Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

Companies can post fake positive reviews just as the same employee can post multiple fake ones. I stated somewhere in this thread that neither can be necessarily relied on. Or at least not as your sole source without anything more concrete, credible to back it up. Some negative reviews can be a distortion of the facts are similly a misunderstanding on the reviewers part.

I don’t buy this. You can easily spot a fake review from the same person by how they type. Penmanship, or typing patterns, is a lot like finger prints. There are just certain words, syntax lay out, and punctuation that people subconsciously fall back on without even realizing it, and you can easily notice these patterns if you know what you’re looking for. A few of those positive reviews scream “The same person wrote this.”, but not one of those negative reviews remotely stands out as one person writing them.

Furthermore, all the negative reviews are focusing on the exact same things, and they’re not bashing the company like your typical smear campaign would. In fact, every single negative review also has very positive things to say about the company in general. Its just those key points that keep repeatedly coming up. What gives these negative reviews even more credibility is how they talk about Mike. You can tell the man is rather clueless about his own game just by the blog posts and public posts hes made. If that isn’t enough, its hit home even further by just looking at the state the game is currently in.

GW2 is an utter mess. Its a game that doesn’t know what it wants to be. It had all this great content that was slashed, smashed, and gutted, leaving it all a hollow, barely working mess. We have developers actively disincentivizing already existing content to push an agenda from some clueless upper management type. Exactly what the negative reviews say is happening.

I’m sorry some of these people are delusional and while I am not happy with the way things are I wont let those reviews push me farther from what I already feel from first hand experience but 3.5 Really!?

Any place I have ever worked a 3.5 is NOT acceptable.

Yes, I know it is not the job of ArenaNet to cater to 3rd party rating systems. I’m sure however if things…weren’t that bad you would not have a 3.5 with your CEO having a 50% acceptance rate as well as a would you recommend to a friend…that’s failing by most standards in America. School, reviews, polls, you name it. 3.5 @50%. Where on earth in any place is 50%…good?

Yes 3.5 comes out to an even letter grade of C but the other two F’s do not help that lonesome C out there.

Please. “You have to question the validity of those reviews”.
Right you do have to question them…why were they made in the first place?

However, cynicism aside…it’s interesting but not surprising.

God it reminds me of my old manager……when someone who clearly isn’t a leader get’s stuck in a leadership role. ugh! It’s the worst.
If this catches wind on the forums…the level of irrational people saying all sorts of ish will be outrageous.

Pre-secondhand embarrassment already.

Ayrilana.1396:

paintpixie.7398:

Ayrilana.1396:

paintpixie.7398:

Ayrilana.1396:

Customers are more likely to report about a negative experience than anything contrary to that.

These aren’t customer reviews…

It doesn’t matter. The concepts are the same.

People are more likely to report on negative experience than anything contrary.

Better?

It does matter. People have already said in this thread that employees are less likely to post negative reviews because of the career repercussions.

Also, you are discrediting the fact that companies are very likely to post false positive reviews, as well, and as somebody said earlier, false positives actually happen more than false negatives. For instance, I lived in an apartment complex a few years back that would occasionally get bad reviews. The bad reviews were all true (although I personally didn’t find the things they were complaining about to be a deal breaker for me, personally, and I lived there for six or seven years). But every now and then the staff would go on the review site and give over-the-top reviews because they…wait for it…wanted more customers.

Review sites are hardly the end-all, be-all, but they are a relevant tool and I use them for everything, from buying something, to living somewhere, to jobs, etc. And I know that even one negative review is far more valuable than a million positive ones. Because it is likely to be more honest, and more telling of the product/service. You don’t need to know what a (insert anything here) is like on a good day. You need to know what it’s like on a bad day. That’s the best way to make an informed decision.

Reviews on that website are anonymous. I can go on right now and write one about Anet without having ever worked there.

Companies can post fake positive reviews just as the same employee can post multiple fake ones. I stated somewhere in this thread that neither can be necessarily relied on. Or at least not as your sole source without anything more concrete, credible to back it up. Some negative reviews can be a distortion of the facts are similly a misunderstanding on the reviewers part.

