Guild Wars 2

Distaste.4801:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Pavel.8531:

Let me start with this quote:

DevonCarver.5370:

When I’ve been working on WvW for 11 months, then we’ll talk.

So, 11 months have passed, let’s talk then?
1. What is currently being worked on for WvW?
2. Why are things, that have been in the top of the player requests for over an year not only not implemented, but even not talked about from your side?
3. We haven’t heard from you since you posted in the “new maps” thread several months ago… and that was after around 6 months of you not posting. Do you think if you communicated better you’d avoid some of the huge negativity and toxicity on the WvW forums? Any plans to do something besides hiring more mods and creating additional CoC rules?

Feel free to add more questions guys.

I am going to jump in here answer these as honestly as I am able.

1. We can’t talk about that right now. Once the in-development features reach a state where we, as a company, are comfortable talking about them, we will.
2. Some player requests are under development. What those are and when they will be completed, I can’t say at this time for reasons mentioned above.
3. Devon is very busy with his job duties and only has limited time to devote to reading the forums. If he spent the time demanded of him responding to threads on the forums, his work would suffer. My job duties have me reading and reporting on the forums regularly to ensure that Devon and the rest of the team are aware of active concerns within the WvW community. I do this for other parts of the forum as well. As has been mentioned a multitude of times previously, our developers read the forums as much as they are able, but time prevents them from responding to everything they read.

1. This is the exact mentality that has lead people to think ArenaNet doesn’t listen or care. You guys might want to rethink your information strategies as it’s having a large negative impact on the community. Sure talking about features you might not do or even scrap can be bad, but if you keep the community updated about them it won’t be nearly as toxic as your current strategy of letting the community wallow in despair and hate. Of course the only reason I can think of for continuing down this path is that the updates for WvW are so lackluster that informing the community that is all that’s in the works for them would kill what’s left of the community.

2. While I don’t doubt that you’re using some player requests, that was also true a year ago and we’ve yet to see or even hear anything. See point #1, you cannot just keep saying we can’t talk about it.

3. Then you need to report back to the WvW team that their silence and lack of a simple MONTHLY or even QUARTERLY information update on what’s happening is helping to kill wvw. We don’t need devon to make posts here, he is just a figurehead, what we need is an ArenaNet representative to keep us informed and hopeful. It doesn’t take buy 10mins to throw together some basic information on what’s being worked on, what got scrapped, and what they would love to do but aren’t working on yet. Yes, some people will be upset if something gets scrapped, but do you think the negativity then is anything like what it is currently?

Honestly you guys are doing way more harm than good. Let’s try a different tact and put it into business terms. You guys need to think of players like investors, if every 3 months at the investor meeting you say nothing the players aren’t going to invest. Not only that they are going to dump your company and invest somewhere else where they get the information they want.

You can speak for me anytime – dead on, clear and concise.

Many of us here feel exactly as you do.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

1. Devon is very busy with his job duties and only has limited time to devote to reading the forums. If he spent the time demanded of him responding to threads on the forums, his work would suffer. My job duties have me reading and reporting on the forums regularly to ensure that Devon and the rest of the team are aware of active concerns within the WvW community. I do this for other parts of the forum as well. As has been mentioned a multitude of times previously, our developers read the forums as much as they are able, but time prevents them from responding to everything they read.

Here let me fix this for you.

1. Devon is very busy planning Season 3 which will be one bracket of all 24 servers for 26 weeks. He feels that will provide new and exciting matches like EB vs. TC vs. BG; plus it will allow him to say he provided content for the next 6 months. Additionally, he is working with the Living Story teams to ensure some of the story content makes its way into WvW so you don’t miss all the fun. He only has a limited time read and respond to forum posts but unfortunately he spends that time staring in the bathroom mirror working up the courage to face the mean and rude WvW posters. If he actually responded to a post he is afraid the vile WvW’rs would destroy what little remains of his self-esteem and his games of computer solitaire would suffer. We are aware of your concerns but you don’t buy as many gems as your casual PvE counterparts so we don’t care. If there is actually anything WvW related we are working on expect to see it with the $60 expansion pack because you were too cheap to buy gems. We will be posting a CDI on what you want in the expansion pack then pass it around the office and laugh as we are not going to do any of it.

There ya go….. fixed.

P.S. A preemptive thanks for the infraction.

atheria.2837:

Chaba.5410:

Victory.2879:

Mark’s comment tells us nothing, promises nothing and gives away nothing

That’s about as diplomatic a response as is possible when the mob is fickle.

How did players who love the game become a “mob” to you OR to anyone?

Not familiar with the phrase are you?

I went back to find the WvW roadmap, now can anyone tell me exactly which of their wishes/promises/dreams actually happened in the last year. https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/devon-carver-on-the-future-of-world-vs-world/

Distaste.4801:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Pavel.8531:

Let me start with this quote:

DevonCarver.5370:

When I’ve been working on WvW for 11 months, then we’ll talk.

So, 11 months have passed, let’s talk then?
1. What is currently being worked on for WvW?
2. Why are things, that have been in the top of the player requests for over an year not only not implemented, but even not talked about from your side?
3. We haven’t heard from you since you posted in the “new maps” thread several months ago… and that was after around 6 months of you not posting. Do you think if you communicated better you’d avoid some of the huge negativity and toxicity on the WvW forums? Any plans to do something besides hiring more mods and creating additional CoC rules?

Feel free to add more questions guys.

I am going to jump in here answer these as honestly as I am able.

