Guild Wars 2

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?

Chris, I’ll state this under a flag of truce, as I’m considered a troll by many.
I do not feel the need to explain my emotions/outbursts/commentary, because I am not going to research all my own posts and write a book on why I feel as I do. I think overall it should be obvious to most that I am primarily unhappy about two things. Primarily the monetization of the game, secondly, the crafting process (from gathering to finished product).

For now though, I will set aside my opinions of the Arenanet staff, and take your words at face value, giving you the benefit of the doubt.

If you asked me what I want out of GW2, and if you gave me just one thing to choose out of the many I could come up with. What one thing would I change?

I’d like to play GW2 and not feel like I was in a rat maze where every dead end was the gem store.
I want to log in and play the game, and not feel like I’m constantly under the shadow of ulterior motives to drive me to spend RL money. I’ve spent plenty of money on vanity items and perma-gathering tools, etc. But (I can hear them now, Vayne and everyone are going “oh god, here he goes again”), when I step out of Lion’s Arch to focus on crafting something, I want to move towards it with confidence. Confidence that I can gather those materials I need, that I can seek out their sources and if necessary farm those sources until I have what I need. I don’t want to feel like getting 250 Armored Scales is impossible compared to farming gold to buy them. In the long run, that is what I wound up doing. I farmed scarlet invasions and before that the Crown Pavillion until I had 300gold with which I simply bought the remaining T6 mats that I needed for my legendary gifts, simply because it is unrealistic to play casually and gather 250 of each material the traditional way. I’d like to gather the materials without feeling like I’m taxed 15% to do so. I’d like to adventure my way to a legendary. Not buy my way. Not gamble my way. I’m probably the only person on Yak’s Bend that thinks Ascended Weapons crafting is the best thing to happen to crafting ever in this game. You can gather materials reliably, without Diminishing Returns limiting you. If I want to take my characters and run through all the zones in the game 8 times to gather all the soft wood logs that I can get, I can do that.
The time gating is perfect, because it regulates the overal time it takes to get a weapon, but it’s set. There is no mystical number attached to it that says I can’t make them at normal pace because I’ve made to many recently. I can sit down, open an excell spreadsheet, plug in numbers, and know exactly what I have to do and how long it will take. It’s a set path, and unlike Legendaries, there is very little gimmicky RNG stuff involved with it. I’m not even to 500 yet on my first profession (because T6 mats are hard to get, thus I am not crafting exotics very fast), but I feel like I am progressing as I see the Empyrial stars piling up, and the Bloodstone Bricks, and so on.
With Legendary crafting, it took me several months to get a couple of the main components, and I really really enjoyed it, because the parts I was working on involved world completion, and other aspects of the game that I’d not tried. I still don’t like PvP and WvW, but I did it. that Gift of Battle is a major milestone for me.
But then I got to the Gift of Fortune. Suddenly I found my locations limited for options, most of them chained by diminishing returns. I saw my normal playstyle bringing in approximately two T6 material items per hour, sometimes 4 if I was lucky. For a casual player such as myself, finishing my legendary suddenly stretched out to a years worth of time if I didn’t start farming specifically for gold to buy materials.
Which brings us back to gold. So much of the game seems focused on getting players to obtain gold one way or another, with the gem-store looming in the background like a steroids dealer in the shadows beckoning to the dejected athlete that just wants to finish a race.

I know this rambles, and may not get read, but it is here. If I whittle all my wishes down to just one thing, I want to feel like the gem-store is a place I go to because I want to look better or buy neat things. Not like it’s hiding around every corner trying to convince me that if I just take a pill, my life will be better.

I really hope we can revisit some topics that appear to have been “closed off”, such as account bound WXP in WvWvW too. More than that I’d really like to think we can start with a clean slate on each topic rather than the entrenched positions some people have taken (and I mean that on both the player and dev sides).

For WvWvW topics I’d like to see:

1. Population and matchups (specifically alliances)
2. WvW rewards
3. Power creep
4. Account bound WXP
5. New maps
6. The commander system
7. Making both small team and large team worthwhile (aka less zerging)

Some of these items have already been mentioned by Devon in his Q&A this week but in an ideal world I’d like to see Devon be able to come to the suits with a well thought out plan and demand the resources to make it happen. In return we will all promise to buy more gems.

