Guild Wars 2

Anyone?

/10char

I read a previous thread before posting this… the previous thread appeared to deal with multiple monitors, whereas my girl is running a single monitor.

GTX460 video card. During gameplay, the game will randomly minimize on her machine. Alt+tab brings the game right back up, but it’s extremely annoying. I don’t have this issue, and I’m running a nearly identical gaming rig.

Any thoughts? Any additional info needed to help resolve this?
Thanks in advance!

Nalora.7964:

“Diminishing returns” means “diminishing gameplay” and also “diminishing players in the game” and “diminishing people you recommend the game to”.

^This.

Judging by all the replies, I can see it now: an army of people running around with Quaggans strapped to their back…

talk about your break in immersion.

Fasalina.6571:

He never stated that FOTM resets the DR. What he meant was that FOTM is not affected by “world DR” which means if you get hit by DR and/or get bugged the only option for good drops is FOTM.

lolwut? He specifically said,

“If you get bugged, I believe the only way to remove it is to run FOTM.”

I believe, given the context of the OP, that he means actually resetting some kind of DR timer. Thanks for not reading, though.

Should put it up on google docs, then people could download a copy without messaging you.

Just a thought.

@OP: No, server transfer cost is a bad thing. It’s a greedy move by a company that I personally feel has abandoned its philosophy of caring about players, and has moved into the shady realm of getting as much money from the playerbase as fast as they can.

Time to go back to RIFT- at least I knew what I was paying for and why I was willing to pay it.

All your influence, improvements, Guild Banks, etc. all stay on the server you created them on.

It’s lame, and actually works against transferring.

plasmacutter.2709:

There is a wiki article on DR on gw2wiki that is fairly accurate IF YOU DON’T GET BUGGED.

If you get bugged, I believe the only way to remove it is to run FOTM.

DR is account wide and zone-independent.

Source? The DR article on GW2Wiki says nothing about “getting bugged”. It has an estimated time that DR “resets” which has no verification source. There is also nothing on that page substantiating your claim that running FotM clears or resets a DR. I’d be interested to see your source material for this.

The fact is, we know next to nothing about the DR, which is exactly how ANet wants it.

Zonzai.2341:

Right now forum feedback has primarily been ignored by ANet. (Even though they keep saying otherwise.) The only people they really pay any heed to are the “e-sport” PvP people. And even then, it’s not much.

^
This.

Case in point: drop rate/DR issue thread(s). Players make a thread, thread gets 1200 responses, thread gets locked. “Official” thread gets started, and it takes nearly 2 months to get a Dev reply, which basically said, “we’re still looking into it, it takes time”.

I could list other examples, but this one is fairly prominent.

As for paying attention to the PvP’ers… this is clearly not the case, either, as is evident by the decline of sPvP and the clear intent to ignore requests for different game modes besides something conquest-based that relies so heavily on bunker builds.

Dante.1508:

No DR No loot restriction in open world talks, no magic find discussions, why did they bother?

If they aren’t going to fix whats needed why will anyone play, as stated above new games are going free to play with less issues and bugs why would anyone want to stay here with important issues not getting looked at..

Nerfing AoEs will be very silly they affect all classes including the insanely weak ones, why will anyone play the game when their classes no longer perform viably..

I’m in total agreement with this, honestly… Arguably one of the biggest issues presented on the forums (open world loot/DR) got zero response from the development team. Bravo. Glad to see ANet took the whole improved communication seriously- by repeating things that had already been announced, and giving out virtually no new information, other than to say “we’re nerfing the KITTEN out of AoE”.

Well played. I would like to thank the Development staff for their time, and for confirming that I continue to have no reason to log into the game.

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

Hawkmoon.5849:

Yes, there was a Dev or CC/Mod post saying this was okay. The obvious reasoning behind this being an acceptable practice is the financial gain for ANet.

So, because it doesn’t benefit you, the player, financially, it’s ok… Anyone else seeing a pattern in what’s ban-worthy and what isn’t?

They’re running a business. What did you expect? Charity?

I think you missed the idea behind my post, good sir: I was making an obtuse reference to the recent Snowflake Incident, in which players were banned for using currently existing in-game practices of manufacture/salvage.

