Guild Wars 2

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

You could also post in an existing thread, so that the moderators don’t become angry with you.

A solid line of communication is what’s really lacking, and if you’re all as jazzed to get us involved in the living world as we are to be involved in it then more frank discussions about various aspects of the game with users at large is the best place to start.

Discussions, not monolithic statements, ask questions, respond to them, present multiple choice options to gauge where your community is at. Things like that.

Thanks for taking the initiative. It may seem that there’s a lot of negativity on the forums, by do keep in mind that it comes from a place of passion. People wouldn’t argue in such a heated fashion if they didn’t genuinely enjoy some part of what they’re trying to get altered. Your players are passionate about this game, and you’re passionate about making it, now all that remains is getting everyone to be passionate about the same thing.

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.

I think in any MMO, the community has a better idea about the direction the game should be going in than the developers themselves. Typically, MMO developers are arrogant and talk about how the vocal community members are confused, loud-mouthed idiots who have no idea what they really want – that all the detailed, constructive posts they make are just delusional fantasies that would send them running if it was ever really implemented. This is obviously a load of you-know-what, demonstrated in how when games fail to deliver what the community asks for, their population decreases drastically.

Even the biggest of the big WoW isn’t immune to this. When Blizzard started dumbing down content, making most classes totally faceroll, rehashing old content, making ‘prestigious’ rewards trivial to acquire, selling cool looking mounts while offering reskinned existing models in-game etc. the community said “stop that, or I’m leaving”. Blizzard of course didn’t listen, saying “we know best” and continued down that path. As a result, they lost something like 40% of their playerbase. We could argue that its just nostalgia, or that people quit because the game is old or whatever – it’s not. I know plenty of people (including myself) who would re-sub immediately if they returned the game to how it was in the TBC era.

With GW2, I have to say, the only real reason I continue to play is that it has a lot of potential and frankly, there’s no other MMO out there that I feel is worth playing. When you talk about delivering ‘groundbreaking content’ (a quote from the OP), I have to say there is nothing groundbreaking about GW2’s content. I don’t mean that offensively, either. If anything, the vast majority of the post-launch content has been very mundane. There has been an awful, awful, awful lot of “press F 250 times”, “go and slaughter these mobs in this zone event, with no tactics whatsoever”, “log in at this time on this date”, “go and do this bugged mini-game 20 times” etc. That’s not remotely groundbreaking. It’s actually quite poor.

However, there has been a pretty decent amount of high quality content, too. SAB, whether people like it or not, is a well made, creative piece of content. The new TA path is great, too. A little too many conditions from mobs, but other than that it’s nice. Fractals were an excellent addition to the game.

If the developers truly want to ‘collaborate’ with the community, I’ll be the first in line to write long, detailed posts about things I’d like to see in the game. By the same token, if another MMO comes out that ‘gets it right’ in the same way WoW ‘got it right’ back in 2004, I’ll be the first one to leave if the desire to collaborate with the community is merely all talk. Because, let’s be honest, you guys have a lot of idealistic plans that never see the light of day – including stuff that gets blogged about in detail.

Orion Templar.4589:

While discussions like that are valuable and demonstrate how the dev team and the player community can have valuable discussion, I’ve also seen many other issues that apparently are ignored. I’m sure they aren’t being really ignored, but the silence gives that impression. An example of that might be the dozens and dozens of threads in the Ranger forum about the need for multiple improvements in the Pet mechanic. Maybe there have been constructive dev interactions on the forums about ways to improve Pets, but if there are I apologize I’ve overlooked them.

The “devs” have interacted there. And I don’t mean the CC / CM people either … we’re talking about heads of the skill functionality team here … Sharp & Peters. And the entirety of their interaction all year long, has been to tell us that we’re fine overall b/c the perception is that we’ve been almost too strong in sPvP. Everything else that we have a problem with, report as bugged or bad design…. is just a non-priority for them. ….Basically… the entirety of end-game PvE, and WvW, is a non-priority…for them. This is not exaggerating & paraphrasing just to attack their character. No this is exactly what they have implied and re-asserted again and again with regards to our role in these game modes. Even our arguments that we have to “Play the UI” more than we actually “play the game” are brushed aside. They’re not interested in changing that. They’re focused on bigger things like trying to make Conquest mode “LoL-popular” eSport tier addictive etc etc.

They have written/collaborated probably, FIVE TIMES as much explanation on this issue of priority (than Whiteside has here), over in the sPvP forum with little side jabs sometimes on the ranger forum. Maybe they’re not as well received as Colin’s posts typically are, but they’ve interacted, and MADE THEIR POINT. They are not budging on this issue. It does not matter one bit what our suggestions are. It does not matter how much we try to refine our reports and work-arounds to solve this problem for them. They simply do not consider it a problem that deserves priority. It doesn’t even matter that a good number of their Ranger players are now on a trend of failing major portions of the living story content being added. That’s not their department. Even us ranger players are split on that argument of whether it’s the content-builders who screwed up or the balancing/skill team.

.

Regardless of what we could ever say on the topic, they have plausible deniability here, and they will use it to its full extent for years into the future. Not only that, they will get away with it too because they got away with it in Gw1 where Ranger and Paragon are still broken/1-dimensional classes in most game modes simply because the need to address it with a very jaded and possibly hostile community …. is such a low-priority.

“We do need to build out more time to be in dialog with you, specifically, following up on our own investigations of your suggestions and concerns.
We will work harder to achieves this.”

Might I suggest that in the spirit of collaboration that you take a look at the long list of long lists of suggestions in the suggestions forum that were posted just after launch as well as 4 months after launch by myself and many others who saw large holes missing in your UI for this game particularly in the areas of basic features every game should have by now as standard and in the guild interface.

I’d also like to mirror the concerns of the community when we say in this thread that we don’t believe collaboration will occur because many of us have for over a year posted well thought out descriptive and calm suggestions/fixes for the numerous challenges this title has faced prior the 1 year anniversary. So while it’s welcome, and we’d love to see it happen, at this point we really don’t have much faith that the most important issues talked about frequently will ever be addressed without some form of gesture from the development team.

