on the forums again.

8) Repeat.

And nothing gets done or improved in WvW, and it will be like this for the games entire existence. Live with WvW being in this sorry state forever, or move on.

Also:

The company has no pvp/wvw balancing teams

The company has no wvw team, and only a very small pvp team.

97.1337% of the companies staff work on pve.

I would also like to throw in some cheerleading for Styx’s post here. We’re buying gemstore stuff. We’re playing the game on a near daily basis. We post guild wars stuff on our social media. And we are WvWers. The people I started playing this game with, the casual PvE population which migrated from GW1 is long gone. WvW is our endgame, and it desperately needs a legitimate, paid team of hired Anet employees who devote their attention to WvW and have at least one person in that team who consistently communicates with the playerbase. And not just the one person who drew the short stick over coffee and bagels who will go back to reading and responding to sPvP forums shortly thereafter.

In this post Josh Davis asked for lists, break downs, bullet points. We continue to provide these, but the lack of communication on this sub forum remains sparse.

+1

I’ve noticed wvw is getting a bit more attention, but now allie is gone, spirited off to the lands of better jobs. we wish her well

I’ve heard there is a very high turnover rate at Anet because of management and lack of communication between business units.

There are game designers and developers who have the answers that we are asking for, and who could easily explain rationale for certain mechanical design choices that were made with the game to respond to MANY of the suggestions that players make to improve WvW.

Hope that someone steps up to the plate.

IT IS pretty sad. I remember reading impressive statistics from Anet about how many players engage with WvW every week compared to some of their other games, and If those statistics were not blown out, then I have no other option but to be amazed at how little Anet suits seem to care about the only real endgame that Gw2 has to offer.

Realist.5812:

This is how the WvW forum cycle goes:

1) WvW forums are neglected by ANET.

2/3) Players get frustrated at the company focusing on the gem store and PvE.

2/3) Players make hundreds of threads about how to improve WvW, all are ignored.

4) Months later, ANET sends a person over to talk to the people, not do anything, just talk.

5) The players, who have been ignored and frustrated for months, tear into the new staff member on the block.

6) Staff member doesn’t have thick enough skin to repair the damage caused by ANET.

7) Staff member never posts on the forums again.

8) Repeat.

---

And nothing gets done or improved in WvW, and it will be like this for the games entire existence. Live with WvW being in this sorry state forever, or move on.

Also:

The company has no pvp/wvw balancing teams

The company has no wvw team, and only a very small pvp team.

97.1337% of the companies staff work on pve.

^ QFT.

I dream of the day they finally stop promising/discussing/teasing/assuaging/ignoring and start implementing/delivering. Of course, that’s never going to happen until someone at ArenaNet figures out a more creative way to monetize the kitten out of WvW beyond server transfer fees.

It comes down to the old adage, “Follow the money.” If there’s little or no money to be had from WvW, then the development strategy looks…exactly like what we’re currently stuck with. I don’t blame the individual developers given responsibility over WvW for this. I can fully sympathize with being in a department that gets the short end of the stick come budget time.

It’s just unfortunate that those responsible for making the executive level decisions have a such a failure of vision when it comes to WvW. Done right, it could become such a cash cow for ArenaNet while simultaneously making the player base happy that resources are finally being put into the WvW game mode.

Until then, print out the quote from above, tape it somewhere near your monitor, and refer to it whenever you’re left scratching your head why simple QoL improvements to WvW aren’t being implemented almost 2 years after launch in defiance of what would seem common sense.

(1 of 2 posts)

In the interest of mutual understanding, a possible explanation: (part 1)

Behavioral science, over the last 40-50 years, has shown that world-wide, people fall into 4 specific patterns of interaction style 75% of the time. This can be described via two intersecting axis: one for a level of assertiveness, the other a level of emotional responsiveness. The intersection of these two axis creates four basic observable behavioral types which can be labeled: analytic, driver, amiable, expressive. Analytics, according this observable behavior model, are usually low assertive when dealing with others (75% of the time), and low emotionally responsive (75% of the time.) In other words, Analytics tend to be data and process driven and value that over emotional-data (feelings), and being socially motivated.

Organizations, companies, any sustained system of people end up having a culture that is the majority collective of this same observable behavior. In other words, companies also can be described as acting (75% of the time) along the same two axis of level of assertiveness intersecting with level of emotional responsiveness. In short, a company that prefers to communicate in a process-driven way, that values precision/data and judges credibility based on those values can also be called Analytic.

