Guild Wars 2

By not letting Josh Foreman post.

Give him back his posting privileges!

Sure SAB 2.0 had bugs, rewards and difficulty issues to address along with the bad timing of the infinite continue coin introduction. But at least we had Josh to address those issues with his witty personality and now you take him away from us too!

The people want Josh. Give the people what they want so they can be happy! The last thing we want to see is SAB fail.

These posts referring to his blog post have likely gotten him into more trouble and done nothing but worsen the situation.

Posts like this is exactly why we can’t have nice Dev interactions.

It’s kind of a vicious cycle only they can stop. Do you want to see SAB fail?

This second coming has already had a dismal turn out that I’ve already noticed. The first time SAB came around, there was no problems finding groups. This time around you’re lucky to have your own echo group up with you.

The feed back Josh has been receiving and his responses have made it better.

Ayrilana, if that’s the case, then ANet really fails to see the reality.
First of all.
There needs to be an explanation why someone who has posted alot and given lots of answers, communication and taken lots of feedback suddenly stops posting at all on the forum.
Without the explanation, Josh Foreman will be blamed and it would be very bad to throw him under the wagon like that. Thus such an explanation is very justified in my book.

Furthermore, he cannot control what the people do and ANet probably knows that. Thus he cannot be held responsible for any forum-poster’s actions. If the people see something they don’t agree with, they will make themselves heard and that happens in countries that have a freedom of speech. The people’s fault, not Josh’s fault.

Thirdly we are trying to tell ANet that we want communication, we want truth even if it hurts, we don’t want standardized robotic answers.
While Josh might have answered “We have tried to work on that problem for a while now but we haven’t found a solution.” or “Thank you for telling us this, but we have to wait and see if this is a general issue or just local to you.” the ANet standard answer would be “We have this in our tracker.”. The later is very unpersonal and cold and gives no valuable information. “Ok, you have it in the tracker… but are you working on it? When can we see a fix for it? Do you need more information for it? .. Hello?”.

In no way can I see ANet legit blame Josh for this.
And I think of ANet as pretty intelligent, after all they have the capability of running a huge company and creating something so complex as an MMORPG, so I don’t think they will do that.

However they do need to understand that we want a 2-way communication where we can give them feedback and they can ask for more feedback and where they can give us information that we need as players of the game even if the answer is an uncomfortable truth, something obvious or a simple answer such as “we don’t know yet but we are trying to look into it, could you give us more information?”.
This is what Josh Foreman did and that’s what made him one of the greatest employees at ANet (along with creating awesome content!).

SAB needs Josh, this forum needs Josh and ArenaNet needs Josh. And we still have threads about serious issues in SAB unanswered for several days since there’s nobody that goes into the thread and says “We are sorry but we don’t know what’s wrong. We are trying to find the problem, thank you for listing every single bauble you have found so far.” or “Oh, but we actually have more baubles hidden away. Maybe we should look at balancing this since nobody seems to find them.” like I believe Josh would have if he could.

Now there are other people that are fairly good at replying and follow-up and that’s good. But honestly I’ve yet to see someone as dedicated as Josh Foreman and I think it’s important that ANet gets to know that.

What I want to see is higher ups who aren’t so…idiotic. I’ve seen more than a fair share of problems with how they run things, and I foresee they may lose many customers in the months to come depending on how the newest monthly patches are, along with how they handle talking with players. We already have a serious trust issue with the mods due to the lack of communication, it will only take a little more to be the straw that breaks this camel’s back. Josh actually took care of that trust issue because we felt we were actually being listened to…and the issue is back BECAUSE the higher-ups won’t let him speak to us. That trust issue may be worse now because it tells us the higher-ups don’t care.

You dudes need to cut it out or you’re going to get this dude in more trouble. Trust me, the message you think you are sending or trying to send is not going to get the reaction you are hoping for.

I feel like I’ve missed something.

Pardon my ignorance, but where do you people find these blogs at!?

JayMack.8295:

I feel like I’ve missed something.