One of the major items to look into I would suggest and not because it is mine, is here . Many people including people who I usually disagree with continously generally like this list as a comprehensive first step in making this game more accessible to the players.

There are other such lists in the suggestions forums as well as in the class forums on simple ways of correcting the problems with combat, pet AI, pet weakness on all three scales (turrets/ranger pets/summons) and the serious lack of diversity in builds in PVE.

We’ll be watching in earnest to see if this collaboration comes to pass, thanks for speaking with us.

Collaboration is a good thing, but there has to be some mutual understanding. I personally feel that the devs understand (more or less) what the players want, but sometimes development just seem to go off on a tangent. Rather than going into complex issues like class balance and gear grinds, here’s something simple I don’t understand, and I’d love some insight:

As the game tries move forward at a rapid pace, there are so many core issues that linger in and outside of the game. When the temporary story content started to roll in a few months ago, I just thought to myself … “dang, if only they can spare a few folks to really try and fix some of the fundamental issues that’s been plaguing the game and forums for more than a year now” …

… Spazzy camera? Will we ever see a fix on that? Will we ever actually see a properly working forum search function? How about real quality of life improvements involving the ability to adjust simple things, like mouse smoothing, FoV and camera height adjustments to aid visibility for very small and very large characters?

Perhaps the basic stuff are the hardest to fix … who knows? Why not tell us why? Collaboration is a two-way street. Below in my sig, is a wonderful, constructive (and year old) thread about some fundamental issues with the game camera and some solid suggestions from the players. We’ve taken that step, now the ball is in your court ArenaNet.

Show us you’re really serious about the kind of collaboration Chris Whiteside mentioned in his post … and for the love of all that’s good in this world, keep the communication channels open. We love to interact with you!

As a PvE Engineer, and a person who barely read/writes on forums, I have a few things to input regardless if this is the place to do so. This is my opinion and what I say may not be possible and someone may point out the faults of my ideals but I’ll understand it regardless of the angle you take this is.

a) I’d like to see long endgame content. I want to be able to enter a long dungeon with multiple bosses with a self RP availability. What I mean by this is that I dont want to walk into a dungeon and have an NPC ask what I want to do. I want there to be a large chasm or the ruins of some Grand Castle that I can go down a certain path to defeat a boss, then backtrack to go maybe through the upper levels to defeat different bosses half way through; consuming maybe 2 or 3 hours of my time for a singular path’s duration. Regardless of loot I want the beautiful art reward of completing a dungeon to defeat a demon in a chapel to where once completed the room fills with light and you just see all the artwork and time put into this by Developers and (Whoever makes it, I’m not good with titles.) And this doesn’t mean dont put in like a good chest at the end.

b) As a leather user I want access to more diverse armor styles. Maybe I dont want a trench coat all the time, I think they’re nice. But sometimes maybe I want a leather chest piece with maybe a cool looking ornate metal plate overlapping the armor to protect vital points of my body, like the heart or something. And the Soldier classes could maybe have like a coat overlapping the chest so they get some diversity, or a coat under, leaving a cool tassel at the end of your armor, maybe even a tabard. And the Scholars could use a full robe or two.

c) PvP armory update? (I’m big about making people look individual.) Theres a handful of weapon models I’ve seen in PvE that haven’t made it to the Mists yet… Ahhem Cough cough The Fixit Mace Wrench Cough cough lolz srry bout dat, frog n mah throt.

d) (More armor ideas cause I’m a loot fanatic. This could’ve gone with point B but w/e) Profession Specific armors. I’d like to have a piece or two in my armor set so at a glance people could be like, Cool watchwork Cogs he must be an engineer; or, Nice brutal shoulderpads he must be an awesome warrior. And not only that, but maybe something for our tradeskills too. Ohh nice fedora, you must be a max level tailor. Nice gloves, you must be a leatherworker!

e) Realistic ideas. Some of these weapons have a great look but their counterpart to the other weapon types are ridiculous. Like you’ll have a great flame sword and then a pistol oozing lava. Its a nice gesture but I dont think I’ve even seen some people use certain weapons cause they are off the wall. They dont have to ALL look EXACTLY alike. They can just be similar through details. One could have tentacles, the other could have an engraving of a tentacle, one could have a glamour effect that looks like a tentacle, and one could even be a tentacle. Side note, tentacles were an analogy for what I’m trying to get across, dont actually make tentacles. I’ve seen where those things can go wrong.

f) Dragons! I’ve got cool dragons. I want them to have slightly a stronger role. I dident see much besides Zytan in my Human storyline. Maybe theres a guy who’s got this different fighting style thats no ones seens yets ands maybes wes gets tos helps hims fights tehs dwragons? Maybe like a cliche one that breathes fire. Maybe the dragon has a monologue. I dont know.

g) Feedback. I know I’ve never posted much on forums because I dont feel like my voice has ever been taken into account. Maybe you could send me a 2 sentence non-automated message on a valid post saying ‘Hey my names Ted, we’re reading your stuff and your voice has been heard. Maybe we’ll contact you later.’ Or something of the sort. I dont have much going for me and even for those who do, hearing the little things like that go a long way.

So assuming this post doesn’t also get removed by the OMS (Overzealous Mod Staff) for supposedly being too contentious and rude (which is a laugh, given the last five pages I’ve read) can I ask a few simple questions?

Why is it, over a year after release, that the foundation of the game is still so shaky? Why are skills that don’t work properly “working as intended” until the outcry is so loud that ANet has to pay attention? Why are traits and skills still misleading or opaque in their descriptions, with many still outright bugged? Why are professions still almost hilariously imbalanced, in a game designed with Tournament PvP in mind?

The game is nice, especially if played in a Role Playing manner, where the player doesn’t worry too much about stats and just plays. But with the release of Ascended gear, and the inevitable gear treadmill that is on the horizon, AND the competitiveness of players, and the desire to get the most out of your playtime, it seems that the vast majority of players are going to be forced into playing GW2 as a solo adventure RPG, as the time investment to get top end gear and remain competitive with other players (either in a PvP format or so as not to “be a burden” in PvE content) is ridiculous. This doesn’t even cover the massive difficulty ramp up of content like Tequatl or SAB.

