Guild Wars 2

They aren’t called guild raids.

“Raiding” started as a PvE dungeon organization, which probably has its roots in pre-WoW days. I don’t know anyone on my server(or other servers for that matter) that calls it “raiding.” We just call it WvW.

There are 3 roles to play in W3: zerging, small-man/roaming, and scouting/escorting. Raiding is probably closest to zerging, but it’s still not the same thing.

Also, simply saying “adapt” is erroneous if you don’t evaluate the changes. I mean, by that rational they could throw anything at all in to W3 and we would be expected to “adapt.” Why not put Tequatl at Bay and Jormag at Hills…who cares if it doesn’t make sense, just adapt! Achievements are fine for PvE, but they have no place in a competitive arena.

Imagine if they gave NFL players little bonuses and titles for, say, # of fumbles caused in a game. Not only would it break the game by providing an incentive incongruent to actually winning the game, but the amount of broken backs and necks would skyrocket. Odd analogy I know, but it’s even more odd and out of place that ANet would put these achievements into W3. Not only do they add absolutely nothing to the competition, but they actually make it harder for a server to get anything done. It’s counter to the very essence of organized teamwork in a competitive arena.

Please remove the ridiculous new achievements from W3, they are ruining the gameplay in it. WvWvW(W3) has a very strong community and is arguably the finest aspect of the entire game. It’s hallmark being the level of inter-server competition and intra-server cooperation, tier populations notwithstanding.

The introduction of dozens of new achievements has caused not only an influx of new players into the Borderlands who don’t care about the match-up, but it creates a queue nightmare in which very few guilds are getting their members in. This leads to a breakdown of server effectiveness in which the carefully laid plans and group builds become insignificant and pointless.

W3 may have been intended as a PvE light combat zone, but the reality is that the PvP here is the most competitive aspect of the game by far. Trying to force some kind of PvE meta into W3 with these achievement carrots is not only wrong, but game-breaking. Leave the achievement rat-race in PvE; it’s not needed, nor welcome here.

Byega.4215:

WvWers don’t care about achievement points, we just want to play the feature we love.

In all fairness, some WvW players have been complaining vocally about lack of realistic achievements for many months. I see threads about it every week.

On the topic of achievement appropriateness, I think the merc camps will be the worst since you have to go out of your way to do this as they aren’t something we normally give any thought to in WvW. I know the EB zergs sometimes do them if they are passing through. The Yaks kill achieve I think is fine. Often when you hit a camp, you get to kill 1 or 2 yaks in the process. Doing the camp capture achievement will get you more than halfway to completion on this.

The one I worry about the most is the 5 castle captures. I play WvW nearly exclusively, but I don’t enjoy EB. I’m going to have to spend a ton of time in EB to get this one. Even worse, some of the smallest pop servers like AR and GoM almost never hold SM. I’d hate to see a situation where whole servers miss out on this achievement.

The other one that seems crazy to me is the 50 world ranks. I play 2-3 hours of WvW most nights but I play home border defense and only get 1 or 2 ranks a night. I can’t see casual WvW players ever getting this unless they exclusively do EB zerging, which is definitely not what WvW needs more of.

Meglobob.8620:

I agree with the majority of what the OP said…

But I would like to add, why no DEFENSIVE achievements like:

Defend sm 3 times
Defend keeps 10 times
Defend 20 towers
Build 10 AC’s in a sm/keep/tower
Pay for a ugrade at any fortification/supply camp

There are no defensive achievements at all, its no wonder most players assume defense is worthless…

Defense need more love, that one is for sure. Anet said they are working on it, and defense bonus is harder than capturing. One treb and sm is under attack, does it count if they stop trebbing and you have now succesfully defended sm?

Brutal Arts.6307:

The nightmare is over

The bags with Tomes of knowledge were so much more rewarding than the chests with blues. All in all for people that don’t wvw this will prolly take a while. If you’re in there 6+ hours a day than you’re probably already done.

You’re assuming people go into wvw actively looking to complete the achievements, which is totally off base. I’m a hardcore wvw player and I can assure you that every single one of these achievements except the keeps and towers is ridiculous. The kills are wayy too low for starters, I’m able to get 450 a night on a good matchup. Jumping puzzles should not be tied at all to this, and unless you sit in one spot tagging yaks its very hard to complete it. The fact of the matter is that they made WvW an achievement hunt like any other LS so far and that is wrong, they’re not promoting wvw game play, they’re just promoting achievement hunting.