1. We can’t talk about that right now. Once the in-development features reach a state where we, as a company, are comfortable talking about them, we will.
2. Some player requests are under development. What those are and when they will be completed, I can’t say at this time for reasons mentioned above.
3. Devon is very busy with his job duties and only has limited time to devote to reading the forums. If he spent the time demanded of him responding to threads on the forums, his work would suffer. My job duties have me reading and reporting on the forums regularly to ensure that Devon and the rest of the team are aware of active concerns within the WvW community. I do this for other parts of the forum as well. As has been mentioned a multitude of times previously, our developers read the forums as much as they are able, but time prevents them from responding to everything they read.

1. This is the exact mentality that has lead people to think ArenaNet doesn’t listen or care. You guys might want to rethink your information strategies as it’s having a large negative impact on the community. Sure talking about features you might not do or even scrap can be bad, but if you keep the community updated about them it won’t be nearly as toxic as your current strategy of letting the community wallow in despair and hate. Of course the only reason I can think of for continuing down this path is that the updates for WvW are so lackluster that informing the community that is all that’s in the works for them would kill what’s left of the community.

2. While I don’t doubt that you’re using some player requests, that was also true a year ago and we’ve yet to see or even hear anything. See point #1, you cannot just keep saying we can’t talk about it.

3. Then you need to report back to the WvW team that their silence and lack of a simple MONTHLY or even QUARTERLY information update on what’s happening is helping to kill wvw. We don’t need devon to make posts here, he is just a figurehead, what we need is an ArenaNet representative to keep us informed and hopeful. It doesn’t take buy 10mins to throw together some basic information on what’s being worked on, what got scrapped, and what they would love to do but aren’t working on yet. Yes, some people will be upset if something gets scrapped, but do you think the negativity then is anything like what it is currently?

Honestly you guys are doing way more harm than good. Let’s try a different tact and put it into business terms. You guys need to think of players like investors, if every 3 months at the investor meeting you say nothing the players aren’t going to invest. Not only that they are going to dump your company and invest somewhere else where they get the information they want.

Fantastic post, +1

Mark Katzbach.9084:

I am going to jump in here answer these as honestly as I am able.

1. We can’t talk about that right now. Once the in-development features reach a state where we, as a company, are comfortable talking about them, we will.
2. Some player requests are under development. What those are and when they will be completed, I can’t say at this time for reasons mentioned above.
3. Devon is very busy with his job duties and only has limited time to devote to reading the forums. If he spent the time demanded of him responding to threads on the forums, his work would suffer. My job duties have me reading and reporting on the forums regularly to ensure that Devon and the rest of the team are aware of active concerns within the WvW community. I do this for other parts of the forum as well. As has been mentioned a multitude of times previously, our developers read the forums as much as they are able, but time prevents them from responding to everything they read.

This answer actually makes things worse than better. Still hearing this after two years, even though history has proven you wrong makes this unbelievable and almost comical. Almost…

Mark Katzbach.9084:

I am going to jump in here answer these as honestly as I am able.

1. We can’t talk about that right now. Once the in-development features reach a state where we, as a company, are comfortable talking about them, we will.
2. Some player requests are under development. What those are and when they will be completed, I can’t say at this time for reasons mentioned above.
3. Devon is very busy with his job duties and only has limited time to devote to reading the forums. If he spent the time demanded of him responding to threads on the forums, his work would suffer. My job duties have me reading and reporting on the forums regularly to ensure that Devon and the rest of the team are aware of active concerns within the WvW community. I do this for other parts of the forum as well. As has been mentioned a multitude of times previously, our developers read the forums as much as they are able, but time prevents them from responding to everything they read.

First Rule of WvW Dev Club is: You do not talk about WvW
Second Rule of WvW Dev Club is: You DO NOT talk about WvW

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

I am going to jump in here answer these as honestly as I am able.

1. We can’t talk about that right now. Once the in-development features reach a state where we, as a company, are comfortable talking about them, we will.
2. Some player requests are under development. What those are and when they will be completed, I can’t say at this time for reasons mentioned above.
3. Devon is very busy with his job duties and only has limited time to devote to reading the forums. If he spent the time demanded of him responding to threads on the forums, his work would suffer. My job duties have me reading and reporting on the forums regularly to ensure that Devon and the rest of the team are aware of active concerns within the WvW community. I do this for other parts of the forum as well. As has been mentioned a multitude of times previously, our developers read the forums as much as they are able, but time prevents them from responding to everything they read.

First Rule of WvW Dev Club is: You do not talk about WvW
Second Rule of WvW Dev Club is: You DO NOT talk about WvW

lol

Yup, only thing you can do is wait for the next patch and see what has changed (if any). Sad but true.

Distaste.4801:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Pavel.8531:

Let me start with this quote:

DevonCarver.5370:

When I’ve been working on WvW for 11 months, then we’ll talk.

So, 11 months have passed, let’s talk then?
1. What is currently being worked on for WvW?
2. Why are things, that have been in the top of the player requests for over an year not only not implemented, but even not talked about from your side?
3. We haven’t heard from you since you posted in the “new maps” thread several months ago… and that was after around 6 months of you not posting. Do you think if you communicated better you’d avoid some of the huge negativity and toxicity on the WvW forums? Any plans to do something besides hiring more mods and creating additional CoC rules?

Feel free to add more questions guys.

I am going to jump in here answer these as honestly as I am able.

1. We can’t talk about that right now. Once the in-development features reach a state where we, as a company, are comfortable talking about them, we will.
2. Some player requests are under development. What those are and when they will be completed, I can’t say at this time for reasons mentioned above.
3. Devon is very busy with his job duties and only has limited time to devote to reading the forums. If he spent the time demanded of him responding to threads on the forums, his work would suffer. My job duties have me reading and reporting on the forums regularly to ensure that Devon and the rest of the team are aware of active concerns within the WvW community. I do this for other parts of the forum as well. As has been mentioned a multitude of times previously, our developers read the forums as much as they are able, but time prevents them from responding to everything they read.