But I stand by my opinion that the whole ANet team needs to pause the Living Story, pause brainstorming new gem store junk, pretty much put on hold anything that doesn’t deal with these following items until they are completely fixed:

1. Make skill and trait descriptions verbose, players need to know what these things do, as they form the basis of our interaction with the environment. Players should not have to delve into a Wiki to learn what stuff does, that is what the UI is for in the first place.

2. Fix traits and skills that are bugged, so that they aren’t anymore. Actually this should have been priority #1 from Day 1. Its shameful that stuff STILL doesn’t work a year after release.

3. Balance the professions so that they all offer something and do what they’re intended to do. Elementalists should primarily be long range AoE nukers, as they are in every game, not CC-support bots as they are now. Warriors should be damage soakers (not necessarily tanks, but better able to survive aggro) and 1v1 powerhouses, not the kings of AoE both at close and long range. And the ability to do damage should be inversely proportional to how much inherent defense a profession has. Squishies like the Ele should have high mobility and high damage, to compensate the extremely low class survival design. Professions with higher defense like Rangers (pets) and Necromancers (DS and/or minions) should have less DPS output to compensate for their inherent higher survivability. A corollary to this is that classes also need to be balanced based on their capabilities, not developer ideology. The Thief should not be the most mobile profession just because some dev wants it to be, it should have mobility commensurate with its actual capabilities, which include stealth, lots of dodging and endurance and other abilities.

Whatever, I don’t want this to turn into Balance 101, since most of this is both obvious while at the same time extremely unlikely to be read and taken as advice by a design team or ANet in general. Why we, the players even bother is something I question on a Daily basis, perhaps that should be made an Achievement category?

Gonna cut you some slack on this. The only reason I bemoan the game so is due to the fact that I see in it so much wasted potential. If you are in fact ready to start listening to your customers more than the balance pass is one way of showing us you listen.

I cannot speak for other classes as I do not play them on a regular basis, BUT it has become quite clear that you don’t listen to what the necromancer community has been saying since launch. We want/wanted cleave on a weapon, we got fire (not fitting the lore btw)?!?. We wanted the ability to disengage and you gave us a ds nerf!?! To be fair you also improved our DS pool, but you took away our only major form of mitigation making us useless in most PvE settings. You stated quite the while ago that you wanted to make us the “true” attrition class, but you make us into condi-mancers instead!?! Please figure out what our true role is to be because this flip flopping has forced me to craft celestial armor with divinity runes for no other reason that to “suit” whatever may come next.

/rant… just please be more forthright from this point on

edit: clarity

They most definitely read the forums. They just don’t like posting. I wouldn’t post either if I kept doing full 180’s on every design philosophy.

I just want to know what’s going on.
What is the direction of the game?
Right now it just feels reactionary.

I’ll just quote myself from another thread instead of copy pasting:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/My-thoughts-on-Ascended-Direction-of-game/2810623

Xar.6185:

Ascended is just not enough for the gear grind crowd and too much for the horizontal progression crowd. Leaving no one truly happy in the long term.

People are saying all the time that gear isn’t needed. That you can do naked runs of dungeons. So why add higher stats at all then?

Yet we needed to have magic find by account. Those MF leechers weren’t bringing their ‘A’ game and contributing enough so we changed MF. But its so easy you can do it naked, but don’t dare wear MF gear…

Some people keep saying the game is ‘too easy’, and that there is no PvE ‘challenge’. Ascended will only make things easier for them. If they rebalance for ascended, due to the time gating nature of it compared to exotics, those without it will be overly challenged and discouraged with thier inequal contributions to the group. Or just get wrecked solo.

What happens when the people who asked for a new gear tier are done collecting ascended? Add another tier or upset them by not adding one?

Aside from the things I mentioned in that other thread there are plenty of other contradicting things going on in this game at the moment. Examples are the wallet being alt friendly but time gating soulbound stuff is anti alt, having legendary weapon ingredients overlap with ascended weapon ingredients doesn’t solve the supposed ‘time-gap’ it exacerbates it. There are more but this post is already long enough.

What is going to happen? Is there a plan in place for all of these contridicting opinions? Or will it just be reactive change after reactive change until the whole things spins wildly out of control?

You mentioned being black and white. Well, choose one, tell us which one, and then stand by it.

Ipsen.7486:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Vayne.8563:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Azure.8670:

He’s right honestly. Even if there are things you HATE about this game, and you want it to get better because youre a fan, theres just better ways to say things XIV on and off lately and that game honestly sucks, but the community is SOOO supportive of the game its amazing. SQENIX has been horrrrible to their fans for almost a decade and people still support them. ANET tries really hard to make a lot of fans happy, in a game thats three pronged. just be respectful and remember that this is a work in progress. Things game time and this is a great game whether things about it kitten you off or not.

A video game should not be a work in progress the same way your car shouldnt be a work in progress once its released… In an ideal world the game would have had the foundation for their 2 week release cycles prior to release and the game would have included all the basic features it needed (like leaderboards and custom servers for PvP) right from the start. When you release a half developed game as one of the most anticipated games your gonna have a bad time. Shame on us for expecting a AAA title to actually be AAA in quality.

A driving game shouldn’t be a work in progress. Every MMO ever made is a work in progress…not just at release but through the entire life cycle of the game, as long as it’s viable.

When you buy a driving game, you’re buying a game. When you’re buying an MMO you’re buying access to a world…you’re not paying for the program you’re paying for the account. It’s a completely different thing.

There isn’t one MMO I’ve ever seen, AAA or otherwise, that released as a finished product.

There is a HUGE difference between a game expanding and evolving and a game being a work in progress. GW1 for example expanded its world with updates like Sorrows Embrace and War in Kryta in addition to adding 2 stand alone campaigns and an expansion.

That is far different then releasing a game, changing how you want to release content after release and then doing work to convert the game to a new model in order to meet your new requirements… all while players are trying to play it.

First case is your expansion of a world, second case is poor planning and releasing a game thats not complete. Guess which one we got.

The only credit I’ll give you is that Guild Wars 1 was a pretty tidy, but restrictive in game in concept. You HAD to group to be effective mechanically, 8 skills, etc. Expansions (until Nightfall) didn’t add much, just new skills, and new story, which weren’t their prime focus anyway (nonetheless interesting).