@OP, good thread and I hope ANet takes it into account because this is actually killing wvw gamplay by having people focus more on completing the achievements rather than playing the matchup.

I agree with some, the one I agree most with is with the supplies. It will just lead to wasting that and in most cases it is very precious.

The Meta Achievement: WAAAAAAAAAAY too high in requirements. 10 would be reasonable but 15 is just out there.

This factors in the reliability of WvW into the mix. For example, how on earth are you supposed to get Castle in the Air given the effort needed to get in AND the fact that EBG has queues into the heavens?

I have one high-level concern that I find to be the root of nearly all my troubles with the game:

Encounter Scaling to Players Present

There are far, far too many dynamic events in this game that are impossible for a small number of players and trivial for a zerg.

At one end of the spectrum the entire concept of the [Group] tag in front of some encounters needs to be ditched. You aren’t building any more immersive of a world by having Champions squatting 24/7 on half the skill point challenges of Malchor’s Leap – all you are doing is frustrating players who didn’t happen to play that content during the massive first rush a year ago now. Likewise Tequatl and to a lesser degree the clockwork invasion is an exercise in EXCLUDING your players from content. The is simply no reason to spend resource on purely “large guild-only” content when a better system of scaling would make those a location worth visiting for most or all of your PvE players solo, small group, and guild-warriors alike.

At the other end you have things like the Shadow Behemoth and the Shatterer, both of which are awesome visual displays made out of wet cardboard. You literally cannot lose to SB because its attacks are virtually non-existent. And no, adding an ABSOLUTELY FIXED AND UNVARYING timer so that its a DPS race for the people that showed up is not a real fail-condition. These events need to gain not just stronger numbers (more HP, harder hitting attacks) they need to actually gain mechanics as the number of player’s present increases. and under it all you need a table that makes those adjustments ranging from <5 players present all the way up to zone population cap, checking the number of folks around at every possible phase change.

And at the tail end of this the loot needs to reflect the encounter (and challenge) that was presented, not just a flat table for 10 people or for 75. It can be something as simple as “beat the simplified 10 person Tequatl, get a 1% shot at the big shiney. Beat the full 70-man experience, get a 7% shot at the shiney.” Make every attempt appealing and attractive instead of 2 minutes into it knowing you’re wasting your time for even bothering to have zoned in.

I’m also in the camp that believe tings like fixed party size need to die in a fire at the bottom of a well. Resources like building a dungeon map should be leveraged to provide an entertaining experience if I’m on alone, happen to find a friend on, or have my full crew. Encounters in places like dungeons should, IMO be built to scale for 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 players depending on who’s present. Should running CoE alone net rewards as greats as running it with 5? No, but it shouldn’t be outright impossible to do so either…

Hi Chris and Josh,

It feels odd seeing my name appear in the dev tracker so much. Glad to be able to help out, if only a little. A couple of suggestions on things you asked feedback on:

1) Creating a thread every two days may be too quick – you could burn out and have people loose interest if it’s so fast. Changing it to three days – effectively twice a week, may be a little easier to gather feedback.

2) Asking people to ‘submit one idea they want to see discussed’ is a little tedious. Do I post about ascended gear? Condi cap? Content variety? Living world? It may be easier to ask people for a list of points and just store that as a reference point, as it is difficult to decide on just one thing to bring up. I know the process can easily be repeated but this may save time and confusion.

3) Moderators – let’s be honest, some of the moderators on this forum are extremely trigger happy. Moving forward, this really needs to be toned down. I had a thread deleted and was infracted recently for reporting gold sellers in my servers LA – after they were reported countless times they were still there after a few hours. This sort of thing is demoralizing and makes it feel like the community mods are out to get anyone who disagrees with their agenda.

Sure, this is a game forum and there will be a lot of disrespectful and not-so-mature posting, but the amount of times the mods jump on something, simply because they can, needs to be reconsidered if you guys want to build a better relationship with the community.

Have a great weekend guys!

I respect Josh post a lot, but i read a hidden message in there. (in all the warnings, we want to but can’t because X).

