Guild Wars 2

A few follow-up points:

• If you don’t wish to participate in any of the community-driven feedback threads that are currently stickied, then this is up to you. I can certainly understand the frustration you feel and get that you might not feel it’s worth it to contribute.
• If you do choose to participate, however, know that I will be relaying your critiques and suggestions to the dev team. We can at least work together and reiterate what you all want (consensus amongst yourselves would be ideal) and place your feedback and concerns in front of the team again.
• Reiterating another point: I do not determine company development priorities, nor do I determine the overall communication strategy regarding when we reveal things. This means that I can’t promise when changes might come or what the company works on, nor can I tell you anything about what we are working on until we’re ready to do so (see Colin’s post to that effect) even if, at one point, we decide to start working on any of the suggestions.

With that, for those participating in the feedback threads:

• Please discuss within the respective threads and organize the feedback. Let’s give the discussion some time, say one week after the release of the Feature Pack: so September 16. During this period, I will be popping in occasionally to check in on the threads. I devote a few hours of my day to forums (the rest of the day is devoted to my other duties as a community manager—event/convention planning, working with partner companies, meetings with devs, sprint reviews, managing my team, etc.), and will try to post when I can. Even if I don’t post frequently, I’ll still be monitoring.
• After September 16, I will lock the threads and begin parsing through all the feedback. I will then summarize, at a high level, each of the threads for the development team. I will include links to the threads so that they can read the feedback and critiques in detail.
• Logistics: if I have missed a thread that needs to be stickied or any other logistical related issues, please PM me.

Thank you for your attention.

Hi all–I’m sorry you haven’t gotten an update on this yet. I wanted to drop a quick post and let you know that I checked in on it and will let you know as soon as I have some news to share.

I second that. That name is sooooper cute. =D

Your name is perfectly fine. (I like it a lot, in fact. )

Thanks for asking!

Wee bit more information, because sometimes people are curious about this: Occasionally a copyright holder will contact us and ask us to remove one of the names to which they have rights. For instance, if someone used Tweety Bird (the “proper name” of the Warner Bros. Company character) and the Warner Bros. company was to directly ask us to disallow the name, we would do so. But your name isn’t an exact copy and we’re not being petitioned by the copyright holder about it, so you’re good.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed a bug in the nourishment effect from the Birthday Blaster. It should now scale appropriately.

Ayrilana.1396:

John,

Can you provide an explanation of what a player-driven economy is?

Do you feel GW2 falls under this and why?

Super very simple:
Players set prices, players set supply. Prices are set by the players. Players can change the supply of items by changes in their play activity.

All vendor based economies are not player driven. The TP is player driven. Apologies for the terse response, remind me sometime to revisit this more thoroughly.

Visteri, these are great! They all sound delicious, and each one fits its name nicely. Thanks for sharing your creativity with everyone–I passed it on to our Twitter followers too. Cheers!

Double red post!

I wanted to jump in and thank you guys for all of the feedback here–I love and appreciate it!

It’s valuable to hear what you all think, because even though it’s been going on for a few months now, PoI is still just getting started–we’re only in Episode 5 and I’m in the middle of planning for the rest of 2014’s shows. There’s exciting stuff to come, so thank you for watching and for sharing your thoughts, seriously.

I’m closing this thread so that everyone can focus on the existing threads, rather than everyone seeing a lot of threads discussing similar topics. Thanks for your understanding!

ipan.4356:

2 years is a long time for an MMO not to release anything.

I think you are mistaken. We have released content and features in the last two years on a fairly regular basis. Just because the content and/or features were things that you personally did not particularly care for doesn’t mean we didn’t release anything.

Please don’t trivialize the efforts of our design and development staff down to “nothing” because you didn’t like it. It’s fine to comment that you didn’t care for what was released, but don’t pretend like we’ve done nothing here for the past two years.

I just want to reassure everyone that Points of Interest will not stop. This is something that the community likes and creates great opportunities for us (including highlighting some of the creations of the community submitted to guildwars2.tumblr.com), so we want to continue to do it and as Regina said improve it based on the players’ feedback. Let us know here or on twitter via the #GW2PoI hashtag!

Malchior.5042:

Evan, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Smite, but I love the way they handle team communication.

