Okay—look. I’m a fellow concerned ranger. My level 80 ranger on tarnished coast is my only character. I’ve put everything in to him; he’s guild wars 2 to me. And he uses a shortbow. So I’m feeling the change. And I do think it was inappropriate. And I do think it needs to be reverted.
Towards the end of the 40ms thread someone named Wolfius was brave enough to fairly respectfully call us babies for the way we’ve been handling this, describing babies as people throwing a fit when they don’t get something they want immediately and, honestly, yes, I have to agree. A -lot- of us are being babies.
Not because we’re asking for shortbow to be given its old power back, or power anew. That needs to happen.
And not because we’re questioning arenanet for how they’ve handled communicating with us about the recent nerf. Those are good questions to ask.
And not because we’re going on and on passionately about it. We should. As long as this is an issue, it needs to be talked about.
A lot of us are being babies because we’re resorting to tactics like saying “our class sucks now”, “guess we’re all forced to go warrior”, “looks like that’s it for me and guild wars 2”, “guess arenanet doesn’t care about its playerbase”, “if only they did”, “can’t wait for a game with devs that actually care”, etc etc etc.; these are not productive sentiments. These are childish attention-grabbing tactics being used on developers who -know better- than to listen to that sort of thing. For god’s sake, we don’t need to start smashing plates and flipping tables to be noticed; in fact, all it does is make us less credible and less able to be taken seriously. I’ve been proudest of the people who have been able to voice their concerns clearly and relentlessly but also maturely and respectfully.
How many of us have seen—maybe pretty obscure, but—the peanuts sketch in which Lucy asks Charlie Brown if he thinks she’s pretty, and after staring nervously at her for all of half a second she promptly bursts in to a fit of rage saying, “You didn’t answer me! That means you don’t!”
Same thing, guys. Development processes are -not- as instantaneous and reactive as a lot of us are treating them. I wholeheartedly approve of fighting to make these changes happen but I am exhausted and honestly annoyed by all of you people so eagerly jumping on a reason to feel abandoned, neglected, and scorned that just isn’t there. And if I may be for a moment be vulgar what the hell is this kitten about implying Arenanet hates rangers? That is truly unfathomable. No developer alive has a marketing incentive to deliberately disdain a certain class; it’s all a balancing effort. And what’s more, once you actually get skilled at PvP and start playing it like an action game I’ve found that arenanet has made a pretty unusually well-balanced game ESPECIALLY for an MMO and I don’t -slightly- begrudge them tripping here and there along the way as they figure things out.
Should they communicate more with us? I’d love that.
Should they explain what gives about claiming the change was to fix an animation bug and then implying they weren’t being honest about their intentions re: nerfing it? Of course. I’d like to have a dialogue with them. I want to know what happened.
Should we continue arguing for a stronger shortbow? Absolutely. A stronger ranger on the whole? I sure wouldn’t complain.
But should we keep having every other post on the topic be some fearful, sensationalized remark of accusing arenanet, degrading the game and all around pursuing a sense of martyrdom in a desperate grab for attention out of what seems to me to be the lack of bravery and patience to actually organize your thoughts in a way that sounds respectful and reasonable?
I think not. I think it’s a useless expenditure. I observe it hurting the community and doing nothing to help the game. And maybe some of you would argue that there’s no point since the game is “doomed now”. Then -leave-. I actually have the patience to talk about this, as do many of my colleagues. I want our voices to be actually heard.
Finally I’d like to give a big shoutout to all the people who -did- express their views maturely, rationally, and argue their case, which was a very pleasingly high percentage (on the whole I’d offer a sense of about half, though this isn’t based on data). You guys make us strong, and thank you.
(edited by Othayuni.7369)