NcSoft/Anet doesn’t hire enough people to actually make a 3 million copy sold MMO, future proof, and keeping true to it’s first made promises. I think that’s the issue. This would explain why both devs/players are kitten ed at each other.

Devs viewpoint: We wan’t to make it happen but don’t have the resources/have bad luck with some part of the code that doesn’t want to debuf/realize it’s harder to make then was thought earlier.

Player viewpoint: Statement are statements, you keep them true, or you lie. Otherwise don’t make statements. This is both true and not true at same time. If a politician promises something and it won’t come true, he will be punished for it. Simple. Is this punishment justified? Who will tell, no clear answer to that. Maybe he worked hard, maybe he didn’t work hard enough. But the word ‘promise’ is very important for humans. It creates… Expectations. Expectations becomes dreams. Dreams become Utopia, and then it falls apart. And the feeling left then is very horrible. And they need somebody to be angry at. They want to focus their ‘angry’ emotion at someone. Sadly that is often you devs.

Who is wrong here? Nobody and yet both sides can make improvements. My take on it? here goes.

Players should always be friendly to devs no matter what. (angry is not equal to unfriendly). A happy dev (reading ‘respectfull’ forum posts) will be more motivated to work on the game, then someone who just got flamed. This is a fact, although some people claim/act like they can handle if well.

Players should also keep on trying to contribute even if they feel like being ‘not heard’. Who knows, suddenly a player might have a simple, but golden solution that slipped tru Arenanets ‘net’ of brainstorming, and was all they needed to move the game forward.

With this said: devs can definitely improve on the following.

Stop being stubborn. Seriously. I know making an mmo is very challenging. And that at some point you are tired of changing directions and want to make a decision, you make it and then you feel ‘safe’. Like ok it’s this and i won’t have to change my focus, wich means easier developping for me. I would make this mistake too. However it prevents mistakes from being fixed. You (devs) made mistakes. Am i angry? no. Is it wrong to make mistakes? ABSOLUTELY NOT. It is a mistake however to not admit them and look past them. Pvp is a best example imo. Some nerf were uncalled for and now proven to be to drastic. Pvp changes are always numerous so i suspect code wise they aren’t a challenge to change. So imo very simple, show you can fix mistakes, by fixing nerfs that should not have happened. There’s plenty. (read my post in Jonathan sharp preview topic for more info).

Devs should listen more to players. It kitten es me slightly off that the argument is here again ‘forum players stop acting like you are everyone, you aren’t’. It’s partially true and it isn’t an insult. So technically you didn’t do something wrong. But here it comes. People will feel insulted by it (weither justified or not). They will feel meaningless/ignored on the forums. To be honest. I played over 80 parties (x4 players i didn’t know before), aetherblade path, Twilight arbor. All those ppl had same conclusion, the ‘ooze’ pulling part in that dungeon stinks. So technically about 250 people rounded down told me they hate it (as do I). If i tell you on the forums now that this is a broad topic, (and you won’t take my word for it), then you are wrong.

Players that wan’t the game to grow and take so much effort to even make wall of (sincere) text on the forums of idea’s, those players aren’t stupid. They aren’t completely selfish. Their idea’s will most of the time be a combined conclusion of many ingame chats/player conversations/frustrations. If you think every player post here with the pure ‘selfish, me me me,’ way of thinking, that’s a terrible mistake Josh. And it’s the mistake at the base for the reason why people think they are ignored on the forums. So please improve in this. I know perfection doesn’t exist. And it can’t exist. But please strife to it. That’s why i ask both sides to do this.

Mif.3471:

Angry complainers mean the game is healthy. It shows people care about the game.

When they stop complaining, that’s when a game is in trouble, because it means they’ve stopped caring.

for Josh Foreman & Chris Whiteside & rest
+1 for the posts, i am happy now that you guys actually read/discuss what the community has to say (ex. the condition problem and other stuff)
it was a nice way to put the fire out, at least for me
just a few post were enough to make me happy again, at least it’s not the feeling of a brick wall now

l.e. lets say 100 people are at tequatl, and 50 are condition specs
how those 50 ppl can do their damage if just 5 are enough, the rest of conditions are “lost” ? And because of player number scaling, the monster is killed 30-40% slower than with all 100 guys pure damage builds
in non-time limit cases, this is not so much of a problem
lets say that the 100 zerker guys kill tequatl in 8 minutes, from 10 the limit
so if it’s 50 zerk 50 condition, they lost the boss already
and you still didn’t fix this since beta, how should i NOT be angry in this case…

also did you account for events on low population worlds, them becoming “impossible” with low player numbers?

diamondgirl.6315:

I agree with Neural that the Ascended crafting gives you a concrete goal to work toward. You have to work, you have to wait, but your hard work is not going to be utterly negated by random bad luck, like the precursors.

