Guild Wars 2

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Aidan Savage.2078:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Soooooo, basically looks like game dev on the new content (specifically the new class and for that matter most like the specializations) is all being done with what looks like the current trait system.

So, this means that:

a) the new “simpler” system isn’t actually going to be very different in use, but perhaps in obtaining them which begs the question “why is it not out yet”?
b) there is no plan to get this new trait system (which they said they’ve been working on for some time now) done and ready before HoT drops

Note, this is speculation based in part on today’s POI.

Yeah…I’m really seeing no reason to even try the beta at this point.

Keep in mind the new system may not be 100% complete, thus cant be used on their internal environment yet, which is probably where the game video we’ve been seeing has been recorded.

That’s kinda my point here. Once again, they went to the trouble of saying something is coming (again, even though already knew that from a post ages ago in the original trait thread), but nothing is ACTUALLY ready and probably won’t be until after launch of HoT, which for me, is utter nonsense.

It’s Hamster Wheel 2.0

I see the same thing happening here as in the other thread. That, of course, begs the question of why they even bothered with this newest discussion. As I see it, and I appear to not be the only one scratching my head, there isn’t anything to talk about.

If you create a thread (like the first Trait Feedback megathread) with the intent to have dialogue with your playerbase about change and upcoming features..then have a presence at the table. If you do not have any intention of communicating in a meaningful way, or at all, and have no plans to discuss anything meaningful about your plans for change, then creating a thread about it is pointless. There is no discussion value.

Additionally, I think the Trait 1.0 thread was the perfect example to illustrate this. Was nothing learned? I am trying to be constructive here and look at this in a “moving forward” way, rather than a “let’s just repeat what we did in that other thread and leave the community twisting in the wind again” way. Is it possible to move past this model of non-communication to gain traction in a more positive, and illuminating 2-way dialogue?

From observation, and trying to be constructive again, all I’m reading are hundreds of additional community discussion points that revolve around slight confusion, and more building frustration. That, as I see it, is not a solid or positive base to build a reciprocal conversation on. From reading, your players want to talk about this. They want to give suggestions, and they’d like to know if it’s worth their time to do so, given the lack of basic acknowledgement to their contributions.

My suggestion is simply to avoid the mistakes of the past and move forward so the community feels there is value in this thread and what they say. Please do not let it go on for months without meaningful interaction. That has already been done.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Schneider.8615:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

[snip]

I find his post pretty clear.

Hey folks,
“Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.
In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.
Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic – it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.”

It tells us that the new system will be simplified and following the trend of their account wide mastery system.

It tells us that specialisations need a system revamp to work traits and skill, since the new sub-classes will use new traits and skills.

It tells us that details on exactly how it will work are coming later closer to the release.

To me that says more than enough.

Yes, and as a basis for conversation, it seemed a valid amount of content to inspire thoughtful commentary.

I take on board that many feel the first thread was fine and dandy, even with ridiculous load times, redundant posts, valueless bumps, and the obvious fact that many people were posting without reading input by other forums members or our Game Director. Circular discussions and the same person posting the same opinion 11 different times don’t make for a valuable thread.

With all due respect, Gaile, I find your general tone about the first Trait thread to be quite negative. To say this constructively, if that is your particular view from someone in a Community Rep position, it is a strong reflection of what Colin, Chris, and whomever else must think.

Repetition was made because no one was answering the questions posted by your customers. Bumps were made because there was little to no indication that the thread was on anyone’s radar. It behooves me to think that the people in your office, including yourself, fail to see the cause and effect of poor communications —> community trying multiple times for basic levels of communication.

Anyway. On to bigger and brighter things? Traits 3.0?

It sounds like they already have a plan in place. While I am glad 2.0 has been kicked to the curb, how is the community in a position to discuss the new version if Colin won’t be more forthcoming with details? One of the points that has been brought up many times, not just relating to Traits, is that a lot of pain and grief could have been avoided if previews of sorts would have been given earlier. Many other games do this successfully, often on Public Test Servers, with the end goal being a smoother product and experience.

^ So this is my suggestion, for constructive feedback. More details sooner, so we don’t have another 2.0 fiasco. Doesn’t that make sense? Your competitors seem to think so.

Wolfheart.1879:

But I don’t feel valued as a player or a customer anymore

Long, but great post. I thought I’d boil your commentary down to one short but sweet line. It really captures the soul of this thread after all these months.

Unfortunately, this thread is full of ANET’s customers saying the exact same thing in a myriad of ways. Chris Whiteside has acknowledged the problem and hasn’t participated in communicating. Isaiah Cartwright has acknowledged the Trait system needs work, but, again, nothing has been done.

8 months of the run-around. 8 months, 3.3 thousand posts, and just under 160,000 views on a topic that has become thesis-worthy on the scale of What Not To Do for corporate/customer relations.

Regarding your media comments, I’ve brought this to the attention of two separate MMO writers. One won’t even touch the topic because he’s afraid to be critical of ANET. The other one agrees wholeheartedly with the general sentiment here and has stopped making alts as well until it gets fixed, but finds the sheer mass of this feedback thread to be too much to go through to write about. I say keep sending emails to writers. Maybe someone will pick the story up.

Gaile, with all due respect, this “Specialist” program isn’t going to help the current situation. That situation being the topic that has dominated this forum for a year: the abysmal lack of communication on meaningful topics by ANET. Judging by the larger portion of commentary in this thread, many community participants see through the smoke screen as well.

Let me elaborate. In the “Communicating With You” thread, Mike and Chris went on and on about how they read, and listened. Throughout the thread, very specific topics were directly brought to Chris’ attention (since we finally had it after a half year of radio silence) which he acknowledged. Since that time, not much at all has improved, and the hot topics that were brought up are (drum roll) still being ignored.

So, if months of compiled community feedback (in various threads across various topics) still remain smouldering and ignored, and random flare-ups of threads where the community is pleading for communication get ignored..after Chris and Mike make a hullabaloo about mending the bridge they burnt..how is anyone to believe that a volunteer system is going to improve anything?

If thousands voices in threads that are over a half year old can’t get them to wake up, then how is a memo from a volunteer going to change anything? It’s become so comically absurd.

The problem comes from the top. Their self-imposed hiding behind a wall has to cease. <— That is where the problem lies.

What they are trying to do with this program is cure cancer with an aspirin.

dlonie.6547:

Forum Specialists may make no promises—expressed or implied—about the relaying of information, neither that it will be relayed nor that it has been relayed in the past. Forum Specialists may not divulge information that they may learn about unreleased components of the game, such as upcoming changes or new content.

I appreciate the idea, but what we need is a policy change. Not more people saying “I don’t know” or “I can’t tell you.”

What would the role of these specialists be? Just to point newcomers to existing posts that answer their questions? To serve as a liason between the player and developer communities? To be a friendly face associated with a particular subforum?

If they’re still bound by the “don’t talk about what’s in development” policy, I don’t see this improving anything.

Gaile:

“Forum Specialists may make no promises—expressed or implied—about the relaying of information, neither that it will be relayed nor that it has been relayed in the past. Forum Specialists may not divulge information that they may learn about unreleased components of the game, such as upcoming changes or new content.”

I agree with you, Dlonie. What is the point in having more people repeat the party line.

All this is going to do is further inflate certain ego’s of the whiteknight contingent here. Because, as per this line:

Gail:

“..flag posts in breach of the Forum Code of Conduct..”

..they will be given the powers to police. I can think of at least 4 people that frequent these forums that will be over-joyed and clambering over each other to get their applications in to finally have power to shut down the people that criticize ANet.

I think this is a terrible idea, in a long list of poorly thought out ideas.

Guhracie.3419:

Illysharia.7286:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Thanks everyone for giving us some feedback on this system we’ll meet internally and discuss this system some more as I think there are a lot of valid points being brought up here.

Hello Isaiah,

I thought I’d fish back to retrieve this post as it still remains quite relevant to this thread. Before your reply, there were 4 months of feedback and data (as requested) that the community spent quite a lot of time compiling. Since your post, there have been 3 more months of feedback from the community, again as you requested.

There has been acknowledgement from you and Chris that the Trait re-vamp needs adjusting, and our feedback was needed as part of the process towards improvement from its current build. In 7 months, the community has helped with the process as best we could. We have done our part.

Understanding your communication policy of not divulging specifics of your development goals, it is not an unreasonable request to have an update on whether the re-working is still a go, or if the idea has been scrapped altogether. I am not asking for deadlines, or details of change. I am merely asking for a basic degree of common courtesy to be returned to the community that has compiled 7 months of requested feedback.

I hope this message reaches your desk. Thank you for your attention.

I really respect your tone, because for me, another red post full of platitudes is not going to cut it. I don’t care if O’brien himself comes in here with a song and dance about the importance of our feedback, because I will believe it when it is live and in-game, and not a moment sooner.

I figured I’d make an attempt to reach the source one last time. You can attract more bees with honey than vinegar, even though there is enough honey in this entire thread to give the world diabetes.

I’ve made a happy home elsewhere. Unless this gets meaningful updates, there isn’t any reason to come back here, or to ANET. Disappointed, but we tried.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Thanks everyone for giving us some feedback on this system we’ll meet internally and discuss this system some more as I think there are a lot of valid points being brought up here.

Hello Isaiah,

I thought I’d fish back to retrieve this post as it still remains quite relevant to this thread. Before your reply, there were 4 months of feedback and data (as requested) that the community spent quite a lot of time compiling. Since your post, there have been 3 more months of feedback from the community, again as you requested.