It takes a little practice and getting used to it, but they have a hotkey (V) that initiates voice commands. From there, you enter a series of letters/numbers that correspond to a very specific direction. Some are simple like attack or defend, but others claim “Ultimate is Ready” (VVVR) or “Defend Left Lane” (VD1) or “Enemy Missing Middle” (VF2) etc…

Not being a MOBA, GW 2 wouldn’t require as many of these commands, but it could be a way to improve team communication with minimal mouse involvement, allowing players to stay focused on the action.

I have played Smite, but I was not a fan of how complex their comm menus were. Sure you can develop the muscle memory, but its hard for new players and all that work goes out the window when you have a new map with a different lane structure.

Hi thready,

First of all, welcome to Guild Wars 2! I’m moving your thread to the “Players helping Players” subforum that is the best place for you to find help (although players have been nice to point you in the right direction ).

We also have an official wiki where you can find tons of information : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/

Have fun playing Guild Wars 2!

Roe.3679:

^ There are going to be things that can’t really be included, I think, and these may qualify. So just using the treb example, you could add: “Use our treb,” “Kill their treb,” “inc treb shot,” “inc to our treb,” “repair our treb”…. So on and so forth b

So I think bare, important basics are all you need. Because anything else may be too situational to really need to include as an option.

Plus, most of these things are contextual. Ping on an enemy treb to imply killing it. Ping on your own empty treb to imply someone should use it. Ping on manned treb means help it. Ping on dead treb means repair it.

Roe.3679:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Roe.3679:

I would love to see simple rotation requests as an option. “Rotate to home from spawn” and “Rotate mid from home” would be great, and so would"Hold" and “on my way to A, B, C”

Probably no more than 8 options would really be needed but simple stuff to make communication easier would be cool.

For suggestions like these. What happens if the new game mode has no capture points? Do those options just get replaced with other things?

I suppose they would have to be replaced by other things that are very relevant to that game mode, like killing a flag carrier or guarding them, or etc. etc. that applies to said game mode.

This is why combining functionality with the map seems like a good way to go. Just point at a position on the map and say, “Going here, Need help, Retreat” etc.

Did you look at articles in the Knowledge Base? I wonder if this one might help you: https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/27626157-Mobile-Authentication

Roe.3679:

I would love to see simple rotation requests as an option. “Rotate to home from spawn” and “Rotate mid from home” would be great, and so would"Hold" and “on my way to A, B, C”

Probably no more than 8 options would really be needed but simple stuff to make communication easier would be cool.

For suggestions like these. What happens if the new game mode has no capture points? Do those options just get replaced with other things?

Mpiftekis, that is very puzzling, but I’m glad you found the one skin. I suggest that you may want to submit a ticket so that the team can help with your second question.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Ossuary-of-Unquiet-Dead-bugged/4314159

Update: Noon – 25 August 2014

Thanks to previous reports of this issue, we’ve been able to determine that our billing system provider has had a processing problem that has prevented some players from making a Gem Store purchase. Quite honestly, it was pretty hard to find what was going on, which is why for a few days we were not able to confirm exactly what was causing the issue, and we did wonder if the problems were unique to individual players. At this time, the provider is actively working on a fix and we hope to have this all ironed out very soon. I’d suggest that you do not need to submit a ticket, but you may do so if you wish.

I will update you as soon as I have more information. In the meantime, please accept our apologies and our sincere thanks for your (attempted) support of our game through Gem Store. We hope you’ll make that purchase as soon as the problem is worked out.

Thanks!

Most of the items you listed off that aren’t in this update are because they are content. This is not a content update, this is a feature pack. Content updates usually, but not exclusively, take the forum of living world updates or festivals.

Psientist.6437:

Imho, honesty without tact is the cliche of ’keeping it real", and tactful honesty is difficult to balance in an anonymous forum. I think John Smith does a decent job, even though he never answered my last questions.

1, Have you ever made a statement concerning the ethics of economic punditry in game or in the forums? I imagine you see posts from people giving not only bad information but purposefully misleading information.

Perhaps a for instance would help. Say I am convinced that Fishing game-play will be released on Monday and want to talk about the effects of fishing on the economy. Would you have pointers or standards you would want players to apply to such a discussion?

Yes, the first time I was less than tactful was inspired by someone clearly attempting to mislead people about economics and game design. The rules are pretty intuitive though. Do not attempt to mislead people, making an argument using a different set of inputs is good business we always need more perspectives, making those inputs intentionally fallacious to prove some that isn’t true will end poorly.

