Guild Wars 2

I think polls ingame or otherwise are an inherently bad idea. The number of ‘liked it’ or ‘hated it’ people as a number is pretty useless when you dont consider the context.

Look at the Tequatl Rising update. People that couldn’t get on a highly populated enough server with organisers that knew what they were doing to have a successful kill will tell you it was ’the worst content yet. Problems such as the guesting and overflow system were barriers to their having fun. On the other hand, the people that did manage to kill Tequatl a few times will tell you it has been some of the best content yet. (Im one of them, the Tequatl update was genius btw).

You cant get the intricacies of ‘why’ a person loved some aspect of an update from a poll.

To be honest, the best thing the players can do to be in the spirit of the ‘collaborative development’ ideology is to keep doing what they have always done. Provide concise and constructive critisism to help the developers see what the problems are. The developers just have to keep up their end of the bargain by showing they are listening. There will always be trolls and flamebait posts which can easily be ignored.

If immersion breaking or interrupting important game play needs to be avoided (which it probably should be), would one option be to put the poll/feedback mechanic in the character select screen? If you decide to try and get focused feedback, you could put up a poll and include a link to a specific and related thread on the forum if the player wants to give more detailed feedback, it’d also be easy to skip over and won’t annoy the player as much as an in game pop-up, but is more accessible than an in game NPC.

I can’t see polling ever being so critical that it has to occur during gameplay, but as mentioned there still should to be a way to be in contact those not frequenting the forums.

Considering the amount of interaction ArenaNet has always had with its fans pre and post launch I was taken aback that the feedback processes you’ve been discussing Chris weren’t already in place! On the one hand it speaks wonders of the team for doing so well this far, but also reveals why there is a cohort of dissatisfied players feeling they are being ignored.

Hi, Chris!

This thread (specifically your recent replies) gives me renewed hope! It felt like before launch there was a good dialogue going between all of you and the players, but that it became more and more sparse the farther we got from launch.

The number one thing that first got me hooked on GW2, two years before the game went live, was the passion with which you all spoke about the game. It truly felt like a team of people working to make the game you want to play yourselves.

I’d like to echo a few things that have been said previously in this thread, but stand out as the most important to re-establishing that communication and excitement.

1. We need more statements of the vision for the game. You’ve seen the “manifesto” posts on these forums. Part of the player base feels that your original vision for the game that you expressed so passionately early on (not just in the manifesto video, but in other statements frequently quoted) no longer apply. Some people are unhappy about that. Some people defend it as evolution of the game. But no one seems to be able to point to anything significant post launch that either upholds those original vision statements or replaces them.

It seems like recent “here’s where the game is going” statements focus on lists of things you are working on or would like to implement in the future. Specific features, bug fixes, and the the like.

Possibly the movement to the “living world” concept works as one of those vision statements post-launch, but I think we need something more. This is the touch-stone by which we can come back to you with feedback. We can all argue over whether any given change in the game is good or bad, but that just comes down to personal preference. If there is a clear mission, vision and value statement, so to speak, we have something to hold changes up against so we can let you know whether the change is serving that vision or not.

2. More “why” along with the “what”. When you make changes, it helps a lot to know what though process went into it. Again, this will help us then give feedback that makes sense. If I don’t know why a certain change was made, all I can do is tell you if I liked the change or not. If I do have an idea why the change was made, I can give very specific feedback as to whether or not it’s have the intended effect, regardless of whether I personally like it.

Finally, before answering one of your specific questions below, I’m not sure a “what is your number one concern” thread would be terribly useful. Especially if there’s no way to restrict everyone to answering only once. You’re going to be inundated with everyone’s personal pet peeves, like many of the posts sprinkled throughout this thread.

Could I, instead, suggest you or others on your team simply comb back through the last few pages of each subforum? If you look for the posts with a large number of views, responses, or even (if possible) those that stayed on the first page for a significant amount of time, you’ll find the really issues people are most passionate about, and are probably in need of a developer response. It’d be fairly easy to create a punch-list of top forum community concerns to address.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Yes, very much so. I tried to dutifully fill them out during the BWEs when they popped up, but I found them very disruptive.