It doesn’t quite work like that. From what I have personally experienced, it takes a few days to verify your review. I doubt that multiple posts by one employee or false posts by non-employees are as big of a problem as you think it is. The reason for the (outward) anonymity is to protect the employee from backlash from the previous or current job.

I agree with you that a review site can’t be relied upon as the sole source of information about something, but that doesn’t mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. They are actually very useful.

Ayrilana.1396:

paintpixie.7398:

Ayrilana.1396:

Customers are more likely to report about a negative experience than anything contrary to that.

These aren’t customer reviews…

It doesn’t matter. The concepts are the same.

People are more likely to report on negative experience than anything contrary.

Better?

It does matter. People have already said in this thread that employees are less likely to post negative reviews because of the career repercussions.

Also, you are discrediting the fact that companies are very likely to post false positive reviews, as well, and as somebody said earlier, false positives actually happen more than false negatives. For instance, I lived in an apartment complex a few years back that would occasionally get bad reviews. The bad reviews were all true (although I personally didn’t find the things they were complaining about to be a deal breaker for me, personally, and I lived there for six or seven years). But every now and then the staff would go on the review site and give over-the-top reviews because they…wait for it…wanted more customers.

Review sites are hardly the end-all, be-all, but they are a relevant tool and I use them for everything, from buying something, to living somewhere, to jobs, etc. And I know that even one negative review is far more valuable than a million positive ones. Because it is likely to be more honest, and more telling of the product/service. You don’t need to know what a (insert anything here) is like on a good day. You need to know what it’s like on a bad day. That’s the best way to make an informed decision.

xbutcherx.3861:

Ayrilana.1396:

xbutcherx.3861:

Ayrilana.1396:

Labjax.2465:

PopeUrban.2578:

“Peer review” sites are inherantly biased toward negative reviews because those with nothing bad to say don’t want to burn bridges, risk their career, or alienate future employers.

Wait, what? Don’t you have this backwards? Why would someone who has only good things to say be afraid to say them?

It’s not that they are afraid to. People that are disappointed with anything for whatever reason are more likely to go on and review something to vent than someone whose expectations were met or exceeded.

You know you are the only one defending Anet’s position right now, if 1 person is happy with the game’s direction and 99 more are not; there is something wrong about it, keep defending all you want and argue all you want, at the end the numbers and the reviews says everything.

I’m the only one? Not really. It’s just that the negative people are more vocal at the moment. I dare say that you should provide your source that it’s 99 percent of players. People who are disappointed are more likely to post about it than those that are not.

ROFL, you want me to bring the CEO of NCsoft to show you numbers? read the THREAD, you’re the only one defending this!! This thread has 104 replies, how many are defending (only you) and how many are there stating something is wrong with the game and the company (the other 99%), you don’t need glassdoor to know that.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Who-else-is-enjoying-HoT/first#post5820903

Ayrilana is not the only one that has nice things to say about HoT. Does the game have issues that need to be fixed? Sure. But there are a lot of people playing the game right now and having a blast. And if you look at the NEWER reviews on glassdoor, the vast MAJORITY of them have good things to say about the company.

Goldrock.9076:

and as a gamer that stuff really none of our buisness and i think anet should take it down no need to spread negative morale around true or not.Thats their buisness and their employees and any future employee’s not the players not the customers buisness,

Wrong, it affects the game developing so in other words it is affecting us as consumers, because we are suffering the consequences.

Ayrilana.1396:

xbutcherx.3861:

Ayrilana.1396:

Labjax.2465:

PopeUrban.2578:

“Peer review” sites are inherantly biased toward negative reviews because those with nothing bad to say don’t want to burn bridges, risk their career, or alienate future employers.

Wait, what? Don’t you have this backwards? Why would someone who has only good things to say be afraid to say them?

It’s not that they are afraid to. People that are disappointed with anything for whatever reason are more likely to go on and review something to vent than someone whose expectations were met or exceeded.

You know you are the only one defending Anet’s position right now, if 1 person is happy with the game’s direction and 99 more are not; there is something wrong about it, keep defending all you want and argue all you want, at the end the numbers and the reviews says everything.

I’m the only one? Not really. It’s just that the negative people are more vocal at the moment. I dare say that you should provide your source that it’s 99 percent of players. People who are disappointed are more likely to post about it than those that are not.