It’s basically the opposite policy of news stations

Wanze.8410:

pdavis.8031:

I may be repeating a question, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Was there an economic reason for ascended gear being bound (Soul/account) and not tradeable on the TP? And if so, what were those reasons? Maybe a way to minimize a “pay to win” scenario? Or to avoid having a bunch of new items that would reach the cost of legendaries and be seen as unobtainable by the player base?

It was clearly a game design and not an economic decision.

Mckeone.9804:

In general, do you consider the impact of magic find when deciding on rewards for LS & seasonal events? For example, in deciding to change Queen’s Pavilion from mob drops to event reward chests.

Nope. Changes like that aren’t made because of magic find, they’re made because it’s superior design.

captainteemo.6537:

First I wanted to say it’s great you’ve talked to the community so often and in such a straightforward fashion.

I don’t know if my question has been asked before, the posts have become quite long and if someone has an answer that would be great.

After the transition to the new wardrobe, Several items have become a burdern to player inventories such as armors bought with karma and even armor bought with gold. Does it seem detrimental if these items could be salvaged?

1) Gold cost of buying cultural armor and even armor skins from each order doesn’t seem like it would offset the possible ‘ecto’ gain of salvaging. Would this be likely to happen in the near future?

2) If karma armor could be salvaged only to remove upgrades added to the armor (and possibly not runes that came with such an armor) be possible in the future? Or is it mainly the fear of possible unknown exploits that’s keeping this from being implemented?

Large game systems often require consistency, like following coding standards when programming. It’s a giant collaborative process and consistency protects us and the players.

Thanks for making this thread. It would be interesting to know all the desired requirements of a system like this as it pertains to Gw2 PvP. Even in Dota2 I only end up using a couple things on the wheel: Missing, and sometimes backup. I usually just spam map pings for everything else.

Lheimroo.2947:

Those megaserver changes.. they read like addressing the individual bullet points from the feedback thread. I have to give kudos.

Seriously, though.. having that on the boil and yet not telling us sooner did the atmosphere here on the forums a lot more harm than good. I understand not giving details or timelines.. but surely the motivation was fixed to address the issues ‘soon’ months ago.

We always do our best to listen to the community and read the forums, we just don’t always have the time to reply and engage, and it is our goal as expressed last week and over the weekend to build a better relationship with you all.

Chris

iiJordanii.3621:

Branden Gee.2150:

You shouldn’t be seeing this crash any more.

Im still getting this crash, i even tried repairing my game but it hasnt made a difference :/

If you are still getting this crash you were probably in the old build (37,556). As of the build that went out on the 21st (37,900) we have received 0 crash reports in regards to this error.

dlonie.6547:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Huzzah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjftsPeef_s

For ALS Awareness and fun!

Chris

“Come back, we’re not done — it’s all about iteration!” LMFAO, 10/10. I’d love the opportunity to do that to a couple of my former managers :-D

Back on topic….

Some of the interesting CDI ideas above gave me an idea, especially the point that ranking a la reddit does disrupt linear conversation, which is a big turn off for me as well.

The suggestion of a subforum would be nice, but would quickly grow unwieldy, as we’ve seen in the past.

Some sort of hybrid would be nice, and might be worth the development time to roll your own if there’s nothing off the shelf available. A medium where:

1) Threads are ranked with up/down votes, but not comments. This preserves the discussion on the topics, while allowing more popular concepts to float to the top.

2) Threads may be sorted either by ranking or time posted. “What’s hot” vs. “What’s new”. So we don’t get so fixated on the popular ideas that we miss out on new ones.

3) Ongoing (daily) guaranteed replies/discussion in the top X “hot” threads. Not promises of deliverables, but well thought out, meaningful, insightful discussions.

Less important, but perhaps useful ideas:

• The multiple threads will allow focused discussion to take place with less jumping around, something that killed readability in the other CDIs.

• Comments may still be flagged as unhelpful, and may be hidden if an overwhelming majority of votes identify it as such (this would be helpful on the regular forums, actually. Let the community discourage “toxic” posters without feeding them).

• Heavy moderation would be needed for these discussions. Off topic posts/bickering/long meandering arguments should be removed (not infracted, unless a repeat offender) and the involved parties encouraged to continue the discussion via PMs/regular forums.