A mature Analytic understands and uses their interaction style in a way that takes advantage of their strengths (data and process oriented), and at the same time recognizes they need to flex in a versatile way to ensure that communication and interaction is effective. In other words, Analytics, in order to facilitate more effective communication, need to understand that at least 50% of the world’s population does not value data and process to the exclusion of social considerations and emotional content (feelings). A mature Analytic would need to temporarily adjust their behavior 25% of the time, to try and reach out socially/emotionally, by being a little more emotionally responsive when responding and little less process-bound. In other words: try and meet the other person in a way that values that other person’s behavioral culture.

Stress, however, can affect anyone’s ability to temporarily modify their innate behavior. no mature how mature they are.

Behavioral science, over the last 40-50 years has also mapped what happens when each of the 4 interaction styles operates under patterns of increasing stress. Being data and process driven, if the Analytic does not have data, or discovers a flawed process, or has been given too much data and gets into a situation where analysis of the data leaves them unable to create an obvious solution or outcome (“analysis paralysis”), or the Analytic is constrained somehow (via process, or other stressful pressures beyond their control – management, business environment, economy, etcetera), their first observable reaction is to retreat and/or withdraw… in short: they avoid. Pushed beyond that, the Analytic will go through a “backup” or stress pattern that will eventually have them acting 100% opposite of their innate comfort zone: they will become extremely assertive and emotional. In other words: “a melt down”. No one wants to see that.

So, some of what we could be seeing here, appears to be a very competent set of Analytics under a great deal of stress, not understanding how their behavior is being perceived by the majority of their customers.

This post is not intended to be an attack, nor a rationale, merely a possible explanation.

(Happy to supply a less “esoteric” version if all this gobbledystuff is incomprehensible.)

.
.
See “however” post farther below. (part 2)

styx.7294:

Alright, I’m a paying customer. I bought the game and I’ve bought from the gem store (with gold as well as dollars). My last dollar purchase was 800 gems for the guild finisher. So recent enough. My point is I’m not someone who hasn’t played the game for 6 months and only comes to whine. I’m active, paying, engaged.

I will use the sPvP forums as an example but this isn’t about whining or being jealous. This is about illustrating what sort of service I am expecting and not getting.

It’s easy to bring up how many dev posts there are in sPvP front page (at all times) compared to WvW forums. It’s kittening shameful.

More specific example. This Friday a blog post was revealed for a sPvP feature. People had concerns and how fast were their concerns answered even before that blog post happened? There were even posts before even the blog post letting people know whether it will address their concerns.

“I’ll put down the rumors right now: This is not Gw1 Templates.

Watch this Friday’s Ready Up to learn more!"
(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/PVP-build-button-noticed/first#post3809737)

As soon as the blog post was up, a dev started a post to talk about it in the sPvP forum (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/PvP-Rewards-Blog)

That’s engagement and that’s service.

What’s it like on the WvW forums? No talk about what’s happenin with WXP account bound since February. No follow up discussion or whatever.

Instead people on the WvW forums are digging up threads from a thousand years ago (6+ months) about WXP account bound and other things (commander functionality!) because that’s all the dev talk there is.

It’s gotten really pathetic and sad here.

Look at this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Commander-Abilities/first! It’s 7 months old, wasn’t even 2 pages, but still got dug up and started a conversation about commander tags because Devon posted in it. That’s the state of engagement we have.

I get different people have different personalities. If Devon Carter isn’t big on posting, that’s fine, that’s not a fault.

What is a fault is that you haven’t gone and hired someone to start posting in here instead. Hire someone already!

I know it’s not super exciting sayin “We’re workin on that but can’t reveal anything” or “We’re not working on that but we can consider it” but it beats this mess.

Besides, there are things to talk about. We had a whole huge thread about transfer fees and population balance. Where’s the follow up on that? Did this create different trajectories of transfer before or after? What are commander tags doin? Are more WXP abilities coming? Do you think people get through gates too fast? Are you looking at lifting the AoE cap or is it still off the books (just keep telling us the state of these things, the game is ongoing and new people want to know!).

/vent

I figured I’d put this up here so that other people can vent too, haha. Hope it doesn’t get deleted! If I can’t communicate to a company through their forums, I dunno what!

As a disabled player who plays to keep my mental abilities as sharp as possible, I second your comments.

We paid for this gorgeous game – now we want to see the “promises” made, kept.

I have been a loyal player who logs many hours a day during WvW season.

I see others here for at least the amount of time I am and more, – up to 16 hours at a time for some commanders who are battle weary and mentally fatigued from waiting for all the promises made to date.