Agreed. I haven’t noticed Josh posting around here the last few days, but this topic seems to suggest he’s been officially shut down by Anet or something…

Google search their names.

AcidicVision.5498:

You dudes need to cut it out or you’re going to get this dude in more trouble. Trust me, the message you think you are sending or trying to send is not going to get the reaction you are hoping for.

I will not “trust” you. I fail to see how staying silently dissatisfied with ANet benefits anyone.

Electro.4173:

JayMack.8295:

I feel like I’ve missed something.

Agreed. I haven’t noticed Josh posting around here the last few days, but this topic seems to suggest he’s been officially shut down by Anet or something…

He was. At least, that’s what a certain blog suggests.

Shortcut: http://joshuaforeman.blogspot.se/
It’s not a secret, it’s been posted here before in other threads. ANet knows about it already and so do half of the people posting here.
Keep in mind that it’s Josh’s blog we are using as a source and he writes what he wants and he may or may not be biased.
However the part that he is hush-hushed from ANet whatever the reasons is obviously true since he’s not posting anymore and that’s the main concern that is being stressed.

I’ve just read it.

I actually agree with the OP. We shouldn’t be quiet about this – it’s ridiculous.

Josh posting as often as he did and being as transparent as he was (I’m not expecting ANet to tell us every little secret) was great to see in this forum. I’ve read through his forum posts, and none of it came across as the company being incompetent or him trying to get ANet into trouble.

It was refreshing to see. We all make mistakes – we’re human. It was great to see him being honest.

I won’t be surprised if this gets locked but I just wanted to put my thoughts here before it does. Don’t make your employees afraid to post, ANet and don’t treat them like children whose posts have to be approved.

Make it clear what they can and can’t say before they get reprimanded for not knowing.

Best thing to do is … play more SAB.

‘Hrouda’…now, why does that name sound familiar? Was he a Raxacoricofallapatorian, by chance? No? Well’ then, I’ll just be standin’ o’er ’ere. —-——→

Josh had a personality and I liked him, he was level headed and informative. I doubt he will post often any more because the bosses think his interaction is not entirely professional, but that is their loss and ours.

The best companies are those with good community interaction and Arena Nets community relations has kinda sucked ever since they dropped GW1 in favour of GW2. Stopping Josh posting is really a step backwards, we need more well informed developers giving us details and insights and directly addressing concerns, this is the one thing Arena Net really lacks with.

The second release of SAB was a bit of a failure compared to the first, but that was only because it was overly ambitious had some buggy mechanics and included the controversial coin. I am still optimistic for the next release, no doubt lessons have been learned and world 3 will be fantastic when it arrives. I am confident that players will flock back to try it out on release, even those let down by this one.

The only problem I had with Josh were the first couple posts where he seemed to be dismissing the issues. But the communication after that showed that he did genuinely want players to enjoy World 2 and wanted to make sure the complaints were justified. The communication was great and one of the main reasons I decided to stick with SAB even after getting frustrated. I don’t see why he should be put on moderated status when the majority of his posts were very good at isolating the issues and responding to concerns. Frankly, it’s something I’d love to see more among developers.

Edit: I actually wouldn’t say SAB is dying. In fact, I see a ton more people running around with SAB weapons over the last week. So I’d say all the communication and changes did some good.

Honestly I dont think SAB is dying, instead things have simply “changed”

As a player, there are 2 main reasons I will play any content in a game:

1. Enjoyment
2. Rewards

Perhaps the order might diffrent but I am sure its the same for everyone.
Thats as simple as I can put it, now lets compare what changed?

Enjoyment aspect of the game was definately there in both releases. In fact 2nd release brings not only all the content from 1st back but includes an entire 2nd world.
World 2 was borderline a little longer than most players expected. Some mechanics can also be considered quite difficult for your casual player.
But guess what? Infantile mode is available for that crowd. The release overall is close to perfect, few bugs? well sure thats going to happen no matter how much testing is done. In terms of enjoyment World 2 was dead on.