And really, what changed in how Anet decided to update content, for Guild Wars 2? GW2 isn’t a skill-focused game as GW1 was, so you don’t see as many skill updates (wish I did, though). They also mentioned years ago that they did not want to do the same expansion system to provide large-scale updates. They want more story, and have an engine that lets them try new things. Though I won’t totally dismiss you; I think what you’re looking for, as well as myself and many others is a larger-scale update, both story and skill mechanics, than the type we’re getting, or ever got before. I’m happy that work continues on the game, but there is a ton of potential to tap.

Im not saying Im looking for anything. I am saying literally that system you said GW2 was designed on was rewritten after the game was released. They even wrote about it – transitioning from monthly time frame updates to their 2 week system which included backend changes to allow it a full organization shift to those smaller teams. If you need to change THAT much then you released your game incomplete.

Look at PvP for another example – they had to fully remove their tournament system and repurpose it to a single round system. They had to ADD leaderboards and custom arenas and observer mode because they were not complete for release. Why… because the game was released incomplete.

So again, Im not questioning why GW2 was made and the philosophies behind it. I am proving to you that this game was released and required substantial changes to it AFTER release because it wasnt done correctly – yet was still given to the customer in that state.

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

People are angry for a reason.
People hate temporary content for a reason.
People hate ascended gear for a reason.
People hate class imbalance for a reason.
People hate server imbalance for a reason.
People hate constant buggy content for a reason.
People hate watching you making the same mistakes over and over for a reason.

Agree here.

Outside of the blatant copy/paste from September, you once again claim you want constructive feedback.

Based on observations of the Extremely Overzealous Moderation staff you have, you seem to only want feedback on how positive your game is, rather than bluntly pointing out the flaws.

Feedback:
Living Story: Good Concept; Horrid Implementation. Achievement grind fest for the masses. Majority of LS is temporary. Nothing to continue/tie into existing personal story (a.k.a. the story of Trahearne).

Ascended Gear: Too Lazy to lookup quotes. May be by same person.
Person A: We want players to have max gear by the time they reach 80…
Person B (later date): Players got max gear too fast.
Also, mentioning that ascended is to be an in-between exotic/legendary gap, but make it require materials used for legendaries. Now it is even more of a hindrance for Legendary items.

PvP/WvW: Too many problems to list.

Elite vs. Easy Content: Everything that comes out is either intended for people with Incredible dance dance revolutions button skills, or press 1 for loot content. It doesn’t have to be either/or. Think about having dungeons with multiple/various completion options. The hard way can shorten the run; while those with less coordination can complete the content with a longer/mob filled path.

Simply put, why should the community believe they truly make a difference. You promise us something now, but 6 months from now, deny having said it, or say “the community mis-interpreted our statements”
Examples:
1. Manifesto – Biggest bait and switch of the game.
2. Ascended Gear – Like mentioned above. “we want people to have max gear by the time they reach 80” vs. “People obtained max gear too quick”
3. LFG Tool – The sheer arrogance/denial of the need/work for this tool was amazing. For the longest time, you scream “why do the work when a 3rd party solution works”. Then after almost a year of listening to “we want this feedback”, It is finally released, being used as a poster child for community feedback? Imagine if an automaker released a new model sedan without cup holders, and then used the defense that automobiles didn’t even have cup holders for years. Doesn’t matter how long it took them to appear, but what is considered standard now.
4. PvP/WvW – “We are aware of the problem.” a.k.a. Please stop posting. We might fix this, but will probably just release something no one wanted instead (ruins? skyhamer farming?).
5. Moderation – Extremely selective enforcement. Trolling is obviously allowed when you defend the game/devs, as evidenced by multiple users accounts.

Yes. When you make promises/statements, the community WILL hold you accountable for your actions/inaction.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding our process in terms of forum usage as a development tool:

The reality is we do read our forums, and others, every single day. If you look over the last year, and cross reference with community feedback you will see many ideas actioned and many more not.

Then why do developers say you don’t? Why would anyone be interested in providing good feedback when you have developers saying forum posters are just a vocal minority? Furthermore I don’t understand that analogy either. Isn’t ArenaNet a minority when it comes to making design decisions. While you are 100% entitled to it, believing that you are the only minority suited for suggesting design directions is a bit naive, don’t you think? The entire wealth of creativity in the world isn’t confined to your design studio. Discarding suggestions simply because they are made by a “vocal minority” is a dangerous path to tread, and an excuse which ArenaNet seems slightly too eager to wield.

living world

The most pressing demand from the community in regards to the living world is that it doesn’t feel tied together with the rest of the game world. You have tried to remedy this, for example through the new TA path. However, you seem to completely miss the point. For the first 100 hours, people battle the DRAGONS. The elder DRAGONS are the major antagonist in GW2. They and their minions appear everywhere. And then suddenly, after you kill(?) one of them, you are done. No more talk of DRAGONS. Nowhere.

Rather, you are fighting some kind of sky-pirates which you have never seen in any part of the game before. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that Aetherblades are cool and that the Bazaar for example was a really solid update, but when the only new content you deliver isn’t tied in any way to the rest of the world you will never make players feel that connection.

angry forum posters

Again, I can’t dictate Arena Net forum policy. But saying you outright disregard stuff like this is too easily applied on too many cases for an easy way out.

stand out content

This part of your post shocked me a lot. While switch and bait(I guess you can qualify my post as one of those you can just ignore now) has been the case several times with GW2, it will only work so many times. You can’t say that you are creating an MMO that is different from every other MMO, and then instead make it into the same MMO. I’m talking time gated gear grind and massive power creep in WvW. Things like this doesn’t rhyme well with what you say here.

Vayne.8563:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Azure.8670:

He’s right honestly. Even if there are things you HATE about this game, and you want it to get better because youre a fan, theres just better ways to say things XIV on and off lately and that game honestly sucks, but the community is SOOO supportive of the game its amazing. SQENIX has been horrrrible to their fans for almost a decade and people still support them. ANET tries really hard to make a lot of fans happy, in a game thats three pronged. just be respectful and remember that this is a work in progress. Things game time and this is a great game whether things about it kitten you off or not.