I can but dream…

if you think the polls would somehow interfere with the suspension of disbelief (I won’t even discuss how many other things already presents in the game do so, it would be off topic tho) just make them a part of the game and encourage -without “forcing”- the partecipation.
I will use WvW as example ‘cause that’s my main (I’d say only) interest: add a daily “report to Commander Siegerazer”. It will only contribute to the daily the first time you do it every 24h, but it will keep track of all submissions for the activity (I may play one hour in the morning, then play 2 hours in the afternoon, and every time have something to say which can contribute to the overall ingame view of the game experience through the eyes of that particular character).
Of course, it’s very important to be able to gather data from each player that plays with different characters: what may look easy for those who mains a certain class, might prove an hard task for someone with the same class as alt, ‘tho in order to find a compromise that can set peace for both the sides (let’s call it “balance”), both opinions need to be heard.
Is there any chance that the poll threads that you planned for WvW/PvE/PvP board macro-areas will appear also in each class section? I believe that listening specifically to the opinion of players class by class is even more accurate than the “area” in which they play, because in order to play you must first choose a class.

I’ve spent thousands of hours (and lots of money -_-) in this game, playing from scratch with 9 chars (8 leveled up to 8, decked out in end-game gear); playing across all modes of the game; helping to Command our server out of the original Glicko Ghetto (forever ago), while helping to run and lead an averaged sized social guild that crosses playerbases from niche players to casual to hardcore.

From what I have seen personally, and from our guildies these are topics in need of discussion for each section:

General:
1. Guilds (General)
a) Guild Message/TOTD is hardly visible. Some way to make that more interactive (display on sign in or something?) would be amazing.
b) Guild Content is nearly nonexistant, all attempts so far have just been stop-gaps. Guild Missions were a great idea, but lacked sustainability (especially once maxed on merits).
c) Guild Halls/Housing would be a great way for our members to interact with each other in game when just socializing (which happens a lot for us).
d) Guild Event Organization such as a Guild Calendar or something in that vein.
e) Guild Limits are an issue for some guilds. (Both how many can be in one guild -500- and how many guilds you can be in -5-)
f) Guild Alliances! In a game that has WvW, World Bosses, and Guild Missions that can require large numbers of people how is this not already in the game? It would make organizing for the co-ordinated events so much easier.

2. Guilds (Leader/Officer perspective)
a) Guild Member Stats and Information – Beyond needing ways to track active guildies, better ways to keep tabs on alts, add notes and help get everyone involved would be great.
b) Quality of Life Management improvements that help from member management to better structured guild buffs functionality.
c) Something to do with our excess guild merits that doesn’t require us to use additional time/influence we are already using for current buffs. (We’re capped and they are pretty much useless)

3. Chat Functionality
a) Add in the ability to copy/paste, etc. basic chat stuff.
b) Create custom Chat Rooms with ownership and moderation.

PvE:
1. Hard Mode content to keep our hardcore players engaged within the guild, so it helps sustain the casuals/infrequenters.
2. Real Balance content – Ways to make it so zerker is not required for optimal efficiency. Make support/control/sturdier builds more necessary.
3. Permanent Content – temporary content with Living Story killed off interest for a lot of people, especially those that got behind and felt left out.
4. Raidlike Content – Something larger than 5man parties, but doesn’t require entire server organization. Difficult so that it takes weeks/etc of failing to work on something to understand and get better at it.
5. More Minigame/Offhand content to do when you are bored/disinterested in end-game farming or doing instances. (i.e. Polymock!, Southsun Survival, etc)
6. Better structured core game lore content. Living Story, strayed from most of the content people were curious about after the Personal Story stuff (i.e. bosses, dragons, ancient lore, stuff of epic nature, etc)

WvW:
1. World Experience and Alts have a hostile relationship right now. Improve that so people who play multiple characters aren’t inferior to those who only focus on one. (Account Bound WXP would be the way to go imo)
2. Small-man group play. Bloodlust was a great motivator for it, more map design and small goals with incentive.
3. Seperate Coordinated Large Group Content (currently called GvG’s) from WvW.
4. Fix Commander system. Squads have very negligible functionality right now. And there are better ways to portray different commanders on maps (Guild Commanders, Colored tag Commaders, etc).
5. Add more PvE Breakout type trigger events for dynamics events going on. Great idea, paltry follow through.
6. Give us much more incentive for defense.

sPvP:
1. More Game Modes – hands down, this biggest drawback.
2. Improve Custom Arenas – add holiday game modes, or something quirky and fun that doesn’t add glory/ranking that Guilds can do for fun. Also the custom-ability could be added to as well.
3. Adding in other missing stat types and runes, and balancing. More builds = more viability.
4. More focus so it draws people into the esports scene to help get a following.

I don’t often post suggestions in forums because of the toxic atmosphere, but with your interaction hopefully you get time to read through some of them and they get discussion flowing.

Thanks in advance.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Safari.3021:

In game Polls:

Barmen.

You talk to a barman in a tavern, they chat yto you, ask you questions, you give your responses.

Anet get their poll.
Player recieves tankard of ale for their time.

Encourage participation by making “visit tavern for a drink” a daily achievement when a poll is needed

haha this makes ingame polls actually immersive, nice idea Only problem I can think of: how do you make the connection between the things you want to ask about (a specific event etc.) and the dialogue?