I look forward to discussing RNG.

They can’t please everyone.

I don’t want goals to work towards assigned to me. I don’t want people who have more time, or people who are willing to do unfun things many times, to have a numerical advantage.

The reliance on random rewards smells like cheap conditioning tricks to hook players.

If it’s going to be a free-for-all, no-holds-barred feedback session, the priority list would just deteriorate into a wishlist.

I think there should at least be some context about the topics being discussed. Maybe Anet can start the ball rolling by starting a few threads like:

[Discussion] Crafting
[Discussion] Ascended Gear

So by looking at the thread and post count we know which topics garner the most input.

More importantly, the devs should at least share what confines/constraints they are working under:

Some issues may have technical limitations (eg condition damage)
Some issues may require significant academic knowledge (eg economy-related issues)
Some issues may have political or strategic business implications (eg Cantha)
Some issues may have divided views among playerbase (eg Scarlet as a main villain)
Some issues may conflict with Anet’s philosophy (eg no instanced raids, no traditional trinity)

If we don’t understand these constraints, then our feedback won’t have much value.

Hi Chris, thanks for taking the time to answer here, it is really appreciated.

Being an avid forum reader, I noticed that often people are just not informed of things that have already been announced / precised by the devs. This, together with the broken search feature, leads to multiple similar threads, suggestions and complains: for example I saw a post in this thread complaining about precursors being complete RNG, when a scavenger hunt has been announced for late 2013.

I think there should be a place (probably a forum thread) where all the released informations about what is coming / what is being worked on is gathered.

It should aggregate:
- The half-year blog posts
- The official forum posts/announcements
- The various interviews given by the devs (this part is probably harder)

Each topic having:
- A status: “coming soon”, “is worked on”, “we’re thinking about it”, etc.
- A release date (even something vague like “late this year”)
- The details of the feature as they are disclosed

Such a database would greatly help us, players, have a better understanding of where the game is heading to and as a consequence improve the quality of our feedback/suggestions. Also, it would be a great help to have this sort of “ultimate reference” when we want to back up our forum posts with dev information.

Just wanted to say. Really appreciate the amount of replies you’ve been giving Chris. Also, they come across as you actually listening to us instead of management-muzzled replies. That’s even more important. Keep up the good work.

Chris (and ANet…): First of all, if you want to have a meaningful discussion with your players base, you really need to stop alienating yourself with all the PR talk your official posts are riddled with. Your first post here… it was difficult to read without cringing: if you want honest meeting of minds, stop being dishonest up from.

Please take a look at how Digital Extremes handle their forums for Warframe.
They are honest and upfront. There is almost no PR talk (that I can assure you a lot of your “most dedicated fans” are allergic to by now, one and a half years after your Manifesto – but since you read the forums you should know that!). And they have a brilliant “Weekly hot topics” where their Customers Relation representative highlights what was hot on forum and what team thinks about the feedback / what they plan to do.
Also, they never hide their mess-ups with – again – wall of PR garbage. They are not afraid to bluntly admit: guys, we kitten up, badly. We are sorry, here is what we are doing about it.
It saves a lot of bad blood, but also actually opens grounds for ACTUAL conversation.
Unfortunately – let me state it again – what ANet seems to be doing alienates fans. Stop it. Don;t let PR spin doctors edit your posts. Honestly, we can see through them. They are silly.

Edit:
Warframe forums require login. While the game is free, to lessen your hassle, copy of latest (October 4) Community Hot Topics: This is how it’s done!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lxn1Pfg3zgDiT_u1wZnZp9owt8i5GM9rX5eyAPDbrQs/edit?usp=sharing

Chris,

Does your new commitment to collaborative development extend to looking back at your old commitments?

10 months ago, you offered to discuss social systems in MMOs by PM:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13tuac/im_the_studio_design_director_on_guild_wars_2_ama/c7756ah

I’ve since contacted you twice by forum PM and once by in-game mail, to take you up on that offer. I haven’t heard back from you at all.