A video game should not be a work in progress the same way your car shouldnt be a work in progress once its released… In an ideal world the game would have had the foundation for their 2 week release cycles prior to release and the game would have included all the basic features it needed (like leaderboards and custom servers for PvP) right from the start. When you release a half developed game as one of the most anticipated games your gonna have a bad time. Shame on us for expecting a AAA title to actually be AAA in quality.

A driving game shouldn’t be a work in progress. Every MMO ever made is a work in progress…not just at release but through the entire life cycle of the game, as long as it’s viable.

When you buy a driving game, you’re buying a game. When you’re buying an MMO you’re buying access to a world…you’re not paying for the program you’re paying for the account. It’s a completely different thing.

There isn’t one MMO I’ve ever seen, AAA or otherwise, that released as a finished product.

There is a HUGE difference between a game expanding and evolving and a game being a work in progress. GW1 for example expanded its world with updates like Sorrows Embrace and War in Kryta in addition to adding 2 stand alone campaigns and an expansion.

That is far different then releasing a game, changing how you want to release content after release and then doing work to convert the game to a new model in order to meet your new requirements… all while players are trying to play it.

First case is your expansion of a world, second case is poor planning and releasing a game thats not complete. Guess which one we got.

Not sure if this thread is a joke…

Why? Heres an example:

Fractal Weapons. Since the introduction of Fractals, players have been suggesting a fairer and more rewarding way to get a hand on this (Weapon Boxes, Tradeable for Relics, MF recipe, etc. etc.) and rightfully so because this is the most laughable system i have ever seen in a video game. Yet there has never been a single word to all these suggestions, not even “Hey Guys, we like the way these Weapons are currently implemented so we wont make any changes to the system!”, nothing. Not a single word.

Collaborative Development, where? This is just one of the many examples…

Hello Chris,

I applaud you for representing Arena.net mindfulness, thoughtfulness and reasonings to their game, community and its players.

But!….

Yes there is a but..

there is 1 thing that is missing in Marrying and Uniting these 2….

Action

13+ months and going strong…

Supporting and Justifying Favoritism of classes; thief, alongside side-kick> warrior
Suporting and Justifying Tyranny and Elitism mechanics; Thief stealth, backstab, heartseeker, s/d thief, Perma-stealth, Perma-stun, Perma-evade, Perma-Teleport, Perma-Evasion, Outrageous single damage attacks……
Supporting and Justifying of Imbalance mechanics stripping the Fun factor in the game
Apposing and Punishing anyone who Dare question Injustice and Abusive actions and behaviors.
Apposing and Punishing anyone who Dare questions your reasonings in rewarding Elite and Favorite classes with Undeserving Rewards while Punishing the less Advantage ones..
Allowing and Supporting Outrageous Laggs, Crashes, Freezes and Disconnections to contine for so long.
(these are the few i can think of now)
Oh! wait!!
Empty Promises!
Empty Words!

So once more Chris,

Where is Arena.net Actions in dealing with these?

Oh! I have the answer..

With 13+ months later,

None Whatsoever

(Just for your information/ FYI)

Your Community Players are Immuned to Words

Since 13+ months ago.

Well that was a nice post full of PR speak. Chris, if you read other game forums you’ll realize that this is far, FAR from the worst the internet has to offer. EVERY game forum is full of trolls and angry people in my experience, except maybe Egosoft but I haven’t been on theirs since like a year and a half after X3 dropped so that may have even changed. Remember it’s the internet and 90% of people are jerks.

That said, I do think the communication from your end is lacking. I see things, such as guild events for smaller guilds, being added due to feedback from the forums. I also, however, see bugs go for months and months without even simple acknowledgement. In addition, slapping Josh on the wrist for actually communicating with the community was a REALLY bad thing to do. He should be the example for the rest of your employees to follow, not a warning to them. If your employees don’t have time to engage with the community even though you say it’s important to you, then you need to have better time management going on.

I honestly see it as a management problem. Your management is not prioritizing the fixing of obvious bugs, they pay lip service to community communications but then reprimand devs who actually communicate with the community. These problems are totally on management, which is not surprising since management is usually the weakest link in ANY company.

tl/dr: If you actually want to communicate with the community then you have to do it rather than just releasing a forum post full of PR speak.

Personally, I am just really sad to see how the game has strayed away from the original manifesto. What drew me to this game originally was that I could get the best gear playing the game however I wanted. That was a great perk. I didn’t need to do dungeons and could spend all my time working on map completions or WvW which I enjoyed. The best gear was obtained naturally. If I wanted a specific look for a weapon or gear, then I could grind for that.

Instead now, it takes a grind to get the best gear. The means I have to take time away from actually having fun in the game to doing certain tasks ANET wants me to do. It’s totally in opposition to the original spirit of the game.

My other issue is with new content. Changing Teq was a bad idea. It was a suitable and accessible dragon for casual players. Instead of changing existing content, add new. A lot of players do enjoy Teq. The whole mechanic for that dragon should have been added to a new dragon somewhere in the world. In other words, the game needs to cater to both casuals and hardcores. GW2 has lost that ability.

Thanks you for showing interest in what the community has to say.

Here is my 2 cents:

• Don’t make this game into a grind fest and armor/weapon centric. The introduction of ascended weapons and armors (soon I am assuming) and then legendary armor set (I predict) shouldn’t happen. Keep this a fun MMO and don’t try to keep players by adding grind work. If someone likes grind and feels that there is no challenge then they will leave one day no matter what….you will only hurt the GW2 core player base.

• The living story grind. Again the living story adds nothing to the core game. It is basically an achievement grind fest for players and dies soon.

The core improvements/development should go to dungeons, world events, WvW, guild system. As an example the new TA dungeon is a perfect example of content. keep it up.

RNG in loot drops is fun. Look at Diablo 2. RNG you pay money for is not necessarily fun. It makes money from the compulsive, thrills the lucky, but it breeds resentment and distrust in the unlucky. Since most people are unlucky, that is a lot of resentment.