Unless, maybe, they could pop up during loading screens, when play has been interrupted anway? Or perhaps just one that shows up upon opening the client?

The other problem with polls is that it’s really hard to create them without steering the replies. I often find myself thinking, “That’s not really the question they should be asking” in order to get meaningful feedback on how I felt about whatever aspect of the game.

Thanks again for this thread, and taking your time this evening to dig into it! Like many, I have been a passionate fan of this game for several years now (long before even setting foot in Tyria 2.0). Lately, I have been a bit snarky at times on the forums, and for that I apologize to you and the rest of your co-workers.

I appreciate your team’s passion and talent.

I think the idea of a Question and Answer thread isn’t a bad one, but it comes across as a bit of a bandage to me at this point. There are many examples of hot button issues that already exist on the forums which haven’t received any level of response. I would imagine that the first questions asked in a QnA thread will just be ones players have already been debating for weeks, months or longer. Sort of like going fishing when you’ve already got a cooler full in your boat.

Players need to get solid answers and know that ANet has a real plan for the game instead of just what seems to be offering bits and pieces to every possible segment of the player base and little substantial content for anyone. I do definitely feel that an update of the Manifesto and a development roadmap are very important things to get everyone back on the same page.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yep and here lies a Catch 22 problem that we have to solve right? (Yes i know Catch 22 inherently can’t be solved, but nothing is impossible with GW2!)

I think feedback can be commented on, without giving the whole game away. I think questions can be asked and answered without giving the game away to. The problem is it just isn’t good for us to talk about specific work in progress before we are confident about it. So i suggest we ask questions and feedback on any areas of the game but don’t go into specifics regarding development of said items?

This is something we should discuss more in this thread.

Chris

The issue I’d like to raise here is that you’re also not talking about specific work that’s not so much in progress anymore. Like, perhaps a week or two before it goes live I would guess most of the things are already finalised to a point where discussion could take place?

Or am I wrong here?

Uh I have a topic for you as well. It is called RNG

I don’t mind some sort of RNG element in a game. It makes you open chests etc. with some amount of anticipation.

However: I do think gw2 rely too much on the RNG factor.

Let’s take Tequatl as an example. We all know that organizing this event takes effort. We all know that once you are in the right main server or overflow, you cannot leave. You are stuck there for 1 hour +.

We all know we are rewarded differently for this. Some will get the mini pet, some will get ascended gear, I know of some that have successfully killed him more than 60 times by now and got nothing but greens.

Tequatl is obviously just one example. Another would be the mystic forge for precursors or precursors random drop chance, The Black lion claim tickets, the new weapons from Twilight Arbor. Actually, outside dungeon tokens, most seems to be RNG drop chance.

I think this is a problem. I think there should be some way to work towards something outside RNG.

Crafting precursors (which is my understanding are at high risk of not happening this year) would be a step in the right direction.

Another good idea, which someone suggested elsewhere, would be adding some sort of token for killing Tequatl so people that do not win the RNG lottery are still working towards something. Let’s say you could buy an ascended weapon once you had x amount of tokens. That would mean killing him x amount of times and you might get lucky with RNG, but if you don’t, then you are still working towards something. Tequatl does take a lot of time. Time people could have spent gathering mats for their ascended weapons or time they could have spent jumping on the champion farm train and earned the gold to buy the minipet or ascended materials of the TP.

I feel I lack something outside the RNG. I am not a lucky person. I do however play with someone that seems to be blessed by the RNG gods. Or in his words: “I have silly RNG luck, I have always had silly RNG luck in games”.

We do the same events, the same dungeons etc. I have more magic find than he does, I even play more hours a day than he does, but since the greatest rewards come from RNG…. Well, it doesn’t really matter how much I play or don’t play. It is not that I am jealous of him in that regard, we have played together for more that 5 years and we share a bank, materials, recipes etc. anyway, but I do think it shows the flaws in the RNG system.