There has been acknowledgement from you and Chris that the Trait re-vamp needs adjusting, and our feedback was needed as part of the process towards improvement from its current build. In 7 months, the community has helped with the process as best we could. We have done our part.

Understanding your communication policy of not divulging specifics of your development goals, it is not an unreasonable request to have an update on whether the re-working is still a go, or if the idea has been scrapped altogether. I am not asking for deadlines, or details of change. I am merely asking for a basic degree of common courtesy to be returned to the community that has compiled 7 months of requested feedback.

I hope this message reaches your desk. Thank you for your attention.

Infernia.9847:

I still beg the devs to try out this trait change for themselves.
They all need to do this with the stipulations that:

1. They can’t buy the traits
2. They must unlock all of the traits per character
3. They must use all five character slots and finish out each one on a different profession.

Then look at the metrics they have at their disposal:

• Are the majority of players unlocking or buying specific traits? If the majority is buying then go there and figure out why, then change it.
• What is the average number of traits per character unlocked/bought after the patch? Do these numbers support the build diversity and experimentation the trait change was supposed to bring about?
• Sales numbers for new character slots past the 5 free we received. Are the numbers stagnant, falling, or rising? Plot that graph pre-patch and post-patch.

There are plenty of other suggestions in this thread that are amazing. I tried a slightly different approach this time and implore the devs to do it themselves. If the fix is only being discussed at this point they will have plenty of time to achieve the goal of the suggestion before any action is decided on.

Really great idea. It’s easier to form a true opinion from personal experience rather than anecdotal statements. Unfortunately, this has been suggested several times over the..7 months now?..and who knows if that has been tried. Yes, as of tomorrow it will be 7 months.

I put a bold highlight on your last sentence to stress a point. Are they still at the discussion stage after all this time? Who knows. Gaile piped in saying that all our feedback is listened to, but what does that really amount to. It is over a half year now, nothing has been done, and there hasn’t been any communication on the subject. None. Making a statement, then having someone come back in to point to that statement, is not communication. It is a circular dance of avoidance.

Anyway. Even though I’ve put my financial support behind a company that has amazing communication that actually respond, in a meaningful and timely manner, to customer feedback, I follow this thread because of the investment I put in. Oddly, I find myself still surprised that nothing is being done. They’ve admitted there are problems, there is a enormously substantial amount of critical (yet helpful) feedback, and the yet the 7th month is about to tick by with no improvement.

You know, it’s kind of at that point where you’ve said everything in a thousand different ways, you’ve pleaded, raged, maybe got infracted because of simply trying to squeeze blood out of a stone..and nada. I simply don’t understand the mindset where any of this is ok with a company to treat your customers in this way. It astounds me.

Gaile said this feedback is useful, and to essentially keep up the good work. I say, after 7 months it’s time to see results. Or, at least be honest and communicate that the Trait system has been shelved and will remain as is. Either of those is not unreasonable.

Gaile Gray.6029:

To you folks who are saying “You need to update that thread,” please note that right now, the only update we have available in the one that was offered – in detail and at length – when Jon last posted. He or another team member will update when they have more info, but do know this thread was and continues to be useful.

Gaile, not too long ago there was a very robust thread that Mike started, then was shortly thereafter championed by Chris. I am sure you are aware of it, so I won’t belabor any details or reiterate the finer points that Chris acknowledged regarding the need for communication improvements. It has been a rough year for that, and that thread portrayed an earnest desire on the part of the Dev’s to undo the wrongs of the past and move forward.

However, regarding this Trait issue, and this thread, there has been a half year communications break-down. Not on the community’s behalf, mind you, but from the people buzzing around behind and around you in your office. I can appreciate that Jon feels his post was all he needs to say on this subject, but the smallest fraction of attention paid would clearly illustrate that it is grossly insufficient.

I thought Chris’ efforts would have started to bear fruit. They haven’t in this thread. A statement isn’t a discussion, and simply having Jon fall back on that statement when he was pressed for a comment is clearly indicative that the communication problem is fully alive and kicking, and continues to be fostered by the people who promised to improve the situation.

It is so frustrating. I’ve honestly never encountered a Dev group in all my years of gaming that has been so insular.

Gaile Gray.6029:

This thread is very large and has a lot of great feedback and input within it. But because it’s so long, some participants may have missed a very informative post by Game Design Lead Jon Peters.

To help you help us with a topic that the devs feel is very valuable, I’ll repeat Jon’s post:

At the end of the day this system has helped spread out the teaching of the system and the feeling of accomplishment through acquisition, but it has done it in ways that are sometimes counterproductive and still not nearly visible enough to impact as many players as it could.

Guild Wars 2 is a game that is going to continue to evolve and it will be because of your feedback and our efforts so do not get discouraged from posting feedback and be patient with change and I hope we will reward that patience.