So why are the numbers so less?
The reason is (2) rewards.
Whether this was a decision made by the SAB team or leadership, this is what made SAB a one time play for me. Desire to repeat the content is simply not there for me at this point. In the first release, majority of the players played this over and over since we could farm obby shards, skill point related items and more. Now all of those are gone and all I can earn is the same skin but a different color.

So a little message straight to Josh, if I may, Please dont consider this a measure for the content you created, since your content is 10/10 instead the only reason the numbers are fewer now is due to the lack of rewards compared to released 1.
Please continue to design future worlds, majority of players love and enjoy SAB more than any other living story patch released to date.
Also I cannot wait to get hold of a purple Super GS!

-Strong SAB supporter!

Here’s my +1 ZilentNight. This community ( or MMO communities in general? ) have this particular interest to rewards that playes a big part in how much a certain content is played through.

The first implementation of SAB allowed you to farm loads of Baubles for obby shards (gone), obtain skins (that looked better, imo) way faster and was significantly easier (less effort required = bigger pool of players you can draw). Also I’m looking at you, ascended weapons.

The levels themselves are, dare I say, better than the originals! More mechanics, more diverse enemies, bigger levels! What’s not to love? The only thing that wasn’t done perfectly is the difficulty curve: the gong run shouldn’t have made it past QA the way it was, and some other parts should’ve been slightly toned down too.

You and your team did an awesome job Josh and you shouldn’t feel down just because people are busy chasing ascended carrots. The first world was awesome, the second is brilliant.

P.s. I fear that threads like these may do mor harm then good.

So apparently Josh was too honest and actually had a dialogue with the playerbase and thus was silenced. I guess their chosen dev interaction from now on will be Colin “Everyone loves GW2” Johansen – style spindoctoring and marketing bullkitten. (I’m still nauseous over ‘our loved and cherished Living story’.)

I just find it very ironic that for once we can actually share our concerns with a developer, get honest answers and insight and they decide it’s “jeopardizing the company”, although I do realize Josh is in a tough situation here.

So, the first (only?) dev to show any interest in his target audience let alone any sincerity in making the content he creates enjoyable is reprimanded? Wow.

Instead of worrying about the devs that do communicate they ought to worry about the ones who don’t. Communication has been a frequent complaint since the game’s release. Nobody likes the scripted, non-informative, and dismissive replies we’re lucky to get once every 2 weeks. Some areas of the game it’s glaringly obvious the devs are completely out of touch and seeing no attempt to rectify that doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the players.

Josh had a great personality and forum presence. Anyone who ever got offended at anything he posted gives a whole new definition to oversensitive, and I say that as an extremely thin-skinned person myself.

Unfortunately, yeah, I’m afraid posts like this will get him into more (undeserved) trouble. However, since the thread’s already been made I wish to add my voice to those who think this is total BS.

I think as well the lesser partecipation is due to the change on rewards. And people farming materials for ascended weapons.
And imho, Josh was an example for good community interactions. Especially since it actually answered when we asked something (see: drop rates of weapon skins in SAB).

I don’t know why it surprises anyone that this is less successful than the first SAB release.

1. It is harder, so it alienates more people
2. It is less rewarding than it used to be for SAB specific items
3. There is a lot more open world, wvw, ascended rewards for people to be working on outside of SAB.
4. If you don’t like the skins, or the challenge, there is no reason to even bother. No loot rewards, no gold, no bags, nothing to show for hours of hard work but self satisfaction and maybe a skin.

Think about Diablo 2 vs. Diablo 3. Both games were good, and even great in their day, but Diablo 2 had a cult following for years, because it was the best thing out there, and had no good competition to steal people away. Diablo 3 died months after release (for various other reason) as a result of not being able to hold peoples attention.

SAB 1 had so little to compete with in game when it came out. SAB 2 compared to the farm-fest that was the invasion was dead on arrival.

There’s one easy explanation for why SAB wasn’’t as popular this time around. It’s simply not new. The patch in April came as a big surprise, and everyone was really enjoying the cute throwback to retro games and the April Fools joke that brought it out.