I was essentially saying, if you can make money without buying gold from the TP, it’s probably ban-worthy, but because this is not financially motivated, it’s safe.

Yes, there was a Dev or CC/Mod post saying this was okay. The obvious reasoning behind this being an acceptable practice is the financial gain for ANet.

So, because it doesn’t benefit you, the player, financially, it’s ok… Anyone else seeing a pattern in what’s ban-worthy and what isn’t?

I agree, the system is a huge flaw in the game. First, it works against guild loyalty, and actually weakens the “community” feel of a guild. Why would I want anything to do with a guild when I log in that only has 2 members online, and neither of them are “representing”?

Also (and this is the biggest thing, in my mind) This completely ruins any possibility of GvG combat being meaningful.

I fail to see why ANet didn’t bring over the system from GW1, which worked fine the way it was: You belong to a guild, you create an alliance.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

lol… I’m surprised it’s taken this long to see more “if I do X will I get banned” threads. I was expecting to see a rash of them after the Snowflake Incident.

Don’t worry too much, OP: if you get banned, you can just request a refund, since you were using the tools as intended.

Ya know, don’t most cell phones now have world clocks built into the applications???
#firstworldproblems

This is why we can’t have nice things.

(before someone infracts me, think about the context, please.)

They can’t do account bound dyes now, because some genius had the idea of putting dye in the cash shop.

Less dye purchases= less money…. which means dyes won’t go account bound as long as there is money to be had.

Welcome to a game with a cash shop.

EDIT: And for those who come back with the ridiculous argument ‘it can’t be that much money/ it’s not enough to matter/ ANet isn’t all about the cash grab’, etc. I submit: they are a business, which exists to make money. Selling dyes, however few they may sell, generates profit. Any chance at profit is good in their eyes. Thus, we will never have account-bound dye.

lynspottery.6529:

What I do not understand is WHY do they need our input? Its their game and you would think they would have the capability to monitor what happens in the game, right? Why do they have to ask us?

Pretty interesting, right? I mean, when you consider the fact that they’ve made statements in the past discussing how they have a live team that constantly monitors the happenings in-game.

If that’s the case, why do they need us to provide all this data? Isn’t that completely contradictory?

Clearly, we’re being misled on one front or another. I think it’s pretty obvious which one it is.

Anchorwind.9016:

The Dirty Dozen:
1) Would you prefer ascended gear to be the last tier implemented for the remainder of GW2?
2) Would you prefer ascended gear to be equal to exotic gear in all statistics except agony resistance?
3) Would you prefer the level cap to remain at 80 for the remainder of GW2?
4) Would you prefer if WvW was set up on an equal playing field similar to PvP?
5) Would you prefer if WvW / PvP / PvE had separate skill functionalities?
6) Would you prefer if Magic Find was removed from the game completely?
7) Would you prefer if Magic Find was divided equally amongst all party members?
8) Is GW2 too ‘Grindy?’
9) Does GW2 need less RNG?
10) Has the Trading Post [and all its users/farmers] positively impacted the economy?
11) Do you have as much faith [and/or enthusiasm] about the game [and/or company] as you did before launch?
12) Do you reasonably expect [many of] your primary concerns to be addressed in early 2013?

1) yes
2) yes
3) yup
4) Indifferent
5) yup
6) yes
7) not unless they fix it
8) yes. yes. yes.
9) a thousand times, yes.
10) No.
11) LOL No.
12) No, which is why I’ve pretty much stopped playing.

Jordi.6081:

I stopped playing since christmas until now, waiting for a response to this issue.

Colin has now posted a a whole blogpost… and frankly, i don’t feel much better after reading it. I only see vague references to “making open world more rewarding” but not a single word about monster or event/world chest loot at all.
It is indeed nice that they are going to add a reward system for achievements. But what if i don’t care about achievements? Will open world loot continue to be crap and will i be forced to do achievements if i want good loot? How does that tie with “play the way you want”?
I could understand if those achievement chests only have rare skins, but again, if i don’t care about achievs i would like to be able to get those skins with karma.

We need a response, this is becoming ridiculous. 2 months and counting.

I agree with this completely. It sounds like the “achievement” reward system, which appears to be token-based, is their answer. Which equates to actual mob drops not changing in the slightest.