Wvw doesn’t make money. It’s a self inflicted reality. They neglect it, we wvw lovers stop buying or leave the game, they invest less into wvw, and the death spiral ensues. Go play teso. Wvw is a focus of that game.

Month or so and I will be happily paying my money to someone who (at this point in time) seems to actually listen… and cares enough about its customers to <gasp> reply.

See, in business, you have customers.
To me at least, it would seem Anet has not made that leap yet. To me it seems, we are just gamers playing their game, not customer (no longer) enjoying the service (or lack thereof) they are offering.

Just a few more weeks, and there will be viable and promising alternatives. Lets see how well this kind of customer service flies when their is actual competition.

However: (part 2)

WvW had so much promise, so much potential at release. I’ve enjoyed it on almost a daily basis. It has kept me in the game.

That feeling however is stretching pretty thin as some of the “little” things that could have been addressed (and haven’t) add up over a very long time.

I’m not unsympathetic for what may be happening internally. (see long post above).

However, sympathy aside, I am a paying customer (don’t ask) who has a new opportunity to invest elsewhere. Sadly. I’d like to stay here, I feel I really have no choice.

Waiting until after the April 15th patch, which will bring some changes. Not sure I can support the on-going “wait and see” attitude for the others after such a long time.

What I’d like to see is them make good on the concept that EotM was to be a testing ground for new WvW ideas. It would be a golden opportunity for them to re-engage the community and take a truly pro-active and collaborative (hey, ArenaNet, you decided to go there with the buzz word first) approach to designing the game.

Each week (yes, I said week) take one – just one – of the small quality of life suggestions posted here on the forum and put it into EotM. Use whatever metric they need to sort and filter which ones get implemented; number of views, numbers of posts, etc.

Then, put a feedback form into the game similar to what they used during the Beta Weekend Events for players to rate the new mechanic that’s being tested.

Next – and this is very important – remain totally transparent with the feedback results by posting them here on the forum and continue to engage us in discussion about the pros and cons of the change. In other words, don’t fall into the trap described by goldenwing above of gathering the data but not bothering to share it with us or discuss our concerns. TALK TO US !

If the change in EotM is well received, it’s then implemented in WvW.

As it’s so oft requested, has near-unanimous consensus (I have yet to hear anyone speak out against it), and is easy to implement, I vote for giving commanders the ability to change their icon color as the first new feature to be tested.

Now, some may argue – and rightly so – that certain changes that would work in WvW won’t translate well to EotM; different commander tag colors may be one of them. EotM is very zerg-oriented and – as such – typically has only one commander flagged on at a time. In which case, maybe WvW itself makes for the better test bed. I don’t think anyone would complain if this were tested directly in WvW rather than EotM.

Lastly, as part of this process, keep communicating with us, posting a schedule of upcoming features to be tested each week; perhaps a month in advance week-by-week so we know what’s coming next.

The most effective thing you can do as a WvW player is to stop spending money on gems. Vote with your wallet.

Other than that, there are few means by which we can pressure a.net into making better decisions. Posting on the forums does very little to improve our circumstances. WvW still feels like a trickle-down format to me, it’s the place that gets attention after everything else is taken care of, if at all. We’ve repeatedly called for implementation of new ideas, and for a.net to use EotM as “beta testing grounds” if necessary.

Then again, with the last big CDI project ending in nothing – probably mostly due to disagreement within the community – it’s not difficult to see why a.net are having problems charting a course for WvW. There are, however, simple QoL improvements that we’ve been waiting for a very long time and that everyone agrees should be implemented. Those, at least, should be in the game by now.

In the meantime, if you are a paying customer, and a.net doesn’t care about you – stop paying them!

It really is sad that only spvp gets any sort of engagement from the devs when it has the lowest player involvement.
To be fair to all communities in the game, the dungeon community has it far worse.

Solution: Don’t buy gems!!!

Quick Mouse.7635:

It really is sad that only spvp gets any sort of engagement from the devs when it has the lowest player involvement.
To be fair to all communities in the game, the dungeon community has it far worse.

Sadly it’s not a competition. And I agree. Why WvW is our guild’s last fallback for staying in the game.

I have always advocated “Accept, Tolerate, and Vote with your Feet (or wallet)”. That works at a personal level. Unfortunately, voting with your wallet as a WvW player only strengthens the perception that WvW players aren’t the ones “supporting” ANet.

Attrition seems to be the only thing that most developers (read: “bean counters”) respond to these days, usually after it’s too late.