ROFL, you want me to bring the CEO of NCsoft to show you numbers? read the THREAD, you’re the only one defending this!! This thread has 104 replies, how many are defending (only you) and how many are there stating something is wrong with the game and the company (the other 99%), you don’t need glassdoor to know that.

Angelica Dream.7103:

So why the silence about taking away human female animations, Super Adventure Box, Etc

The silence is defining,

I’m guessing you didn’t spend much time reading the items in the link so I’ll go ahead and answer it for you so you don’t have to put in the effort of reading and inferring.

They seemingly have a high turn-over rate due to poor company management. I’m sure the team that worked on the original SAB doesn’t work there anymore. As for human female animations, that could seemingly have been a mistake or they were planning on changing something, got halfway, then a director changed their mind, told them to stop the project, and then never undid the change they made. Or the specific person working on it no longer works there, and their organization is so chaotic that they don’t know where he left off or who was working on what, and it just gets forgotten.

They also seem to be plagued with frequent equipment failures and their IT staff is too small and slammed to get anything done in a timely manner, causing projects to take exceptionally long and scrapped all together.

Bringing in new programmers also seems to be a slow-down as their current system is apparently not standard and/or so convoluted that make even minor tweaks is a large undertaking.

All in all, they seem to be able to start a lot of projects, but due to high turn-over and frequent decision changes by upper management, never finish them. This would explain pretty much every single complaint we see on the forums.

2 of the 3 original founders have left the game already, and the 1 remaining (O’Brien) apparently hired outside executives to try and fill those roles. People who had no idea what the core concept of GW2 is or was and are all supposedly yes-men. This may also explain the strong push for eSports. I’m sure one of these “experts” pulled in said it would be a great idea, and the upper management ran with it.

Daharahj.1325:

You don’t have to look far

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820_P2.htm?filter.employmentStatus=REGULAR&filter.employmentStatus=PART_TIME&filter.employmentStatus=UNKNOWN

Now you know why they aren’t doing so good and are so reluctant to give answers.

This is the most useful and interesting thing I’ve read on these forums. It really gives insight into why the heck everything seems to be going awry. It’s a shame it seems that the CEO is completely disconnected from his customer base and does not seem to care enough to change, plus it seems to be unanimously agreed that he has his hands in too many departments and is apparently the be-all-end-all of all decisions, often causing projects to be scrapped completely, even when they are close to completion, simply because he changed his mind.

Underpaid and understaffed is what I suspected for the snail’s pace of bug fixes and meaningful content (I didn’t suspect underpaying, just understaffing).

I do like to see that there still are passionate and creative people that work there, but if management doesn’t get their kitten together, those people will leave and we really will be looking at a serious problem.

Very useful post and very eye-opening: 10/10 would read again.

Those of you who are discounting the site or the reviews because “happy people don’t post reviews” clearly have no idea how to use reviews to your advantage. Negative reviews are FAR more helpful than any number of positive reviews, and you can tell that there are some real problems, repeated by many reviewers.

Developers in any job (at least here in the US, I know) aren’t treated very well because they’re easy to replace. I have read far worse reviews for development positions than those ones, and I’m as in love with GW2 as the next girl, but that’s no reason to discount what they’re saying. Just because you’re a fan of something, doesn’t mean that everything that they do is done perfectly.

See I normally don’t read reddit for anything. These are the official forums and any information conveyed to us or asking from us should be made HERE first or nearly simultaneously at other forums. I am normally a fairly patient individual but the back channeling of devs all the way up to Colin posting on reddit rather than here is starting to annoy me.

Are these the official forums or not? Or are these the penned off area to contain the “wretched hive of scum and villainy” that the forums are mutating into with 9 out of 10 threads being … negative in tone?

Edit: I’ve been dropping the n’t a lot lately

Clearly Anet has chosen Reddit to be the official forum because it has a working search feature.

Reading this thread i’m left shaking my head at the absurdity of this whole situation. The official forums should be where announcements and coomunications should be found first. Using Reddit so extensively is just kittened. This is disgraceful.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Guys, I’m working with Matt on getting his post over here. He will add some additional information, and we want to localize it so that our entire community — not solely the one that speaks English — will get this nice and meaty info.