• Rank could be by “votes per unique view” to keep a fair entry barrier for newer concepts.

• Alternatively, rank could be a 5-star system, where we can apply some subjective ranking to ideas we like, but find flawed.

• As the discussions grow, there will be similar threads that contain different solutions to the same issues. A way of grouping these (single-word tags, perhaps?) would be useful, especially if we could filter threads by tag.

Like I said, it might take a bit of development effort to build the platform, but it sounds like some new technology needs to be purchased/written to come up with something manageable, anyway.

Oh, and a good search feature would be essential if we’re to have any hope of keeping one thread/topic. The forum’s search functionality is 100% unusable, which makes me sad when I can’t yell at people for making duplicate posts

Some really good ideas here thanks Dlonie.

By the way you order Reddit for it to be linear. Honestly I would like to be able to use something like Reddit for a CDI from a tech standpoint.

All of these points are spot on IMO.

Chris

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Communication isn’t only hearing what you want to hear.

This is a super important point on both sides.

Chris

Edgar Doiron.2804:

I just have to say, a big Thank you to Chris!

Now when I load up devtracker, there’s actually stuff to read!

Thanks to all of you to. The posts have in most part been really valuable and Its been really nice to connect again.

Chris

Kiwicharr.8051:

Hey Chris, thanks so much for all the posts and attention this thread is getting now! Really great to see some more Arenanet interaction with the players, its something that is really needed at the moment i think.

In the interests of transparency could you please explain why the atlas was removed from the website without anyone from Arenanet mentioning it? Also why do we get a lot of big changes not listed in the patch notes? Communicating things like these would really go a long way i think. People would really like to see why you make the choices you make with how you develop the game moving forward.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend!

And thanks for your feedback Kiwicharr.

hris

Kiwicharr.8051:

Hey Chris, thanks so much for all the posts and attention this thread is getting now! Really great to see some more Arenanet interaction with the players, its something that is really needed at the moment i think.

In the interests of transparency could you please explain why the atlas was removed from the website without anyone from Arenanet mentioning it? Also why do we get a lot of big changes not listed in the patch notes? Communicating things like these would really go a long way i think. People would really like to see why you make the choices you make with how you develop the game moving forward.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend!

I will speak to Steve Fowler about this who is our Head of Marketing and an all ground great guy.

Chris

minbariguy.7504:

Torsailr.8456:

Anet’s lack of communication is not a valid excuse to become a toxic member of the forums.

This is a circular argument. While your statement is 100% true, it is also true to state that the toxic behavior of some forum members is not a valid excuse to justify ANet’s lack of communication with the rest of the community. Someone has to break the cycle, and I believe it should be ANet, since they are the ones in a position of power here.

On another note:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Huzzah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjftsPeef_s

For ALS Awareness and fun!

Chris

Wow, Chris, the way you s-l-o-w-l-y drizzled that ice water over James was pure evil! LOL! But kudos to both you and James (especially James!!!) for taking part in the awareness campaign.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Having the CDIs in their own sub-forums was suggested in previous CDIs. I don’t believe it was thought to be a good idea. I can’t remember why. I’m sure you can read about it is the pertinent CDI, though. =)

Chris feared that it would reduce visibility which I don’t think is true (and a lot of people spoke up and disagreed) But maybe he’d reconsider?

Yes the more threads and forums there are the greater the degrees of separation in regard to awareness and keeping up with all the conversation. This doesn’t mean that I am against the idea of having a CDI forum though if for example we consolidated the vast number of our other forums.

FYI I am going ‘planning’ to spend the day with the family today and therefore will be semi afk from the discussion and back full time on Tuesday (This said I am not sure tat I will be able to stay away)

Hope that’s ok.

Chris

That’s great! Some people have all the luck…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Huzzah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjftsPeef_s

For ALS Awareness and fun!

Chris

And on that note (-: I hope you have a great night/morning, I am going to watch a film.

Chris

Huzzah!

For ALS Awareness and fun!

Chris

Note: I am up to date on the posts, thanks for continuing the discussion.

Chris

ALS challenge complete. Link soon (-:

Chris

Right just stepping out to give James Smith (Dev Director at Anet) a shower of freezing cold water.

http://www.alsa.org/

BrB.