TLDR;
We added this system as a direct result from the horizontal progression CDI. We are always reading your feedback, however, we don’t always have time to respond right away or action it quickly. We updated some trait unlocks in the past but we can do more. How can you help?
1) Give us a list of the most offensive trait unlock locations.
2) Keep giving feedback and be patient as this is a big ship and it takes time to steer it.

~~~~~

Jon also wrote later than he would need to be a bit less active on the forums but he explained that this meant he was actively working on making the game better.

So as Jon asked, please keep your feedback coming with our thanks for your efforts to also make the game better! Please note that as Jon points out, changing systems or making adjustments takes time and careful review, but you are being heard and your input is valuable to us.

Gaile, with all do respect (and I do appreciate that you are just a middle-person in these communications) all the feedback required is already contained in this thread. People have simply been repeating themselves for a couple of months now, and trying to get changes made. All the data that is needed is already possessed by Jon as well: he has a list of the Traits and the requirements that each one needs. He simply has to read his spreadsheet and see if they are level appropriate, and if the task is disproportionate to what is being gained. It really is no more than a weekend’s work, at most, of cross referencing to spot those.

How he fixes them is another matter, but spotting them doesn’t take months and months and a continual influx of repetitive community feedback. Frankly, we’re a week and a bit away from hitting the 6 month mark on this thread, and reiterating that more feedback is needed is staggeringly disingenuous.

I think somewhere along the line, someone in upper management over there forgot that we’re the customers that keep your lights on. Rather, we’re treated with, imho, a dishearteningly large amount of disrespect. This is in regards to communication, or lack thereof, how we as customers are perceived, and consequently the attitude directed our way. To keep on track with this thread and not over-generalize, I feel that there has been almost half a year’s effort to stall and entertain this community when we’ve put in so much communal effort to 1) get basic acknowledgement and 2) institute the changes needed for a broken system.

Gaile, again, you are a Community liaison and I appreciate that you have been making efforts. I also understand you have to maintain neutrality, and can only report and relay so much. My comments aren’t about you, it’s about how this Trait thread has been, and continues to be, mismanaged.

As we are approaching the 6 month mark and it appears that little to nothing is being done, I simply have to assume that nothing meaningful will be done. Certainly nothing on the scale of what needs to be done to fix a system that was perfectly fine in its originality. My hands are in the air at this point. In the words of Donald Trump, “ANET, you’re fired!”.

Vayne.8563:

Sokia.3710:

Someone mentioned that you have to kill Overgrown Grub to unlock one of the traits. That reminded me of that last time I was in WvWvW and someone was trying to get a group together to kill the grub. The chat went something like this:

Casual: Hey guys let’s kill the grub boss!
Me: Why would you want to kill the grub?
Random1: Go back to PvE, n00b.
Commander1: Everyone get to the keep!
Random2: Swords at keep!
Casual: We need more for grub, there’s only like 4 or 5 of us.
Commander2: If you aren’t on my tag, just uninstall the game.
Random3: Why are there a bunch of people fighting the grub?
Random4: More like, why are there a bunch of people dying at the grub.

Last time I killed the grub it went something like this.

Guildie: Can anyone help me kill the grub.
Other guildies: Give me a sec, just finishing up this event…I’ll go…sure thing.

Five minutes later the grub was dead.

People say there’s no value to guilds in this game. I just don’t get it.

What I don’t get is the value someone gets by coming into yet another thread to be dismissive and patronizing to someone who is expressing frustration. This is a feedback thread about Traits and people’s experiences with it. Please don’t presume to trample over someone’s post just because you had an opposite experience. It’s baiting, and this thread really needs to stay on track.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Some people had guilds that dropped down to only a couple of people. The 3 guilds I was in went from huge to only a couple active in each one. Its not easy finding guilds that you fit in with and not everyone wants to be in a guild with players they don’t click with. Plus some of us are a little stubbornly loyal and don’t like hopping from guild to guild. I think the amount of people that find being in a guild has no value is very few.

I am happy that you personally have a guild that will help you with these chores when needed though. Its just not that simple for many others.

Edit: Plus you shouldn’t need others for personal character advancement. That’s just bad form.

In relation to gathering Traits and asking for guild help, I agree with your sentiments.

Firstly, not everyone likes to join guilds. There are multitudes of reasons for that, they are all valid to the individual, and they don’t need to be defended. Secondly, not every guild is a cohesive, drop-everything-on-a-dime sort of environment. Many guilds are also small, with people living in various time zones and having real-life requirements. So, getting help isn’t as easy as some people might think, or others might let on to be.
—————————————

Given that many Traits require you to do group events, go into higher level zones, enter dungeons, or enter WvW for objectives, it’s not easy to acquire them. That is the general overtone of this thread: that the given objectives are not congruent with the Trait rewards.

Let’s keep on track and not be dismissive of other people’s experiences. The only way to get this fixed, and to not get this thread locked, is to try to remain constructive.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Crash — I’m asking about that thread. I know it’s huge, and believe me, I hear you (and a thousand other forum members ) loud and clear. I don’t have an answer for you on that subject, but I know you’d like to know more about the status of that thread, if nothing else.

Thank you! Much, much appreciated!

^^ What he said.

There are a lot of people that have put in months of effort to get that thread properly addressed. Thank you, Gaile, for at least trying to get us its status in your office.

Gaile Gray.6029:

If you’re considering how the GW2 Team can best hear your input about the game — such as what you’d like to see in the future, how things are working now, etc. — I personally don’t think a survey is necessary. Honestly and truly: These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication. They are read daily by members of the team — probably more people than you think! — and the forums, as a whole, give us a much better view of what’s important to Guild Wars 2 players than most surveys would do.

Too we have interaction here that’s incredibly effective. Yep, I’m thinking CDIs and I’m glad they’re back! (Even if I marvel how Chris is able to keep up the pace! )

Surveys are difficult to devise in a way that makes them unbiased and statistically accurate. That’s not to say it cannot be done, and the idea of surveys linked to an active game account certainly sounds better to me than those random Internet surveys, like “Who’s your favorite singer,” which get gamed through fan groups, artist management companies, publicists, agents, and the use of “ballot-box stuffing” methods, like vote, clear cache, vote again; vote, change computers, vote again; vote, set up 100 fake e-mail accounts, vote again.

Anyway, just wanted to add a couple of pennies about the subject, fwiw.

Hello Gaile,

Firstly, thank you for being a presence on the forums. A presence has been long overdue. Your efforts are appreciated.

Secondly, to echo CrashTestAuto, some of the threads here are almost a half year old now and really need some attention by someone. In particular, the Traits thread. There hasn’t been any meaningful discussion there in 5 months, even though Chris acknowledged a month or so ago that he is aware. Can you please nudge someone to open lines of communication in that thread?

Zaiteki.3265:

I can see where they may be coming from, re: silence. If you don’t say anything, then you can’t be held to anything. This is a strategy that businesses use on their social media over minor kerfuffles, since it usually dies down within a few days. Remember the Applebee’s receipt controversy a year ago? Most people don’t, and Applebee’s tried to keep quiet on it, so people still go there.

The problem is that this is five months worth of people describing precisely how terrible this decision was and are passionate enough about it to keep on floating the topic to the top. This is not “They burned my hamburger and told me I couldn’t have my money back because I ate 3/4 of it!” here. I do wonder if the community relations people would LIKE to comment, but there is some sort of war/conflict/scoffing at the Dev or Producer level over this. It’s quite clear that a vocal percentage of the player base thinks that whoever thought this was a good idea is a insert clever yet derogatory analogy here, but it’s also quite clear that the go-ahead to revert or to tell the players to stuff it hasn’t been completed yet. With such a passionate topic, anything they say will be held to like welded steel.

I honestly don’t know what the hold-up is. I almost wish I did, but the silence, while deafening and incredibly insulting, is understandable. I just wish that whoever the insert another insulting and derogatory name was who authorized this could be held accountable by the people who would like to play their alts again. A game becomes a ghost town VERY quickly if people stop playing alts, and I’m already seeing a lack of actual other people in the lower levels.

While I agree with 99% of your post, I don’t find the silence to be understandable at all. It is beyond inexcusable, doubly and triply so because of their recent dog-and-pony Communications show that showered the community with gumdrops, rainbows, and group hugs. Chris even acknowledged this thread in particular, and sent a guy over here and..here we are still getting ignored, and nothing has changed. So much for all that.

They seem to think that this is a quiet, forum-only anomaly that, if ignored long enough, will just lose steam and sink away to the depths of the discussion forums. Thing is, I link this thread to every GW2 article that is posted on a very popular gaming site, with a succinct description of what is going on and how the community is being treated. They are shooting themselves in the foot by letting this drag on.

..And yet it drags on! This is a textbook example of how to mismanage a community related problem based on not owning and fixing your mistakes.

Kuldebar.1897:

To put it simply, what should have happened:

• The standard Traits, ie. the core Traits, should have been left as they were in regards to how they were acquired. (This is not to say the Traits for various Professions don’t need tweaking and fixes, of course!)

• New Traits should have been introduced into the game, and those Traits would be tied to various well chosen content gated activities or achievements.

Thus allowing the player to acquire the Core Traits more or less as intended while serving up some “Elite” Traits that would inspire the Player to tackle some fun challenges.

This was pretty much in-line with what the CDI on horizontal progression was talking about. At least, what the players were suggesting. Given how it was executed, I believe the translation to the Dev’s must have been in Klingon.

Regardless. This suggestion is awesome. It’s never going to happen, but it is still what should have happened to begin with.

Zaiteki.3265:

RiverSong, I don’t disagree with you entirely, however, there are many people who have one or two level 80s and really enjoyed being able to play with their traits all along the way, including the last 20 levels. There is a joy in leveling alts and playing the same zones differently due to different class mechanics. However, that falls incredibly flat when all of a sudden you’re slammed up against a level gate that wasn’t there before.

As I’ve said, I’d love to play my alts (I only have a single level 80, a Necro), but this new game system is incredibly insulting and, as however many have said before, just plain not fun. The traits are un-intuitive to find their unlock locations (unless you go off-game to a wiki), and many are higher level than where you’re able to safely explore. So, you don’t get a chance to play with trait combinations at all, and you don’t have real freedom to enjoy swapping them out until max level. This may have been thought out around the boardroom table, but at some point, when you have fifty pages over five months of players screaming about how much they absolutely loathe this change, it’s an almost incompetent amount of arrogance on the part of whichever Dev/Manager/Whatever to tap ash off of their cigar and say “Let them scream, I don’t care, I have their money, and if it’s not fun, then forget about them. We’ll get new players who won’t remember when the game WAS fun.”

