Guild Wars 2

Imagine a conversation between me and my spouse:
Me:“Honey, I’ll probably be home after work at 7pm”
(after i get home late at 9pm)
Spouse:“You said you’ll be home 7pm, but you broke your promise!”
Me:“I said probably! This is why i shouldn’t tell you anything, you always over react!”

At this point, keeping silent with my spouse is not going to save our relationship.
The proper and honest way to improve the relationship is to tell my spouse when I’m planning on coming home, and then providing updates when things change.

Just because this is a video game and not a marriage, does not change the fundamental truth that good relationships require good communication.

Player frustration is pretty high right now. You could flip it around and say “complaints and disruptive behavior don’t result in a good relationship either!” but then it begs the question, who is responsible for making the first move to make things right?

Let’s think about it in terms of what people want:
Players want Hope And Change.
ANet wants customers who will spend money and attract others.

If ANet decides to punish players by stopping development and/or communication due to bad forum behavior, then it pretty much shoots itself in the foot since its counterproductive to its goal of having happy profitable players.

On the other hand, if players decide to punish ANet, there’s no visible loss since player hope and trust is already pretty low in WvW.

Thus, the onus is on ANet to improve communication to fix this relationship. Just because people react negatively to broken promises doesn’t mean you should just stop communicating – the only way to improve the relationship is to communicate even more, explain the change in plans honestly and the reasons why.
People will still be upset, and complain. This is not a technique to shut people up. But they will respect you for the honesty and the relationship will be better.

Of course, there is the scenario where management is on the verge of deciding that WvW is more trouble than it’s worth, and ANet devs are desperately trying to keep the players calm without being allowed to reveal the potential doom of WvW. In that case being vague, dropping false promises and keeping silent are probably the only ways available to devs to shut the players up in order to save WvW.
Wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to believe that?

Feels like ArenaNet went back to ‘’Watch this space’’ kind of style.

I was having a conversation with a guildie about this yesterday and I told him that I kinda view their communication similar to using the mystic forge to get a precursor. If you have no expectations, then you won’t be disappointed. I’m not saying this is ideal…just saying how I’ve come to deal with the situation.

Yes, expectations are interesting things. I play a lot of Japanese games and the feeling is different because you don’t expect to communicate with the devs due to language barriers. (even though I’m sure many of them understand English).

Still, those games werent mmos. They were finished, complete games.
MMOs are eternally incomplete and one of the attractions of the genre is the constant development and change. It’s harder to “enjoy it for what it is”, especially if you’re mostly treading water and hoping for something that will bring you back.

While many users will never be happy, ANet should have come out with a roadmap that doesn’t have dates on it. Players should be able to look forward to changes even if they don’t know when those changes will drop.

Rieselle.5079:

Imagine a conversation between me and my spouse:
Me:“Honey, I’ll probably be home after work at 7pm”
(after i get home late at 9pm)
Spouse:“You said you’ll be home 7pm, but you broke your promise!”
Me:“I said probably! This is why i shouldn’t tell you anything, you always over react!”

Now imagine you did this every single day. That’s Anet (actually with the whole game, but most glaringly with WvW).

Lord Kuru.3685:

Rieselle.5079:

Imagine a conversation between me and my spouse:
Me:“Honey, I’ll probably be home after work at 7pm”
(after i get home late at 9pm)
Spouse:“You said you’ll be home 7pm, but you broke your promise!”
Me:“I said probably! This is why i shouldn’t tell you anything, you always over react!”

Now imagine you did this every single day. That’s Anet (actually with the whole game, but most glaringly with WvW).

Actually it isn’t, because it would imply that anet IS communicating and they are not.

The example given is actually bad communication on both sides. The latter needs to learn not to badly interpret what was said and the former should have communicated the delay just before or after.

Not communicating only has one effect and that is creating a cesspool of negative emotions. I doubt the execs at anet will learn this though. They are hellbent on continuing on this downward spiral till the end. The same excuses have been given for months and that’s all they are excuses. No time especially is a bad excuse as anet controls the allocation of time for each day.

Straegen.2938:

While many users will never be happy, ANet should have come out with a roadmap that doesn’t have dates on it. Players should be able to look forward to changes even if they don’t know when those changes will drop.

Although in theory, a roadmap with no dates seem like it would be a good idea, I think it would be more of a cause of frustration than anything. I imagine the scene would go something like this.

Anet: “Heres a heads up of what we are are working on for WvW. Theres no dates, because things change, but it should give you something to look forward to.”
Players: “YAY!!! Finally thanks!!!”

Fast forward 6 months

Players: “Why haven’t we seen X,Y, or Z yet!? Anet sucks. They just threw this roadmap out as a way to shut us up, and still nothing is being done. Devs you need to respond NOW!!! Oh wait…there are no Devs. This was a roadmap of lies!! It was just to distract us from their money grubbing schemes in PvE and the gem store. QQ, rage, vent”

While I agree the WvW community needs more communication, I believe that the main reason they don’t reveal whats to come is mainly due to the game ever evolving and changing. I am sure that there have been many projects that were ready to go live, but were scrapped for whatever reason. Think Duke Nukem Forever. Everytime it was almost ready to go live, it was scrapped because they wanted to stay on top of whatever new game engine, or hardware came out. So essentially they had to rewrite the ENTIRE game to fit with all the new shineys, and by the time they were done, another new shiney came out.