I have played this game since February and yesterday I got my 6th exotic drop ever (which sells for the impressive amount of 1.20g) In the meantime, he got 20+. One, which sold for nearly 200g.

Thanks to my friend again I do have the Tequatl mini pet, I do have the abyss and celestial dye but outside gathering crafting materials I never have much to offer in return. The dyes I open aren’t the good ones, I am yet to get anything but greens and 2 cheap exotics from Tequatl. When it comes to who has contributed the most to our character progression, it is not even close to being a draw.

I think it adds to the problem that we now have ascended items. Those are not just cosmetic enhancements, those are actually +stats enhancements. Whether you gain those weapons through drops or through earning gold and buying the materials of the TP, it would help if your income to a higher extend was based on your effort. Outside chopping wood and mining materials, it is all about RNG. I would love to discuss how to possibly change that.

A poll or survey would be great for WvW, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt any other aspect of the game either. It seems the WvW community and Dev Team seem to be more out of touch than other areas of the game, which as I’m sure your aware causes hostility. I can honestly say it seems at times that particular team just ignores everything and throws out random things that make no sense at all. Its kind of like us saying we want some pie, they reply with “here’s some cake”, “well thank you for the cake but we really wanted pie”, “no you want cake, now eat it and enjoy it”.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside has a team of writers/PR people and Marketeers talking through him!
This is not the case. i just happen to write this way. Everything i say comes from the heart and if it helps i can write in a less passionate manner. Note i am English and this may have some effect on the way i write (People in the studio tend to blame a lot of the mistakes i make on being English so you are all in good company there)

To me it is so much more refreshing to see you post something like this, than your original post. The first one was so PR this one is so much more human. Some other devs do that, and they can, their choice. But you don’t have to use PR on us, you already got us man!

But thanks for your comments, people do appreciate it. As I said earlier, secrecy breeds distrust and uncertainty (I don’t think you were being secretive but some perceived it as such).

I don’t think anyone expects developers to post on the forums a lot. We know how hard your job is in the MMO space, and I personally appreciate it a lot. But the communication needs to be more open. For example, it would have been better if you guys had communicated with us the stats of precursor crafting a little while ago, instead of us asking about it, and then getting the answer it might not come this year.

Another issue that we haven’t gotten any communication on for almost a year is condition damage:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/No-love-for-condition-builds/page/2

There are some examples that I have seen asked about for a year, with little to no updates/response.

Thanks Chris.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Chris

To me it’d really depend on how the questions would be asked, what the topic would be and the choise of answers.

For instance, if you get a poll after beating a boss in the middle of a dungeon… that would be indeed immersion breaking. If you would get a poll after finishing it, it’d be a nice way to see what people think. That way, you get the answer from people who played that content. You could also put certain parameters to that (i.e. play through all paths of the dungeon, or complete the same path 3 times).

Now what I would love personally is that we could perhaps comment on the idea that you want to implement. Let’s say the account wallet. I feel if there’d been the kind of collaboration you are now trying to establish it’d be a much better feature. It came on top of my mind because you can’t deposit prestine relics in there (which at the time seemed like an obvious thing). And now, with all the new crafting materials that really soak up inventory space and that I keep having to throw away… it feels like the feature again is not living up to it’s potential.

So it’d be nice if we can say what we absolutely don’t want in advance… or what’s missing instead of having to give you feedback afterwards.
And here the forums could absolutely shine. As you could give us the exact reasons why stuff is going to happen the way it is (as it’s not far away in the pipeline), and it’s still subject to easy last minute adjustments.

Hi Chris,

I still attest this is an odd thread, maybe just the tone of the first post is confusing. Since you guys seem serious about it, I’ll make a constructive suggestion.