It’s a very very poor business model to thumb your noses at the people who WANT to purchase and support your product. It’s not very difficult for this many people to make a great deal of noise on various social media, review, and discussion sites about how much people should certainly not waste their time and money on a game where the Devs quite obviously either have zero power to remove a detestable change or zero inclination to do so.

50 pages, almost 2,500 posts and over 120,000 views. Working on a half year’s effort of feedback.

So much for Chris Whiteside’s grandiose statements of improved communications.

Seriously, if there was a perfect example of how it was Us vs Them, it’s this thread. You are correct, it is contempt and arrogance. It is the only plausible excuse to justify how this mess has continued unchanged for so long.

As per your last paragraph, I’m in that bracket of someone who actually wants to play the game again. I uninstalled shortly after these changes went through, and have been waiting for 1) a reasonable response aside from requests for yet more feedback and 2) changes to make this mess at least palatable. Neither of those has happened, and so they will not get any financial support from me. I also can’t speak positively about them on other gaming sites given how this is playing out.

So..still waiting.

duckideva.6358:

Well, the thing is, once you get to 80, you’re way more likely to start an alt than you are to do most anything else, unless you’re a dedicated dungeon, fractal or wvw runner.

And once you start that alt, you’re faced with a wall of locks that weren’t there before.

At first the player is annoyed. They will go do some of the unlocks, and realize that some of the unlocks are impossible depending on which server you’re on, or what times you play, or if you can rearrange your life to be there when the event happens.

Frustration!

If the player could then throw up their hands, and buy a $20 gem card that would stop him from having to deal with any of that nonsense again…the gem cards would fly off the shelves into eager hands.

It’s actually pretty brilliant from a operant conditioning standpoint. Assuming they unlock the traits in the gem store. If they don’t, then I have no idea what they’re on about with the trait changes. It’s just frustration for the sake of frustration.

I agree. There was another game I used to play that is under a new management that loves the Cash Shop. You could sit back and watch it all play out formulaically. A change was introduced that was designed to be tedious —> months went by to let it really sink in —> new Cash Shop item introduced to alleviate the time gate.

It just seems that GW2’s design is all about gating now. It’s the perfect environment for what I illustrated above.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Gaile Gray.6029:

JackDaniels.1697:

Everybody that hates the NPE is going to take over the discussion after all the fixes have been released I believe. You’re going to see multiple posts by the same people that hate it, and it’s going to seem like a lot more people dislike the new changes, when in reality, it’s just those same people that really want to make their point across. And not that there is anything wrong with posting more than once, it is a discussion after all, but you get my point.

I mean you can see the evidence of it now, with people complaining in one thread over the subject, and then having some of those same people from that thread start up new threads on pretty much the same topic.

I do agree that some minor changes need to happen, but hopefully Anet doesn’t give in to the pressure and make a complete 180 to the NPE, because I believe some of these changes are good for the game.

So I can’t wait to chime in when all the fixes are done. Should be interesting.

I agree with you about this. I think it’s premature to gauge how NPE will play at the current time, because we do know changes are coming.

And yes, you do see some forum members making the same points again and again. That truly is not helpful to the review and discussion, in that the devs would prefer a focused, clear, concise statement rather than realizing “Wait, it’s that same person, saying the same thing for the 19th time.”

While i get the reasons and sentiment here Gaile, from our perspective, many of us played it ArenaNet’s way back in April regarding the trait changes and we went ignored for 4-5 months before we got a single reply back from anyone over there while that post made it to roughly 40 pages of both complaints and feedback, only to be told to re-summarize the points because it would have been too much to pour through the entire thread. That was building. For FOUR months.

So no, now people are going to continue to make thread after thread to make sure that their voice is heard and the forum is flooded so it cannot be so easily ignored. The fact that these posts can’t be buried to page 3, 4, 5, or 6 now makes it so these things HAVE to be addressed before it gets to the next feature patch.

Now, I’m willing to drop feedback from my time now with the new system now that i have played it though to level 40 with my third test alt. Question is, do you guys want that feedback in this thread or a specific thread for said feedback? i ask because I don’t want to “add to the noise” if there is a plan for a focused feedback thread on the NPE in particular, but I want to be sure that whatever i right up will be read and not be asked to summarize it later.

Exactly this. Their previous actions (and current actions, really, as the Trait thread still isn’t resolved) and policies have forged what is now being seen. When you give feedback, and it gets ignored, you give more feedback in the hopes it will be acknowledged. When that still goes ignored, you try again, but some of the civility starts to wear off. Eventually it becomes toxic and non-constructive because of how management/CR deals with their community.

Corpus Christi.2057:

The majority of the posters, if unsatisfied, simply post their concerns and/alternative solutions here.

GW2 is full of issues and unsatisfying solutions, hence the grievances, which somestimes, however, are properly dealth with by the devs.

That’s how it is supposed to work.

The fact that for the past year+ there have been more complaints rather than appraisals on the forums is precisely because of what I have mentioned above: plenty of unresolved issues and unheard solutions and so on.

A massive variable for the current state of the forums is that the community was ignored for a half year. That built up a lot of steam that simple communication could have fixed. Unfortunately, there is still frustration even though there is the sudden “all hands on deck” show due to their self-imposed policy of non-communication. The community can now talk..but only about certain things. And management can answer..within self-imposed parameters.

And, even though that is going on, there are still long-standing issues that remain unresolved and aren’t being talked about, like Traits. Yes, Chris acknowledged it and sent Jon over there to say something. However, all he asked for was more feedback, even though there was 4 months of highly detailed feedback there. It doesn’t build confidence in their communication system, or gain them credibility that in their assertions that they “read and listen”. Rather, it builds more frustration and reinforces the distrust that has been building since early in the year.

So (to the OP), the solution to having your community drop the torches and pitchforks is to be pro-active so they don’t have a reason to riot in the first place.

Lishtenbird.2814:

A wild “Changes Coming to the NPE” thread appears! You ran out of endurance and cannot attack.

Vayne.8563:

Seems to me most of the complaining has withdrawn, one week after the patch. So I’m not sure why this is such a huge issue. Some people will still complain of course, but the pendulum, if you haven’t noticed, is swinging back.

For a whole week, people have provided ANet with extensive feedback.

For a whole week, people have been creating separate threads, each about a personal experience (because nobody likes megathreads where you get lost on page 2!), receiving similar feedback from other players from similar threads and defence from the ever-present forum’s White Knights.

For a whole week, people have been wondering what has actually been heard and what not, what is a bug and what not, and had to keep repeating their criticism over and over again to counter the force of the same people from White Knights who kept repeating the same “everything is awesome” in every thread they saw.

After a week, people got sick and tired of it, they ran out of will and had no desire to repeat the same things again and again. Someone left the forum, someone stopped reading the threads, someone left the game. The White Knights stayed, feeling that the victory is near and the “toxicity” is finally being driven away.

After a week, a “Changes Coming to the NPE” thread finally appears. The White Knights says that everything is fine and that people are getting confused by the amount of dissatisfied people because having to read forum names is overwhelming; red post in the thread agrees that repeating your feedback is baaad – missing the point that for a week that very feedback had to be repeated over and over again without being acknowledged and because it had to be repeated to counter the forum defence forces.

So yeeeah, after a week, “the pendulum, if you haven’t noticed, is swinging back”… if you avert your eyes from the facts that people are not only sick and tired of repeating the same things, but also told to stop posting their negative feedback, and only the most stoic people still care to write and oppose the White Knights which are now the ones claiming to officially representing the “vocal majority”.

Now, to keep this post constructive, I’ll quote my tl;dr of the patch, because I have no idea whether it got noticed in the hundreds of other threads or not:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Highlights of my view on the leveling changes:

Best:

• Rewards. Rewards are always good, but only if they’re something new, not if that’s something you take away from someone and then present as a “reward” back. So, a trinket or a booster is a good reward; unlocking downed skills is a bad reward.

Worst:

• Weapon skill gating. Learning skills for each weapon one by one was the most intuitive, best and exciting feature when I got this game – and I never played a serious RPG or an MMO before! I killed mobs and searched for events to kill more to check what that next half-learned skill with a cool name did… then I searched for new weapons and did it again, because it was fun, and fun is the best reward I can get from a game. This should definitely be brought back.

My personal “fix-it-fast-and-make-it-better”:

• Stop calling “Asura Gates”, “Trading Post” and other core features “rewards”! That’s a very large part of that widespread misconception. Instead, turn them into hints and clearly name them as such, even if it stays in the same reward pop-up; like, “HINT: Trading Posts are now displayed on your minimap! You can do X and Y with them! Check it out if you haven’t done so yet!”, not “You have unlocked Trading Post, yay!”

<snip>

And by the way, do you know what I’m leveling that new warrior alt for instead of using an older one? To gear it with Leyline weapons and armour. And if I drop it now, these money won’t be spend by me and people like me anymore.

Cheers.

100% agree.

As we’ve seen with this change, and the Trait change, they are going to continue full steam ahead and ignore the tidal wave of negative criticism. Nothing is going to make ANET change their colors, not even their paying customers.

phys.7689:

MikaHR.1978:

phys.7689:

MikaHR.1978:

Labjax.2465:

Vayne.8563:

I think part of the backlash of this patch comes from an overall discontent with part of the community, who was looking for a reason to attack.

I don’t see any reason why the answer needs to be so deepset. People got pretty upset about the trait changes and quite a few are still complaining about it, or have left the game over it.

This patch looks like more of the same: Trying to improve the experiences for newbies at the cost of what veterans have grown to love.

I think the discontent over stuff like this tends to look very sporadic and temperamental for a couple of reasons. 1) Most of the people who are genuinely angry about it are just going to leave. They aren’t going to stick around complaining until the end of time. 2) The people who stick around may just give up after a bit and give it some time – you only have so much energy to get bothered about things in your life.

Traits were in no way connected to newbs, but to statisfy certain specific group of whiners (and unfortunately they listened to them)

no one asked for trait locking.