I personally don’t have an answer otherwise. Or perhaps, I feel like I’ve just run out of options.

Loosmaster.8263:

Solution: Don’t buy gems!!!

This is not any sort of solution in any universe. This is up to ArenaNet to solve.

Works perfectly fine for me. How about everyone else? I haven’t purchased 1 Gem with real money. Get everyone on your server not just the WvW players. If servers are so “community” oriented, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Loosmaster.8263:

Works perfectly fine for me. How about everyone else? I haven’t purchased 1 Gem with real money. Get everyone on your server not just the WvW players. If servers are so “community” oriented, it shouldn’t be a problem.

If you have never purchased gems I bet Anet doesn’t give a flying squirrel about your opinion. Quite honestly, I don’t think Anet gives a flying squirrel no matter how many gems you’re buying, because even though they have clear data which they’ve eluded to before about exactly how large the WvW community is (whether they’re buying gems or not), they won’t put a real team or a company focus on it. Especially neglecting to communicate with WvW playerbase, which is a symptom of neglecting WvW in general.

Anyone remember Josh, last I recall he popped on to say hi as the new WvW community thingy?

Now as I watch this twitch video I see his title is “Champion Genius”…….. When did that happen, where was his farewell post to the WvW community that he has now moved on to the Genius part of the game? What is the Genius part of the game? What’s going on?!

Josh is always busy and most of the time it is the s/tpvp side of the game. most of the active devs like pvp subforum more anyway but he seems like a busier one than the rest so he might not have been the right guy to be sent over to the wvw forum to attend to the community here…

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

Anyone remember Josh, last I recall he popped on to say hi as the new WvW community thingy?

Now as I watch this twitch video I see his title is “Champion Genius”…….. When did that happen, where was his farewell post to the WvW community that he has now moved on to the Genius part of the game? What is the Genius part of the game? What’s going on?!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/Josh-Davis-6015/showposts
Josh isn’t who Anet should be sending over, from his post history. And yeah, 2 months ago he posted that he wanted feedback on WvW, and there’s been pretty much nothing from him since on this subforum at least.

melodey.4652:

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

Anyone remember Josh, last I recall he popped on to say hi as the new WvW community thingy?

Now as I watch this twitch video I see his title is “Champion Genius”…….. When did that happen, where was his farewell post to the WvW community that he has now moved on to the Genius part of the game? What is the Genius part of the game? What’s going on?!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/Josh-Davis-6015/showposts
Josh isn’t who Anet should be sending over, from his post history. And yeah, 2 months ago he posted that he wanted feedback on WvW, and there’s been pretty much nothing from him since on this subforum at least.

This is the sort of kitten I’m talking about.

1. ArenaNet says they’ll do something and then nothing. Not even a “Oops” or “Sorry”.

2. Why they haven’t hired anyone to engage us like that I don’t know. Has any ArenaNet player posted their WvW rank? It doesn’t reflect at all well on them. Largest WvW event ever in the near 2 year history of the game right now, involving thousands of players across the world, and no one from ArenaNet has said anything in the last 2 weeks about it on the WvW forums. It’s like it doesn’t exist.

I’m really starting to question why I am paying them to ignore me and others in the WvW community.

They’re not volunteers, they’re not doin this on the off time, I don’t care if they don’t care like doing it. It ought to be done.

We’ve complained about the service long enough. This is the thread where I’m letting ArenaNet know I’m dissatisfied with the inadequate engagement. Is this the only way this is gonna get fixed?

Want their attention? Stop playing as many of us already did.

I hear ya but honestly what are they going to do? Send the next sacrificial lamb to the WvWvW forums to say “Here are the things we’re not and have no intention of working on?”. Right now, the game is in a state where quality of life tid bits are being drawn out and dangled as if they were almost expansion packs, which is a giant red flag for me. Seasons are a joke because slapping some achievements and shinies on the same broken mode doesn’t make it a sport. They have players who care enough to complain but for how long?

gennyt.3428:

They have players who care enough to complain but for how long?

Until they gain enough Infraction Points to warrant a permanent ban from the forums of course

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

Anyone remember Josh, last I recall he popped on to say hi as the new WvW community thingy?

It was pretty clear that Josh is no longer doing that WvW job when Allie started posting but now she’s gone……………..

But no communication from anyone at anet about it.

Boycotting the gemstore/the game is not a solution. If anything that just encourages them to cater to their casual population even more. We want actual solutions and communication from Arenanet. Hire more people/redirect employees to this. The pace of change and polish is beyond snail-paced. It’s glacial. And the interaction between Anet and the WvW community is glacial too, when it doesn’t have to be.