It’s definitely true that many issues have been resolved. An example is magic find – the previous implementation was generic and caused a lot of animosity; the newer iteration is well designed, a lot more open to the community and resolves the previous issues. There are a few things however, which are raised time and time again but there is little dev response on these. Even if you guys are working on solutions, how about just creating high level threads acknowledging the problem, what the community thinks about it and peoples ideas for solutions. Even if said ideas raised are not considered, having a place on the forums which shows the developers acknowledge the issue and are showing they want to resolve it, will solve so many conspiracy threads and help resolve so much of the negative feedback on these forums. Examples of higher level topics which are raised over and over again:

Ascended Gear
- Weapons based on crafting or unlikely RNG drops. No skill based achievement patterns.
- Trinkets based on repeating content multiple times which is not ideal for all players due to requirements of content, such as being in a large guild. No crafting or skill based individual content.
- No ascended backpieces or accessories in wvw (accessories have same cost as PVE, no badge cost)

WVW
- Accound bound ranks
- Server imbalance
- T1 > Tarnished Coast > T2 > coverage = main factor in deciding matchups
- Class balance focused around pvp where perma stealth and banner revving not a problem, yet is ignored in terms of wvw balance.
- Bloodlust buff creating unfair and artificial advantages
- Power creep in passive buffs (bloodlust, guard stacks, world health bonus etc)

PVP
- Lack of game modes
- Community dropping off
- Balance issues (Jonathan did a good job highlighting coming changes, but little is discussed to do with toning down over the top elements which are ruining the current meta)
- No rewards or incentive for high level play with current meta/lack of teams

Fractals:
- Fractal level being character bound instead of account bound
- Unable to salvage fractal weapons
- Lower general rewards than open world pve yet higher difficulity
- Artifical scaling in terms of mob health
- Best rewards (unique skins) being RNG based

General PVE
- Too much temporary content
- Bleed cap/generally bad to use condi builds for team play
- Imbalanced rewards/risk/effort. For example, fire ele vs shatterer
- Precursor system totally based on rng

Devon used to do a great job in posting in the WVW forums, usually once a week he would go through and address a number of points. I don’t blame him for stopping this with the animosity caused by Bloodlust, but it was an example and people respected him for it. It’s simply a case okittennowledging there may be a potential issue and putting it out there to see how people respond. Even just creating a single thread, for discussion, once a week, with a dev post every 2 days, would do SO MUCH to help some of the anger on these forums – which again does not come from all users, but is noticeable in pockets of users which then grows larger with more and more negative feedback cycles. Also splitting the suggestion forum into a pvp suggestion forum, wvw suggestion forum, general suggestion etc will make that less of a mess.

By the way, the balance devs have stated multiple times before they only read the sPVP forum section and do not read the class forums – yet a lot to do will balance will show in the class forums as the game isn’t just pvp. The only time we see posts in the class forum seems to be regarding bugs. A ‘State of the Mesmer’ etc thread once a month by a balance dev would be nice… you never know, we may teach them a thing or two about the class in the progress. There is only 8 classes, creating 8 threads explaining the current state of the class, what is too strong/needs work shouldn’t be too much work…

minbariguy.7504:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

That is a very good question. Obviously for me, the answer is “no”, but this could be a real concern for others.

I wonder if it’s possible to have an in-game poll initiated by an NPC? Or if that would be overly complicated? I’m interested to hear what others have to say on the subject of in-game polls.

I had a thought about this not long ago.

We have the Living Story framework and development cycle. It wouldn’t be too hard to expand the Living Story into its own window, I imagine. You could tuck the poll into there. Menus are naturally unimmersive, and you don’t really open them unless you’re not actively engaged.