NPC: “Grab a seat, I’ll pull up a drink for you. Heard news at the Splintered Coast is pretty bad. One of the Dragon’s lieutenants seems to be getting stronger”

Player: “Yep, you wouldn’t catch me there” [didn’t participate] / “I was actually there in the fight” [participated].

NPC [if participated]: “Really?! I bet it was a close fight.”

Player: “Psh. A walk in the park for someone like me” [easy] / “Well, it was a sight more difficult than the usual fights I get into” [medium] / “You have no idea. Bodies. Bodies everywhere” [hard].

NPC: “Really…Fancy talking about it?”

Player: “Sure” [brings up a text box] / “Not really, it’d probably bore you” [if answer was easy] / “I’m trying to forget it, why do you think I’m here?” [hard]

NPC: “Truly a thrilling tale” [text box filled] / “No problem, I understand” [text box not filled]

NPC: “Here you go. This drink is on the house.”

Or something along those lines.

AntiGw.9367:

Lonesamurai.4852:

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?

I have done TA 10 times in the last week, I have NOT enjoyed it, but STATS show I have by doing it 10 times….
A poll AFTER would tell them that I HADN’T enjoyed it, but did it for Deadly Blossoms and achievements I felt I needed to do in case it was gated content

Stats don’t show anything, the analysis of the stats does. What you describe is a flawed analysis.

A poll assumes that people answering it actually know what they are doing. The problem is that most people don’t. These forums are covering most of any usable feedback the playerbase can provide, and even then you see how full of crap it gets all the time.

Is there a reason it’s an either/or option for you?

Usage statistics are valuable, but they’re after the fact. Opinion polls and market research are before the fact and can be used to drive development in a direction the playerbase actually wants.

Virtually every major industry on the planet uses market research to drive their product development, there’s no reason MMORPG development wouldn’t benefit as well.

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?

I have done TA 10 times in the last week, I have NOT enjoyed it, but STATS show I have by doing it 10 times….
A poll AFTER would tell them that I HADN’T enjoyed it, but did it for Deadly Blossoms and achievements I felt I needed to do in case it was gated content

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

Chris Whiteside.6102:

DoctorOverlord.8620:

I just came across this post and I find this an interesting direction for ArenaNet to be taking. I hope they can find a way to work out this approach to communicating with the community. I’ve always been struck by the balance game developers need to manage between listening to the often contradictory community and presenting the game design envisioned by the company.

On the subject of prioritizing topics polls seem like a good way to determine which topics shoudl get the highest priority as well as finding the real topics of interest of the GW2 community rather than just the ones that occupy the attention of forum-posters.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

\
So to start with what i am suggesting we do is that we have a list of topics for each category, so for example:

PVE
1:Ascended Gear
2:Raiding
3: RNG
4: Roleplaying

For global issues such as bugs, balance etc we can open up more threads but lets just start with 3. Note my list above is just an example. So what i am asking you guys and gals to think about is how do you want to go about choosing the list for WvW, PVE, and PVP

Chris

Would a topic on the UI need a place? I was thinking about subjects like build-loading or ability bar schemes that might be of interest.

Good point. We could discuss global topics such as bugs and UI on separate threads once we get our collaborative process down after we have tried 1 round of PVE, WvW and PVP threads?

Chris

Is there a team working on content like new dragons and large new areas (keep them secret if you want)/etc, or is the team concentrating on the ever progressing story line presented via the living story? I think some clarity regarding the vision here would be appreciated. (and might help direct some discussion topics)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So to start with what i am suggesting we do is that we have a list of topics for each category, so for example:

My priorities:

Overarching
1. The current pillars of the GW2 game design
2. Class and item balance
3. Skill lag
4. Guild management tools

PvE
1. RNG in all its forms.
2. Ascended weapons/items and ways of obtaining them
3. fortnightly updates and living world
4. The Trading Post/BLTC
5. Precursor crafting
6. Ascended backpieces

WvW
1. Character bound world XP for WvW and WvW masteries
2. Player grouping specifically about larger groups than 5
3. Ways of reducing the WvW zerg
4. Guild v Guild
5. WvW population disparity and the match up systems
6. the bloodlust buff for WvW

I like Crazylegsmurphey’s suggestion…to tag on to that, what if there was a single AP attached to filling out each survey? 1 AP per account, per survey, under the heading ‘Collaborator’ – this would be an endless achievement, similar to Agent of Entropy, but would help disuade many people from ignoring a survey that would gather valuable player input?

If the surveys were monthly, this could be part of the monthly achievement, or daily rotation, similar to visiting the Laurel Vendor?

I know many of the player base dislike in-game pop-ups, but we may have to make concessions if in the long run it helps to strengthen the game as a whole.

Taking a few ideas mentioned here, and some of my own, I have mocked up an idea of how in-game surveys could work.