I know gems make lots of money. It’s human nature to gamble, and we and Arena net are obviously extremely aware of that. However; being apparently happy to make a mint off the compulsive, while breeding resentment and disloyalty among the unlucky is not sustainable. The unlucky majority have begged to be able to hand over their money to straight out purchase items. They/ we have also begged to have RNG results adjusted so that the whole experience of handing Arena net money feels more rewarding.

Not giving loyal customers more reasons to give you money is not sensible.

Also, I understand that this game has a major conflict present in all mmos; rewarding players tanks the economy. RNG numbers are kept punishingly low to give goods market value. This needs to be worked on. When I need a break from GW2, I play Borderlands 2. It is glorious to play a game that gives you rewards that you can use to play the game, with no regard for whether it will spoil the market for your awesome new toys. I want to feel like my hours and weeks and months in GW2 are spent using all my fun items, not desperately wishing for them. I’ll work for them, all day… as long as I GET them.

I am deeply, deeply disappointed in the direction that Anet has taken GW2.

In general:

• I suppose the first inkling that things were going downhill was when dye went character bound in the beginning for the sake of “character progression”, instead of staying account bound. I argued against it, because quite frankly dye shows nothing about character progression when the money to buy the dye comes from a primary character anyway. The logic was deeply flawed and suggests only one reason dyes became character bound.

• Then came ascended trinkets, with its alt unfriendly time-gated gearing dependent on laurels. There were multiple threads and posts begging Anet not to proceed with time-gating or ascended gear, but alas, they were merged into one giant thread and every constructive post became buried behind “this is our vision of the game”.

• Then came ascended weapons, and soon to come, ascended gear, behind more time gating and massive grinds to reach 500. The threads are also merged and ignored for the sake of the vision of the game.

The reasoning: it took too little time to obtain all exotic gear.
Wasn’t that one of the original selling points of the game – the ability to reach level and gear cap quickly so everyone can participate in WvW on an equal footing without much time or grind?

That brings me to WvW.

• Orbs were a bad mechanic. Yes, they were removed because they were hackable, but behind that was also the problem of the snowballing effect it gave to the winning server. Yet it was brought back, against our protests because and I loosely quote “WvW isn’t supposed to be fair.”

Is the vision for WvW one of unfairness, then, with blowout matches and the winning server flipping everything quickly because “it makes for more exciting matches”? Where alts are detrimental to server performance because they lack points in wexp?

• On the WvW forums, we begged and pleaded for leagues to be canceled, or in the alternative, gave multiple wonderful constructive suggestions for how leagues could be organized and scored for a better player experience. Instead, we get a “Q&A” session with Devon a week before leagues will go live – a session where he will most likely evade questions and nothing will be changed.

• Plopping down ruins in WvW, providing new maps in PvP, or bringing back a broken mechanic into the game is not more content. Especially when there are so many imbalances and issues that should and could be fixed first before being further imbalanced by these new and exciting features!

TLDR It seems that no matter how much helpful, constructive feedback is provided, Anet will decide to go its own route and give silly answers such as:

• “character progression”
• “not supposed to be fair”
• “makes the game more exciting”
• “our metrics say that WvW population isn’t declining” (so it must be a great mechanic?).

I honestly don’t see the point for anyone to post in the hopes that their opinion won’t be taken as a “vocal minority”, and frankly, I only posted this to vent.

P.S. I see GW2 heading towards more grind, more levels, more levels of gear, and more time-gating. If you would like to have a meaningful conversation with the community, perhaps you could address, in a blog post or in this forum, why this vision is definitely not happening, or if it is happening, provide a kitten good reason. Otherwise, I’d say to expect more angry outbursts on the forums.

Chris, thank you for the post. Even if it is a repost, it is important for people of the forums and it seems that many people do not yet fully understand what it takes to put out a gorgeous and functional game. I know there are lots of things I’d love to see in game, but I know they’re not as easy as just adding a line of code here and voila guild management tools or whatever other addition.

Dear Forum Goers…the forums are not the only way the developers and Anet members get our feedback. You might even have a dev or two in your guild and you’d never know it unless they told you. They don’t always tag up while they’re in game. They play the same content as we do and experience many of the same issues. No amount of beta-testing will find every single bug before release and new bugs will emerge once something goes live. They do listen and just because they don’t take your suggestion doesn’t mean they don’t take some of our suggestions.

Personally I want the following in game:
1-Guild management tools. Show last time logged on, last time repped, show what guild a member is repping when not repping my guild.

2-A way to place objects into my home instance. Be able to add my sanctum model to my home instance, wall display of back items earned but I’m not going to wear…make it somewhat like GW1 Hall of Monuments.

3-A unique arena for GvG (so those people will stop whining). Maybe utilize the arena in the black citadel and use the stands as a viewing area where people can mingle and watch.

4-A way to account bound a soulbound item so I can transfer it to an alt. i.e. A crystal from gem store that allows me to move a permanent harvesting sickle from my main to an alt so I can put the new version on my main.

5-A mini pet slot so that I can “equip” a mini on my character that will come out when I enter a new zone or move between land/water.

6-Let me dye my aquabreather and back item. Leave some (like the books) undyeable, but let me change my look a little bit there.

7-Let me craft aquabreathers! We have one recipe for a water filter and it’s only a lvl 20 heavy and masterwork. Give us recipes we can get from vendors in Orr or somewhere with karma. Let us craft rare/exotic/ascended versions.

8-I personally love the zone hearts, but the rewards are a bit lackluster. Maybe start the beginning areas out with a 50c reward and scale up to 10-30 silver for the lvl 80 hearts. Put a few hearts in southsun too while you’re at it. I love that zone and it’s so empty most of the time.

9-More bats and creepy looking armor/weapons. When the designers do start with the next set of legendaries they should be a dark counterpart to the “light” version we have now. We already have Sunrise and Twilight…why not Bifrost and Yggdrasil (which would have a dark shadowy foot-trail, and crow projectiles) and like Sunrise/twilight you can combine the two to form a third legendary that combines the properties of both.