1. This is the exact mentality that has lead people to think ArenaNet doesn’t listen or care. You guys might want to rethink your information strategies as it’s having a large negative impact on the community. Sure talking about features you might not do or even scrap can be bad, but if you keep the community updated about them it won’t be nearly as toxic as your current strategy of letting the community wallow in despair and hate. Of course the only reason I can think of for continuing down this path is that the updates for WvW are so lackluster that informing the community that is all that’s in the works for them would kill what’s left of the community.

2. While I don’t doubt that you’re using some player requests, that was also true a year ago and we’ve yet to see or even hear anything. See point #1, you cannot just keep saying we can’t talk about it.

3. Then you need to report back to the WvW team that their silence and lack of a simple MONTHLY or even QUARTERLY information update on what’s happening is helping to kill wvw. We don’t need devon to make posts here, he is just a figurehead, what we need is an ArenaNet representative to keep us informed and hopeful. It doesn’t take buy 10mins to throw together some basic information on what’s being worked on, what got scrapped, and what they would love to do but aren’t working on yet. Yes, some people will be upset if something gets scrapped, but do you think the negativity then is anything like what it is currently?

Honestly you guys are doing way more harm than good. Let’s try a different tact and put it into business terms. You guys need to think of players like investors, if every 3 months at the investor meeting you say nothing the players aren’t going to invest. Not only that they are going to dump your company and invest somewhere else where they get the information they want.

I agree with you. +1

Saint Scarlet.2906:

I went back to find the WvW roadmap, now can anyone tell me exactly which of their wishes/promises/dreams actually happened in the last year. https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/devon-carver-on-the-future-of-world-vs-world/

Well it says “future”, so is the year 3245.

Please, just ask the higher ups if you can spoil something…

Anything, like, ‘’One of the features will be something about keeping track of numbers’’ and kitten like that. ‘’Another upcoming thing will have you run around somewhere else.’’

Just anything really.

Dry responses like ‘’We understand and are working on whatever but we can’t talk about it’’ are really disheartening.

Chaba.5410:

Victory.2879:

Mark’s comment tells us nothing, promises nothing and gives away nothing

That’s about as diplomatic a response as is possible when the mob is fickle.

+1 for an all-too-frequently unrealized truth.

comon peps
like Mark say they working on something
now ether they lie ether they slaking ether they dont have ppl to acual work on that

pve have every 2 week upadate and for sure that demands way more work than fixing sommething on wvwvw

unlles the bugs that they fix on last update-idk if any1 cares if about those – take the sime time with 3 pve updates that hapens the last month…idk realy

http://jdsmanstories.net/?p=566

This old story is an example of the current situation with wvwer and devs. Wvwer are passionate about wvw but it is frustrating with the lack of response from A-net about any improvements for Wvw. People have stop believing that A-net is doing anything about wvw.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

I am going to jump in here answer these as honestly as I am able.

1. We can’t talk about that right now. Once the in-development features reach a state where we, as a company, are comfortable talking about them, we will.
2. Some player requests are under development. What those are and when they will be completed, I can’t say at this time for reasons mentioned above.
3. Devon is very busy with his job duties and only has limited time to devote to reading the forums. If he spent the time demanded of him responding to threads on the forums, his work would suffer. My job duties have me reading and reporting on the forums regularly to ensure that Devon and the rest of the team are aware of active concerns within the WvW community. I do this for other parts of the forum as well. As has been mentioned a multitude of times previously, our developers read the forums as much as they are able, but time prevents them from responding to everything they read.

Mark, first of all thanks a lot for posting.

Your first and second points are clear; if the company can’t talk about upcoming features until they have reached a certain state I can accept that as your policy.

However, that doesn’t mean you can’t communicate with us more than you have been. We know the team reads the forums but communication is a two way thing and I think there is scope for increased communication without breaking your company policy. A couple of examples of things that would help:

1. Can we get an indication when you communicate popular concerns to the team? This gives us confirmation that concerns have been heard and allows us as a community to manage and focus our discussion knowing that you are aware of a particular issue. Without something like this it is hard to know whether we should keep raising an issue to try and highlight its importance.

2. Is it possible for the team to let you know when an idea or suggestion made on the forums really stands out to them, so you can respond with a quick post to let us know the team liked it? Again this gives the suggestion some focus and players can rally around such ideas and have more meaningful discussion around it. Maybe the team could even feed questions back to the players? I have seen Evan do this on the PvP forums.

Is the above possible? Fine, you can’t tell you what features you are working on and when they are coming, I understand that. But I don’t think the current level of communication is sufficient and on balance there is greater communication on the PvE and PvP sub-forums. Would you agree with that?

There are ways to communicate without spilling all the beans. You can say “permanent changes to WvW maps” without having to go into details.

You can say “exploring ways to enhance the commander interface” without giving away the farm.

What we’ve seen are long, drawn out silences; little to no idea if there even is a dedicated WvW Dev team (ie, people who work on WvW 40 hours a week).

ANet has done some meaningful updates. Whether you like or hate the changes, the WXP masteries, EotM, and PvE added in did take some work and the effort is appreciated.

However, there hasn’t been a peep since January? Surely 7 months is long enough to pick a strategy, to begin to explore and research, and make decisions on what to pursue based upon those findings. Even a brief “WvW Mission Statement” would be nice.