1. Login Screen

(See first and second image below)

- When players log in for the first time after the survey goes live, they are presented with a prompt that asks them to choose whether they would like to participate in the survey or not.

- If players choose not to participate, they are shown a prompt that explains that they can turn on the survey in settings.

2. In-game survey

(See last two images)

- Once a player has opted into the online survey a new icon shows up on the menu bar.

- When a player completes an event that has a survey attached to it, they will be prompted with an alert icon (similar to when new mail comes), so they can see they have a new survey to fill out.

This could also be accompanied by a carrier pigeon, or some other animal.

- When players have time, they can open the survey panel and fill out the surveys they’re interested in (or skip the ones they’re not).

- Surveys are only displayed once, and once they’ve been submitted they disappear from the list, unless they’re updated and require a new survey (Eg. Tequatl)

*See images below for more

I just want to add a few questions:

If there is a real dialog between the community and the developers, how do the other language forums get integrated into this process? Is that even possible?

I would as well ask you to take into consideration that there are people who don’t post on the forums, simply because what is a problem for someone does not necessarily have to be one for someone else. I usually don’t post in every thread when I think something is “ok” for example. Still a change could have an influence on them.

Instead of a poll I would rather suggest something like a monthly survey, which is longer but more detailed. Such a survey could also have a special topic for each month, such as class balance, living story etc..

Last but not least I would ask you to keep in mind that there are several different playstyles and different people. I’m saying this because this “who is the majority” – game seems to be quite popular in this forum, but I think that different people have different wishes and I think as well that the game looses alot of it’s variety if everything is just based on the wishes of “the” majority. There should be niches for several groups.

Thank you

I love the idea of collaborative development, however in order for it to work it needs some structure.

My suggestion is for the Devs to propose topics for discussion to get community feedback on how to tackle specific issues.

Here’s an example, lets say the development team is working out a plan of action on how to tackle dungeons. Create a thread with the specific issues that the development team is attempting to tackle, give us some examples of some of the ideas that are being considered by the team as well as the general scope of the project, and then let the community contribute feedback on how they would like to see that particular issue addressed.

With this form of structure, the dev team can get feedback on ideas that are more focused and relevant to areas of the game you are currently addressing. There are plenty of avenues open right now for the random suggestions that fall outside of this, and those should remain open, however I think more focused discussions like this will greatly help the tie in with the idea of ‘collaborative development’ and help the developers get far more valuable and relevant feedback.

i dont really have much to say about the current topic of pve atm, but in general about how you guys communicate with us on the forums:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. The initial post and other posts i have done have always come from the heart, i am very passionate and really believe in everything i say. I guess the difference between those posts and the ones i am doing now is that i would spend about 15 minutes working on them before posting, whereas on these i just post. To be honest i much prefer shooting from the hip and if this form of communication is acceptable then i am all for it.

Regarding verbiage like ‘Pioneering’ and ‘Building Worlds’ i really mean that. I am a huge cyberpunk fan and the ability to actually be in a space that is making many of that fiction become reality is just awesome. So please forgive me when i speak like that, because that’s why i do what i do and i love it (-:

Regarding Conditions i will get back to you on the thread if that’s ok?

Chris

im seriously cool with you guys shooting from the hip with your posts.

but yall silenced the only dev who actually seemed (to us) to give a kitten about what we thought (josh foreman). his blog about the situation was heartbreaking. like ok, youre talking to us now the same way josh did about SAB. when can we expect you to get silenced?

^ and my attitude and expectations about this are a big problem when it comes to how you guys communicate with us. i shouldnt be expecting you to just stop, and i go to an unrelated site a week later and read a blog post about how you got reprimanded. josh should never have been silenced for being “too real” on the forums, but he was. its not that i think you dont care about the game, im sure you do give a kitten … but it seems like as a company you treat this forum like you would a rabid dog — chain it up in the back yard, toss it table scraps to keep it alive, but never go near cuz u gon git bit.

Alright, so looking at it from that perspective, I think we could further address it as which issues in PvE affect all PvE players?

1) Living Story — multiple posts are out there, not only concerning the frequency with the updates, but the contents of the updates, ranging from thoughts on the quality of the story/lore, the actual mechanics of the various instances/missions included, to the number of achievements that must be completed in a finite amount of time to obtain the shinies.
2) Ascended Gear — while personally its inclusion in the game doesn’t phase me one way or the other, given the number of threads on this topic, it is definitely controversial and bears further discussion/review. With the cat out of the bag, so to speak, I don’t believe it could be removed from the game completely, nor do I think that’s necessary, but further discourse on how it could be obtained would assuredly be welcomed.
3) RNG — with each LS update, holiday, festival, etc., has come the quest for new shinies, whether they be backpacks, weapon skins, minis, helmets … but the backlash over those items being locked completely behind RNG chests has, at times, reached near deafening levels on the forums. Coupled with many of the items being account bound has left many folks without an option to obtain them at all, since they’re luck is either atrocious or they refuse to spend gold/gems on getting the chests in the first place. How the new shinies that become available in-game is definitely something that could be looked at, as well the drop rates for different mats, rares, exos, percursors, etc.