10-The bane of my gaming existence. RNG. While I know RNG will never go away, it is very disheartening when I try and try for something (precursor, weapon claim ticket, etc.) and even after 1000+ tries I end up with empty pockets and empty handed while someone else after 10 tries has three or more of what I was wanting. Sclerite weapons – husband got a ticket on the very first box on the very first day. I bought hundreds of boxes and farmed for more and didn’t get a single one (I cried at the end of the SS event because that was the first weapon skin I really wanted more than anything else). Dragon coffers – husband opened 4200 coffers before getting one weapon ticket. Guildie opens a couple hundred and gets 9 claim tickets. There is a huge disparity here and something needs to be done. I don’t know what, but something.

11- Can we please get the event skins we’ve gotten put into our account skin claim area too? Pretty please? This way my account will have access to the skins I’ve earned (Dragon helm, Wings, fused gauntlets). And then I don’t have to worry about losing a piece….and then people can make a copy for PvP and keep one for PvE. I don’t PvP and don’t care, but lots of people do.

Things I love that you’ve done:
1- While skeptical at first, I love the change with Magic Find. I love it as an account bonus. Still peeved about the lack of clarity regarding the MF armor soulbound/acct bound thing, but I’m over it.

2-The living story – While I don’t love all parts of it and don’t quite see the big picture of the story. I love having new things to do and new achievements to gain.

3-Account rewards for achievement points. Brilliant. Just awesome. Love how I can claim the skins I’ve earned thru my hero panel…love all the rewards.

4-LFG tool. I love it. So easy to use.

In short, thanks for your hard work ANET. I hope you continue to listen to us and implement some of my suggestions (and others from other people too). And try to reply to us just a little more often

chris, you have the right idea and you say the right things. but until you guys give us a public test realm, im going to say that you dont really UNDERSTAND what collaborative development is.

lead and live by example. stop trying to placate us with words.

Pavel.8531:

Am I the only one that thinks this post was just one lengthy “throw some dust in their eyes” damage control type? Because after months of ignoring feedback and even stating that the forums are a vocal minority so they don’t care for them as long as they don’t notice players leaving the game it is hard for me to just accept this on blind faith.

Exactly my thoughts. And it’s best displayed by the devs creating this thread and then completely ignoring the constructive criticism in here and not responding to it.
We don’t expect them to fix all the bugs immediately and improve the ame to where it should be within 2 weeks, but I think we all wish for them to explain more on the forums. For example to really explain to us why it takes so long to implement certain features, where problems with certain bugs are or why they chose to ignore a request issued by many players, etc etc etc.
But, seems easier to tell all the people on the forum that they are the ones misbehaving, instead of thinking about WHY the forum developed into its current state.

I feel like one of the biggest problems is that ANET is terrible at controlling expectations. Think about how many mixed signals they send us…. they respond sometimes to complaints by changing things to make people happy, but then they tell us to stop complaining. They tell us they’re not going to create a gear grind, and then they create ascended weapons. (I actually love ascended weapons, but its a perfect example of my point.). They tell us they are going to create an expanding world, and then they focus on “organic improvements” and bi-weekly events in the existing world. They tell us that personal housing will be in the game, and they keep adding mining nodes to an uncustomizable home instance. They tell us guild activities and community building is a priority, and then they exclude guild halls from production and give us no concrete info on when they will be released, while wild star is being developed to have housing.

I think its difficult sometimes to be a player of this game. Its so close to everything you ever wanted, but that connection skips a beat sometimes and its a little tough to accept. Some people definitely handle it better than others though.

Shakkara.2641:

Well thanks for reaching out to the community, but over the past year I have seen ArenaNet heading exactly opposite the direction that I (I’ll just speak for myself) would like the game to evolve in.

The reason I bought the game is for two reasons:

• The Manifesto
• Because I loved Guild Wars 1

Because of the above, I expected certain things from Guild Wars 2:

• Extreme horizontal progression where item stats do not matter and progression is aesthetics only, and you can get max stat items in less than an hour – NO GRIND, NO GEAR THREADMILL
• Extremely deep character customization, making me think what skills to bring and what gear to equip on my character
• Extremely fast to max level and max gear a character to max to make it easy to have alts (takes me 3 hours to get a GW1 char to 20 and have him kitted out)
• An enviornment permanently shaped by players, not devs
• Exciting, carefully balanced PVP

Thus in my eyes, the devs have done a few things wrong and are continuing to do things wrong:

• High level cap that takes ages to reach (in my opinion, having levels in the first place is a mistake)
• Restricting players to a single class and having very very few skills and traits per class – thus very few options to make interesting builds
• The boring stat system (power, vitality, etc) and the item system that came out of it that only offer simple +stats, instead of ‘cool’ situational bonusses such as +20% enchantment length or +10 armor when in a stance. In my opinion, stats can and should be completely removed from GW2 and such bonusses on items should be replaced by a whole boatloat of diverse situational bonusses that are a direct part of the characterbuilding/planning process.
• The legendary and ascended items. Exotics were just about right, maybe even a bit too hard to obtain in the first place. I don’t want a gear grind; this game shouldn’t be about obtaining items with stupid stats in my opinion. Again, items should be diverse in what they do and not have bigger numbers.
• PVP and WVW just isn’t interesting at the moment, but I think that is largely because of the above points, with the inability to make interesting and diverse character builds and the game focussing highly on the base stats.
• The dynamic events don’t care that I’m there, because next hour they just replay and reset themselves. Thus they lack meaning and epicness.

I personally don’t think that temporary content is the biggest issue, I have much more problems with the fundamental game mechanics (stats, skills, items, progression).

What I personally want to play this game for:

• Discovering new character builds that noone else found before (not possible)
• Equipping my character with fancy clothing, armor and weapons in combinations that almost noone else has (already possible)
• Influence the way the server evolves and make it different from other servers (not possible, outside the elections we had, which were not per-server unfortunately)
• Build a nice place for myself, such as a nice house, and haul loot and decorations in there (not possible, home instance is terrible because other players cannot easily see it, and it is not customizable)
• Compete with others based on creativity and skill (not really possible)
• Challenge myself playing multiple accounts and doing all of the above with them (not possible unless using outlawed programs. In GW1 it was possible because game had much easier controls. GW2 is the only MMO that I have only one account in, normally I have 3 accounts…)

If ArenaNet is seriously reading and considering the feedback they receive on the forums, then I hope they see Shakkara’s comment. More importantly, I hope they reflect on it. I haven’t completely given up hope on this game—GW is dear to my heart, and GW2 has incredible potential—but I am losing faith.

