Showing Posts For Ninjakittee.7681:
I, personally, have not played much WvW or PvP with my Thief, but I have a little experience, and weakening the stealth mechanic will only make Thief unviable. Changing it could break the class (and Mesmer), or it could revitalise it, but weakening it would be disastrous. The reason you always see Thieves using stealth? The entire class is built around it. Every weapon gets special attacks from stealth, their traits are built around stealth. A Thief who can’t stealth is a dead Thief.
Additionally, stealth can’t be constantly spammed due to a mechanic called Revealed. I’m honestly not sure if it’s every stealth skill or only some (it seems to be only some), but coming out of stealth applies this debuff, which prevents the target from returning to stealth until it wears off. I think it lasts somewhere in the 4-5 seconds vicinity, and if you have the skill, that is more than enough time to lockdown and kill a Thief who doesn’t know what they’re doing and is simply abusing a stealth build.
Just a question; are we at any point going to get the ability to gift Gems directly to our friends? Because while many of the Gem Store items are giftable, there is a selection that aren’t, and maybe sometimes we want to give Gems without any real idea of the items that will be bought with them.
Is this a thing we’ll be getting? Because it seems like a pretty obvious thing to have.
As an aside, can we have the ability to purchase Gems from the website store, or will that only ever be in game?
Next time tell us the test duration first..
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Ninjakittee.7681
Beta testing isn’t a ‘privilege’, it’s a legitimate JOB that none of us are getting paid to do. We will have to purchase HoT. It isn’t our responsibility that it runs – that falls exclusively on ANet.
And yet you still complain like mad about being unable to join the beta-test due to the time….
Yes. Which I have the right to do. I am a customer and I am unsatisfied. The amount of time and effort I put into obtaining a portal, not to mention the fact that I bought and have continued to spend money on the game, means that I have the right to complain. This isn’t some service ANet is doing for me out of the goodness of their heart. This is a transaction. I don’t get paid for testing their product and I will still have to purchase the final version. So yes, I am going to complain.
Next time tell us the test duration first..
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Ninjakittee.7681
I think people have a right to be angry about this. The whole participating in a beta thing has no detail. People don’t all know to expect limited times. Many people would have expected more.
No they don’t, they dont even have a right for a chance, being part of the beta is a PRIVILEGE not a right
Beta testing isn’t a ‘privilege’, it’s a legitimate JOB that none of us are getting paid to do. We will have to purchase HoT. It isn’t our responsibility that it runs – that falls exclusively on ANet.
Next time tell us the test duration first..
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Ninjakittee.7681
Or maybe people should stop thinking about betas as preview events and accept that they are actual tests and as such doing short burst is logical and makes sense?
Okay, look.
They HIRE, and PAY people to do serious testing, that’s what the QA department is for. That’s how a lot of their developers actually start their career, get hired on as QA and then they eventually get promoted to designers, like Mike Zadorojny.
Beta tests with playtesters find things that only occur when there’s high volume on the servers, so that’s one purpose, the “payment” for doing this for Arenanet is that people do get to see content early.
That’s pretty much the understood relationship, across multiple developers, and multiple games.
So while trying to trumpet “it’s a test, not a preview”, you’re basically wrong, we’re not hired Arenanet staff, it’s not our job, it’s an exchange, we test things for them in high volume and find issues they might not be able to find with the lower volume they have using only internal QA, and in exchange, we get to see something early.
It’s both a test and a preview, in that sense. All beta tests with volunteer playtesters are both tests and previews.
Otherwise if this is just supposed to be our job and we’re doing QA work for them, they’d better be cutting us a check.
But that’s beside the point. The point is, there were a lot of people upset at how beta invites were distributed this time and there would have been a lot less people upset if they’d known the details of the test ahead of time, because many people would have said “oh well, I can’t be on then anyway, guess I won’t farm” or “oh well, it’s only 6 total hours, so it’s not worth farming for more than 6 total hours” Some people farmed 60+ hours, for this 6 hour test (I’m not one of them I spent maybe 20? I don’t know, 2 hours a day tops for the duration and not every day), that’s a staggeringly disproportionate amount of time, and some of those people farmed that long for a beta they won’t be able to participate in due to irl obligations.