Chris

This thread is getting seriously off topic here and is delving into a much different topic. Closing it before it derails any further.

We have absolutely no problem if you solo a dungeon, or even if you like to explore. However when this becomes a tactic to complete content quicker, or tarnishing other’s play experience by doing so (by “selling” exploited runs), then we have a problem.

Edited for Clarification

Hey All,

I am up to date and semi afk.

Chris

minbariguy.7504:

A bit more on the subject of managing expectations. I found an article by Annie Pace Scranton on Forbes.com titled “The Top Five Tips For Managing Client Expectations”.

The “meat” of the article is as follows:

Here are the five steps I always try to follow for managing client expectations:

1. Be Honest From The Get-Go. Though it may sound counterintuitive, I always tell potential new clients in the very first initial conversation about possiblyworking together that there are no guarantees. As with most things in life, there are too many factors at play to make any grandiose promises. I can’t predict whether a producer will like a pitch, or a reporter will quote my client. Although it may feel uncomfortable, I think that saying this clearly and in no uncertain terms, positions the client to take a leap of faith in your work and also helps them to understand the process behind your work.

2. Under-Promise , Over-Deliver. This old adage is one to live by! I promise my clients that they will have immediate & constant access to me and my team; that we will, every day, work on their behalf through pitching and meetings with the media; and that if nothing else, it is guaranteed that they will become known to key members of the media. After that, when big interviews start rolling in, it’s much more appreciated!

3. Anticipate the Client’s Needs Before They Know Their Own Need. This one definitely takes time and practice, but think about it: no one knows your business as well as you do. You know when things are going great and when you need to ramp up your efforts. It’s so important to share that with a client through a simple email stating “I’m going to spend extra time this week working on your project – I really want to get you out there as much as you do.” It can go a long way.

4. Constant Communication. If you’re in the service industry of any kind, that is what you do – serve. That means being bubbly, bright and (almost) always available. While of course it’s important to set boundaries so that you can maintain a rewarding personal life, it’s critical that your clients know they can gain access to you as needed. Hopefully just knowing you’re available and ready to jump on a project as needed will be enough so that your client’s won’t abuse your generousity with time.

5. Reports. Probably not anyone’s favorite task during the week, but reports show a clear delineation of work that was done over the course of a week or month. Remember – reports don’t have to be very long, or in a format that clogs up a lot of your time. A simple email detailing tasks completed for the week shows your clients what they’re paying for, and thus, keeps them happy.

Hopefully, by following these steps, you’ll be on a road to an even better relationship with your clients. By following this process, you’ll most likely achieve better results in your work, too.

I sincerely hope this is helpful.

Thanks for this. It would be fun for us to discuss this. Maybe tomorrow.

Chris

Going afk for a bit. See you soon.

Chris

Ok, let me clarify

“Skips” generally require abuse of terrain to accomplish. An example of this would be “breaking out” of the map in order to bypass content. Doing such would be quantified as exploitation, using an exploit and profiting (“selling” runs) would be quantified as selling an exploit.

I am not talking about running past monsters, or using creative use of leashing/pathing.

Without going into punishment or policy, we are going to be ramping up on GM coverage in dungeons. If you believe that someone is exploiting, please do report them in-game.

Your friend’s account has been blocked due to an account dispute (multiple contacts trying to get control of the account). Most of the times this happens when an account is purchased/sold or account information is seriously compromised. There won’t be anything “I” can do to help your friend, they will need to go through the Customer Support ticket process to get this resolved.

Yes, I meant report the players exploting the dungeons (in-game report is fine, not a bug report).

:) Sorry for confusion!

Taygus.4571:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

No one is forcing you to do something that you think is pointless. So I would suggest not partaking in the CDIs if you think they are not going to bear fruit.
Chris

I feel for you, devs, you can’t do anything right XD

:P.

Bring on the CDI threads! (and inevitably the complainers.)

It’s all good. Looking forward to the CDI to. It’s been a lot of fun chatting this weekend though. Wish I had more time during the week, and thank goodness my wife is understanding.

Chris

ananda.5946:

Chris, since you are actively posting in this about communication, can you tell us if the Mac client is being looked at? It crashes all the time in large events and there is no active support in the mac support forum.

If you don’t mind i will get back to you on this on Tuesday.

Chris