Chris Whiteside,

It seems to me a lot of the negative feedback has stemmed from the original pillars changing from the original manifesto video. You guys always say that you are an iterative design company. I respect that. The problem is, a lot of times you guys don’t tell us when that philosophy changes. We just get to see it when you release it. I think if you truly desire a discourse with us in a collaborative environment, then when you make the decision to change a pillar, you need to let us know.

We in the community need to get over when a pillar changes though. A LOT of us are hung up on design things from 2008-2010 etc. Those things are gone and we need to move on. If we feel we can’t move on and accept this new direction, we need to remember it is an MMO and there are literally TONS of MMOs vying for our dollars. Maybe some of us need to change MMOs. Either way, the communication channels need to be handled in a better way and that starts with ArenaNet, because ultimately, they make the decisions that shape the game. We offer feedback, but in order to offer feedback, we have to know in advance of a decision being implemented. Our feedback to something that gets released that we never knew was going to be in the game is pointless. If it’s actually “collaborative” and that isn’t just PR speak, we need to know a few things like:

When a design philosophy (a pillar) changes we need to know about it when it changes, not when you implement it in game(the skill update preview for the 15th of October is a good example of it being handled in a collaborative way)(I think the Ascended stuff was handled poorly in terms of communication and would be a good example of it being handled poorly).

Another example is transparency. The “Cantha District” vs. “Arts District” is a big one. It was officially called the Cantha District by ArenaNet people and then covered up. You guys at ArenaNet are usually pretty straightforward when it comes to being transparent, that one was a pretty big gaffe.

As a community we need to stay away from idle threats, people calling for people getting fired, and totally reprehensible comments being aimed at devs and other forum users. Blind rage is ludicrous and if we want real communication we need to talk, not just spew hate and anger.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The communication pipeline in most part lacks one very important component. Specifically, ArenaNet having more time to feedback on your ideas, concerns and our own plans.

Hi and thank you, I also agree that sometimes it feels that ANet does not have enough time to respond with feedback to our ideas or concerns. In many posts I’ve seen the standard answer formed something like this:
(Acknowledgement that Anet is moving towards fixing/resolving this, usually in one line)
(Link provided to the blog post made about how GW2 is moving toward overall goals for this year).
Problem is sometimes that form of answer doesn’t necessarily address the problem in that thread. The link is the “5,000 mile view” of what GW2 is doing.

On the flip side we’ve had great answers from you folks in red about the UI for Living Story and how to bring in the recap ideas we’ve pitched. It wasn’t in exact minutia but it did overall show that just slapping in a “Here’s the story” does take work and will take quite a bit of time.
So there is some progress for certain topic communications, but others might need some refocusing.

ArenaNet has been extremely busy of late listening to you all
(snipped text)
We are also trying to forge a truly ‘Living World’. Therefore with your continued support, and patience we can continue to break new ground. Not just with world of Tyria, but with the method by which we build worlds ‘together’.

ANet is busy, the more sensible posters here realize that. You can actually learn from the community and engage in building a world together with us. For example: Lost Shores was a bust, then SouthSun made it a bit more fun or at least redeemed the new zone in my eyes. Flame and Frost moved so slowly at the beginning, but you folks at Anet said to wait a bit and now I love Rox and Braham.

The problem is with some of the extra irons in your fires we still don’t know where they are going. What is Kiel doing now? Is Gnashblade planning anything after the elections? How is the new Fractal coming along? What were you thinking with Scarlet? Now that last one isn’t put to a mocking tone, but really what is the thought process in creating her? Could we have someone in the Lore team or whatever departments take some time and write up a blog entry about some things they did with her?

Sometimes seeing a character from not only the In Universe view, but also the Behind the Scenes view helps folks enjoy or at least understand the journey more.

Maybe tell us what’s in testing phase 2 or 3 at the moment? Basically leak to the forums before reddit or some other site gets a hold of the info. Yes the virulent members of the forum might still complain, but honestly they could go sip tea with Shiro for all I care.

Could we see another form of the beta survey for certain events in game? I’d love to see something like that for, say, Twilight Assault. This way you can get direct data from us as we just finished it and we get that feeling we’ve contributed.

Therefore you have to ask yourself: Is this a journey you want to take? ….

I can answer that I don’t mind the journey, but I’m tired of hitting the same potholes all the time with ANet. I understand that development takes time. I also understand that your teams are cycling through releases. I also acknowledge and praise the hard work they do. I develop software as well so sometimes we do get that dreadful feeling of wondering “why are we still doing this same mistake?” Only to realize its the time crunch that kills us.

With that said, I hope ANet does publically acknowledge some day that maybe some releases shouldn’t just have a shelf life of two weeks. At a compromise one could call a specific release Part 1 of (insert number) showing us that there’s a progression of story and it will continue next release.
Maybe for the more grand releases they still continue in game for the month and another smaller release is played out later or ties with it. Two releases tied together as one and lasting a month can be done. We’ve seen how Super Adventure Box still continued while “Boss Week” (clever pun) was going on.

I love the game, I’ve defended it, and I have also not agreed with some things.
When ANet said “Hey we’re releasing two week content” I grabbed the popcorn because I thought this would be an interesting experiment. Some releases worked well, some needed more time to play out or more time to debug.

I hope that as we move into the new year with the current stable of seasonal releases under your belt now we can move on to bigger releases. Hopefully the two week time table could be stretched a bit for some; allowing folks the proper time and scale to appreciate where not only the story, but the game itself, is going.

Arnath.2319:

First step to building a stronger relationship between developers and the community: admit your mistakes.

Instead of writing this post ArenaNet you should have made a post admitting the hundreds of mistakes you have made over the past year, apologise, then promise to make things better.

And go under a FFXIV:ARR like thing?

Because if we would really start to list all the issues, you’d end up with some very core things to fix.

Not going to happen, imo.

Gw2 place in MMO history: “The missed opportunity”.
This game could have been so much more, so much better.
Shame.