So yeah. Create a Living Story window which basically outlines the current Living Story stuff in the same way that the Heralds and the thingy in the top right and the letters you receive do. Tuck a “report card” feature into it so you can give ANet your thoughts on what they’ve put out. Naturally, attach a few checks onto it to make sure that you’ve actually done the content. Maybe add a little perk to filling out report cards (achievement points would be pretty much perfect for this), and donesies. If you’re like me, you’ll probably chew on the content and form a few thoughts on it; whether you’re a fan, whether you thought that boss was too hard or tuned just right, whether you think a character is a complete train wreck, and then you’d go either to the forums or to hypothetical the poll to fill out your feedback.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

minbariguy.7504:

I want to echo the people who have recently been requesting in-game polls. Since currently there has been no real acknowledgement or response to player dissatisfaction with the pace of Living Story releases, I have chosen to simply not log in at all to avoid being counted as a “satisfied customer” in your concurrency metrics.

An in-game poll where I would have the chance to have my opinions actually be counted would be something worth logging in for.

I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Chris

Even if it does “break immersion” (which for me is total bs, but that’s not the point here). Would you:

a) Use early(ish) stages of the game, have a little immersion break, but use that to build a better game for years to come.

b) Be worried about the instant effects that a pool would have on those that feel it breaks their immersion, and waste valuable feedback that could make the game live up to its full potential, resulting in not-so-great experiences which could shorten the life of the game.

Randulf.7614:

would much rather see conversations like this..outside of the game (forums, reddit, livechat etc).

I agree with this. As I said on the previous page, I think it would be better if some of the bigger changes to the game had a line of communication after the actual implementation.

Without any communication after implementation, it is very hard to give actual feedback or to enter a dialog of some form. There are plenty of posts providing feedback on several topics, but without any dev replies, no one really knows if the feedback is even read, no one really knows if you agree with concerns raised.

Besides, and in game poll would not feel much like a dialog between developers and the community.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

minbariguy.7504:

I want to echo the people who have recently been requesting in-game polls. Since currently there has been no real acknowledgement or response to player dissatisfaction with the pace of Living Story releases, I have chosen to simply not log in at all to avoid being counted as a “satisfied customer” in your concurrency metrics.

An in-game poll where I would have the chance to have my opinions actually be counted would be something worth logging in for.

I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Chris

But what constitutes as “Immersion”?

…you guys had said you didn’t want to do things like fight with town clothes because it “broke immersion”, but, like…can we say that the LFG tool breaks immersion? Not too sure we can if you were keen to add it

in relation to the “what do you want to see” threads…I’m hoping that you will actually have most threads that highlight key aspects of the game that need some fixing, instead of just having a spam-fest of ideas.

For example, Instead of :
“what do you want to see in WvW?” how about “What method would you use to curb buffs”

Or instead of

“what do you want to do about PvE?” how about asking “What is most pressing. Condi stacks? Lack of gear variety? or Enemy skills vs player skills?”

Not saying everything should be relegated to significant areas, but it’d help to at least get somewhere.

On a side note, – As I’d said previously, I’d be nice if we could get the players from in-game participating too, and not just the forums.

Would it not be better to maybe make a sticky in each section, PvE, WvW, and SPvP so the appropriate team can comment and collaborate with each community ?
Keep them heavily moderated to filter out that anger if you like, but my concern is one big open free for all like this, things will get lost and before you know it the seperate communities will be fighting over who’s playtime is more important

What about this: If a thread in the forum gets a certain number of views, it should trigger a dev response.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We definitely listened to the feedback surrounding CP and were aware there would be some concern before we deployed the content. We weighed up the pros and cons and went with it.

We will be offering a lot more player choice moving forward but have certainly learnt lessons from CP. We want the players to not just shape the social aspects of Tyria but the world itself. This is a topic i can’t go into more detail on currently.

Chris

This is what I mean exactly in my previous post in this topic. Thanks for taking your time by the way, I appreciate it.

And now you bring up the pro’s and con’s…
I can list a bunch of stuff here that you’ve also thought about.
But the biggest issues that are still left unanswered is why you would couple two completely unrelated choises together and just force people to make a bad decision?

And why do you let people who wouldn’t care about specific content choose it?
I’ve heard dozens of people who don’t do fractals, or don’t feel strong about them. Yet, they get to choose for people who care deeply about it.