Which means yet again, ANet has missed the mark entirely, and taken steps to “correct” an issue that didn’t really exist. I didn’t see many threads suggesting that “achievements aren’t rewarding”; I’ve seen lots of activity here, and in the previous locked thread, discussing OPEN WORLD DROP RATES FROM MOBS, VETS, and CHAMPS.

Maybe if I use small words and big letters?

And yet again, it feels like ANet has missed the mark entirely.

The continued development of this game becomes more and more underwhelming.

I’ve essentially given up. I play maybe an hour or two a week, but the game just feels entirely stale at this point. Knowing I’m broke, and that going out in open world cannot fix that is frustrating enough to drive me away from the game.

GG, ANet. Well played.

As the title states, every time I start my client, I have a download (as if the game patched, but it didn’t). The patcher then goes to the log-in screen without actually downloading any files, and I’m able to log in.

Any ideas as to why this is happening?

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

See, I did not read the GW books. So.. from what I have seen of the storylines I did, Destiny’s edge are a bunch of /facepalms who make Alesia look like Voltron.

…
It is a terrible storyline series, it is a personal to me as a walmart parking lot and less interesting.

…
Here? Me (and 10 other noobs) gank one guaranteed success worm. (Norn) Now, for that I am THE SLAYER, known far and wide throughout the lands, feared, honored, and on the fast track to even more fame and product endorsements.

I am in awe of your one-liners, which I have highlighted above…. because they were great :p

Also, i agree with the entirety of your post. This story was mind-numbingly boring, and very hard to become attached to.

Ashes.6418:

I’ve analyzed for a while what makes the GW2 story so poor, beyond the obvious stuff.

Probably the biggest thing for me is the pacing. On my first character I leveled to 80 purely through world exploration, and did not touch the story until I was nearly finished with gearing my character out with full exotics. From exploring the world I gathered this amazing sense of depth and lore in the GW2 universe that I loved because none of it was explained directly to me, it was just there in the world for me to discover and interpret how I will.

Then I played the story through, each mission back to back. I mentioned pacing, and this is why, playing the story like this became a chore. Not only were the instanced story zones so repetitive in their structure (an essentially on-rails experience one expects from an FPS story, not an RPG), but the obligitory combat in nearly ever zone that didn’t even require it was too long and drawn out, and not challenging in the least. It highlighted everything wrong with an MMORPG’s combat system and combined it with J-RPG levels of horrible linearity.
This came straddled on the back of your quick progression of a young person thrust out into the wilderness rapidly gaining favour of your race’s hero and becoming extremely wise and competant very quickly, to the point where people start taking advice from you when they have no good reason to. All the while you’re racing through the story at break-neck pace, leaving behind you story threads that were never fully resolved.
You transition so quickly from nobody to town hero to trusted advisor, and then to rookie of an order, quickly promoted to highest rank after about 2 or 3 missions, and then promoted to second in command of the pact. The progression is not believable because your character never develops through the story, your character never learns anything, and you have no say in how your character acts in your “Personal” story.

And that’s the biggest peeve I have about the GW2 story. They advertise it as YOUR personal story, when in reality, regardless of what choices you make, there is only one real story path. There’s nothing personal about it, just a thin veil of choice as to while missions you have to slog through to get to the most anti-climatic ending ever.

QFT. This is it, in a nutshell. Dead-on.

I would argue that the story itself was anything but good, and the manner in which it’s presented is even worse. What follows is my opinion.

Let’s take a look first at Destiny’s Edge. In order to fully grasp their story, you have to run story mode dungeons…. which is about as much fun as having my wisdom teeth extracted. And yet, you’re introduced to these characters during your story quest… and that’s it. You don’t see them again until you’re forced into a dungeon at Arah for the final story quest. They don’t have anything to do with the Pact, or that nimrod Trahearne… just dungeons.

Speaking of that nimrod Trahearne… what an epic facepalm. Let’s examine this for a moment: a guy appears about 1/3 of the way through your story (we’ll ignore the fact that the first 10 levels of story quest pretty much ended- that’s okay, I didn’t want to know anything else about my sister who’s a Seraph, anyway… /eyeroll), and suddenly, he becomes the hero. Wait, aren’t you playing the hero? Nope, sorry- glory goes to the plant guy over there… who almost never swings a weapon.