So the issue with WvW players not buying gems is that it gives them a reason to stop supporting WvW in favor of PvE content. (Doubtful they’d do that, as they know as well as anyone it would literally kill the game. WvW is huge, given how much of the discussion on fan sites revolves around it and how many people consider it to be the end game.)

Why not then get the support of the PvE community? If they stop buying gems or voice their concerns as loud as the WvW community, wouldn’t that force ArenaNet to involve themselves more?

I think the problem is that — despite the community’s opinion — ArenaNet thinks WvW is fine how it is. They don’t involve themselves in the community because they view it as futile, since nothing you could say would change their mind that WvW is perfectly fine. Matches? Working perfectly. Siege? Fine how it is. Server balance? Horribly unbalanced fights are the intention! It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.™

So really, I just see two choices: Get the support of the entire GW2 community (not just the WvW crowd), or completely detach yourself from caring about the game because anything short of a kitten riot isn’t going to light a fire under ArenaNet’s kitten.

(It’s also possible they don’t want to touch WvW because they don’t want to “break” it and kitten off the large number of players who have a diverse set of reasons for participating in WvW. However, judging by how often they change up everything else on a whim, it’s 99% likely they just don’t feel like their resources should go towards it at this time.)

Not only are we being ignored, but Anet keeps making other changes that hurt WvW Community (killing the match-up threads, megaservers).

WvW needs dedicated community liason, who will listen to us and push for the things we care about.

Haha, it is really telling that a thread, where the starter complained about players being forced to revive ancient threads because of anets lack of communication, gets revived after months of lack of communication.

zortek.9607:

styx.7294:

I’m really starting to question why I am paying them to ignore me and others in the WvW community.

Because you either have no alternative or you are not yet so thoroughly disgusted.

When you have reached either place… you won’t bother reading or posting to the forums and you will stop logging in entirely.

This is known.

Alternatives are coming. Kinda like winter, for Anet.

styx.7294:

Alright, I’m a paying customer. I bought the game and I’ve bought from the gem store (with gold as well as dollars). My last dollar purchase was 800 gems for the guild finisher. So recent enough. My point is I’m not someone who hasn’t played the game for 6 months and only comes to whine. I’m active, paying, engaged.

I will use the sPvP forums as an example but this isn’t about whining or being jealous. This is about illustrating what sort of service I am expecting and not getting.

It’s easy to bring up how many dev posts there are in sPvP front page (at all times) compared to WvW forums. It’s kittening shameful.

More specific example. This Friday a blog post was revealed for a sPvP feature. People had concerns and how fast were their concerns answered even before that blog post happened? There were even posts before even the blog post letting people know whether it will address their concerns.

“I’ll put down the rumors right now: This is not Gw1 Templates.

Watch this Friday’s Ready Up to learn more!"
(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/PVP-build-button-noticed/first#post3809737)

As soon as the blog post was up, a dev started a post to talk about it in the sPvP forum (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/PvP-Rewards-Blog)

That’s engagement and that’s service.

What’s it like on the WvW forums? No talk about what’s happenin with WXP account bound since February. No follow up discussion or whatever.

Instead people on the WvW forums are digging up threads from a thousand years ago (6+ months) about WXP account bound and other things (commander functionality!) because that’s all the dev talk there is.

It’s gotten really pathetic and sad here.

Look at this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Commander-Abilities/first! It’s 7 months old, wasn’t even 2 pages, but still got dug up and started a conversation about commander tags because Devon posted in it. That’s the state of engagement we have.

I get different people have different personalities. If Devon Carter isn’t big on posting, that’s fine, that’s not a fault.

What is a fault is that you haven’t gone and hired someone to start posting in here instead. Hire someone already!

I know it’s not super exciting sayin “We’re workin on that but can’t reveal anything” or “We’re not working on that but we can consider it” but it beats this mess.

Besides, there are things to talk about. We had a whole huge thread about transfer fees and population balance. Where’s the follow up on that? Did this create different trajectories of transfer before or after? What are commander tags doin? Are more WXP abilities coming? Do you think people get through gates too fast? Are you looking at lifting the AoE cap or is it still off the books (just keep telling us the state of these things, the game is ongoing and new people want to know!).

/vent

I figured I’d put this up here so that other people can vent too, haha. Hope it doesn’t get deleted! If I can’t communicate to a company through their forums, I dunno what!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/RE-Where-are-all-the-devs/first#post3937612