Forum posting is a voluntary option for developers. It’s great that Matt shared the info, and extra great that he’s working with me to share this globally and to share additional bits that he comes up with, too.

I believe we’ll be able to post up the fuller version later today in English, and provide a fully-localized version in French, German, and Spanish on Monday in those forums.

This post/tone and other like it on reddit rub me the wrong way, sorry. Post or don’t post, voluntarily or other wise, its just a game for me. But GW2 is your job, your salary, your career so don’t act like any dev posting is doing me (the customer) some kind big favor.

I would of course like more communication from the devs and anet that’s important to me, but more important to you, wouldn’t you think?

I’m sorry if I’m a bit gruff and some might say that Anet deserves better when they grace us with a post. But lets keep it in perspective your getting paid to be here, I paid to be here.

And all the hype/media 101 verbiage (“will get this nice and meaty info”) is getting really old, please stop.

HakunaMataBaby.2734:

Guhracie.3419:

HakunaMataBaby.2734:

FrouFrou.4958:

I just find this so sad but still sorta hilarious. People have been begging for any kind of information and finally there’s a nice dev out there talking to us but behold! The GW2 community that doesn’t seem to operate under any kind of logical laws, strikes yet again! Angrymob equipped with pitchforks and torches making sure that no dev will be posting here or on Reddit after this. Wohoo! Praise the Great Lord Flame Ram and pass the ketchup!

Lmao so true, everyone complains about no dev response, but when they do they get screamed at by immature adults who want EVERYTHING to be perfect and their way. I hate people

Yeah. It’s super immature and unreasonable to expect the official guild wars 2 forum to be used for any sort of official communication. Obviously our expectations are too high. You’re so right, and your assessment of the playerbase is in no way insulting or offensive! Thanks for showing me the error of my ways!

Why on earth would devs respond to unreasonable people who are only going to bash on them if they try to communicate? Also, insulting the player base? All the forums have been is constant complaints, negativity, etc. But calling them complainers is insulting, maybe you should take a break from the internet if that’s offensive. Thanks

Regards, Hakuna

Let’s see. Why would the devs use their official forums to communicate?

1. This is the place the company for which they speak has chosen as its official message board.
2. Seeing as how their company owns this message board, they also have the means to moderate posts that violate their terms of use.
3. Because it looks unprofessional and extremely scattered to leave important information strewn all over the internet.
4. This is where their customers, who own the game, are led to believe news and announcements will be made, on account of the whole subforum named exactly that.
5. Because this is where they work, and posting to Reddit doesn’t shield them from criticism, so why not post here?

I genuinely don’t understand why their self-moderated forum gets the cold shoulder and people are rushing to defend that decision, like Reddit is somehow a safe-haven for them in a way they cannot create here. Is Reddit part of some unknown complaint-free zone on the internet? Are only mature and reasonable people allowed to post there? How have I missed such a place? Please. Explain this to me.

Explain to me how you’re not perpetuating toxicity by trying to shut down another person’s concerns by reducing them to “immature complainers.” Is it your job to moderate people?

Okay, a few things that I’ll just be quick about:

1) The post from Matt was amazing. His follow up posts on the reddit thread were even better (they were short and direct responses to questions made openly and in good humour). This is exactly what people have been asking (and occasionally rioting) for for years.

2) It’s sad that it was on reddit, but if that’s just how it’s going to be then excellent communication in a non-ideal place is better than no communication.

3) There is a serious issue with player communication that goes back a long way. Just look at how well Matt’s reddit post was received, even though it notes multiple problems with a single game system and ALSO states that it’ll be a long and unknown amount of time until they are fixed. So much of the hate on these forums could be solved if the community was actually talked to.

4) Gaile, the “We don’t talk speculatively about future development” guideline, if that is all that is going on, is clearly not working. People are really, really angry. We were told communication would improve after the SAB riots, and it hasn’t. I don’t think anyone believes this is your fault, but there is a fault in the system somewhere and it needs fixing.

5) I really don’t think the community blaming by some people is helpful. People were angry before this reddit post, just look at the countless bug threads (angry about lack of clarification on the issues, not the existence of them) to see that. People aren’t getting angry here because of the reddit post, they just haven’t stopped being angry yet, and are pointing Matt’s writing as an example of how to appease this.