The thing is, they have not been following through on any of it. There were supposed to be more WXP masteries, but we did not have a new one in long time. there were supposed to be more changes and experiments in EotM, but we have seen nothing. There was supposed to be a CDI and i dont have to tell you how that went..

And they didnt even take the time to tell us “Yeah.. about that, we wont be doing it because reasons”, they just kinda up and vanished..

Sorry Mark, but as the days go on, more and more people will refuse to believe that.

Anet Says: They want to be more transparent
Anet Shows: Nothing, instead they go into hiding

Anet Says: They are working on things
Anet Shows: Nothing at all about what they are working on, no more blogs, videos, notes, etc. instead everything is being classified as a “company decision”. What ever happened to free ideas and open creativity? We would love to hear the ideas of what they want to do, they don’t have to be promises.

Anet Says: They are watching player suggestions and ideas
Anet Shows: Very little sign of (wtf censoring) acknowledgement of player suggestions and ideas, causing players to stop suggesting things all together due to feeling unwanted.

Anet Says: The team is busy
Anet Shows: No information on the size of said team, how busy said team actually is, what said team is focused on, rough estimates on testing and QA for the team.

How big is the WvW team exactly? 2 people? 10? it feels like 1….or maybe even 0 currently.

Zietlogik.6208:

okittennowledgement

LOL

The only reason this thread was responded was because of the quote. They didn’t respond to use because they wanted to. They responded because they didn’t want to make their wvw “head” feel bad about lying. And now they will continue to ignore us to a point where we all stop and then they will close the wvw forum down since no one is “using” it. The simple matter is that they don’t care about wvw because it isn’t their main thing. As long as they can roll out PvE contents the reviews will remain positive.

It’s not necessary to drop an ETA or even go into any detail but Anet can still communicate with the community, hint hint we didn’t even know if anything was in the works or if there is even a team. What does that tell you? I wonder if they realize that whatever they produce after all the silence will need to be impressive or what’s left of the WvWvW player base might just leave. Or maybe that’s the problem, whatever is in the works is probably nothing to write home about. I’m hoping I’m wrong because I enjoy WvWvW but I’m not hopeful because I see symptoms of deep rooted management issues.

Chris.3290:

You can say “permanent changes to WvW maps” without having to go into details.

Then we get users qq-ing here about how they don’t like the maps or how some map feature was better before the change and now they’re going to quit the game because the change is so stupid.

You can say “exploring ways to enhance the commander interface” without giving away the farm.

Then we get users qq-ing here about how enhancements were “promised” and why aren’t they done already.

“The mob is fickle”

Chaba.5410:

Chris.3290:

You can say “permanent changes to WvW maps” without having to go into details.

Then we get users qq-ing here about how they don’t like the maps or how some map feature was better before the change and now they’re going to quit the game because the change is so stupid.

You can say “exploring ways to enhance the commander interface” without giving away the farm.

Then we get users qq-ing here about how enhancements were “promised” and why aren’t they done already.

“The mob is fickle”

This is the case in every game. Some players will like things others will not.

The issue is that we havent had anything that is directly linked to WvW to QQ over!
There is huge difference between complaining about updates that people do not like, and complaining about a lack of updates!

Imagine going to a supermarket and you want to buy some fruit and veg. You go to the fruit and veg section and you find nothing! Everywhere else in the store is fully stocked.
You ask an employee if they have any fruit and veg. The employee says they are working on bringing in a whole range of fruits and veg from all over, but not sure when it will be delivered in.

You come back the next week and see that the fruit and veg section is still empty. But over in electricals they have a new line of TVs in. You go to the employees and ask again. The employee says what the delivery is a little complex and a few issues came up, try again next week.

The following week, again the fruit and veg section is empty! This time electricals has in a new line of microwaves. You ask the employee; the employee, annoyed that you’ve asked him 3 times in 3 weeks just turns away and walks off. You confused and a little upset they brushed you off, decide to come back the following week.

And so the following week you come in and see the fruit and veg section is empty yet again; but you see a single apple on the shelf. You go and see that electricals have a just received a delivery of the lastest consoles. You ask the employee why after a month they only have received a single apple! whilst electricals has had 4 full deliveries!?? The employee annoyed once again tells you that delivery of fruit and veg is complex then kicks you out of the store.

The next week as you come to the store, you see a huge sign saying “New Fruit and Veg coming in store next week! Including a whole range of Apples!”. You think to yourself, that finally they will get in some fruit and veg!

You pop in the following week all eager to finally get some fruit and veg. But the shelves are all still empty. You see boxes littered in the fruit and veg section, but somethings off. You look closer at one of the boxes which has an apple logo on it. To your surprise the box doesnt containt fruit and veg, but a range of Apple electrical products! You try to find the employee to demand why the sign said new fruit and veg when in fact it was another delivery for electricals! But alas he is nowhere to be found. you leave rather vexed at the whole thing.

You come back the following week, again the fruit and veg section is empty, but this time you see a single banana on a shelf. Again electricals have received a new line of mobile phones. You get mad, ask the employee to see the manager. The employee ignores your request and bans you from the store.

You annoyed that electricals seems to get deliveries every week with new lines of products, whilst the fruit and veg section lay bare, start banging on the door to see the manager and demand and explaination as to why electricals gets it’s deliveries whilst fruit and veg deliveries are somehow more complex?! The employee then threatens to call security.

timmyf.1490:

As somebody who is generally supportive of the ArenaNet developers, perhaps to a fault (as I’m often called a “white knight”), and somebody who has mostly stopped reading/responding to these boards because of the toxicity, I have this to say…

Devs are busy. They do read (let’s say “skim” because that’s probably more accurate?) these threads. Understood. Taking the time to develop a well-crafted response is probably not something they can all do.