some people suggested they should make NEW SKILLS that you could get through gameplay, opposed to only being able to pay 25 skill points (like the universal toxic heal) and that could act as horizontal progression.

They then decided to apply this to traits instead, because traits are easier to create. (some dev actually said this in an interview or something)They decided to apply it to old existing traits, and not just new ones, as a surprise twist, but most likely because they felt leveling needed more progression.
it was not a requested feature.

It was requested feature because a lot of people whined that reading a manual is crap and they should make it like GW1 skill hunting (becasue that was “awesome”)

It was a requested feature because a lot of people whined that "character is “complete” at level 30 and theres nothing after that"

That one WAS direct from feedback of the “community” and falls on back of the “community”

Enjoy.

you say things, but i actually read the CDI, it was about SKILLS, not traits, and people whining the game is complete at 30 were not the people even asking for horizontal progression. That would be vertical progression, which in the cdi, people were actively avoiding talking about even when the devs steered the cdi to that topic, and trying to talk about horizontal progression again.

I do know people who complained about game feeling complete at 30, but they were generally shouted down by a great many players for every person asking for that.

So no, it was not the masses they were listening to, they may have listened to one guy that a lot of other people were disagreeing with, but that seems to suggest they were just gonna do what they wanted anyhow, and were not following the desires of the people.

I’ve found that in the CDI’s, Chris really only bantered with 6 people, and that vocal minority became the discussion group. Yes, the CDI starts off with a lot of participation from many voices, but it whittles down further as the pages of the thread roll on, and it becomes a discussion between “Chris and his buds”. It’s not very democratic, and seems heavily weighted to favoritism. They’d be better off actually doing their research on the forums, reading the amassed feedback that could answer any CDI topic they decided to pull out of their hat.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

I will say this: From the things I’ve read (and no I’m not hunting down each instance of something that made me raise an eyebrow) it does look like someone is at least reading what we’ve been saying.

Now, does this mean that I agree with how long its taken for them to acknowledge this/us? Nope.

Do I think they could have acted sooner/with more gusto? Yep.

Do I think they are just ignoring us? Not at all.

If we can try to keep this thread on point though with good/solid suggestions and reminders that we still care about fixing the system though we might be able to keep the proverbial fire at their feet.

The thread is filled with good/solid suggestions. Almost a half year’s worth. How many times do you think the community should repeat themselves?

The ball has to be in their court now. Either they will make a meaningful patch that will sort it out, or they won’t. My bet is on the latter, in that they will make token changes that demonstrate cooperation, but they won’t be adequate.

My view is that the team who, imho, ruined a perfectly working system with such absurd requirements to gain traits, simply cannot bring it back to an equitable state that will please the community. While that may come off as hard over on the negative, for me it’s just honest realism. While I dislike the direness of this forecast, I feel it’s important to accept it and move on.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

LIVE.4875:

Chris, your answers to every well written response is one sentence.

Chris, you have a lot on you’re plate.

Chris you should listen to your customers

Chris,Take a lesson from Valve: One of the things we learned pretty early on is ’Don’t ever, ever try to lie to the internet – because they will catch you. They will de-construct your spin. They will remember everything you ever say for eternity.’

Sorry but this post means absolutely nothing except for the fact that aside from me having a lot of work to do the rest of your comments are based on assumptions and that your comment about lying would be pretty disrespectful had the rest of your post had been based in an semblance of knowledge.

Being that it isn’t I will take your post for what it is. Pointless and unproductive.

Chris

5 second face..

Chris, I think I’ve conveyed my disappoint in how the communications breakdown since last April affected me personally, as a player and as a customer. In particular, how Traits were (mis)managed, causing me to throw my hands up in the air in frustration, uninstall, and throw my CD into the trash.

Still, I stuck around, read and participated here and there, all the while hopeful that the game and it’s managers would get back on track and make it an environment I would find enjoyable again. By that, precisely, I mean the removal of the silent treatment, the alleviation of perceived arrogance and contempt from you to the community, and thus a lightening and dispersement of the toxicity that has been festering here.

I think it’s great that there is an all-hands-on-deck..show right now. However, I think your CDI topic is way off. There really are more important things to talk about than Guilds. You’ve made that decision and are running with it. I disagree, and will not participate or make detracting posts in that thread.

Now to my actual point:

I find your above post to be unnecessarily offensive and insulting. It really echoes the sentiment that I mentioned regarding the perception of contempt and arrogance from you to us. For me, this is the biggest warning flag that nothing has changed, and that this break from a half year of ignoring your customers is just a bells-and-whistles show.

So, I still have concerns that any of this will amount to anything. Maybe time will tell. However, this is my feedback that there (in my opinion) are still improvements that need to be made, one of which is how you address this community. I get that you are a Dev and not a trained CR person, but you have to do better than that. I can’t trust someone who disrespects one of his customers in the way that you just did.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ohoni.6057:

While I think a great many players also agree, the CDI for guilds was talked about before the patch.

Yeah, but I didn’t care about it then either. CDIs are great, but there is nothing they could do involving guilds that would make the game any better, and the only thing they could do is make things worse (by adding new features that you need to be part of a large guild to benefit from), so I’ve never cared about a guild-based CDI. Before this week, I would have wanted a CDI on the destructive changes to the Traits system introduced in the last feature patch.

This new patch is a major issue though, and they need to have a major sit-down explaining why we shouldn’t hate the things we believe we hate about it. Why should we like the new level-gating system? Why should anyone? Why should we appreciate having to go several layers deep to see what we just sold rather than having it as a top-level option? These are all far more important topics of discussion than anything involving guilds.

To you maybe but the world doesn’t revolve around either you or I. I promised the CDI and we are doing it. There is plenty of awesome stuff that can come from it so it is a pleasure to be able to read what members of the CDI have to say.

if you don’t see the value in it then don’t partake.

Cheers

Chris

It’s sort of like planning a family meeting a week in advance to talk about how the kids could help out mom more around the house. You promise your wife it will get better, and set a date and time. Then, when the promised time comes up, the house catches on fire. Rather than addressing the fire, you stubbornly sit your family down in the burning living room to make good on your promise.

That is the degree of sense you are making. It is such a magnitudinous sign relating to the disconnect between what is going on, and what ANET wants to do.

Errant Venture.9371:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So the question now is the current environment conducive to starting a CDI or should I wait a few days?

Chris

I think it depends on the topic. A CDI on guilds seems a bit superficial right now, when the major concern of the community appears to be the massive changes to the leveling system.

Things like level-gating resource gathering, salvaging and skill points; the issues with the new compass directing brand new players to high end zones; and preventing players from having full access to their class’s abilities until they’re halfway done leveling all seem like far more pressing issues at the moment

100% agree.

Chris, please take a note of this. I think it’s great that you are starting the CDI initiative again. However, I think there are more pressing things to discuss at length with the community than guilds.

1) The Traits system from the last Feature Patch seriously needs to be addressed. A lot of feedback was given, and it seems that after 5 months you are still at the point of asking for more feedback. That simply breeds more lack of trust in the system.

2) In conjunction with that, as it is part of the over-all change to the 1-80 leveling experience, is the more recent gating from the last Feature Patch.

Talking about Guilds just seems superfluous when there are other, more pressing concerns that are really fracturing your community.

felessan.9587:

I’m reminded again that communication is a two-way street. The post-April feedback threads have taken yet another step to prove that while we’re talking, at great length, no one is listening on the other side.

TLDR;
We added this system as a direct result from the horizontal progression CDI. We are always reading your feedback, however, we don’t always have time to respond right away or action it quickly. We updated some trait unlocks in the past but we can do more. How can you help?
1) Give us a list of the most offensive trait unlock locations.
2) Keep giving feedback and be patient as this is a big ship and it takes time to steer it.

This request is outrageous because I personally have done exactly this more than once, in exactly this thread. Other players have done this more than once. We have told you myriad ways to fix these problems.

I understand that there are 42 pages of comments at this point and that is a lot of noise to sift through, but that is because no one responded for over four months. It’s understandable that replies and actions aren’t immediate, but four months later all there is is a response that basically reads as “I’ve been paying attention, I swear, but can you repeat that with succinct and explicit bullet points?” That is completely unacceptable.

A signal that these complaints are being taken seriously needs to be given in a timely fashion. If the response is, “too much white noise, please clarify,” that at least sends a signal to us on what we can do to help the dev team in our feedback. We need that and then we need to see a little faster turn around time, especially since this is a thread that ArenaNet opened, for the express purpose of gathering our responses. It feels like a huge bait-and-switch and is honestly offensive.

I 100% agree.

5 months after a great deal of community participation, they are still asking for clarity. I’m somewhat speechless, and more than a little annoyed. If, after almost a half year of very detailed data and suggestions from your customers you are still wondering what to do..

Do your homework guys. Read. All the “clarity” you need is there. There are even linked spreadsheets in that thread. Asking all those people who took their personal time to help improve your broken system to reiterate what they’ve posted really underscores the above post. In addition, those that were active in the thread have pretty much given up and walked away. I can’t imagine how you are going to find and drag back the people whose valuable contribution from 2, 3, and 4 months ago went pointedly ignored.

If you still need to gather information after almost a half year from your original request to gather feedback, I’ll tune back in around Christmas, or maybe next April.

Ensio.8172:

It’s our fault it’s gotten like this, not the developers.

Having said that, I wish game devs everywhere would grow some balls and just ignore the irrational crybabies.

It’s both sides. Finger pointing and throwing out insults isn’t going to help this situation.

All we can do is more forward, and work with Colin and Chris in trying to repair the damage. I, for one, was angered and frustrated enough with the last few months of silence to uninstall and toss my GW2 CD into the trash. However, I love the game and I’m willing to see this through to see if their current intent will materialize into positive change. I’m willing to give them another chance, and I think that is all they are asking at this point as well.