I’m sure I just got lost in the shuffle. You’re a busy guy, after all. But, if you’re too busy to read and respond to PMs that you’ve invited, perhaps you shouldn’t extend the offer in the first place.

If your team is too busy to collect feedback the old fashioned way, by talking to players, I don’t think all the cute feedback-collecting mechanisms in the world are going to get you the information you want. If you’re too busy for something, gotta hire more people, no way around it. Is ANet budgeting any cash for this whole “collaborative development” initiative?

Chris,

here’s another suggestion for the forums: maybe add an indicator to the +1 button (maybe a ! next to the number) if a dev clicks it to indicate that a dev read the post and noted it down for further discussion with the team or something like that. I understand that you guys are very busy and can’t always respond to a thread, but this way at least we’ll know that you guys are taking it into consideration.

Chris,
If the team found a mechanic in the game that simply was not working or holding the game back, would they fix that mechanic?

I honestly would like to believe that the DEVs care about this kind of stuff, however there are things in the came holding it back. Class balance is one of them, more specifically, build balance. For example, the ranger class i would imagine to be a cross between a thief and a warrior, especially with a sword or great sword, however the DPS on the GS just does not come any where near the reliability that a warrior or thief has. Not to mention we do know the warrior/ele classes are unbalanced in terms of how well the classes were put together.

What im getting at is there is ALOT of potential in all the classes, ranger even more so. The necro could also use some buffs as well. Warrior and DD ele could be toned down or left the way they are if you toned every other class up to level ground.

Other issues would involve content like teq, and guild missions. I have a very good guild that can do guild missions quickly, easily and efficiently. However, others are not as lucky as me. I am on a server that has not been able to kill teq…at one point i was the only one there at his event. Don’t get me wrong, i love his fight but he simply as too much health. By that i mean, he should have 50% of his health or tack on another 15 minutes to the fight. The fight remains hard, but it is still DOABLE. Why even time these bosses any way? Why not just make them super strong? Other things already mentioned involves the legendary process…its challenging yes but the money grind gets boring…. been there done that.

I would like to leave off on a good note. GW2 has definably been a fresh of breath air…i cant thank you guys enough for doing a great job creating an immersible world that keeps me comming back for more every day and even more when new content comes out (will be freaking out like a fan girl on October 15th). If you fixed some simple things, this game could trump out WoW.

It’s good to see you guys trying to get some communication going, and to build a better community. You’re going to have a long road ahead, and at least part of that is on your own heads due to past actions/inactions.

Now, a few suggestions:

Skritt Survey Squad: Space these guys out like the laurel vendors, and give them a few lines to say. They can explain that they’re there to perform surveys, and clicking on the right option takes you to a survey screen that explains that it’s for the player, NOT the character. Then, when you make a new survey, you can make talking to one of them a possible daily task, instead of visiting a laurel vendor. And skritt are kinda cute/funny, so people will remember one standing in Hoelbrak or the Iron Citadel.

Relax the Forums: Any GOOD forums I’ve been to have always had a “and whatever” area in them. A place to talk about stuff that doesn’t really have anything to do with the game/webcomic/ect that the forums are for. I’m not saying to allow ANY topic, make some guidelines (please). No other video games, no politics, no religion would be a good start. But give us an area to talk about other things that interest us, so we can kind of get to know our fellow players a bit better. Community isn’t just Player – Dev, it’s also Player – Player. A Roleplay section might be worth trying as well.

And finally, You Need to Listen. On the very first page of this thread, people complained about the moderation of the boards. They got this:

CC Danicia.1394:

The only time the Moderation Team edits a post is to remove profanity or comments which violate the Forum Code of Conduct.

Complaints and comments continued, and got them this:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

This thread is about discussing the post from Chris Whiteside, not the moderation on this forum. Please focus on the topic at hand. Any further posts discussing things not related to the original post will be removed.

I’m not going to say if there’s a problem or not. What I will say is that there is a PERCEPTION of a problem, and when it was put in front of you, you guys brushed it aside right off the bat. Not a good start to open communications, especially when the problem in question is one that hampers open communications.