But please, please: it would go leaps and bounds for them to just put a quick, “Interesting ideas here, keep going” every so often. It would take 30 seconds but would lead to so much more red-tag visibility here.

A little bit of positive encouragement goes a long way. Any manager knows it. Heck, any guild leader knows it. It might be worth trying here to see if things improve.

Agreed. They don’t have to paint us a fairy tale rainbow unicorn land. They can be honest and just say, “This is what’s up.” Or, as you suggested, just ask for ideas. The point is, we will see that they aren’t just ignoring us. It goes a very long way! +1

Chaba.5410:

Chris.3290:

You can say “permanent changes to WvW maps” without having to go into details.

Then we get users qq-ing here about how they don’t like the maps or how some map feature was better before the change and now they’re going to quit the game because the change is so stupid.

You can say “exploring ways to enhance the commander interface” without giving away the farm.

Then we get users qq-ing here about how enhancements were “promised” and why aren’t they done already.

“The mob is fickle”

I don’t doubt there will be people complaining about changes, the question is whether there will be more or less negativity if they do so. Just ignoring for a moment the possibility that ArenaNet makes a change that is utterly and completely devoid of any intelligent thought, the mob will probably hover at 50/50 negative to positive with some obvious variance. As things currently stand everyone here is basically 90% negative. So literally any information they release will at the very least make the community less negative than it currently is.

The real problem comes after they start releasing information as the memories of the 90% negativity fade. Maybe they hit a 70% negative change and suddenly it feels like releasing information just causes more negativity and it’s not worth putting the information out there. I’m sure that’s partially how we got into this situation. That’s why rule 1 of ANY MMO should be no information is by a huge margin worse than iffy information. The issue with iffy information is that you need to keep players updated about it or they will be expecting it as your last correspondence about it stated.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Pavel.8531:

1. What is currently being worked on for WvW?
2. Why are things, that have been in the top of the player requests for over an year not

snip………

Feel free to add more questions guys.

I am going to jump in here answer these as honestly as I am able.

This might turn into a lengthy post but I will try to keep it on point as much as possible.
Let me start by responding to #3, trust me I get it, they are all very busy people, and I do like to see them (so to speak) working and not responding to every person on the forums. Now with that said on to #1 and 2.

1 this is a problem I am seeing as way to often in the industry, now for some things keeping thing under wraps is good, like anything related to story line, as it would just spoil it all, if you came out and revealed it all. But this is WvW, it’s all mechanics and environment here, not much to spoil. By hold all this information from the players, you guys could end up doing all this work on project that the community could complete hate, and then all that time, effort, and money is now wasted. Instead why not try something truly unique.

Come out with a post saying what you guys current have in the works, what you are hoping it turns into, and how you plan to make it work. And in EACH post in big letters mark that EVERY thing is subject to change. I think most of your players can handle if something that they want gets pulled from the table, in exchange for being truly part of the decision process. With this open discussion, there won’t be any more point less or greatly unwanted updates. Let’s take for an example, when you guys went and changed the middle of the lake, on the home borderlands to the bloodlust, I think you would find most people found that as a rather un-needed change (I might be wrong, but have you ever asked the majority of the people?) . But if that had been brought up beforehand that time spend could have been put to another more desired change.

Now before it’s brought up, that asking the forums only speaks for the minority, that’s not how I am suggesting you ask the players. You’re an mmo after all so you have thousands of players on each day why not just send out an in-game survey, asking the people? Emails get lost and would be hard and time consuming to compile all the answers, the forums are normally just the vocal people. With the in-game survey everyone can answers. For the simplest answers just to multiply choice. And if they would like to give a suggestion about how they think some given feature should work they could then fill out a field at the bottom or post on the forums.

Example (this is used as example, and should not be taken as what I think the people would prefer.)

Say you’re working on a new commander tag system, and you start off by allowing people to buy tags that have different colors, to allow more groups to work better on a given map. You would send out a survey asking the people what they think. At which point you might get back that most people would prefer, a drop down option by the create squad button that would allow them to change that tags color, instead of having to buy a new tag for each color. At which point you would start to work on this new version, so some time down the road, you would come back with a preview of it and get more suggestion. At which point maybe someone came up with an idea, that a second type of tag be made for havoc groups that way commanders and other players can see where they are at and what their up to. And Say they community all loves this idea. Then you guys would start world on this new feature, and release a new preview, and if all goes well, with some more modification this feature can be pushed out to live servers.

Of course along this whole process you would make it very clear that ANY project could be abandoned at any point for any reason. Now that’s not so say some people aren’t going to lash out, but I think that you will find that most people, will be ok with it and understand. And hey you might even find that a lot of the current toxicity in the forums might just vanish overnight, with this new transparency.

To wrap it all up, I am not saying any of this will work, hell it might back fire right out the gate, or it might have a rough start but turn out to be a brilliant idea. But the way I see it transparency can never be a bad thing, what better way to keep the players happy then to allow them to be actively involved in what features are and aren’t placed in the game their here to play. Sure they might try to throw some insane, game break ideas out there, but most will mostly have some very simple elegant ideas that might be better that what would have been created behind closed doors. Do with this post what you want, hell it might be complete ignored, but at least it out there for anet, or for anyone to think about.

Pocket.2740:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

I am going to jump in here answer these as honestly as I am able.