I’ve just picked one topic here where I feel ArenaNet completely missed out on an awesome idea. And I’m sad to say that your response doesn’t really give me hope for a better future. And that’s a whole nother issue that seems to linger around which I could go on about for a long time.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Sarrs.4831:

I don’t know if a single thread would be the go. There are more than a few hot-button issues, at least on the WvW side; having a consistent dialogue on each of those would be good, but having a single thread try to encompass them all would be ineffective, I feel.

How about this then? We create a forum thread on the main forum to discuss high level aspects of the game with Colin and I, and meanwhile on this thread people put forward ideas of how to move forward with a process for collaborative development from the forums? Then a method can be picked and we go from there?

Chris

I think it will be hard to discuss everything in one single thread as well, so I think splitting it up into the relevant sections of the forum would be more appropriate. WvW, pve, spvp etc.

As for collaborate development, I think it would be great if some of the bigger changes was up for debate.

As an example, one of the moderators created a feedback topic for ascended weapons. There were like 20 pages where people voiced their concerns and hopes, but there was never any dev reply. After the actual implementation of ascended gear, the entire topic was deleted, and all the feedback along with it.

I think it would be better if some of the bigger changes to the game had a line of communication after the actual implementation.

Without any communication after implementation, it is very hard to give actual feedback or to enter a dialog of some form. There are plenty of posts providing feedback on this particular topic, but without any dev replies, no one really knows where you are going with this. No one really knows if the feedback is even read, no one really knows if you agree with some of the concerns.

Lack of communication often leads to frustration and then you end up with some of the more inflammatory posts.

I think this topic is a step in the right direction and I am very much looking forward to see how it evolves.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Atherakhia.4086:

I strongly suggest you put these ‘what do you want to see’ type of threads in appropriate forums. Part of the problem in the past has been class forums are completely ignored so players are forced to air class issues in the sPvP forum because that’s the only one you visit.

If you’re going to make threads, make class specific ones in each forum. WvW one in the WvW forum. sPvP in the sPvP. And so forth. Otherwise we’ll all just be fighting amongst ourselves in a single thread. ‘Im not overpowered, you are!’ stuff.

That’s a really good idea which raises an interesting point. i am well versed in the game globally but not necessarily in the specifics of certain areas. So here is what i will do, i will post one in general asking for PVE specific feedback and then nominate two other members of staff to do the same in WvW and PvP and we can go from there. Note i am not going to do this over night as i do want to create some guidelines (set by me) for what the team can answer and can’t that way you guys can be frustrated with me rather than a specific developer (-:

Put simply though we don’t comment on specific dev. content that is in the pipe unless we are confident about it internally.

Chris

PLEASE, for the WvW person, recruit someone who is NOT on the WvW dev team but does play WvW. The WvW dev team is SERIOUSLY OUT OF TOUCH and needs someone with a new perspective. The game mode is in real danger of dying.

Atherakhia.4086:

I strongly suggest you put these ‘what do you want to see’ type of threads in appropriate forums. Part of the problem in the past has been class forums are completely ignored so players are forced to air class issues in the sPvP forum because that’s the only one you visit.

If you’re going to make threads, make class specific ones in each forum. WvW one in the WvW forum. sPvP in the sPvP. And so forth. Otherwise we’ll all just be fighting amongst ourselves in a single thread. ‘Im not overpowered, you are!’ stuff.

Now this makes extreme sense to me as well! I love the idea of addressing each concern in each separate forum because it allows people to complain about only that one combat situation, it keeps it organized and people who play primarily PVE don’t accidently stumble upon a thread about a sPVP concern and think it’s a PVE issue!

I’d totally love to see these forums separate as well the future patches concerning class balance are supposed to be separate as well.

Each class should have a subforum of PVE sPVP and WvW.

I really appreciate the post and the devs showing up to talk to us. It means a lot.
I know building a game is a tough thing. Building a world is even tougher, yet somehow Anet has been doing it rather well.