The entire story could play out without Trahearne even existing. You lead the Pact, you make the decisions, you fight the Elder Dragons… Oh, wait, that’s what happens anyway, and yet he gets all the credit.

Terribly written, terribly executed. There is one thing I agree with Trahearne on:

This won’t end well.

No, there’s no class you can play that doesn’t follow the mantra of DPS, DPS, dodge. This is essentially what they have done with combat in GW2. Welcome to a game without any semblance of real combat mechanics.

But hey, getting rid of the trinity was a great idea, right? It could have been, if they had introduced a system that was just as meaningful, and had developed combat roles beyond that of “hit this until it dies, and stay out of red circles”.

This is, of course, my opinion, after having played both melee and ranged up to 80. Feel free to disagree.

Of all the things that were lost in transition from GW1 to GW2, I miss the Dev’s minds the most :p

Guild halls
HA and GvG
Meaningful skill choices
Dervishes
Useful pets (both ranger and necro), or the option to run without and be just as powerful
Loot drops???
A decent story?
A useful quest system
A useful attribute system
Skills? Elites?
…

I could go on for hours. I give up.

TerrellEdenost.7086:

The problem with that idea is that they won’t know what the 95% is until weeks before launch. And that is just what we are getting. Next week we’ll get the details because they will be >95% sure that it will be in the patch. If they tell us that something is gonna be there early in the month and then it fails QA testing… what then? There will be way more QQ about being told something will be there and then isn’t. ArenaNet is actually doing the right thing by running all new content through QA and then making a formal announcement for the update.

The point is this… we have to treat all comments from dev as “sneak peaks” with no expressed or implied release time and that is that. Otherwise you’ve set your expectations too high.

See, I disagree with this. If the level of communication was higher, the devs could announce X. let’s say X fails QA testing (assuming at this point QA exists- I’m looking at you, snowflake jewelry…). The dev (or…gasp! our community manager) comes back and says, “yeah, X didn’t pan out, we’ll take another run at it later.”

That, right there, is called ‘communication’. This is the same thing I’ve been saying for months: the communication we receive from ANet is so few and far between that we have to guess and speculate at everything. If they simply communicated more openly, more often, the playerbase probably wouldn’t be as whiny on the forums.

I invite you to take a look at the dev tracker here, and then compare it to the dev tracker on the RIFT forum. The difference in the level of communication is night and day. The biggest thing I loved about RIFT is that I always knew what the dev team was working on, what was coming up next, and that my feedback was heard. I wish ANet would try this tactic- it works wonders.

Edit: all that being said, I was kinda hoping for a scavenger hunt too =/

Thomassassinate.9370:

Not the responsibility but the lack of common sense if something is too good to be true it probly is.

Like the dude who made 10k off of it the players were well aware it was an exploit. I’m sure many told friends and guild members, some made videos etc.

Think of it like this if you saw a device on the ground in real life and everytime you pushed the button money printed out after the lets 5000th or so push wouldnt you say i wonder if this could lead to something bad.

First, in using common sense, I wouldn’t compare a real-world situation with something in a video game that in many cases blatantly ignores reality. Your point is moot.

While I would agree that “if something is too good to be true, it probably is”, the issue at hand is that players brought this to the attention of the developers via Reddit and the official forums, and were not replied to. Hard to know if something is working as intended if you can’t get an answer from the people running the show.

If anything, this whole situation has highlighted the lack of communication on the ANet staff’s part to the community, and the need for this to change immediately.

Again, I say to the people who got refunds: good for them. They deserved it, because the bans were questionable in the first place.

I say good for them. It was questionable at best to ban them in the first place. I wouldn’t blame any of them in the least for taking that money elsewhere.

A problem that I’m seeing with all this recorded data (I can’t believe I’m going to say this) is the lack of scientific method. People are farming all over, using different levels of MF, different characters, different farming methods… there’s no specificity.

A great way to test this, in my mind, would be to get 5 or 10 players together, and make them as similar as possible: same levels of magic find, no foods or boosters to help keep things simple, etc. Then, have them all go to the same map, for a set time, for a set number of days, and relay ALL that drop data.