(Note, to avoid the usual kittenstorm, when I say “people” I mean it in the normal sense of the word, “more than one person”. It is not meant to be read as “everyone”, nor “the entire guild wars 2 playerbase”. If you don’t think I have spoken for you, fine, I wasn’t pretending to.)

Menadena.7482:

I only have 13 for some reason, despite having quite a few achievements unlocked. I guess I should have been doing things like jumping puzzles (which I can never do) instead of obvious things like personal stories and fighting bosses.

The irony of this statement is that every personal story chapter achievement (42 for personal story, 16 for S2) gives a mastery point. And that the boss kill achievements give mastery points too.

And jumping puzzles, except for one or two harder ones, don’t.

Menadena.7482:

Please anet, give us a better way to earn mastery points. You are at a distinct disadvantage if you have no interest in non-pve content and are rubbish at jumping puzzles.

Not including jumping puzzles, non-PvE content, or scavenger hunts you can obtain 53 Central Tyria mastery points.

Max total of Central Tyria mastery points: 58.

Yeah, I think they did. The five you’ll not be able to get are from 2 jumping puzzles and 3 scavenger hunts.

There isn’t a single non-PvE mastery point.

Edit:

Just as a heads up, the Mastery Points for Personal Story are awarded on a per-chapter basis. So once you complete Chapter 1 and earn the Achievement for it, you’ve earned the Mastery Point for Chapter 1. This includes each different starting storyline: I believe the right names are: Graduation Day, For The Legion!, Crime and Punishment, Rising to the Challenge, and Waking from the Nightmare. Similarly, whichever Order you join, there’s just one Mastery Point there.
Hopefully this helps clarify the total number of Mastery Points you should be expecting from your previous accomplishments in Tyria. That said, the different stories really are fantastic, and should definitely be experienced, but for your own pleasure, and not for Mastery Points.
If any of you still think you are missing MPs from Achievements you’ve completed, let us know via the in-game Bug Report tool and we’ll try to identify if there’s a bigger issue happening.

The achievements is VERY misleading and, IMO, it should be per achievement because you’re experiencing different storylines.

In HoT I can run around zones and earn extra mastery points from various nodes. it took me a little bit but I got an understanding of that locations set up. Tyria on the other hand has me at a complete standstill. I’m a relative new player on a month old account having bought hot specifically just after the first of this month. By the middle of the month I’d leveled to 80 and completed multiple achievements, yet tyria is completely unleveled except for a few things. I think I had a total of 10 tyria masteries, and at first didn’t realize i had to bypass my entire personal story and jump to HoT story line just to begin the entire process.
Not only does the tyria mastery lines need to be made more accessible as HoT content is, but there needs to be some type of explanation for new players to understand what they need to do to get the process started at level 80. I didn’t like having to skip ahead in my story progression. Once I did it I realized how ever that much of the HoT is locked behind mandatory Mastery unlocks.

Thank you for an official post on the official forums. I hope you’ll continue to monitor this thread and make note of the information being supplied by players.

And can we please get some attention and response to “fail gating” in general? Long ago this was proven to be a bad idea, and many times since then. Why is this method still being used at all?

And while we’re on the subject of communication, it would be constructive to address some of the other threads that have gotten a lot of posts. These issues are on our minds, and the lack of communication is worrisome.

Thanks for the update, thanks for communicating with us, and thanks for being forthcoming and polite! It’s always a pleasure to see and we appreciate that you guys are working on these things!

I have a small team working with me, but we are working on a few different things. Specifically: issues with current legendary weapons, new legendary weapons, and festivals (that’s a topic for another day).

The priority for current legendary crafting bugs is as follows:

Fix blockers as soon as I’m made aware of them. Anything that halts your progress is unacceptable and I’ll do everything I can to get it fixed ASAP.

Fix issues that encourage toxic play or interactions. No collectible should be gated behind failed events, or mechanics that make you upset that another player is playing a specific way. Unfortunately these things take longer to fix and test around the fixes (don’t want to break something else on accident), so the turn around will be slower

Fix the smaller things. Things like icons, text (unless it is very misleading, then it gets addressed sooner), and minor inconsistencies. We will get to things when possible, it may just take a while. Something to remember, every minute spent on one bug is a minute not spent somewhere else.