Also when certain features, or updates are revealed too early, the community does get exicted, and eagerly awaits, but if it gets pushed back, or scrapped or tweaked, they are even more disappointed, because “thats not what they promised!” The greater anticipation of something, the greater the disappointment when, for whatever reason, it doesn’t come to pass.

I bought the game for WvW in October 2012 (2 copies) and some gems afterward, then decided in summer 2013 that I had finished paying for WvW, and refuse to pay for EoTM or LS. If this were subscription-gated, they wouldn’t have gotten a penny from me.

I also found this quote on the BBB site. from Anet regarding a server change mid tournament complaint. I feel that it directly applies to communication about whats to come, and what is being worked on.

“There is a genuine need to keep some things “discoverable” by players, that is, to not tell all the details every time. In one sense, this allows players a better game experience. In another, not giving extremely detailed information prevents someone from capitalizing on a system in a way that negatively impacts other players."

See more at: http://www.bbb.org/western-washington/business-reviews/computer-software-publishers-and-developers/arenanet-in-bellevue-wa-22017235/complaints#sthash.peTalPtf.dpuf"

pdavis.8031:

See more at: http://www.bbb.org/western-washington/business-reviews/computer-software-publishers-and-developers/arenanet-in-bellevue-wa-22017235/complaints#sthash.peTalPtf.dpuf"

Strange, the complaint dated 04/16/2014 they claim the guy’s PC is too new to run window 7 on 32 bit.

First time I’ve heard of such a thing!

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

pdavis.8031:

See more at: http://www.bbb.org/western-washington/business-reviews/computer-software-publishers-and-developers/arenanet-in-bellevue-wa-22017235/complaints#sthash.peTalPtf.dpuf"

Strange, the complaint dated 04/16/2014 they claim the guy’s PC is too new to run window 7 on 32 bit.

First time I’ve heard of such a thing!

Its not that they claimed it was too new. They showed that his PC was x64 but he was running x86 windows (32 bit), and therin was the crux of his issue. So he was running a 32 bit OS on a 64bit machine. If you have a 64bit machine, you should always run a 64bit OS. Anything else will cause issues. My guess is he built his new machine with a 64bit motherboard, and installed windows 7, but being a noob installed a 32bit version instead.

They’re reading our feedback all the time, don’t worry! We know it’s true because they say so. There’s no communication and no sign of changes that are about two years late, but it’s OK because we know we are being heard.

Stay tuned for WvW season 3! Coming soon with attractive transfer pricing options.

Is your spouse b2p as well?

pdavis.8031:

Straegen.2938:

While many users will never be happy, ANet should have come out with a roadmap that doesn’t have dates on it. Players should be able to look forward to changes even if they don’t know when those changes will drop.

Although in theory, a roadmap with no dates seem like it would be a good idea, I think it would be more of a cause of frustration than anything. I imagine the scene would go something like this.

Anet: “Heres a heads up of what we are are working on for WvW. Theres no dates, because things change, but it should give you something to look forward to.”
Players: “YAY!!! Finally thanks!!!”

Fast forward 6 months

Players: “Why haven’t we seen X,Y, or Z yet!? Anet sucks. They just threw this roadmap out as a way to shut us up, and still nothing is being done. Devs you need to respond NOW!!! Oh wait…there are no Devs. This was a roadmap of lies!! It was just to distract us from their money grubbing schemes in PvE and the gem store. QQ, rage, vent”

While I agree the WvW community needs more communication, I believe that the main reason they don’t reveal whats to come is mainly due to the game ever evolving and changing. I am sure that there have been many projects that were ready to go live, but were scrapped for whatever reason. Think Duke Nukem Forever. Everytime it was almost ready to go live, it was scrapped because they wanted to stay on top of whatever new game engine, or hardware came out. So essentially they had to rewrite the ENTIRE game to fit with all the new shineys, and by the time they were done, another new shiney came out.

Also when certain features, or updates are revealed too early, the community does get exicted, and eagerly awaits, but if it gets pushed back, or scrapped or tweaked, they are even more disappointed, because “thats not what they promised!” The greater anticipation of something, the greater the disappointment when, for whatever reason, it doesn’t come to pass.

The problem with your after 6 month evaluation is that it assumes ArenaNet didn’t communicate at all during those prior 6 months. Almost everything post 6 months could be eliminated by actually communicating as things go along. Sure a lot of people will be disappointed, but most will at least understand and still be hopeful.

While disappointment can be viewed as negative, it’s not nearly as negative as the emotions that most WvW players feel currently. I mean anger, hatred, abandonment, indignation, and frustration are all pretty bad things to have a community dealing with and to top it off we are still disappointed. Whatever they are trying to avoid they failed horribly at it. that much is apparent.