I simply have two bits of advice for you, Chris:

1) No matter how much you beseech the player base, there are GOING to be elements that their sole goal is to simply scream and complain as loud as they can. To them, you aren’t there to discuss things, you are there to yell at. They WILL look for any reason to be insulted, and if worse comes to worse they WILL make up reasons to be insulted if they have to.

You can NOT let that small group of people dictate the conversation, and you can NOT let them run you (or other developers) off, nor can you use them as an excuse to ignore the rest of the feedback. Yes, they are going to be crude and hurtful and spiteful, but you’re gonna have to power through it, no matter how unfair it is, if you want to keep those lines of communication open.

2) Metrics and customer feedback, be it through forums or polls or beta test realms or surveys, are all well and good. It never hurts to know what your players like or don’t like. But at the end of the day, this is YOUR game (and I say that in the plural sense encompassing the entire company); and you shouldn’t be afraid to do what you want to do, or reject ideas from the community, no matter how popular they sound.

Players will respect decisions that they don’t like if it shows a creative passion rather than a feeling that you’re simply trying to milk as many dollars as you can.

xephire.8324:

There’s been a lot of whiny threads…
snip

Whatever the reasons, let’s try to give them some trust again.
We have nothing to lose
I do not say we have to be blindly optimistic, but this can be an good opportunity for both devs and players.
Plus if it turn out to be a sinister attempt to stem the discontent we will notice it in a few months.

Gibson.4036:

AntiGw.9367:

Lonesamurai.4852:

AntiGw.9367:

I don’t see how polls could give you more information than participation, activity and click statistics.

It would tell them what those doing them actually THINK of the content they just did

How is that more useful than actual statistics?

If you were to look at pure metrics, you’d probably think I’m someone who likes ascended weapons. I’m working on leveling all three weapon crafts, and have been farming for mats and gold.

If you ask me, however, I’ll tell you that I dislike that ascended gear got added, and really dislike the way it was implemented with a long grind to achieve it. I’ll tell you that my normal play style means I have no hope of achieving it without specifically farming for it, and that my current farming is the first time in any game that I’ve ever actually farmed. I’ll also point out that, for the first time since I got excited about GW2 two years before launch, there’s a distinct possibility I’ll move to another game, especially if ascended armor follows the pattern of ascended weapons. Though the “you don’t need ascended, so just ignore it” crowd won’t understand, I just want to have BiS gear and enjoy the game without needing to work toward another loot carrot.

Would any of the information in the second paragraph come from just looking at what I’m doing in game?

If I leave in a month or two because ascended armor puts me over the edge, would pure statistics tell you why seeing that I did grind out ascended weaponry?

Would any statistical analysis of my current play style tell you why I used to buy small, but regular amounts of gems with cash, but stopped with the introduction of ascended weaponry?

This. So much of this.

Just plain metrics, even those gathered from the proposed polls, can only go so far. In many cases, the statistics will not tell the whole story, or may actually tell an entirely different story than the reality of the situation.

Polls, while good to get a general feeling on something, don’t really go into enough detail to be a true representation either unless you break them down to the point where you might as well be asking for a straight out written response anyway. For example, you can ask in a poll if players like Ascended Gear and give it a 5 for love it, 1 for hate it scale. Let’s say a player gives it a 5. Awesome, they love it! But wait, do they love the look of it, the way it’s acquired, the fact that it provides them with a new goal to achieve in game, the fact that they were just getting bored and wanted something new to do, that it gives them an advantage in WvW, that they love crafting, etc? All of these and more would/could be valid reasons for a player to rate it as a 5, and no one could argue with them, but just the 5 alone doesn’t provide any useful feedback at all to further development of different/similar content.

This is why we need open and direct, and ongoing, communication. This is also why we need ANet to be forthright about it’s design plans and methods so that the communication we do have isn’t diluted by players who don’t really like the game but remain with it in vain hope that somehow the stars will align and they’ll start getting what they want out of it even if it’s not in ANets cards to ever go that way.

Dromar.1027:

I would also like to see more Transmutation Stones being rewarded or at least a MF recipe to turn green ones into rare ones. Prob in my dreams tho.