Even if SAB World 2 had been perfect and everyone loved it, it’s likely there would still be less of a turnout this time around. Being released at the same time when everyone is heading back to school and college and work probably didn’t do it any favors either. There’s also the Ascended Crafting which while it probably brought people in, it also made some people leave. (I do wish we could have some dev discussion about whether Ascended Crafting is reaching their goals or not)

Anyway, I wouldn’t want stuff like this to hurt a dev professionally. I think they’re under enough pressure already.

Ya how dare he do a good job and actually talk to the community! He should be like the anet reps in the dungeon subforum and never say anything, just delete the occasional post and collect a paycheck!

imho i think its because if you want to “finish your collection” your better off not playing SAB at all and just farming dungeons for gold to buy them off the TP

you can get 9 BB for w1 + cart once per day , another 9 for w2 (2 per chest +1 for cart/ bandits +2 for digging etc) 18 total

this translates to 3 days per skin unless you want the utter tediousness of farming honeycomb + chests to speed things up

compare to running 4 15 min dungeons for 4g+ drops and buying a skin outright(prices may vary) 3 days vs 1 hour

so lets say you want to collect one of each skin for pve and pvp
so 2 × 9 skins x 50 BB +1g each
thats 900 BB and 18g

not including any reductions for outlay on continue coins due to deaths

if you clear both worlds every day, thats only
50 days before you can earn all the skins, which is only 20 days more than the content will be available for at most, if it doesn’t leave with the arrival of tequatil

that’s before you even consider spending BB on coins attempting TM

I’m saddened that we won’t get to see the kind of rapid-fire, back-and-forth dialogues that we had with Josh anymore, but I can understand the complicated office politics and company-consumer diplomacy that goes into these things. I really do hope that Josh will continue to post here (even if his posts have to be “vetted”), because getting that kind of response and interaction with a developer was outstanding; it really gave us the feeling that our concerns and feedback was being listened to. In our discussions with Josh, we could understand where he was coming from, modify our own ideas and position as a result, and come to a conclusion to the satisfaction of all.

Sure, it’s not something all the devs may like to do/be capable of doing, and I can see why other developers might worry that this is the standard they must now live up to, but silencing open discussion between players and the developers is not the way to do it.

For what it’s worth, Josh, I still love SAB. The new difficulty of W2 is more than I was expecting (and perhaps it could be toned down in future SAB releases), and I think the reduced rewards definitely contributed to the lower numbers this time around, but I can see what a labour of love it has been for you and your team, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that we appreciate your work and everything that you’ve done. Don’t give up on SAB, and tell Lord Vanquish that we’re still coming for him!

I really enjoyed Josh’s posts. If you do read this, Josh Foreman, do not feel bad about SAB. As you said, you have acclimated to the difficulty some of us find in the Box. Some of us are not as talented or skilled. I, personally, think World 2 is a piece of cake on Infantile mode, although Assassins are a pain in the butt, but I am a complete wreck when it comes to playing on normal.. and forget a whole lot of Tribulation. I love SAB, I will always be a fan and supporter of it. I don’t chase achievements, I like the rewards but I don’t really care about them. I play for the nostalgia and the fun of it, so maybe that’s why I don’t get so upset when I die five million times trying to beat a level. On the same route Zax was going, we all respect your hard work and dedication to the SAB, Josh. When SAB first aired my daughter (3 years old) fell in love with it. She asked for it every day when it went away, and is so happy it’s back. We play together, her on one computer and me on another. If nothing else, know that your creation IS appreciated and it IS loved. We respect you bringing a fresh, new, more difficult feel to the Box, and really challenging us to become better players. There will always be people that will complain, but you did the best you could do (this applies to responding on the forums, also), the result was amazing, and nobody should expect more of you than that, especially to be someone you are not.

So wait, wait, wait…

>Players have problems with SAB
>Dev actually responds
>Responses (excepting the beginning snark) are legitimate, honest, and show a deep interest and care for the community
>Responses are in fact what one expects of a company on a normal, daily basis out in the rest of the world
>Dev is reprimanded for DOING HIS JOB

I think what shocked me the most is how he was apparently told that he sets a precedent that other Devs shouldn’t feel necessary to fulfill.