Those would be my suggestions for now, since they do all affect a significant degree of the PvE playerbase … obviously those aren’t all the issues, and may not even be ones that anyone else feels are all that important, but from wandering through the various threads on the forums, they definitely do seem to weigh rather heavily on more than a few players’ minds.

Thanks again!

I love the communication that is going on in this thread, it gives me hope for the future of the game.

However the is one MAJOR issue that has thus far been completely ignored by the devs.

Condition damage in PvE: It is horribly broken and is a major game system. It really needs a complete overhaul, but seeing as that is unlikely, one of the MANY MANY suggestions on this forum would be helpful. But we have not heard a single peep or response to one of the biggest issues currently in the game in over 11 months. That to me is unacceptable.

Please help us, you are our only hope!

Srly, we can say what’s wrong with the game without being banned this time? OMG then here I go:
First of all, thank you Chris for your post, this actually give me hope concerning Anet attention to the community thoughts on GW2 so here I go:
Concerning the PVE:
-It’s good to have a living story going on, but why creating scarlett, or all the foes so far. Don’t we have at least 4-5 dragons to defeat? So why don’t they have a more important role on the actual living sotry? How come we don’t hear anything about them? Aren’t they the biggest threat of Tyria??? I bought GW2 because I was a GW1 player that loved the GW1 story, and was hoping to get something at least as good as GW1 and the beyond Kryta and Cantha? I was wrong, GW2 story is pretty good until you defeat Zaithan, in the last cinematic, you are told that the other dragons still need to be defeated, so how come nothing happened concerning the dragons? Also, how come some things unexplained in GW1 are totally left apart in GW2? Is it because it’s a different game or because the story team completly changed? Right now, the living story is boring but that’s only my opinion anyway…
-next concerning HL content, the lat dongeon created with Scarlett was (except the lore that was completely useless) really a great one? I know Anet said that they would rework the dongeons once, but when? And how can you explain that all the scenario mode are harder than the exploration mode??? Why are the scenarios more interesting (better boss mecanics for example)? It should be the contrary don’t you agree? Also when do you plan on putting a DOA/FOW/UW like area?
-I way told that a way to get precurssors through a quest was ongoing so when and how?
-Finally, how has GW2 become so grindy?

Now concerning the sPvP:
-Does the PvP team plan on doing something for the abuses on the skyhammer map?
-When do we get real class balance???
-when do we get other playing options? You want to be stuck to this E-sport thing…But look at LOL for example: It’s an E-sport game and they have more than one playing mode. Also at this time, GW1 had released faction with AVA, JQ and FA, which were one of the greatest PVP modes ever. In the end GW1 had HoH, GvG, AVA, JQ, FA and another one I don’t remember the name…I know GW2 is still a young game but come on, It has 1 year already and nothing is done to either improve PVP experience, or PVP play modes! On top of that why not doing like in GW1 where you had some skills leveling according to your Lux or Kurz rank, so that even PVE players would find a reason to go on PVP. “Because PVP is for PVPers only” Is that so? Then are you telling me that reaching level 40-50 by farming skyhammer is skill and elitist???
-Finally the actual mode is a mode where you have to capture points and defend them. So how come do gain almost nothing when a cap and keep a point whith a gard for example, and get 300 min glory when switching with a thief to kill everyone. This is insane and totally contradictive! Srly you are not rewared when you accomplish the objectif, but get rewarded as soon as you don’t? Then why don’t you do deathmatches? Because any logical thing would be, for the actual PVP, to give a lots of point to people capping points and above all, defending them, like in Dominion.

I still have a tons of things to say, but I’m going to stop here.

Since I know my post will be deleted because I critizised the game, I will say this: I really loved GW1, I loved GW2 but I don’t like the fact that Anet doesn’t keep the promises they gave to GW1 players, and the direction GW2 is actually taking, which is nowhere… So I hope, before being deleted, my post will be read. You can only advance when you look at the community feeback, not by being deaf and blind to critics.

Sincerly, a GW fan

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I agree, please do understand though that part of the problem really has been a lack of time. We work at a break neck pace and as i have said we need to carve out more time to do that. So the speed at which i am posting now is extremely difficult for most and will be difficult for me to but what i am hoping is we can work to build a communication process that is great for all involved.

There have been many many times i have wanted to post and i would imagine this is the case for the devs to but finding the time to give it the attention it deserves and also getting the courage to do so has been difficult.