The sad thing is, ANet should (again, in my mind) have the ability to run this kind of simulation themselves and see exactly what it is we’re describing as a “perceived loot issue”. Relying on the playerbase to do this is going to result in, well, odd results.

Not to mention, this whole thing feels like it was done just to make us all chase our tails. I think the lack of official response attests to that. Requests for things like “what kind of data do you need” left unanswered also make me think this was done as a stalling tactic on ANet’s part.

At the risk of being flamed…

I would like to see a poaching/bounty hunt daily. The more I worked this idea out in my head, the more it reminds me of Nicholas, combined with some aspects of a different game I used to play. Allow me to explain in detail.

In LA, there would be an NPC who collects those often useless trophy items. By speaking to him, you can see which items he is collecting, and what pre-set reward he is offering. Each zone would have a specific mob type and trophy type, so this could be completed by players of every level. Obviously, reward scales with level, as does trophy requirement (where the bounty may be “10 globs of globby goo” at level 10, the bounty may be 50 at level 30, etc.).

The NPC would also offer a “Bag of Goodies” for defeating a specific mob (typically, a dungeon boss) weekly. This would encourage players to group together, and actually leave LA (I know, it’s a strange concept, fractals being there and all).

By bringing the NPC said items, players can exchange the trophies for either cash (which would obviously need to be greater than the merchant value of said items), or tokens for exchange. Exchange rewards include rare and exotic armors (new skins, same stats?) karma vials, crafting components (T6, ideally), and more- I’m sure this could be worked out in more detail later by someone far more qualified than me.

Gotta love the bad engrish.

Are we really shocked that the goldsellers have turned here for an additional revenue source?

I can’t help but laugh. The lack of official response is typical of ANet at this point.

The frustration from the playerbase is palpable… I wonder how long it will take, how many players will be lost, how much revenue will be sacrificed, before ANet realizes their mistake.

Ah, well. My scores on Medal of Honor Warfighter have never looked better. I’ll keep checking in here for a (continued lack of) official response regarding the single largest factor in many players quitting the game.

edit: Props on much of the data submitted by the players here. Maybe ANet should hire you guys, seeing as how they clearly lack the ability to compile the data they needed themselves.

How about the guy in the LA TP who talks about his competition being “skrittheads”?

I don’t always run away from a fight, but when I do, I run with Logan Thackeray.

Keep running, my friends!

Eli The Yahoo.9782:

1)graphics (1-bad…10-amazing) – ⁹
2)sound(1-bad…10-amazing) – ⁷
3)story concept/originality (1-boring…10-captivating) – ⁸
4)loot/reward (1-lost all my money…10-gained amazing items) – ⁸ for some reason i stopped getting cogs and couldn’t get 2 other minipets, otherwise everything else was great
5)stability (1-extremly buggy…10-no bugs) – ⁸
6)network connection/speed (1-laggy,disconnections, 10 – perfect connection) – ⁹
7)mini events length (1-to long/short…10-just right) – ⁷
8)overall event length (1-to long/short…10-just right) – ¹⁰
9)overall Satisfaction (1-worst experience ever,10-best experience ever) – ⁸

1) 10 The art was excellent.
2) 10 The bells were a great touch.
3) 5 “It’s wintersday, and an inventor made stuff and decided to give it away? Wait, the stuff broke and attacked people?” <- story in a nutshell… eh, they didn’t re-invent the wheel or anything, but it was amusing. That being said, on “concept” the idea of not being able to party with the people we want to was a complete and total /facepalm moment that pretty much turned me off from doing the event.

4) 3 Rated a 3 because while I didn’t lose any money on the event, the loot was fairly useless, aside from the bag that got sent to my new toon. I’m not complaining about it, really- it’s not like I expected something earth-shattering as a reward. I just thought the reward we did get was very… meh.

5) 10 I didn’t have any issues with the event stuff in terms of stability.
6) 10 goes hand in hand with stability, I thought?
7) 10 fine, I guess
8) 7 Honestly, I think this went on a bit too long, and became very stale very quickly. After you completed the Toypocalypse, there was really no reason to re-do it, unless you were achievement hunting. Event probably could have been a week shorter without seeing anyone cry over it.