That is ridiculous. Josh is the precedent that EVERYONE at Anet SHOULD be aiming for and should want to aim for.

Zaxares.5419:

and I can see why other developers might worry that this is the standard they must now live up to,

Crazy thing is, this IS the standard that they should be living up to. There is no excuse for the horrible lack of communication that is Anet’s standard.

Josh did right. He should be getting praised, not reprimanded.

RIP in peace Josh. I’ll remember you as fondly as I do Habib Loew and Robert Houdra.

Brutal Arts.6307:

RIP in peace Josh. I’ll remember you as fondly as I do Habib Loew and Robert Houdra.

Wait what?

Gene Archer.8560:

Crazy thing is, this IS the standard that they should be living up to. There is no excuse for the horrible lack of communication that is Anet’s standard.

Not everybody is comfortable with discussing their work with other people (especially if said “other people” can be rude, aggressive or downright hostile. You’ve seen how the fans on the forum can get. ), and if a developer is shy or introverted, they shouldn’t be made to get up front and talk about their work if they don’t want to.

On the other side of the coin, the execs might also want their employees designing/coding rather than talking on the forums, even if it’s to gather feedback. There’s also the risk that employees (who are people too) get their blood angried up and say something on the forums that could be extremely damaging to the company. You saw Josh’s initial reply to our complaints about SAB 2; he was a bit defensive (understandably so. I’d be defensive too if it was my pride and joy being criticised), but he kept it fairly professional. Can you imagine what would happen if the employee had really taken the criticism personally and posted a hate-filled tirade as a response?

I’m not saying that I approve of ANet’s stance in the matter, but I do understand why they’ve done what they did.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Brutal Arts.6307:

RIP in peace Josh. I’ll remember you as fondly as I do Habib Loew and Robert Houdra.

Wait what?

Robert Hrouda resigned (or was let go, according to some sources) from ANet a few weeks ago. He was a content designer and was quite chatty on the Ranger forums, leading to some players there to view him as the “Ranger liaison” dev.

Don’t really know about Habib Loew. I’m not familiar with the name.

Gene Archer.8560:

That is ridiculous. Josh is the precedent that EVERYONE at Anet SHOULD be aiming for and should want to aim for.

This. I’m sorry but whoever is wanting him to stop is simply making a really bad decision. You know all the times so many of you red names ignore problems or give quick canned answers? Yeah.. that tends to irritate gamers. We like being informed. Information tends to prevent more problems and angst occurring. Josh’s communication managed to turn the situation around. You guys need more people to interact with the community like he does.

Both are not with the company. A quick google search of their name will lead you to sites like Google+, LinkedIn, and such where both of them have shown the reasons why they are no longer there.

You know…when people grabbed their pitchforks and exclaimed for Robert Hrouda, esspecially in the Ranger forums…he ended up getting fired.

If you don’t want SAB World 3 to go up in flames because you caused Josh Foreman to get fired and someone else took over, you need to stop these posts.

Arenanet was mad when he gave us too much info in the forums. I can only assume they are going to be more kitten ed about what he put out into the public on his blog post.

Bravo.

Habib was the WvW lead until he “left to pursue other projects”.

People need to understand that posts that say: “OMG this dev is the best, all other devs should be like him!!” more or less “forces” other devs to start being like said dev, and that is not possible for certain kinds of people or certain projects.
Therefore the management don’t want to give the community a reason to make said statement as that will simply put even more pressure on the other devs.

It is really as simple as that.

Gene Archer.8560:

Crazy thing is, this IS the standard that they should be living up to. There is no excuse for the horrible lack of communication that is Anet’s standard.

Totally agreed.

Zaxares.5419:

Not everybody is comfortable with discussing their work with other people (especially if said “other people” can be rude, aggressive or downright hostile. You’ve seen how the fans on the forum can get. ), and if a developer is shy or introverted, they shouldn’t be made to get up front and talk about their work if they don’t want to.