1. We can’t talk about that right now. Once the in-development features reach a state where we, as a company, are comfortable talking about them, we will.
2. Some player requests are under development. What those are and when they will be completed, I can’t say at this time for reasons mentioned above.
3. Devon is very busy with his job duties and only has limited time to devote to reading the forums. If he spent the time demanded of him responding to threads on the forums, his work would suffer. My job duties have me reading and reporting on the forums regularly to ensure that Devon and the rest of the team are aware of active concerns within the WvW community. I do this for other parts of the forum as well. As has been mentioned a multitude of times previously, our developers read the forums as much as they are able, but time prevents them from responding to everything they read.

Mark, first of all thanks a lot for posting.

Your first and second points are clear; if the company can’t talk about upcoming features until they have reached a certain state I can accept that as your policy.

However, that doesn’t mean you can’t communicate with us more than you have been. We know the team reads the forums but communication is a two way thing and I think there is scope for increased communication without breaking your company policy. A couple of examples of things that would help:

1. Can we get an indication when you communicate popular concerns to the team? This gives us confirmation that concerns have been heard and allows us as a community to manage and focus our discussion knowing that you are aware of a particular issue. Without something like this it is hard to know whether we should keep raising an issue to try and highlight its importance.

2. Is it possible for the team to let you know when an idea or suggestion made on the forums really stands out to them, so you can respond with a quick post to let us know the team liked it? Again this gives the suggestion some focus and players can rally around such ideas and have more meaningful discussion around it. Maybe the team could even feed questions back to the players? I have seen Evan do this on the PvP forums.

Is the above possible? Fine, you can’t tell you what features you are working on and when they are coming, I understand that. But I don’t think the current level of communication is sufficient and on balance there is greater communication on the PvE and PvP sub-forums. Would you agree with that?

Very well said!

MasterMc.7543:

Let’s take for an example, when you guys went and changed the middle of the lake, on the home borderlands to the bloodlust, I think you would find most people found that as a rather un-needed change (I might be wrong, but have you ever asked the majority of the people?) . ignored, but at least it out there for anet, or for anyone to think about.

Funny you mentioned that:
Remember the Bloodlust (the one that was giving 50 stats/each)? When they told us about… I don’t remember anymore, several weeks before its implementation? 9/10 posts on the forums in threads with over 500 posts were like: “This is stupid, this will lead to snowballing, the server with more people and better coverage being even stronger (and so on)”… remember this leak from their alpha forums, that stirred the community?:
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/104396/I4E780N.jpg
So… I guess the forums were right in the end after all(oh and remember the pre-patch ACs)… so yeah, it’s better to tell us in advance what are you planning, instead of the “we’ll run it and then we’ll fix it if it breaks something” style you’ve been doing.

If they are worried about a negative response, I would reply that when levels of confidence are approaching the same numbers the US Congress is seeing; then you might want to consider reaching out.

MasterMc.7543:

Now before it’s brought up, that asking the forums only speaks for the minority, that’s not how I am suggesting you ask the players. You’re an mmo after all so you have thousands of players on each day why not just send out an in-game survey, asking the people? Emails get lost and would be hard and time consuming to compile all the answers, the forums are normally just the vocal people. With the in-game survey everyone can answers. For the simplest answers just to multiply choice. And if they would like to give a suggestion about how they think some given feature should work they could then fill out a field at the bottom or post on the forums.

But why should faceless, anonymous, most likely impulse-driven survey clicks be more informative on this game’s current weaknesses than well-thought out, well-crafted, humane analysis by thread starters, like we get (or rather got,, in the past) every single day?
Such surveys help to determine WHERE a problem could be, sure, but not really HOW it is such a problem. For that, you need an intelligent dialogue.
You write about suggestions, but you know most people ingame wouldn’t bother with that, a “long response” would constitute three sentences already, and most people who vote don’t even really care, they don’t give the matter much thought. Whereas every single one of the persons who write such analyses do in fact care.
You can’t advance your product just with contextless ratings. That’s like trying to read tea leaves or psychoanalyze a sphinx.
Add to that, that the majority opinion is not always the best way to reach an informed decision. It really is often the case that people don’t even know WHAT they want (but they often very astutely know WHEN they want something, and that usually leads to a better product, but not hoping on the former).

@Pavel
Exactly, that exactly happens when you ignore informed opinions, be they the “minority” or “vocal” or what ever.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

1. We can’t talk about that right now. Once the in-development features reach a state where we, as a company, are comfortable talking about them, we will.
2. Some player requests are under development. What those are and when they will be completed, I can’t say at this time for reasons mentioned above.

Reading this statement I had a terrifying moment of deja vu from Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.

This “we can’t talk about it until it’s ready” only works if you have a track record of delivering anything at all.

ykyk.2740:

This “we can’t talk about it until it’s ready” only works if you have a track record of delivering anything at all.

Sadly have to agree with this.

I know that you don’t want to say anything for fear of changes/not being able to please everyone, but surely you see that if you never tell us anything about what you’re doing, you’re guaranteed to never please anyone at all.

City State games have already communicated more about their plans with RvR in CU than Anet have with their plans for WvW 2 years after release. And CU havent even reached Alpha stage yet.

Posting BS about devs not having time to read or respond to forums and their customers. How do you think that would work in any other industry? I got news for you, it doesnt work in the gaming industry either.

Wake up Anet, this is 2014 and the games reputation is all you got. If things dont change, I doubt there´ll be much for a reputation left in 2015.

Smokee.1754:

City State games have already communicated more about their plans with RvR in CU than Anet have with their plans for WvW 2 years after release. And CU havent even reached Alpha stage yet.