Additionally, they are in the process of hiring Customer Relations staff. At least, I believe that is what Chris mentioned earlier in this thread. Generally, Dev’s aren’t trained to deal with on-going community issues. CR people are, and they are the ones who know how to deal with the good and the bad. They have very thick skins. So, hopefully when they come in the communications environment will improve.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Lishtenbird.2814:

CobaltSixty.1542:

All A.Net employees can use the tag/icon. But not all employees have GM powers.

You’ll notice the A.Net employee isn’t named GM Der_py.

No,

Michael Henninger.7451:

2. ArenaNet Senior GMs all have character names akin to GM Madi Walker and have the ArenaNet Guild Tag.

3. All ArenaNet GMs have GM ‘Hopefully Cool Alias’.#### for a display name.

only senior GMs have character names starting with GM. Others have an account name starting with GM, the character name can be named anything else. Regardless, I find it amusing that that GM’s name can’t be written on the forums as it gets “kittened”.

It is against the rules of the forum to call out an A.Net employee even their characters.

To the OP, man are you one whiney troll. I don’t think an A.Net employee caused your DC. They would need to know your IP and it would take a bit to search a database. You just probably DC’ed at an inopportune point and blamed the A.Net person.

What a bunch of malarkey!!!

I really wish you wouldn’t make it your full-time job to browse the threads and attack anyone who has anything negative to say about ANET. Negative commentary, personal attacks, and non-constructive behavior are, as far as I am aware, frowned upon here.

Vayne.8563:

Actually OP you don’t have any rights at all. Anet isn’t America. It’s Tyria. You don’t have any rights except the ability to access the server to the game. Those are your rights. Even if you were kicked, and I won’t say you were or weren’t, you still accessed the game. You lost no rewards in the process. You were back in in a matter of seconds.

You could report him, I suppose, but what are they going to realistically to do him? Ban him for 72 hours? I somehow doubt that. Talk to him? Maybe.

Nothing will likely come of it, because nothing really happened, except that your ego was hurt.

It’s posts like this that really get my dander up. How dismissive and ignorant!

Should the OP have moved? There wasn’t a problem with him being there. The onlookers seemed to enjoy his playing. It wasn’t until the ANET employee showed up to use a Power Over maneuver to forcibly remove him from the game so “Kitten y” could do what he/she wanted.

This isn’t a theoretical discussion of Rights. It’s a matter of behavior, and of inappropriate abuse of power.

To the OP: I’d email rather than posting on a thread. Discussions like this will always get locked and there is the risk you’ll be infracted because the topic is about staff and their moderation.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks just to be clear, this isn’t a thread where you list all the stuff you’d like to see in the game (we have plenty of those!)

This is a thread to discuss the idea of adding a sticky to the top of each of the big forum threads (PvP, dungeons, WvW, General discussions, etc.) where we help provide a very high level list of stuff the Gw2 Dev team is aware of with the game, and what questions/thoughts we’re giving those areas to help guide your discussions – and provide visibility into the very top tier stuff we’re aware of.

Feedback on just the idea itself as a concept please, thank you!

I think this is a fantastic idea. I honestly believe you guys are making an effort here to work with the community, so I’m game to give you another chance. Let’s move forward and keep this ball rolling.

Thanks for the positive updates, Colin.

phys.7689:

<big snip>

its a very real statement that people have no idea what the future of gw2 holds, and that isnt working well for a lot of people (especially people who have been playing longer)

I agree, and I would add that it isn’t just the uncertain, unknown future of GW2 that is causing player friction in regards to lack of communication. They seem to have that wrapped up in a tight little bow of company policy. What about the very current issue of the last feature patch and the wall of silence that followed? I’d say that isn’t working well for a lot of people either, but it would be a thunderous understatement.

Chris, I suppose I would just like to know why feedback threads were made and then there was no reciprocal discussion. Your players made thousands of well thought out posts, with suggestions of improvements, and there wasn’t even acknowledgement by your team that our concerns were being looked into. I simply don’t understand how that choice on your end was a good decision.

I’m also going to share that my personal frustration of the Trait re-vamp, our attempts to gain answers and fixes, and then 5 months of silence was a deciding factor in making me leave your game. Not only uninstalling, but throwing the CD in the garbage. I don’t want to sound over-dramatic on that, but it is exactly what happened.

Now, understand that I love GW2. I was having a blast up until the last Feature Patch in April. But, the non-communication just killed the game for me (as well as the Trait re-vamp). I have no problems whatsoever buying another copy of your game, but I need to see if the conditions here improve. If I didn’t love the game, if I didn’t care about it’s future, then I wouldn’t have been following and participating in discussion for the last few months.

I really hope there is a turnaround. I think it’s great that you are here talking again! But, you also have to understand that a lot of ill-will came about by months silence. I’m hoping that these discussions, and the up-and-coming CDI will improve the current player/dev relationship.

#1, simply for the sake of getting on with it.

If we choose #2, then it is going to take months before actual discussion on an agreed upon topic occurs.

chemiclord.3978:

Illysharia.7286:

How about you bring us a list of what you think the current hot topics are based on the last couple of months of community feedback.

This would show that you have been paying attention, “reading and listening” as Colin said in his OP. If you manage to hit at least half of the major issues on the head, it would illustrate that the perceived disconnect between player and Dev is a non-concern, that, in fact, you guys really do get it.

The problem with that is that you are assuming a consensus in the player base that doesn’t exist. In fact, it’s a big problem I see with this forum as a whole… the assumption that any one person represents anyone more than themselves.

Some people hate the gem store focus. Some people want more 5-man dungeons. Some people want instanced raids. Some people want Tengu. Some people want Mesmer buffs. Some people want a new pet AI. Some people want more challenging AI period. The list of wants and desires goes on and on and on.

Your challenge would be one that Arena.net simply couldn’t hope to pass because it would be a constantly moving target. That’s horribly unfair to expect, don’t you think?

You missed the point of my challenge.

Read the first paragraph of Mike’s OP:

“I know some are concerned about whether ArenaNet is communicating with you and listening and responding to your feedback. As you saw with yesterday’s announcement, we do. All of us at ArenaNet play the game with you, chat with you and read your forum posts, and work on the things that we think will most delight and entertain you.”

All of the community issues are out there. Feedback has been given in the mega-tonne load, for months. If they are paying attention as they claim, then they should bring us a list of what they are working on based on what has already been discussed. It’s about putting your money where your mouth is.

You see that as being horrible unfair? What an odd sentiment.

All the data they need for these CDI’s is already on their forums. All they need to do is read. The community has put in a lot of time to give valuable, detailed feedback on a variety of topics. A quick scan of the forums will show multiple threads with hundreds of posts and tens of thousands of views, most of which have the appearance of being ignored. Those are, generally, the hot topics I was referring to. Someone who is “listening and responding” should be be fully aware of those and be able to bring them up, and discuss them.

What is “horribly unfair” is them putting it on the community, when it is ANET who needs to put the effort in. We’ve been communicating. We’ve given mountains of feedback. It’s time for them to prove to us that this current show of “we listen, let’s create another CDI” isn’t just another smoke and mirrors entertainment to placate the population.

Anymras.5729:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

This is bunk! Pure stall tactics and I’m done with it all. You won’t tell your customer base what’s coming down the road out of fear we’ll be disappointed?? Well color me very disappointed. I’m sick of waiting for straight forward answers, answer some real questions or as far as I’m concerned this exercise is a complete waste of time. Start with this one, are you or are you not going to have an expansion, yes or no?

They did tell us they were working on getting every class to be able to use every weapon – more than eight months ago. Not so long ago, there was an influx of threads about that, and how it seems like they’ve just shuffled it off the table and are pretending they never said it at all.
So: It’s completely plausible that they’re holding back for the reasons they say.
But it might still be a stall tactic – after all, they really haven’t said anything about it, that I’m aware of. Nothing about ETAs, ‘yeah, some things came up, we had to put it on hold,’ nothing.

Judging by the undertone of a lot of comments here and in other threads, there is a fairly ingrained feeling that there is more talk and less substance from ANET; that the CDI’s, for the most part, have proven to be a nice distraction with a feel-good sentiment that the interaction will ultimately lead to in-game improvements. The CDI seems to represent Hope. Hope that an individual’s voice will be listened to, hope that long-needed changes are made, and hope that the game can get back on track.

There is also the sentiment that why have a CDI when all the issues have been reiterated multitudes of times in mega threads. All the feedback is there already. Creating a special thread to talk about it, yet again for the hundredth time, implies that 1) the previous feedback wasn’t read because it if was we wouldn’t be here in the first place, and 2) a feeling of being strung along.

Starting a CDI on communication, imho, seems disingenuous. This isn’t a mom-and-pop organization. Having your customers telling you how to do rudimentary Customer Relations functions underscores a systemic failure that we, the supporters of your business, simply shouldn’t have to do. Having a CDI for weeks on this seems like a monumental waste of time, and more of a placebo than anything. Again, there are multiple threads of feedback spanning months and months where your customers have talked about your lack of communication, and ways to improve it.

Understandably, in some of your customers, a lack of faith has built up. Too many words, too little substance, and a whole lot of built up ill-will. As they say, the proof is in the pudding.

I suggest, rather than putting it upon the community to bring their issues to you for CDI ideas, that we do something entirely different:

How about you bring us a list of what you think the current hot topics are based on the last couple of months of community feedback.

This would show that you have been paying attention, “listening and responding” as Mike said in his OP. If you manage to hit at least half of the major issues on the head, it would illustrate that the perceived disconnect between player and Dev is a non-concern, that, in fact, you guys really do get it.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Iason Evan.3806:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Iason Evan.3806:

I thought of another specific thing that really shows a lack of two-way discourse: Skill splits/Skill Templates.

Skill splits seem to be off the table for WvW/sPvP/PvE. Reasons have been given.

We were told months ago that Skill Templates were coming. If Skill Splits don’t happen, then Templates make total sense as we players need different builds for different formats.

What’s up with Templates? How is progression going on those? With seemingly only 2 Feature Patches per year, does that mean we will have to wait another 6 months for Templates when we were told 6 months ago they were happening?

I think that type of thing is where the issues arise. Saying that things are happening isn’t the problem. Forgetting to tell us that they got cancelled is the issue. If you stop working on something because it isn’t meeting your standard is OK. Will some of us be ticked it isn’t happening? Sure. But being honest with us is way more important to open communication than just stopping development on something and not telling us.