Of course, Arenanet may have had trouble getting enough testers for that “high volume” part of what actual testing we do consists of if they had been up front. But then they would have done as they did before, randomly select accounts that are on the newsletter subscription.
So what makes me angry is that Anet was not up front about the details and wasted a lot of time for some people and in fact deceived people to do what the REAL purpose of the portals was, not to get testers, but to get people back into farming Dry Top and Silverwastes. Their deception is what makes me angry about it.
THIS
A thousand times this. (I was one of the people who farmed for days and days and I won’t be able to participate, plus the fact that this portal only gives me access to THIS event and no future ones. I can’t be hyped for HoT anymore)
Thank you so much for putting this into words.
This wouldn’t be a problem if ANet hadn’t treated the event like they did. The Portals were purely a hype thing. That’s it. If they didn’t want people hyped for this like I was, they would have just randomly selected us all from their newsletter subscribers.
THIS is the result of hype. It will hurt them because a lot of their players are just going to ignore the future betas. And then how are they going to test it properly? They won’t have the numbers.No, the portals were not purely a hype thing. It was partly a hype thing but it was also a way to guarantee that the people invited actually played the game and at least had basic knowledge about it.
I think you are overestimating the amount of people that have an issue with this actually.
There are plenty of people that know what a beta is and accept that betas won’t be on our terms but rather at the company’s terms.It is also worth pointing out that when they need to do larger scale testing they will most likely do it more akin to the 24h Stronghold beta were everyone gets access or via the Beta Weekend events where everyone that have prepurchase would get access. So they would have plenty of people willing to do their testing, even if you wont.
Maybe I am overestimating the long term impact this will have, but just because a beta is for testing for bugs and other issues doesn’t mean that ANet is absolved of messing with us. They only succeed because we spend money on their product. Someone above mentioned that if it’s not financially feasible to hire beta testers internally, then we are doing that job for free. I’d posit that since we have to had both bought the game and invested enough time to have gotten a Portal, we are paying for the privilege of doing this job. It doesn’t matter if our satisfaction isn’t the main point, because when customers are unsatisfied they LEAVE. They needed the hype because we are going to have to purchase HoT – that is the price we pay for the content. Money. We don’t owe ANet anything for buying their product or spending further money on their micro transactions. They have their reasons, yes, and some of them are good reasons. But this should have been handled better.
I should mention, I did prepurchase this game.
I suppose the baseline is, I am disappointed. And I won’t be hyped for any beta events ever again. And doesn’t that hurt them in the long run?
Why would it hurt them in the long run?
They don’t want people like that in the betas anyway. They want people that know what a beta is about and do what they supposed to do.
This wouldn’t be a problem if ANet hadn’t treated the event like they did. The Portals were purely a hype thing. That’s it. If they didn’t want people hyped for this like I was, they would have just randomly selected us all from their newsletter subscribers.
THIS is the result of hype. It will hurt them because a lot of their players are just going to ignore the future betas. And then how are they going to test it properly? They won’t have the numbers.
And essentially, what they’ve done for a lot of us, is just take it away again.
No one is taking anything from you, this is not the last beta test that will take place.
The Portal only provides access to this event, so future ones are irrelevant.
I’m not saying don’t get us to help with it, I’m saying it was a little weird that they made such a big deal out of it if this was the plan. And the Portals don’t provide access to future beta events either, just this one. I don’t doubt they have reasons, but as a customer, the next time they announce a beta I’m going to ignore it, because what did this one get me? Time wasted and now I’m really upset that I can’t participate. I know I’m not alone in this reaction. It just seems counterintuitive to advertise it as a big important thing when this was the plan.
I suppose the baseline is, I am disappointed. And I won’t be hyped for any beta events ever again. And doesn’t that hurt them in the long run?