The only problem is – I feel a lot of things that could have been easily put in the game are still missing a year after release.
These things – I’m sure you’ve seen them a few times in a number of threads. I’ll mention some.

1)The ability for guild leaders to see the last time someone was online – right now this is killing guilds because leaders can’t keep track of member activity.

2) Guild halls – these should have been a part of Guild Wars from day 1. I don’t understand how the game was released without them considering how much of a big deal they were in GW1.

3)More armors in the game. I said the game – be it through playing the game or paying the gem store – just give us more armor. And on that topic – please – please,please,please give us back some of our favorite GW1 sets. I doubt it would be that hard and I’m 100% certain they would sell like crazy. ( I’d pay 3000+ gems for Elite Templar or Elite Platemail).

4)PVP and PVE – balance – I don’t really get why these are balanced together?
PVE now has ascended – PVP does not. PVE is one things PVP is another.
GW1 had it right – the balance was split and everyone was happy. Now you have to juggle a ton of plates because what works in PVE doesn’t work in PVP and vice versa. Just split them – I don’t think anyone would mind.

5)More content for organized and well prepared groups – see elite areas in GW1 – UW,FOW, Urgoz. The community has been asking for something like this from the very early days of the game.
Yes – we did get Fractals but we’ve been doing that for a long time now. We need alternatives – I can’t play fractals every day I want a challenge – game needs some flavor mixed in.
A hard mode variant to dungeons would be fun as well – harder but with better rewards.

6)Give us some use for all those account bound rings we get in FoTM. I have like 30 + of them. I don’t need them since I don’t need those stats – give us a change to at least forge them. Or salvage them for ascended materials.

7)Please stop the time gating – it’s bad enough already. I now have a daily list of crafts on top of my dailies. I’d like to play the game on my own terms and not be punished for it.

Anyway these are just a few things off the top of my head. I’m hoping the devs see it and maybe one day we might have these things.

This game has had its ups and downs, it has its good and has its bad but at the end of the day I hope we can make it better.

I feel that a lot of the negativity around the forum really comes from ArenaNet only reading posts. Yes, it’s a more effective way to go through the forums and get feedback. But, I don’t think it’s the best way. A lot of good idea’s I’ve seen come forth were through indeed collaboration. Conversation. And that includes the people from ArenaNet on the forum.

Now, we’ve already heard for quite some time the issue is being addressed… and to me it does seem like the amount of dev posts have gone up. But, when there was true collaboration on the SAB… we see someone getting truly burned down by ArenaNet.

All I would direly wish to see is more explaining why certain things can, can’t and will or won’t be implemented. Often enough you’ll only see these reactions to something that we’ve already been informed about. For instance, when the account wallet was announced I saw a dozen of dev posts explaining what was already explained in the original announcement. But, when there were questions that weren’t explained in the announcement you rarely saw an answer.

All in all it just seems the communication part from ArenaNet is extremely filtered to give a bunch of generic replies. A lot of thought behind updates is left to guess. And on top of that, there’s so much vague stuff going on that people are left in the dark. For instance, there’s been a lot of fus and some big cry outs about the Bloodlust giving out stats. All I’ve seen is what came down to ’we’re thinking about it’.

I really do appreciate this topic, and I do feel ArenaNet listens. Now all I would like on top of that is that we can also listen to you. Cause now it feels like talking to a brick wall a lot of the times.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Sarrs.4831:

I don’t know if a single thread would be the go. There are more than a few hot-button issues, at least on the WvW side; having a consistent dialogue on each of those would be good, but having a single thread try to encompass them all would be ineffective, I feel.

How about this then? We create a forum thread on the main forum to discuss high level aspects of the game with Colin and I, and meanwhile on this thread people put forward ideas of how to move forward with a process for collaborative development from the forums? Then a method can be picked and we go from there?

Chris

And you toot the horn for people to do the same on spvp and wvw forums, I’m guessing, and those threads branch out from there? That sounds like it could work.