I also feel we get talked to like we won’t understand. I for one want to hear the truth of the matter whether I understand it or not.

They don’t have to tell us ANYTHING. The fact that they are trying to communicate in such a toxic environment as this forum is great.

They don’t have to say to us, ‘Sorry this doesn’t fit into the design of the game’. Once the DCI restarts then maybe but more than likely not. The reason being players focus on one or two issues, A.Net has to focus on them all and make them fit.

The post is about better communication. That starts with honesty and dropping the PR speak.

Not speaking PR – I was a forum mod on another forum. This is objectivity talking not the ‘A.Net is always wrong’ attitude. Why don’t you drop the incensed attitude and try to listen just for once. You might actually learn something.

I’d suggest listening to your own advice. The only contributions you have made to this thread are to attempt to derail it with bickering stabs at other people’s commentary. As per your post history, this seems to be a common trend. It is non-constructive, and creates an adversarial environment. The thread itself is polite and civil, though pointed. Let’s try to keep on track and be positive.

As to Chris’ comments about the CDI, what I would like to see is a roadmap of developments from the previous CDI communications. As in, what you as Dev’s are choosing to work on from those lengthy discussion with the community. I think that would be a great starting point. Once we know what you found valuable from our feedback, and what is feasible to implement, then let’s move forward onto the next level of discussions.

Mike O Brien.4613:

I know some are concerned about whether ArenaNet is communicating with you and listening and responding to your feedback. As you saw with yesterday’s announcement, we do. All of us at ArenaNet play the game with you, chat with you and read your forum posts, and work on the things that we think will most delight and entertain you.

That is a nice sentiment, but I’m one of those people who has been reading and participating in multi-thousand post threads that have gone ignored by you and your Dev team for months. There is a vast disconnect between what you are saying and the reality of what your customers, the players of your game, experience. Any of the mega feedback threads after the April Patch give glaring testimony to this.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Thanks everyone for giving us some feedback on this system we’ll meet internally and discuss this system some more as I think there are a lot of valid points being brought up here.

I suppose there are a lot of people who are breathing a sigh of relief that, finally, a Dev has showed up. Hopefully, the changes needed will come to pass.

However, Isaiah, you need to also know that a lot of damage has been done by the 5 months of silence since the April Patch. I’ve made a couple of lengthy posts in this thread regarding my thoughts on that, so I will not reiterate what I wrote. However, I will say that there is a lot of trust to be earned by your players. Seriously, you guys did a good job of burning bridges of communication.

Anmida.4058:

At this point I am strictly convinced that the reason they are not changing anything is because the CEO is against admitting administrative failure/bad decisions as it would give them bad reputation. However, I hope they reconsider and understand that nothing attracts a playerbase more than a developer that can admit “we dun goofed, tried to do something cool for you guys, but it went wrong. apologies, we’ll get to fixing it.”

A public apology and feedback from the developers made the whole playerbase of FFXIV return for the reboot of the game, and if that doesn’t tell you how much can a playerbase look past a monstrous abomination of a failure with the proper apologies, I don’t know what can.

The Trait system in itself is an abysmal clusterfudge.

What compounds the issue is the staggering level of mismanagement. I’ve been around the block and I’ve seen some pretty spectacular PR screw-ups, but how Chris Whiteside has handled this utterly dwarfs anything I’ve seen in recent history. This approaches the level of SWG’s NGE, and I think everyone knows how that panned out.

We’re working on 5 months now of this clownshow. I mean, who in their right mind treats the people that keep their business running like that? The only reason why they are still in business is because they rely on their customers, the players, to keep them afloat. I guess the numbers haven’t dropped enough for them to take this seriously.

While they keep their beady eyes on their financial charts, they aren’t keeping track of their word-of-mouth reputation. Frankly, it’s not that great right now. I’m very active on a popular gaming forum, and I’ve talked about this Trait issue at some length over there. I also make sure to link to this thread. So, while Chris may feel like ignoring the issue, he’s absolutely the source of why it is festering and driving people away.

Reputation is a really hard thing to fix. Some people just need to learn the hard way.

TheFamster.7806:

its more like buy gems then convert them to gold to unlock them for better and faster experience.

Bingo. That’s why the system was designed, and why it’s not being changed..and why Colin isn’t piping in to say anything. This is what happens when your monetizer comes from Nexon.

Ashen.2907:

Illysharia.7286:

Ashen.2907:

Cameirus.8407:

they need to make it of a quality that people want to play, not use a stick to beat them into it.

Encouraging people to try out different aspects of the game is not necessarily anything to do with the quality of those different aspects. Colin specifically mentioned WvW because some PvE exclusive players might find that they enjoy it even though they normally dislike PvP(ish) aspects of other MMOs. Again not good vs bad quality but rather variety.

Cameirus.8407:

Because the devs spent time and effort making it is absolutely the worst reason to force people into content.

Agreed. Then again no developer is capable of forcing me, or anyone else for that matter, to play content that I do not wish to play.

Sure they are.

Unless, of course, you are speaking absolutely literally about an ANET employee coming over to your house and forcing your with hot pokers, then no, they can’t force you.

However, in this current state of affairs with their Trait re-vamp, yes, they are forcing you to do content you do not wish to do, or farm for gold and skill points. If you want a specific build, with the traits to support it, that require you to enter dungeons, or kill world bosses, or complete certain zones, or WvW, then you have to do that content that you do not wish to do to accomplish your goals.

For myself, as a consumer and as a player, I refuse to let a company treat me like this and ignore their community in such an abhorrent way. They forced me out of the game by their behaviors. That, I think, is a much more important result of their manipulations.

Indeed no one from Anet is going to force you. The terms, “force,” and, “forced,” are greatly overused (and misused for that matter).

As to the version of forced used here: “..yes, they are forcing you to do content you do not wish to do…”

1) You may not like some specific piece of content, but others may enjoy that same piece of content very much. This means that the general claim, as quoted, is misleading. It implies that everyone must complete content they dislike in order to create a preferred or desired build. This is not the case.

2) How forced is it if you are allowed to bypass the forced element, as you mention above, with alternate means of acquisition ?

“Anet forced me to do specific content that I do not enjoy in order to acquire the trait I want. My only alternative is to play any aspect of the game I wish and spend the currency so acquired to buy the trait.”

Not really a sold example of being forced into something you don’t want to do.

I don’t care for the system either, but hyperbole and/or outright misrepresentation of the situation do not help the argument.

I think you are arguing just for the sake of the mental exercise, and creating a off-topic that beats the purpose of intent here. I’m not even going to counter elaborate to engage you further to traipse down your merry path. I was pretty clear in my post, and hair-splitting doesn’t benefit this thread.

Back on track.

Honestly, I if ANET gave two beans about this, there would have been changes to fix the current state of things. Months have gone by without any comment by Chris, or any CR, which pretty much spells out that this thread and it’s feedback are a complete sham. Look at the current state of the posts for the last 5 or more pages: people are resorting to pleading and begging now.

Their focus now is on their Chinese market, and all the millions they are going to rake in from them now that their paws are finally on the game. The few that leave due to this trait change aren’t even a drop in the bucket compared to what they’ll be dancing in. The ones that remain, well, those are the people that prove to ANET that no matter what they do, they’ll passively follow along, or blindly, glowingly defend them.

I suppose what appalls me the most is that Chris Whiteside feels it’s A-OK to treat people with disdain. For all the grandiosity of the open lines of communication show that was put on not too long ago, this thread alone is a stellar example of how business is done over there.

They really might as well lock this thread. What is the point of keeping it open?

Ashen.2907:

Cameirus.8407:

they need to make it of a quality that people want to play, not use a stick to beat them into it.

Encouraging people to try out different aspects of the game is not necessarily anything to do with the quality of those different aspects. Colin specifically mentioned WvW because some PvE exclusive players might find that they enjoy it even though they normally dislike PvP(ish) aspects of other MMOs. Again not good vs bad quality but rather variety.

Cameirus.8407:

Because the devs spent time and effort making it is absolutely the worst reason to force people into content.

Agreed. Then again no developer is capable of forcing me, or anyone else for that matter, to play content that I do not wish to play.

Sure they are.

Unless, of course, you are speaking absolutely literally about an ANET employee coming over to your house and forcing your with hot pokers, then no, they can’t force you.

However, in this current state of affairs with their Trait re-vamp, yes, they are forcing you to do content you do not wish to do, or farm for gold and skill points. If you want a specific build, with the traits to support it, that require you to enter dungeons, or kill world bosses, or complete certain zones, or WvW, then you have to do that content that you do not wish to do to accomplish your goals.

For myself, as a consumer and as a player, I refuse to let a company treat me like this and ignore their community in such an abhorrent way. They forced me out of the game by their behaviors. That, I think, is a much more important result of their manipulations.

I made a post shortly after the Trait system cataclysm, and have been checking in periodically for responses, change, and how the community has adapted. After 2 months, the community has given ample feedback to warrant a response from Chris, or some sort of Customer Relations rep. From experience, 2 weeks is a good time to wait to let the players try out the system, listen to their pros and cons of the changes, and then address the community in some fashion.

2 months with zero feedback is dismissive of your customer’s concerns in a horrendously unprofessional way.

From reading through all 28 pages, and over 1.3 thousand posts, the general consensus of these changes is negative. Even the people that gave it the old college try came back with strong criticisms. Many positive, realistic improvements were even suggested. It has been a civil, though one-sided, attempt to supply the feedback that ANET asked for, and open discussion lines from the Dev’s to their customers.

Now, I’ve been online gaming since 2000 with EverQuest. In between then and now I’ve been very active in the MMO community, and gladly supporting great game developers both financially and in spirit with forum participation. Changes happen as the games evolve, for good or bad, and generally the bad changes get mitigated or revoked once a company sees error has been made, and that there is more than an unacceptable level of community unrest.

I am utterly perplexed at how this entire Trait re-vamp was managed. 2 months without an attempt at communication tells me quite clearly that the expiration date for any discussion or change has passed.

As a consumer, not just a player, I’ve been around the block quite a bit to know when a company is happy to treat their customers like cattle, and take my business elsewhere. I feel like ample opportunity was given for communication, and those efforts were rudely ignored. I’ll be interested in seeing ANET’s fiscal reports at the end of this year.

Colin did an interview with MMORPG’s David North recently. Here is a quote:

“..That’s one thing we know we’ll be doing going forward, and that is to continue to collaborate with the community about what works and what doesn’t work and to enable us to continue to pioneer in this space..”

“..Ultimately we make the decision on how we move forward, but players spend a lot of time in the world, and therefore it’s amazing to hear their feedback and be able to move on it so quickly.”

I haven’t seen one response that addresses the concerns in this thread, or the rest of the feedback. Not one. Lip service versus the reality of actual practice. Gotta love the glowy feel-good interviews for the masses to put on a rosy image.

For myself, I came back to the game a month ago to roll up a couple of new characters in preparation for the next installment of the Living Story. I found the first chapter to be shaky and lackluster (to be honest), but hey, I chalked it up to growing pains. I was excited to be back in my old stomping grounds, and really looking forward to seeing what this season would bring to the game.

Then this patch hit and they completely overhauled the Traits.

Now, I have been following the forums since before launch, and I simply do not recall reading anywhere where the community was clamoring for this degree of change. Yes, new and better Traits and Elites have always been fodder for discussion. But, waiting until almost halfway through the game to begin traiting at level 30? And not being able to access GM traits until level 80?

It is a very unneeded nerf to the leveling progression. This is not an improvement. This does not make the game better. Nothing was wrong with the old system.

I came back to the game to enjoy my two new low level characters. I have to tell you, this does not make anything about leveling a low level Mesmer and Engineer enjoyable, better, or easier, or whatever selling points were tossed at us to swallow this bitter pill. It is discouraging and annoying.

I’ll tell you what this change did do for me. This morning I ordered and installed a new game from one of your competitors. I’d much rather invest in a company with a proven history of listening and visibly acting on feedback, than ignoring the community (there is a strong history of that here) when they react to stupendously perplexing game changes like this.

cesmode.4257:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Carelius.1430:

minbariguy.7504:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We are committed to quality not quantity.

Suddenly, every two weeks, just like clockwork, there it is. Right on schedule. How, then, can it be that your priority is on the quality of the release, when you are committed to releasing it on a specific date no matter what?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

This said there is a lot we can and are doing to meet concerns regarding the cadence and really polish the positives we have already achieved in this area.

I would be really interested to know what you guys are doing to meet my concerns regarding the cadence. Because I honestly have no idea how you can do that while simultaneously stating that the cadence will continue unaltered no matter what any of us says.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The cadence is something we discuss frequently. We are a very collaborative team and do our best to never sweep anything under the rug (-:

I’m curious as to what these discussions are like. When you are having these discussions, does it ever come up that many people are vigorously opposed to it? Or is it the impression of the team that the current cadence is both popular and desired? If so, do you have any metrics to back this up?

Finally, a simple question:

Why are you unwilling to adjust the release cadence? What is the reason that it must continue, no matter what anyone says? Can you at least help us understand that?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. This right here – especially the last question. The sad thing is we’ll never get a real, honest answer. Right now this thread feels like a PR stunt. I hope I’m wrong.

I think it’s money. Every new LS there is Gem Store items linked to them. Most of all the Black lion clam tickets. I’m willing to bet Black lion keys make up the bulk of money that the game brings in. You get 1 from doing you PS if I remember right. And I have had one drop in the world the whole year I’ve played the game, and in my build of over 200 I think, I’m one of 5 people who have had them drop in the world, not from opening a Black Lion Chest.

Not that I will take your answer for grail, but if it did turn out to be money, then thats all I need to know about the game going forward. It would be deleted off my computer and erased on my ‘watch list’.

Quality should always be > quantity. And quality definitely > $$ if you want to win over the loyalty of customers.

Do you think it’s a coincidence that every installment of the LW has a BLC dependent set of skins? People are paying ridiculous amounts of money to try and get one. What’s even worse, is that the game design for these skins is based off of Variable Ratio Schedules. Casino’s use this in their slot machines. It is the best, and most addicting form to get people to repeat a behavior (buying keys to open chests) for a reward (the LW skins). It’s intentional, and it’s abhorrent to me.

So, increase the frequency of the LW to a two week rotation (with new skins) and they are laughing all the way to the bank. That is why Chris won’t budge from the cadence.

Now, once I saw how the whole LW was panning out I quickly lost interest. Consequently, since all the focus was going to this and not the game itself, there wasn’t much of a reason for me to stick around. If Chris is suggesting that they are going to listen, not just hear, the players this time around going forward, well, let’s see how that pans out. So far, in the 22 pages of this thread, there hasn’t been anything that I would remotely call collaborative.

Tyrion Temple.7650:

Whilst I’m sure many are appreciative of the fact that there was a typographical error which massively inflated the stated costs for the initial recipe to even create the gifts there has, as yet, still been no reason given for why the crafting material requirement was changed in the first place.

How can it possibly be justified that material requirements which were at the level of, at most, a full stack of any single material are now, thanks to the introduction of these meta-materials, up to 10,000 (10 meta’s) from 250 (40 times the previous amount) and this be thought reasonable by the Dev Team Members responsible for it’s implementation?

Essentially what you have created is a section of the playerbase whom had previously obtained the recipes for the gifts in question, being able to still craft these weapons using the old recipe and other players being priced out of the market as it would cost, in some cases, substantially more than even the final weapons themselves. All this to create the initial recipe for a gift which is only one ingredient out of yet another recipe for the weapon itself!

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Everything is a process. We work really hard to listen to our playerbase and be responsive to their needs. Time is always a mitigating factor and even information takes time to move from one place to another.

I have quoted the last paragraph of an earlier response made by Linsey Murdock and put in bold the relevant section as I think seems very much not to be the case in this particular instance. If the playerbase were being listened to in any way, it would seem that none of our concerns on this matter are being taken into account nor, as stated earlier, a reason even offered as to why this change was made.

I stopped playing and actually uninstalled GW2 sometime late spring because I was so disappointed how far off track the game has gone and how utterly out of touch the Dev’s have become with the playerbase . However, I still loosely follow the forums and I figured with the whole “Collaborative” communication that has (re)surfaced (remember folks, this was promised before), this Halloween event might be pretty amazing. So, I re-installed last week and prepared to have some fun.

..And I’m left scratching my head and wondering who is running the show over there. It certainly isn’t the team that launched the game. Guys, you had so much potential with GW2 and you are running it off a cliff.

See, you had me as a customer at one point. The game was awesome! It simply isn’t anymore. The slew of topics in the collaboration thread pretty much cover why I walked away from GW2. The way the Mad King event was handled this year hasn’t enticed me to come back.

I’ll check back in the new year.

Josh Foreman.8250:

As to my challenge…. all I know is that I run through SAB over and over constantly and find it very easy. But like I told someone above, I’m very used to the engine problems like camera, lag, weird hit detection, etc so I hardly notice them and have developed strategies for getting through the levels without running into most of the problems described by most. And I’m not a super great jumper. I don’t find the “pixel perfect jumps” accusations to be accurate at all. But I know last time I played through LoZ it took a long, loooong time. And some of those later dungeons were BRUTAL. The rooms with 8 darknuts you can only hit in the back? That seems WAY harder to me than SAB. But I see where you’re coming from. You’re super familiar with LoZ. I’m super familiar with SAB. I’m sure that plays into both our perceptions.

I think part of the problem here, and with other LS content regarding difficulty, is that the people testing the content, as you stated, become immune to the problems after a while. This is problematic for 2 reasons:

1) By glossing over the problems with the engine because you are “very used” to them, the same issues crop up in all the LS content. If you, a Dev, have to develop strategies to avoid the issues, do you then expect all your millions of customers to do the same to accommodate flawed design? The problem is still there, strategy or not, becoming “used to it” or not.

2) You designed the content and you’ve played it repeatedly and therefore find it very easy. By extension, you seem to think other people will find it very easy once it is released. Again, the issue of difficulty pops up repeatedly with various LS mini games and challenges, so there is a flaw of perception here.

What has been asked many times in the past is for the implementation of a Public Test Server. This would allow for impartiality which I also believe is a big problem on your end. Having a fresh set of eyes from the actual players would give a more realistic check for difficulty, as well as weed out more of the bugs.

(edited for double post error)

TheLaughingMan.4320:

Shiren.9532:

The monetisation team is drawing the line. Unfortunately they aren’t willing to abandon RNG with that line.

Unfortunately many users are willing to abandon gw2, especially with the slew of new mmos coming out. No real new content, and korean rng gambling, I hardly play anymore except wvw. Will stop playing gw2 if ESO gets good reviews, will still play gw1.

The writing is clearly on the wall about ANET’s unwavering devotion to this RNG path. The game is simply not as advertised any more. All the Living Stories are a glitzy, fluffy, candy shell surrounding RNG gambling for the next skin. I used to log in every day as well, but not anymore after this radical change. I’ve simply moved on.

DeWolfe.2174:

IDK why you’d change them. Now you took a grind and made it a “Pause, Wait, & Grind” Just because people were overzealous on day one, doesn’t mean daddy has to come lord over it.

I was having a lot of fun last night setting a bomb, trigger the holo, and watching them blow up! It wouldn’t kill them outright but, it truly was a blast! Just enough damage to tag too.

This is something we needed to work out on our own. Besides, being a low level alt, they aren’t THAT easy to solo. No one’s going to be doing them after they get the achievement. As a developer, Anet should realize how OCD their gamers are by now

Thus, please revert them back as it was more fun!

The delay and health increase was added to allow people to run to the spawn in time and tag the mobs. Its not a game changing increase. It was put in to allow more people to participate by giving more time to the Holo encounter.

I actually like this change. I was farming them last night for 2 hours (nicely, with courtesy given to stragglers) and it was a common comment in chat, or from the later arrivers, that they were very short lived. And, they were. As a necro, I could arrive first and trigger/kill the encounter in seconds if I wanted.

All this change did was add a delay so others could catch up. Nothing more, nothing less. I think it was fairly done in a non-impacting way.

Soulstar.7812:

Stop buying the chest if you are losing money.

If you are “testing” the RNG, you are guilty of supporting the RNG.

For the love of the fluffy kitten, stop buying the RNG gamble system if you do not like these sorts of things in the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7H9xEesilU

I used to support this game.

It’s now CasinoNet.

No thank you.