And who are going to pay those ArenaNet devs that need to spend 24+ hours straight at the office? Sure they could switch them out, but that could usually lead to issues, misplaced data and misunderstandings. It is always better to have the same team in place for the full duration of a test.
If that was the main reason, why not just get some beta testers in to get it done internally? The reason I personally have a problem with the setup, aside from not truly understanding why, is that they made it such a hyped, exciting prospect. I was so excited by the idea of using an ingame mechanic to spread the beta hype. They gave it to us. They made us want it. And essentially, what they’ve done for a lot of us, is just take it away again. It’s incredibly frustrating, even if they hace good reasons that I need to understand.
The purpose of a beta is NOT te please the people participating in it but to test the content with real players. For this purpose it is important that they monitor stuff, thats why it is in working hours.
You’re right, this ‘beta’ isn’t primarily for the pleasure of the player base. But ANet are a company providing a service and the happiness of their customers (which is essential for keeping our business and money) is something they should be primarily focused on.
You have a point about area size…. But it still doesn’t make the time staggering any less illogical. Or lessen my saltiness that I won’t be able to play it.
The staggering quite logical I would say.
That means they can tweak and change stuff between the different runs based on the previous stats and feedback.
Lets say they have map limit set to 20 on the first run.
Based on that they see that they could easily fit twice as many in there or they need to decrease the limit. Then they can do that before the second run and so on.
Honestly, I never thought of that. It makes some sense. That said, six hours split into three blocks is still very strange to me, and it seems that they’d be better served with a 24 hour block or something. Not only would that negate the amount of negative reactions upon learning a lot of the player base won’t have the opportunity to participate, the need to tweak between blocks is a nice idea, but in practice wouldn’t it be easier to just take note of everything and fix it when they don’t have to be ready for another block?
I’m also a little concerned about the beta progress being deleted between blocks, which if they are tweaking between, seems more likely than I originally thought.
That depends on how much there is in the beta.
Two*three hours is usually plenty of time to find bugs in a map, especially if you don’t have access to the whole map.
You have a point about area size…. But it still doesn’t make the time staggering any less illogical. Or lessen my saltiness that I won’t be able to play it.
FYI this is second stress test which is false advertising from anet again, because portals were advertised as beta access, not another stress test
no specs to test
no new revenant stuff to test
more verdant brink which we’ve already played and saw on bajilion videosI don’t feel like spending more money on the company making jokes on their customers.
I don’t know, if it was supposed to be a stress-test it would only be one and it would be on a a more active time than this.
We have never seen any of the outposts, something which will be part of the test for example.
One could of course also question if one could even apply false advertising to something that is not being sold.
I mean, yes. I’d argue yes at least – we haven’t (yet) paid real money for HoT, but we spent time one these Portals. As for bug finding – we don’t have adequate time for that to happen properly.
I understand the reasoning for having it on a workday, even if it’s frustrating for a lot of the playerbase, but I just don’t see any reason to hace staggered it the way they have. Three lots of two hours? What are we supposed to be looking for? That’s not enough time to find bugs and too many people are at work or study for it to be a reasonable stress test. Why not have it open for a straight six hours, or for a 24 hour block? That way everyone who spent time (over a week, for some of us) farming for a Portal will all be able to use it. They may be providing the service, but they are doing it for money – this is a business. As customers, we have the right to voice when we are unhappy with something. And hyping us up only to drop the times at such a universally inconvenient time means that we’ve wasted a lot of gameplay when we could have been doing more beneficial things.
I won’t be able to play at all, as my timezone drops the first slot at six thirty in the morning and I have study that day. I can’t do it. Seeing how long and desperately I farmed and how excited I was, this is a little heartbreaking.
As for the label ‘Beta’ – it’s not. This isn’t a beta, we can’t do anything with the time frame. This is a sneak preview for the lucky few who have the Portal – AND the time.
Yep, I’m getting it too. Just started after a successful purchase, won’t let me buy any more.