You mean just like how ArenaNet communicated much more before release?
That is basically what every single company does.
They communicate massively before and during release on order to get players interested, but sooner or later all of them communicates less and less.

lordkrall.7241:

Smokee.1754:

City State games have already communicated more about their plans with RvR in CU than Anet have with their plans for WvW 2 years after release. And CU havent even reached Alpha stage yet.

You mean just like how ArenaNet communicated much more before release?
That is basically what every single company does.
They communicate massively before and during release on order to get players interested, but sooner or later all of them communicates less and less.

I think you’ll find it’s the ones where they know their game is failing that refuse to reply to players.
Games which are still steadily going on, the devs and mod at least try to reply to some threads, or post updates every now and again on how the game development is, or isnt, going.

I’d be fine with them being too busy to answer if we actually saw some results from all of this work they have supposedly been doing.

If updating tool tips every couple months is tying up so much of their time that they can’t respond then the WvW team must consist of 1 part time intern.

DevilishLyx.2340:

I think you’ll find it’s the ones where they know their game is failing that refuse to reply to players.
Games which are still steadily going on, the devs and mod at least try to reply to some threads, or post updates every now and again on how the game development is, or isnt, going.

You mean just like they are doing here?
But maybe not in the part of the forums you would prefer?

Cuddlepie.8109:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

1. We can’t talk about that right now. Once the in-development features reach a state where we, as a company, are comfortable talking about them, we will.
2. Some player requests are under development. What those are and when they will be completed, I can’t say at this time for reasons mentioned above.

Reading this statement I had a terrifying moment of deja vu from Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.

+1

By looking at things, it seems that wvw has a huge amount of potential. While gw2 is generally played for PVE, if wvw was properly funded and developed, then it would encourage a huge amount of new players and therefore would create more profit for the game.

By fixing the biggest problems first, it would improve wvw play dramatically. However, at the moment, many people are getting annoyed and frustrated because the biggest things that happened to wvw turned into giant disasters (bloodlust and eotm)

For now, I would say the three biggest problems imo are:

• zergs everywhere/ no encouragement to use skill
• the lag
• bad rewards

These three problems make wvw near unplayable, although the latter was slightly improved when champions and veterans got buffed to drop boxes. The second one is the worst for me, it makes wvw near unplayable, but overall, I would say the first one is the worst.

In a war, the participating armies do not all group up on one spot like they do in wvw, they have to use a massive range of tactics and skill in order to win against their opponents. At the moment, it’s whoever has the most numbers wins and that in turn causes people to go to PVE, because in PVE you do the same thing and get much better rewards for it.

I realise that there was a pol about if people played wvw or pve, but that’s because many people have just given up on wvw and/or quit the game entirely. Seriously, even gem store items relating to wvw wouldn’t go unappreciated. If you put something like a permanent siege repair kit on the gem store, then I can almost guarantee that there would be a giant fan frenzy praising the Anet dev who put it on there. Not to mention gem sales would spike due to wvwers wanting to be able to repair their siege.

I really hope that an Anet dev reads this and takes it into consideration, after all, gem sales do create profit.

lordkrall.7241:

DevilishLyx.2340:

I think you’ll find it’s the ones where they know their game is failing that refuse to reply to players.
Games which are still steadily going on, the devs and mod at least try to reply to some threads, or post updates every now and again on how the game development is, or isnt, going.

You mean just like they are doing here?
But maybe not in the part of the forums you would prefer?

Praise the lord!
The devs and mods are highly active in the PvE forums!
WvW is saved!

:/

I love wvw. Its my favorite game mode (okay, maybe tied with GvG). With that said, me thinks if these game modes are to improve, we need to back off the Anet teams dedicated to these areas and let them get to work. They are professionals. I trust we are in good hands. Don’t let us down guys – we are counting on you

Distaste.4801:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Pavel.8531:

Let me start with this quote:

DevonCarver.5370:

When I’ve been working on WvW for 11 months, then we’ll talk.

So, 11 months have passed, let’s talk then?
1. What is currently being worked on for WvW?
2. Why are things, that have been in the top of the player requests for over an year not only not implemented, but even not talked about from your side?
3. We haven’t heard from you since you posted in the “new maps” thread several months ago… and that was after around 6 months of you not posting. Do you think if you communicated better you’d avoid some of the huge negativity and toxicity on the WvW forums? Any plans to do something besides hiring more mods and creating additional CoC rules?

Feel free to add more questions guys.

I am going to jump in here answer these as honestly as I am able.

1. We can’t talk about that right now. Once the in-development features reach a state where we, as a company, are comfortable talking about them, we will.
2. Some player requests are under development. What those are and when they will be completed, I can’t say at this time for reasons mentioned above.
3. Devon is very busy with his job duties and only has limited time to devote to reading the forums. If he spent the time demanded of him responding to threads on the forums, his work would suffer. My job duties have me reading and reporting on the forums regularly to ensure that Devon and the rest of the team are aware of active concerns within the WvW community. I do this for other parts of the forum as well. As has been mentioned a multitude of times previously, our developers read the forums as much as they are able, but time prevents them from responding to everything they read.

1. This is the exact mentality that has lead people to think ArenaNet doesn’t listen or care. You guys might want to rethink your information strategies as it’s having a large negative impact on the community. Sure talking about features you might not do or even scrap can be bad, but if you keep the community updated about them it won’t be nearly as toxic as your current strategy of letting the community wallow in despair and hate. Of course the only reason I can think of for continuing down this path is that the updates for WvW are so lackluster that informing the community that is all that’s in the works for them would kill what’s left of the community.

2. While I don’t doubt that you’re using some player requests, that was also true a year ago and we’ve yet to see or even hear anything. See point #1, you cannot just keep saying we can’t talk about it.