Then I would suggest they hire and/or designate someone to act as a bridge of communication between those devs and the fans.

Jordo.5913:

Arenanet was mad when he gave us too much info in the forums. I can only assume they are going to be more kitten ed about what he put out into the public on his blog post.

While you are probably correct, unfortunately, it’s still stupid.

Seriously, why is this even an issue? They’d rather perpetuate their reputation of being absolutely terrible when it comes to communication? I don’t even understand why the reins on their employees are pulled so tight in the first place. It makes no logical sense to me.

If they’re that against communication then they really need to start incorporating a PTR because whatever testing/feedback they’re currently getting is not sufficient and it shows.

I was hugely surprised he was posting as much as he was. You never saw that from any other thread or dev. It was actually great to see the inter-actions taking place. I only had one complaint about SAB, after the fixes, I didn’t need to anymore.

The fact that Josh did what he could was great.
The fact that Anet silenced him makes me feel like the game is dying.

Lane.3410

Then I would suggest they hire and/or designate someone to act as a bridge of communication between those devs and the fans.

I would actually wholeheartedly support this. I’d ask around and find out if a dev from that particular team was willing to be their spokesperson and respond to fan questions on the forum. If one can’t be found, then perhaps the responsibility could be given to a Community Liaison like what Gaile used to do (and still does, although just in the Account Issues sub-forum).

Thing is, I bet the executives would have a hard time bankrolling an employee position whose sole responsibility is to “network with fans on the forums and pass feedback/concerns to developers and responses from the devs to fans”.

Zaxares.5419:

Thing is, I bet the executives would have a hard time bankrolling an employee position whose sole responsibility is to “network with fans on the forums and pass feedback/concerns to developers and responses from the devs to fans”.

I don’t see why. One of the CMs for Tera did exactly that and I’m sure other games do it too (or something similar).

Considering how much forum (and likely PM) reading would be involved I don’t doubt it’d be a monumental undertaking. I’d actually be surprised if one person could do it all, which is why I suggested it only be done for devs who have some sort of issue with communication.

It could probably be done weekly or so. Gather up the main concerns from the forums over the course of the week, present it in a digest e-mail for the dev(s) in question to respond to, then keep an updated sticky in the appropriate forum with that week’s Q&A (as an example).

I believe the problem is the standard the first World in SAB set as far as players’ expectation. World 1 was fast, easy, and took little effort to achieve satisfying results.

World 2 isn’t fast, it isn’t easy, and bugs can deny you the achievements for your efforts.

Big difference.

Honestly, to get the players to try World 2 again, it’s going to require a massive revamp and toning down. Yes, I know some players are going to scream that ‘whiners’ ruined the content. But, from Josh’s own blog, the numbers state participation in World 2 is dismal.

His words, not mine.

To change that, it’s going to require some do-overs. Right now, and I’m sorry, World 2 just isn’t fun. There are too many factors that frustrate as compared to the World 1. World 2 needs to be brought inline with World 1 and what made it fun.

Not frustrating.

It is much easier to live up to a lower standard . Thats pretty much it

That would be against Anet’s policy of non-communication.

Honestly, I understand why everyone is upset and I like Josh too. But I am absolutely shocked they let him go on for so long. I assumed he was allowed to do as he pleased during April because he was a team of 8, his addition was a play test, and so it didn’t really matter what he did. This time he’s in charge of a full team and presumably has responsibilities.

I’ve constantly wondered if he actually did any work at ANet because he seemed to be on the forums all day talking to us. From our perspective that’s cool, but from a game company’s perspective that is extremely dangerous for both public relations and quality assurance purposes. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, I mean just looking at the actual evidence the public is a fan and likes it, and because of it the quality of the product has gone up, but that’s not how they see it because there’s no control.

Ayrilana.1396:

These posts referring to his blog post have likely gotten him into more trouble and done nothing but worsen the situation.

Yeah, I’ve been wondering if we’ve gotten him in more trouble by making that post more visible.