This is something i want us to get back to and in answer to the question of why did the communication cadence lower in the first place, it is simply down to how busy everyone has been. You can take it or leave it in terms of believing this but i am telling you it is the truth (-:

I am really excited about rebuilding the communications bridge and this conversation in general.

Chris

Far too many posts for me to tell if this has already been said but I think this is an important message to get across.

People get frustrated when they feel no-one’s listening to them and when devs don’t respond to threads this is how they feel. However perhaps we have unrealistic expectations of how much time devs have during the working day to devote to things like this.

It’s apparent that the only reason you’ve been able to respond as you have been is that you’ve found some free time to do so and I recall Josh talking about working 16 hour days on SAB (I’m sure because he wanted to do it not because you were there cracking the whip ).

I’ve also never considered that it might be a daunting experience posting a reply on the forums but thinking about it I can see how this would be the case.

I think it’s good that you’re looking into building more time into people’s days for them to respond on the forums and hopefully the community will be supportive thus making it a less scary experience.

Similarly we probably have unrealistic expectations of how long something takes to be changed.

For example take something like not being able to change the leader of a dungeon. To me this seems a simple task which just needs the leader to right click the name of who they want to change it to and select ‘make party leader’ from the drop down list. To my inexperienced mind this should take someone a few days to program? In reality I suspect that implementing this would actually be much more involved and take much longer.

Perhaps if people’s expectations were a little more realistic they wouldn’t get quite so frustrated. Would there be any value in having a blog/news post detailing the day in a life of a developer or a look at how a feature which has been introduced went from idea to implementation and how long this took?

I’m not suggesting it’s done as a this is why we can’t respond to you, or look at how long it takes us to do this, type post. More of an informative post of what goes on behind the scenes at ArenaNet – I’m sure people would be interested in this and perhaps it’ll have a secondary effect of changing some of our expectations.

Anyway keep up the good work and remember that when people get upset with you guys it’s usually because they’re passionate about the game.

cesmode.4257:

I’ve said this before in other threads…
I think that the reason why this community has become the most demanding and nit-picking community out of any MMO I’ve ever played is because Arenanet has made pretty bold claims, promises, and then claimed that we mis-understood what they meant to say. I’ve played many MMOs and while each commmunity is different and each community is pretty demanding, GW2 community is by far the worst in this regard.

You never played EQ a year or two in, or WoW in the TBC era, did you? Or sure as heck don’t remember the forums from back then if you did! With EQ, players got so demanding that they staged sit-ins which crashed servers, in order to attempt to force developers to nerf certain classes (not for PvP, even, purely for PvE!). The players were successful (the leader of these sit-ins went on to be WoW’s lead dev for a while before being sidelined into developing Titan).

With WoW, the amount of screaming and shrieking, particularly from self-declared “raiders” in the TBC era was far, far louder, more irrational, and more shrill than even the worst stuff here. Screaming that they, as raiders, should never have to do anything but raid to access gear, that no-one who didn’t raid should ever have gear which was either aesthetically pleasing OR powerful, trying to force the developers to get rid of “welfare epics”. The level of entitlement was truly astonishing (there was no “opposition” either – no group of people demanding easy epics or the like, just “raiders” (and I was an actual raider at the time and thought these guys were complete idiots) shrieking endlessly at the devs and threatening to quit and to go to [insert FotM game which turned out to be terrible here] and so on. WotLK forced them to accept that none of that was going to happen so they kind of calmed down a bit then.

I heard that FFXI fans were even more demanding and loud, too, but I don’t know, I never played that.

You are right that a lot of the issues stem from the boldness of developer comments followed by the near-complete lack of communication of changes of direction, though. In general I think we could do with more frequent updates on the direction of the game, and particularly some discussion from the devs of their goals with certain mechanics and ideas – not the living story stuff, which they are always happy to talk about, but Ascended weapons and the karma nerf and so on, which they avoid discussing much.

Jordo.5913:

This thread shows you what the power of developer responses can do!

The first couple pages were not that good, the hate was beginning to flow in. Now that you are responding? The feedback is tremendous and the last 10 pages have been nothing but love of finally being heard and some great, great feedback!

Get that going across all sections of the forum and this forum will begin to purify itself just like the land of Orr!

I applaud you Chris Whiteside and I hope that what you say about developers interacting with players more on the forums stays true!

I dont want to be a fountain of negativity, but Chris Whiteside said the same things a year ago when ascended gear rolled out and he held the AMA. He said he wanted to have Arenanet communicate with us more. Here they are, almost a year later, saying..“we want to be more active in communication”.

I definately agree and applaud that Chris Whiteside has the courage to stand in front of this forum and speak to us. He has my respect.

But there are issues that have been lingering since launch, things that we have cried for and clamored for all over these forums and fan sites, things that are un addressed. But they continue to focus their development on controversial things like living story and ascended gear.