If you see something, say something. We actively read the official forums and reddit posts. My QA partner Evan Zynda is all over things on reddit. We want to know what’s wrong with our content, so please let us know.

New legendary weapons! The good news: yes, we are working on them. The bad news: no, I cannot tell you any more about them. Sorry, some things just need to be a secret.

Communication: I’m not a very social-media-focused person, and to be honest, have a lot of stuff to do, but I’m going to try my best to be communicative and up-front with you all. There are things I won’t be able to talk about, and things I won’t have the knowledge or authority to talk about, but I will do my best to not hide things from you.

Alright, I think that’s about everything I wanted to cover as far as legendary collections.

I’m so in love with Matt Pennebaker right now. This is the best news I’ve heard all year! ok, this, and the astralaria sheets of aurillium fix. And thank you Gaile for getting these things brought to attention :P And Evan Zynda for scouting ideas and the like on Reddit

Edit: Still waiting on a quick fix for failing events on purpose for items needed for collections >_< not happy. Shouldn’t be that hard to simply put said bosses away from temple events and have them like hero challenges where they remain non-aggressive until you interact with them. I’m so tired of having to wait for constant fixes for these legendary collections. I don’t think I’ll ever go for another legendary after all this BS.

Edit 2: A very helpful player pm’ed me and invited me to a contested map where I was able to finally get the items I needed. I paid him 10g for his help, because of how long I’ve been waiting and how much he helped me. But players shouldn’t have to resort to all this stuff. It’s not good, and I don’t think I’ll ever be going for another legendary after all this hassle. I just hope that the new guys on the scene can clean up all the mess for future people going for legendaries, because i’m so over all this bugged collection drama.

You might want to be more careful with your screenshots, Jeremy Whitehead.

So I get your rock and hard place Devs. On one hand you need to acknowledge that visual noise can make it hard to see fight mechanic AOEs and cues. On the other hand, most of what we as players enjoy is seeing the full beauty that is this game. You solve one, you hurt the other.

I get that it may be a difficult solution, and that the coding is likely a nightmare, but please just give us a SLIDER. That way we can decide for ourselves how much “noise” we want. That way those whose computers need less processing, or those who need to see the “tells” better can slide it down, while the rest of us can still enjoy our fireworks.

It’s really the only solution. The “minimal” effects are so faint they might as well be badges, no one can see anything really anymore and so it doesn’t really feel like we are doing anything. Where is the fun in that?

Also. Viva la marionette!

The Greyhawk.9107:

Earlier this afternoon I stumbled upon a player in LA with an Anet tag. I made my disappointment known to him/her. The following image is the convo I had with him/her.
(Sorry about the poor quality, only have kittenty old MS Paint to work with)

I’m sorry to say that your approach was a little ..heavy handed. As the poor guy said several times, he’s not responsible for the issue and he handled the conversation very peacefully all things considered. It would probably be more effective to befriend anet devs if you see them in-game. Getting them on your side makes them more likely to champion your causes, rather than frightening them from entering the game. But I understand your frustration. It’s not easy finding the right way to explain that frustration to the person who is (seemingly) responsible. If you see him, or another dev again, try to win him over. Get them to see you as a person, and not a credit card number or player alias. It’s worth it.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Nerf the “Violets, not violence”. Nerf the “Get some water from the dolyaks, and put out those fires!” audio spam.

Or those shouts. The new ones are totally narm, overly complex, situational, like something a child would consider “epic” after he sees a superhero cartoon. When repeated 1000 times while you play a shout build in a new multiple hour HoT map, that sounds just awful.

On this point, I love my shouts. I love hearing “Feel the burn!” “Aftershock!”

But at the same time, it’s embarrassing to think other people are hearing that. I would love an option so only I can hear my shouts.

I’d be happy with an option for both.

My husband and I play in the same room next to each other. He keeps his sound off because he can’t stand all the audio spam. I keep mine on low, but no matter how low it is, every time he hears, “Feel the burn [bern]!” he makes some remark about “feel the Bernie Sanders!”.. between him and the shouts and the random stuff… “dolyaks. .violets, I like that, I earned that, look at that! So pretty! This rose has thorns and here they are! Chilled to the bone, you are all weaklings!” a girl will lose her mind!