9) 6.5 Being completely honest, the Halloween event was far more entertaining. The Mad King’s realm areas were loot-filled and hilarious. Candy Corn monsters? Yes please!… And for Wintersday you want me… wait, you want me to run around and… paint dolls? eh…..
Couple this with, again, the fact that I couldn’t partake of the event with my friends that I chose to (what happened to the “guild” concept in ‘Guild Wars’?), and it was less than impressive. Could’ve been worse, I suppose: it could have gone like Lost Shores.

Blame ANet for putting PvE stuff in a PvP environment. Honestly.

Map completion? Jumping puzzles? In PvP? Fail idea.

Someone else stated several pages back that a great deal of the confusion surrounding this issue could have been avoided if ANet had simply spoken up in a timely manner.

This highlights the communication issue that exists between ANet and the playerbase. It’s interesting to me that we didn’t hear from the ANet staff until after the issue had all but sorted itself (economically speaking, e.g., balancing of prices on goods), and only then was it clarified that “this is an exploit, there will be bans”.

This is a terrible way to run a business, in my opinion. The fact is, this could have been stopped dead in its tracks if ANet had spoken up. If someone from the CM or Mod or (gasp) Dev team had popped into one of the (it looks like) several threads regarding this and said, “yeah, gonna check into this… stop until we get back to you”…. done deal. Word would have spread the same way word about the recipe did: guild chat, voice comms, and other means of communication would have lit up: “ANet said stop, they’re investigating!!”

To then after the fact permanently ban players is excessive. If we’re going to dish out blame, there’s plenty to go on ANet’s plate as well. Lax quality testing, poor response time on the issue… I’m not saying players are blameless here; I’m saying there is a shared burden, and for that reason, justice should be meted out tempered in understanding. There should probably be some temporary suspensions, and several rollbacks… and that should be about where it ends.

For the record, I don’t have a jewelcrafter and didn’t get in on this…. at all.

CaptainCanada.5374:

Hawkmoon.5849:

And for kitten’s sake, could we get some combat variety? press 1, dodge, press 2, dodge, press 4, then 3, then dodge… every class is DPS- it’s simply a matter of what animation I want to see when I press said key that determines what class I roll. there’s no support, no dedicated healers (probably the biggest disappointment IMO), no real boss mechanics.

Dude, lets not start this again. It’s not a trinity game. Get over it or go play something else.

Trinity? Hell, I’d settle for some DEPTH in combat… or the story… or… nevermind.

As the game stands now? No, I would not consider buying any kind of expansion. There are far too many features missing from the game right now, common sense features that shouldn’t need an “expansion” to be delivered to the players.

For those of you asking, “what common sense features?” I submit:

Guild Halls, meaningful PvP (this would include ladders and actual structure), a LFG tool (in-game, not on a 3rd party website), useful guild management tools…. I could go on for what feels like days.

There are many aspects of GW1 that worked well and should have been carried over, not abandoned. Alliances? Worked great- now, we get a guild system that actually makes guild loyalty a joke. How about a gripping story? Because let’s be honest: you playing as Trahearne’s sidekick and taking the story focus away from the player, placing it on an NPC… fail move.

And for kitten’s sake, could we get some combat variety? press 1, dodge, press 2, dodge, press 4, then 3, then dodge… every class is DPS- it’s simply a matter of what animation I want to see when I press said key that determines what class I roll. there’s no support, no dedicated healers (probably the biggest disappointment IMO), no real boss mechanics.

Loot tables are a disaster right now…unless you ask ANet, and then it’s all in our heads.

Again, the list could go on. Point being, why would I pay a company so I could be even more frustrated with the product I already have? Same reason why I refuse to spend money in the Gem Store. I’d happily throw money at a good game: hell, I did it for over a year with Rift- paid my subscription and bought extra fluff too. At this rate, I’ll probably be headed back that way soon.

shrug Agree with the OP. Valid points are valid, regardless of how people feel.

lmko @ the amount of hate in this thread.

Now, let the flaming continue because clearly the OP and I are not entitled to our opinion and need to leave… /eyeroll

Yeah, isn’t it a great utility?