Ohgods! I would love this. I have so many basic transmute stones that are useless and I have yet to receive even a single Transmute Crystal in all of my 4,500+ hours of play. I’d love to actually be able to use them. Please, ANet! *crosses fingers and hopes*

I’m sceptical of what this will accomplish. I have been posting on the forum for over a year now under the impression that what I write (provided it was constructive and respectful, which it isn’t always) had a good chance of being read by someone it was relevant to. I still assume that’s the case – that forums are read just not frequently commented on.

What exactly is the goal of all these threads and polls etc? I don’t see how they would appease people or lead to more satisfaction unless actual actions in game followed (which my understand is that won’t happen for 3-4 months in the best of cases). If a thread is created in the ranger forum asking what issues ranger players are most concerned about, what would happen if 90% of the posts talked about pet AI or pet survivability in challenging content (WvW, dungeons, World Bosses etc)? This is already a known issue and has been well documented since the beta yet it becomes worse and worse with each content patch (most of the dungeons this year kill the pet with certain mechanics – electric fields in Aetherblade Retreat, everything in the Tequatl Encounter etc). Devs talking about it in a forum thread isn’t going to change anything in game. What if rangers raise issue with the main hand sword auto-attack leap chain and the character control issues it causes? What if the thread becomes split between PvP rangers that love the cruise control to stick on their target and PvE players who hate the inability to dodge DoD (dodge or die) attacks because of a useless (to them) leap function?

What happens if players themselves aren’t clear on what they enjoy? The Crown Pavilion and Scarlet’s Invasions were very popular content. Is it because they demonstrate the best gameplay experience in the game or is it because they gave out large and imbalanced amounts of loot compared to the rest of the game? What if you get a lot of praise about the mechanics of Tequatl and Twilight Assault but a month later people only run the other two TA paths because they are easier and faster despite the new path being more “fun”?

What if you get a lot of negative feedback about Ascended tier equipment? What if the company has a hard stance supporting ascended regardless of what the feedback says (as long as the metrics are fine)? What about Scarlet? If there is a lot of negative feedback to her as a character and her central role to the stories being told (and how poorly received they are by many people) we know you can’t just kill her off – the story has been building up to her and stuff down the pipe line will involve her so until that’s resolved she’s here for better or worse regardless of what the feedback says (the Living Story has gone all in on Scarlet at this point). Then we have the issue of forums representing the vocal minority and only a small subset of the community. It’s easy to dismiss or devalue forum criticism on the grounds that it doesn’t represent everyone.

I’m not looking for a specific reply on any of the issues I raised above, they are just examples of the scenarios that will be raised and I can’t see how threads on the forum are going to change these situations or appease the people they are important to. Is the goal simply to raise the visibility of developer consumption of the forums, or is the goal to create a new paradigm which will give player feedback more power to influence the future of the game’s development? I am under the impression the later already happens with the forum and I don’t believe the former is likely to result in any real changes in the game, just player perception of the forums.

TL;DR What does all this hope to accomplish? Is this going to have any real potential to change the direction of the game differently from how the forums currently work? How is a new way of handling forum feedback going to impact on the content releases for GW2?

Chris – Thank you so much for your time. I won’t pretend I’ve read through all of this thread, because it’s pretty long. The two things that are always on my mind though aren’t new “issues”, so they may have already been addressed in this thread.

1. There have been many topics on this one, but it’s such a wonderful idea and suits the GW2 model, that I feel like the only reason it hasn’t been implemented is due to technical barriers: Namely, a “PvE locker” of sorts. For the first time since the Living Story was launched, I don’t really want to finish the current Living Story achievement. I mean, the achievement points are nice, but I have to ask myself, do I really have the room for another skin that I don’t plan on using? I WANT to collect these things. I’d use transmutation crystals if I could—just to hold onto the things I’ve collected. This is the #1 thing I want in this game, even more than….

2. Build diversity. I hear so much complaint on the forums about GW2’s new turn for alt unfriendliness. Well, I play one character, so this doesn’t effect me. But I share their concern. This game just isn’t meant to be played with multiple builds. Sure, you can pay the gold/tokens/laurels for another set of armor, but storing it and accessing it is such a pain. Even before ascended gear, I can say honestly that throughout the year that I’ve played this game, I’ve stayed with one single build because of the cost and storage of changing it.