Throwing my chips in on the ‘collaborative design’; first things first, we really need to get access to your brains before launch day. This blow-by-blow dialogue we have in these last few pages is pretty solid. There was Josh Foreman talking about SAB W2 as well; that was great. This kind of dialogue really helps to show that there are people with real investment in the game on the other side, and it’s not just us.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So back to the matter at hand. Through reading the posts i think it would be really useful for me to start a thread like ‘name one thing you would like to see improved in Guild Wars 2’ and then start riffing with you all on these subjects matters and try to make a more meaningful connection with you all that way by which we can define a process together for Collaborative Development?

I am also going to ask that we build out more time for team members to post and i will follow up with you all on that.

What do you think, does this sound like a good way to move forward?

Chris

It’d be great for everyone to have visibility into the game’s “Pillars” and have them documented somewhere that the community can see them. It’s important that the community understand these. Currently all anyone, who is not internal, has to go off of is what has been observed over the past year, which is pretty telling in and off itself. Having a common understanding about the game’s core competencies is a good place to start the communication at, in addition to the other valuable suggestions that have been made of course.

Dear Chris Whiteside,

Thank you for your post.
I will try be brief and clear and talk about important things only.

1. Feedback. Anet MUST have feedback from your customers (players). Feedback must be more organized and readable for devs than a forum. In game feedback was great! Please just add this as option to the game. Many people will enable it and rate the content.

2. Is it fun? Try to use this simple philosofy each time when you plan to do something.
Example: are you try to wait 1.5 hour with guild memebrs until Tequatl spawn to avoid constant oferflow? Was the waiting fun?
Try to have a team who will play in GW2 as a rest BUT not as a work. When you last time play in to the GW2 when you back to home? Just because it’s so fun? When you will love to play in your game you will got the point.

3. Learn from competitors. Create a team who will PLAY and learn from other MMO. Many little but very important things can be implemented. Simple example: GW2 has few hard to reach achievments (Liandri, jumping puzzles, Teqatl, etc) just announce if player got new hard avievment to the guild chat (like in WOW). It’s strong reward for player. Please look again into: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

5. Story. Entertaining electronic content consists of few elements in terms of perception: audio(music, etc) + video( art, gfx, etc) + meaning (story, achievments, etc). Most succesful movies had all elements. Many books just has “story” and extremely succesful. Are you like to read books? Will you read a boring book? Everething in the game builded around the story. The story must be intresting and it’s not so hard to achieve. Please use more strong story-writer. The story is weakest point of GW2 today. With living story it became more clear.

Few final words: I hope you will read it. I like to pay for the interesting/quality content. Everybody like it. When you release “Bazaar of the four winds” I was so exited and then just go to the Gem-store and donate (even if I don’t want to purchase any item in gem-store) just to support you.
Why exited? Nice music, nice art, nice jumping puzzle, nice ideas (new moving possibilities), great sanctum sprint etc. I miss for “dash” after sanctum sprint now Keep this quality and creativity and you will have permanent success as a company. Good luck!

Chris, I remain sceptical and I have one question still. Why did it take a year to start communicating about collaborative development with us? From now on, be more open about the things you work on, about the way you want to take this game. So much agony on this forum could’ve been prevented if you guys kept posting more frequently, informing us and asking us for feedback. Instead some sub-forums feel like they’re being completely ignored. Still, thank you for posting here. A lot of us players will be happier if you continue to post frequently in the the future.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I will do my best to feedback but at the same time i hope people will respect the fact that there are just some things i won’t be able to go into.

Chris

Might I suggest that if you come up against a subject you cannot go into, you plainly identify it as such instead of just ignoring the post in question? That would help to manage expectations all around. Having someone think, “Ah rats, he can’t talk about that”, is much better than having them think “What the…? Is he just going to pretend he didn’t even see my post?”

Also, if the reception to Living Story is one of the things you can’t talk about, may Dwayna have mercy on your soul. ;-)