3. Then you need to report back to the WvW team that their silence and lack of a simple MONTHLY or even QUARTERLY information update on what’s happening is helping to kill wvw. We don’t need devon to make posts here, he is just a figurehead, what we need is an ArenaNet representative to keep us informed and hopeful. It doesn’t take buy 10mins to throw together some basic information on what’s being worked on, what got scrapped, and what they would love to do but aren’t working on yet. Yes, some people will be upset if something gets scrapped, but do you think the negativity then is anything like what it is currently?

Honestly you guys are doing way more harm than good. Let’s try a different tact and put it into business terms. You guys need to think of players like investors, if every 3 months at the investor meeting you say nothing the players aren’t going to invest. Not only that they are going to dump your company and invest somewhere else where they get the information they want.

I vote that this guy is hired as the WvW Rep.

Seriously though, if the DAoC freeshards I’ve been playing on lately with their 3-5 man dev teams can implement massive changes and bug fixes, respond to in-game tickets, hold GM events, take care of custom requests (like item reskins, which are done manually by the devs), AND respond on the forums all while maintaining a day job, I see no reason why a AAA studio with multiple employees and publisher funding can’t be bothered to have a single employee take 15 minutes at the end of their shift to post a few comments and/or replies.

HOLY RUN-ON SENTENCE!

That there are no features being developed that the WvW team feels confident about releasing after this long since the last big update (EOTM), then that’s… Somewhat worrying.

Bones must be thrown!

lordkrall.7241:

DevilishLyx.2340:

I think you’ll find it’s the ones where they know their game is failing that refuse to reply to players.
Games which are still steadily going on, the devs and mod at least try to reply to some threads, or post updates every now and again on how the game development is, or isnt, going.

You mean just like they are doing here?
But maybe not in the part of the forums you would prefer?

people in this forum are concerned about WvW the mode dying, not the game overall. The rest of the game gets more updates, and more communication, So people dont think those modes are in danger.

The reality is the lack of updates, combined with a lack of declared intention of updates, or a general idea of the direction they want to go, is what causes people here to complain, and say that WvW is being abandoned. If they had released WvW year ahead plans, blog posts on new content, or even just forum posts, people wouldnt be as concerned.

The reality is no one really knows what the future of WvW is right now, and no one is communicating that. Therein lies the problem. The devs wouldnt need to come in every day, but the marketing team/community reps/blogs/ready ups, havent really mentioned much on the future of WvW.

tadhogue.4736:

Seriously though, if the DAoC freeshards I’ve been playing on lately with their 3-5 man dev teams can implement massive changes and bug fixes, respond to in-game tickets, hold GM events, take care of custom requests (like item reskins, which are done manually by the devs), AND respond on the forums all while maintaining a day job, I see no reason why a AAA studio with multiple employees and publisher funding can’t be bothered to have a single employee take 15 minutes at the end of their shift to post a few comments and/or replies.

HOLY RUN-ON SENTENCE!

yeah this is one of the issues, when you take a stance where you are not going to communicate your long term plans, you generally have to consistently release new things. And have expected dates, etc.

This development strategy mixed with this communication policy is, imo not a good idea

BooDuh.2841:

I love wvw. Its my favorite game mode (okay, maybe tied with GvG). With that said, me thinks if these game modes are to improve, we need to back off the Anet teams dedicated to these areas and let them get to work. They are professionals. I trust we are in good hands. Don’t let us down guys – we are counting on you

This made me laugh. I’ll leave it to others to explain why, but the clue is the mention of ‘Anet teams’.

Jamais vu.5284:

MasterMc.7543:

snip…..

Such surveys help to determine WHERE a problem could be, sure, but not really HOW it is such a problem. For that, you need an intelligent dialogue.
You write about suggestions, but you know most people ingame wouldn’t bother with that, a “long response” would constitute three sentences already, and most people who vote don’t even really care, they don’t give the matter much thought. Whereas every single one of the persons who write such analyses do in fact care.
You can’t advance your product just with contextless ratings. That’s like trying to read tea leaves or psychoanalyze a sphinx.
Add to that, that the majority opinion is not always the best way to reach an informed decision. It really is often the case that people don’t even know WHAT they want (but they often very astutely know WHEN they want something, and that usually leads to a better product, but not hoping on the former).

@Pavel
Exactly, that exactly happens when you ignore informed opinions, be they the “minority” or “vocal” or what ever.

The point that I was making on the surveys, was that it was an option only after a POSSIBLE solution had been found, and to get the generally game populations reaction on it.

You mention that most people wouldn’t care(which I beg to differ) and would mindlessly vote so they can get back to their champ train or what ever. Thats why the surveies wouldn’t be force in fact they would be in some sub menu so only the people that truly wish to help would go looking for them, and would more or less be a easier and more organized way for suggestion to be made on that topic. Because as it stands now the forums are horrible on keeping similar suggestion to a set problem together, plus with the new no necroing rules just makes it that much hard. Add onto that right now we are just shooting off suggestions to ever problem in every direction, not knowing where anet is truly driving their updates right now.

Which lead to the whole main point, its that fact we have ZERO idea of what they are working on. Can any one here tell me one thing for sure that anet is currently working on??

No? Nobody? That’s because they aren’t saying anything, we could be in turn waiting on yet another dud update, or no update at all. The transparency of what they are working on and their interaction with what the people think is what i as truly getting at. The Surveys was just a way for anet to show that they are at least attempting to listen more closely to their players, and in turn might lead to even better routes of achieving a goal.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’ve been here for 5, so I still have 6 more before you boot me for someone else.

I wonder if this still applies lol