I know a solution is in the pipeline: Legendary armor and trinkets. THEN we can have build diversity. And I want it so bad. But, can’t we bridge the gap? Perhaps a Mystic Forge recipe where you can, say, throw an Exotic Medium Berserker Shoulderpad and an Exotic Medium Cleric Shoulderpad, along with some additional ingredient, and get back an Exotic Medium Shoulderpad in which you can switch between berserker and cleric’s when out of combat. This would be fun, I think, to collect and earn these stats. Gotta catch ’em all

3. I don’t mind ascended gear. Many people seem against it, but I actually like the idea. With that said though, I don’t like the execution. Particularly with ascended weapons. I’m not sure what went wrong, but there’s something wrong with the balance. I don’t think I should have 100 bloodstone bricks, but only 10 dragonite thingies (and even less of that other one). I delete bloodstone dust now, and I’m going to get to a point in the near future where I’ll be deleting dragonite, and then later the other T7 mat as well. I hope that the ascended armor fixes this imbalance (maybe by requiring more bloodstone bricks than the others?) Either way, there will be a point when this mat is useless and clogs up one’s inventory. But my bigger concern is that crafting from 400-500 is incredibly boring, tedious, and expensive. It took me longer than those who were very excited, but I did craft quickly from 400-450 using elder wood refinement from 400-425, then exotics from 425-450. Now I’ve just been refining, and I have so many T7 mats that I’ll never use, and I’m at 471. At this point, I don’t want to pay the cost of crafting the rest of the way to 500. I’ve already been fortunate enough to get 2 ascended weapon boxes (neither of the stats I truly want, but I’m not going to complain about that!) and the cost vs return is too high at the moment. I suspect other methods of obtaining these ascended weapons will come into play. Or, eventually, I’ll find the box with the stuff I want. I felt that ascended trinkets (aside from the backpiece) was done perfectly. I, for one, enjoyed the time gated content that meant you had to work consistently, not grind it out in one evening. (And I did enjoy getting my ascended backpiece the first time, but blah blah alternate builds, blah. In short, I don’t want to do it again. And again. And again.)

That said, I’m incredibly optimistic about the game. I don’t like everything, and my dream would be to see quality of life patches having a higher priority, but this game is truly amazing. I hope that, someday, PvE Lockers find their way into the game (and are flexible). And I can rest knowing that at least Legendary equipment will allow for the build diversity that I want. I’m also sure that as T7 mats become cumbersome and unneeded by players, there will definitely be some sort of fix, be it more recipes that use them, and/or the ability to sell them to a vendor for some small profit.

Gibson.4036:

If you were to look at pure metrics, you’d probably think I’m someone who likes ascended weapons. I’m working on leveling all three weapon crafts, and have been farming for mats and gold.

If you ask me, however, I’ll tell you that I dislike that ascended gear got added, and really dislike the way it was implemented with a long grind to achieve it. I’ll tell you that my normal play style means I have no hope of achieving it without specifically farming for it, and that my current farming is the first time in any game that I’ve ever actually farmed. I’ll also point out that, for the first time since I got excited about GW2 two years before launch, there’s a distinct possibility I’ll move to another game, especially if ascended armor follows the pattern of ascended weapons. Though the “you don’t need ascended, so just ignore it” crowd won’t understand, I just want to have BiS gear and enjoy the game without needing to work toward another loot carrot.

I just want to add that I’m in exactly the same boat, I’m doing the grinding/crafting for ascended weapons but I hate it.

Gibson.4036:

If you ask me, however, I’ll tell you that I dislike that ascended gear got added, and really dislike the way it was implemented with a long grind to achieve it. I’ll tell you that my normal play style means I have no hope of achieving it without specifically farming for it, and that my current farming is the first time in any game that I’ve ever actually farmed. I’ll also point out that, for the first time since I got excited about GW2 two years before launch, there’s a distinct possibility I’ll move to another game, especially if ascended armor follows the pattern of ascended weapons. Though the “you don’t need ascended, so just ignore it” crowd won’t understand, I just want to have BiS gear and enjoy the game without needing to work toward another loot carrot.

One thing to note on the ascended gear is that it doesn’t seem to bad to outfit a single character. If you run more than one character/class, though, it goes from barely bearable to impossible to even consider. Because the ‘refining’ of the materials is time-gated, it means that it doesn’t just take x hours to outfit your multiple charas. It now takes x days to do so.

I was initially interested in ascendeds. Now I just dislike them on principle. To unobtainable.