Too bad it’s beyond kittening rekittened that you have to go out of the game to access a tool the game clearly needs.

Why this wasn’t put in-game with the release of FotM is beyond me. I seriously hope this is in development.

Precursors should be account bound. This prevents looting of a precursor that can’t be used by your class (as you could later roll a class that could in fact use it).

Legendary weapons, once crafted, should be soulbound.

I’m not sure who twisted this into an issue having to do with the holidays; I don’t recall the OP mentioning it.

I think the idea was in general/overall, communication has been poor. I don’t think the holidays factored into what the OP (or many of us here, for that matter) were getting at.

I’m hoping we see a more… shall we say “forthcoming” communications strategy in 2013.

And this is exactly why we need server-specific sub-forums. Would be an awesome tool for instances just such as this.

Alice.8694:

Hawkmoon.5849:

Clearly, they don’t care.

The forums rules actually say do not make threads calling arenanet out. There are better ways to present things than trying to cause sensationalism.

Never claimed or intended to “cause sensationalism”.

Alice.8694:

That you seem to think that Arenanet should be answering all the player call outs WHILE developing and working on the game is absurd.

Never said that, or implied it, either.

Alice.8694:

Would you rather they were answering many of the sensationalist rants repeatedly posted all over the forum or actively working to fix the problems that are within the game while improving and adding new content.

I believe I stated my opinion of what I wanted quite clearly. In case I didn’t, let me give you a summation:
I would like to see increased communication from the Development Team. This would include interaction on a semi-regular basis, via forum, live stream, AMA (although I personally believe that Reddit is horrible…), or even an in-game Q&A like we used to see in GW1. I did not, however, suggest that they answer sensationalist posts; I would agree that there are many. However, there are also several legitimate issues and problems presented that are ignored until eventually swept under the rug. This is where “increased communication” comes into play.

Alice.8694:

It’s either/or… take your pick.

I disagree, as I think most players would.

Alice.8694:

Better communication from the developers would be nice, but constant babysitting of peoples feedback is totally unnecessary and needless. Most developers who do it either do it within their own personal time or sacrifice dev time for it. Many questions and requests require answers from several different teams and would likely be a lot of work to compile.

It’s never gonna be 1:1.

I wouldn’t expect it to be 1:1, and didn’t imply that it should be. I did, however, show another example of a game in the same market, in which Developer communication is considerably better, and far more consistent. Rift manages to release major content updates on a regular basis (just released a major expansion pack called Storm Legion, if you didn’t know), and yet maintains a level of communication that is far and above what we’ve seen from ANet. If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to check out their forums- you don’t even need the game to read their boards.

All I’m saying, is that the communication here has been terrible, and there’s really no good reason for it that we’ve seen or heard (I’m all ears if someone would like to correct me on that). You cite things like hours in the day; then explain why Trion publishes such an amazing product in Rift and yet manages to maintain a solid and open line of communication with their playerbase? I’m not making it up. As I said, you can go right to their site, and see who has what job title, and how often they’ve been posting. It’s not a “specialized team” of people who interface with the community (although they have those, too- their CM James “Elrar” is awesome); it’s the actual class leads and content designers and developers.

Artemis Noir.3804:

@Hawkmoon,
The Rift communication looks very good.

Equally, though I have never played the game, I have seen WoW’s patch notes and they are extremely detailed as well.

There is much I truly love about GW2, despite the need for fixes in various places, but were I to give Anet a grade on their communication it would be no higher than a C+, and that is only if I were in a generous mood.
I’ve worked in marketing… regular and informative communication with your customers or client base is KEY.

Yes, and the things I posted don’t even touch the regularly scheduled live feeds in which the Dev team sits down and takes player questions- MINUS the “PR speak” ANet is famous for…

For those of you saying “they’re on vacation”, that’s great. But it doesn’t excuse the terrible level of communication we’ve had prior to the holidays.

Communication is critical these days. Social media, Twitch.tv and YouTube, fansites, and yes, especially the official forums… there are so many options for ANet to give players the feeling like they’re in the loop and know what’s going on with the game they love, and they fall abysmally short in this regard.

For the new year, I’d love to see a new strategy from ANet on their level of player communication.