Wooden Potatoes makes great GW2 feedback videos.
Like this one – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AidBQxGQsSg

I’ve said this before in other threads…
I think that the reason why this community has become the most demanding and nit-picking community out of any MMO I’ve ever played is because Arenanet has made pretty bold claims, promises, and then claimed that we mis-understood what they meant to say. I’ve played many MMOs and while each commmunity is different and each community is pretty demanding, GW2 community is by far the worst in this regard.

So I think this is why, obviously, that there has been a lack of communication on their part. They don’t want us to rip apart their quotes each time. But they dug their own hole with this one.

BTW, I too am guilty of ripping apart quotes. Just saying, that we are half of the reason why they are frequenting these forums less and less. The other half of the reason is that they know they cannot back up their claims so boldy as they pretended to have done done pre-release.

This thread shows you what the power of developer responses can do!

The first couple pages were not that good, the hate was beginning to flow in. Now that you are responding? The feedback is tremendous and the last 10 pages have been nothing but love of finally being heard and some great, great feedback!

Get that going across all sections of the forum and this forum will begin to purify itself just like the land of Orr!

I applaud you Chris Whiteside and I hope that what you say about developers interacting with players more on the forums stays true!

The biggest thing on my list? Make the game more alt friendly across the entire game, just like GW1 was!

Chris, I have one opinion I would like to share.
I think Arena Net should make it more clear whether a feature is a possibility or not so that community doesn’t keep talking about things infinitely.
For instance, we get a weekly thread on the trinity or treadmills but Anet never posted their stance on that; i.e. they could say “we currently we do not intend to implement such a system” or “we are evaluating the possibility yadda yadda”.
Until Anet clears its stance toward a matter the community will just circle-talk about it and it creates a bit of uncertainty around.
Not saying you should speak in black and white (because you never know in the future you might change idea), but you can say if something is currently under consideration or not at all

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Catch you all tomorrow.

I really like the idea of Collaborative Development between devs and players but I don’t think that the forums as they stand will be a good way of doing that. In a typical forum thread people debate and complain and contradict one another far too much for clear ideas and recommendations to be made and you end up with a thread two dozen pages long where most of the posts are people having side-arguments with one another on off-topic issues. Sifting through that would be difficult.

So my suggestion is that surveys (as frequent as is useful) could be used to gather a general overview of peoples views and feelings about the game, what they like, what they want to see improved and so on.

These could be used to produce “blind” threads which are focussed threads where an ArenaNet employee puts up the initial post with the usual title and a description outlining the specific issue or feature to be discussed (“PVE condition handling”, for example) providing information on the problem and then people can post their ideas and outline their issues with it. So far, very similar to normal forums but the difference will be that, while all ArenaNet employees can see every post, the players can only see ArenaNet employee posts and their own posts. ArenaNet employees can reply to and quote specific good ideas, or pieces of good feedback and then everyone will see that and can in turn comment on it indirectly.

Then after a week or two, when you’ve gotten the feedback you need you close the thread and turn off the blind side and show everyone everything. People can now +1 the posts they like or agree with and the thread isn’t bogged down in arguments or off-topic discussions.

The downsides of this of course are that you may get a lot of duplicate suggestions (but that’ll happen anyway, as it stands now if someone suggests something on page 5 then by page 10 other people will be suggesting it) and you won’t have that refinement process where someone can rework a suggestion based on other players but I think that the pros outweigh the cons: You have a more succinct thread with “purer” content where people aren’t getting side-tracked and the thread isn’t getting derailed the entire time.

RedStar.4218:

And just like in the beta, of course you don’t have access to a poll until you finished the necessary content.

For example, when you only get a poll Weaponsmith crafting when you reach the max level. And a poll regarding crafting in general when you have maxed out every crafting professions.

I’m not sure about your emphasis on completion.

Shouldn’t someone who refines mats to 425, spends gold to craft to 450, does ascended mat refinement to 475, but quits because they decide the last 25 levels take an extreme amount of resources to level get a chance to give feedback on Weaponsmithing?

Shouldn’t someone who plays through the Gauntlet but can’t down Liadri be a part of the discussion on the Gauntlet?

Galen Grey.4709:

What if the hard stance they take is not the one you like, would you be happy with that?

Not to speak for the poster you’re responding to, but I think a lot of people would be happier. We have arguments among the player base about statements that ArenaNet Made that go something like:

Player1: “ANet said X and gave us Y and I’m Mad”
Player2: "Games evolve, you can’t hold them to everything they said three years ago.
Player1: “But X was a core part of the vision for the game!”
Player2: “But they learned most people wanted Y, and so they gave it to them!”
Arenanet: (if there is a red post in the discussion at all) “We didn’t really implement Y. We’re looking into things. Improvements are coming.”

It would be so much better for everyone if they could just take a hard line and say, “Sorry, Player2 is right, we’ve changed our mind based on this and that and Y is our new direction for the game and we’ll be sticking to it.”

Yes, player1 will probably complain, but then they can decide whether they can live with Y or not, and either shut up and play the game or decide to move on.

how can you be sure we who dont like vertical progression are their core base rather then the minority you think should be denied?

That’s just the problem, we can’t be sure. So we’re going through endless cycles of trying to convince each other that the core base does or does not like VP, when we should probably move on (since it seems to be here to stay) and try to find ways to make it lekittenous to those who didn’t want it in the first place. This is where clearer communication from ANet would help take the discussion forward into a more meaningful place.

ANet didnt choose to ignore anyone, the problem here is people think that if they dont do stuff exactly the way they wish then it means they’re being ignored.

No, not at all.

I remember back before launch, when there were mana/energy potions in the game. There was a big response from the community that the idea of having to stock up on potions before going out and playing was running counter to one of the core principles that ANet had stated. They wanted us to be able to do the things that are fun in game, not spend time preparing for them.

There was communication back from ANet in response to why they thought potions were useful. People could still be upset, but they couldn’t claim no one was hearing them.

It’s a basic part of communication. “I hear what your saying, you are concerned about X because of Y. Here’s why we decided to go with X anyway, please continue to let us know if Y is a problem and if you have ideas on how to adjust X to solve it.”

Sure, there may be people who will continue to throw tantrums if they don’t get their way. The ill-will on the forums (and in-game, lets no pretend everyone in-game is happy because they don’t post on the forums) has a lot to do with a lack of clarity in communication, not just dissatisfaction with design choices.

on collaborative improvements

communication is key specifically WHY most of the changes of the last year have boggled my mind mainly due to not understanding what you were thinking when you implemented them, given my immediate reaction is generally why haven’t they implemented it this other way, ill give three specific examples

the fervid censor is a living world rare backpack that has an infusion slot and cannot be ascended

its existence is presumably justified by the desire to give players easy access to a backpack with an infusion slot for fractals. HOWEVER why was it part of the living world? would it not have made more sense to reward it for defeating the jade maw for the first time? or sell it for a small amount of fractal relics etc making it easily obtainable to those who want a backpack with an infusion slot?

its actual implementation gave players who have no desire at all to experience fractals or the other forced vertical aspects of the endgame a backpack with half the stats it should have, that needs to be transmuted to be useful outside of a small corner of the game, if it was intended to be cosmetic it could easily have been rewarded as a skin as many of the items are, but it was not…

the pillar “play the way you want” is frequently referred to, but each patch changes it to "play how we tell you"

currently you are pigeonholed into one build on one class due to time gating on gear, and progression in general, because if you want to change to another class or build you are looking at months of effort just to get back to the point you are currently at, while being weaker and more poorly rewarded while you do so given that reward is calculated based on damage(support=no recognition) and progression level ie fractals, which leads to that build being direct damage ie berserkers in most cases. this is essentially leading to the point where you will have to enact balance changes that will ruin carefully devised and constructed builds for some players, faced with months or rebuilding to get back to the same point with no guarantee you wont just re-balance again, many players would just quit.

as the proverb goes “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” while you may aim for some ambitious goal the implementation leaves much to be desired. and in many cases runs counter to your stated intent

the curse of game development is that you spend more time making games than playing them, this is one thing you really need to address, primarily because missteps and decisions you have made, have been done before by other companies, you just need to look at the competition and see why feature X didn’t pan out or what the solution they implemented to problem Y was to inform your development.

as an example companies like blizzard stopped resistance gating the better part of a decade ago, did you ever wonder why before you implemented it in this game?

mixed messages/ no solid design

it was only a few weeks ago that you guys were telling certain staff not to communicate with us and now you want to improve communication, its complete 180s like this that are never properly explained that lead to people having no clue as to what the game is about where its going or if we can even trust anything you say

a more specific example from a little over a month before the game released, the presumably finalized design lasts about 4 months

Colin and Eric on endgame design last year

“these legendary weapons are really cool looking and like we said, there’s no, you wont get a game-play advantage out of these things you’ll just look really cool and people will be like hey where did you get that.” (comparing them to exotics)

to last month, just over a year later

Changes to Legendary Weapons

Legendary weapons now have increased stats to keep them in line with the new ascended weapons as “best in slot” items.
Legendary weapons now have functionality to allow their inherent stat combo to be changed to any other stat combo when out of combat.

even if you argue that there is no stat advantage over ascended the functionality to change stats and avoid having to get another ascended weapon is a game-play advantage, not to mention they have been explicitly stated to always upgrade to BIS so when there are more tiers you wont need to grind for them.

but seriously make with the non ascended servers, if jagex can do it for runescape so can you