Guild Wars 2

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.

Why don’t you understand that?

Read this and learn Arenanet

Chris Whiteside.6102:

One key to understanding our philosophy to building worlds is that we don’t give more attention to feedback simply because it is the noisiest, most aggressive, or delivered in the most inflammatory way. We take on board all constructive feedback and actively discuss it, and then make a decision to backlog the item or move forward with it (the development of which can sometimes take longer than some give it credit for). Therefore do not expect feedback to be implemented just because it is something you feel very strongly about. We just don’t develop like that. We instead work with our community to help us navigate these uncharted waters, taking on board all advice and measuring them against the pillars of the Guild Wars 2 and the direction we ultimately want to move in as a whole.

Well first of all avoid censorship. Evryones is free to express their opinions even if you don’ t like their content. You love too much removing the posts you don’ t like.
Another point I want to underline :
Go reading ranger forum and look what rangers think about their class. Instead of adding new stupid content ,work on the balance of classes and try to fix this kitten class. You write that you don’t care of any posts of complains..Well when you nerfed ranger pets and renger spirits…I’ m totally sure you cared of people ^^complains ^^ without realising that in that way you have killed ranger class.
You could have directly deleted Ranger class…

Galen, i undestand your point, and obviously we can’t expect everyone to be pleased with every choice they make. However, the general development should be made towards the enjoyment of a large chunk of the community instead of a single individual desire.

But, how do we know what the community wants? The lack of a feedback tool to provide the feedback into the development tool, makes this forum the only tool for that purpose.

We cannot say for certain that the problems issued here and the solutions presented represent the overall consensus on those subjects. We can’t know, and neither can the ANet. So why are we the minority? Because we are the only ones that voice the oppinions in the forums?

I agree that some posts are indeed Rude, but so is ANet’s behavior towards the individual player that constitutes the community. It’s a two way road!

You had this manifesto you might have forgotten.

Now we have vertical progression and I don’t see any horizontal progression at all (new skills, traits, whatever, all just a promise for the future after one year).

Now we have grinds on every corner, be it dailies and monthlies (which before laures have been optional but now will give you the best gear) or farming for crafting materials (seeing the ridiculous amount of stuff you need for ascended items). Grinding dungeons for gold or whatever, grinding achievements, the game and therefore the Devs don’t even try to hide it anymore.

We have to press one, one and one again, as auto attack still has the most damage potential. Play as you want as long as you are running around in Berzerker in PvE or you are not needed in a group.

I could go on, but you probably see the picture. People getting mad over things you made them expect is just a logical reaction.

There is nothing inherently wrong with reposting a message that the devs wanted us to see. The disrespectful part is choosing to not make clear that it was a copy/paste.

Cactus.2710:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

… Chris wall of text …

Chris W

Why are you asking us this now?? Where was this request for “collaborative development” many months ago when players were FAR more constructive in their comments and FAR more willing to cut you some slack?? You wait until long time players get so frustrated with your silence and misdirection (working on things we didn’t ask for or want instead of the things that need fixing) that they either leave or turn the forums into the angry mess it is now … and THEN you show up to ask for our help and understanding?? Sorry, but your message sounds remarkably disingenuous to me. So far we’ve been mostly ignored and told we are merely a “vocal minority” … where’s the mutual respect in that??

^ Quoted for truth, specially the underlined part!

And what regards that partnership OP said, it’s a kitten blatant lie!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We see problems not as failures but as opportunities

Maybe one of the biggest problems in your development, is not acknowledging your mistakes and working towards fixing them. It’s a big part of growing, specially when being pioneer. One can’t simply walk on the unknown road and drill every brick wall you get in your way. Sometimes, that brick wall is thicker than you think and it’s best to find another solution! But failure still exists!

But one thing you nailed it right. Or we are willing to accept this or we can move on! The latter is a growing option for me!

I think the most important part of what Chris said is that the game is made up of communities not individuals. I honestly thing a lot of people just ignore that fact.

The central issue of that can be seen in feedback people give about ascended gear.

I would say thats probably the single biggest item why people accuse the company of no listening.

But please consider ascended gear came into being based on player feedback. Most of us were there at launch and we all know the flood of posts we had about there being nothing to do at 80 and how cosmetic gear was not a reward worth of effort for some players. However its not like Arenanet completely dismissed the other community that just doesnt want Vertical Progression, they made it less powerful gap wise then all the other tiers, they made it take a long time to acquire so it would last a very very long time and thus have no need to introduce a new tier, they made sure its totally optional and for the most part they made it easy to get (just play and finish dailies (excl ascended weapons) )

Its a compromise. Yet a lot of people will refuse to believe Arenanet listen until such a time as they do the change they desire. Which brings us back to the game being made up of communities not individuals. When people ask please remove ascended gear or make it really quick to acquire etc… they’re not being acted upon in my opinion not because their feedback is ignored but because Arenanet really cant. Acting on that would mean acting against the community who wants those rewards just like if that community were to ask for a new tier they’d be refused because acting on that would go against us who dont want any vertical progression.

Whats probably even more sad is this same community feels hurt and lashes out with statements such as not only does GW2 refuse to take out Vertical progression but it does it much worst then other MMOs… thats really sad in my opinion because to me it seems that clearly they’re doing it much worst specifically to defend that same community thats attacking them. They released new weapon skins nearly every month, they’d have no problem making those skins into a new tier and create a vertical progression in line with those other MMOs but then that would be counter to what the community running those accusations really needs.

Basically what I am trying to say is an MMO is made of different groups of players who like different things. Listening to the community doesnt mean giving what each an every playing in the game wants. Listening to the community means keeping in mind what each group likes / dislikes and try to fit your choices in that paradigm as best as possible. Not getting exactly what you want does not mean you’re not being listened too. Its important to look at the big picture and not at specifics.

You want collaboration, than the ball is your court. Ask yourself why has the forum turned hostile? Might it have anything to do with constantly dodging questions? By going in directions players don’t want you to go IE Ascended Gear, WvW leagues, Bloodlust? Lackluster Living Story that is far from living to begin with? Massive temporary content?

Start talking and fully open up, you might be surprised to learn that the playerbase is a lot more intelligent than you’ve as a whole has given them credit for. If you leave it with this one statement than you are feeding the problem instead of trying to better it.

Knote.2904:

Lol I thought I read this somewhere.

http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/What-A-Dev-Think-About-The-Official-Forums/2845309

The thread is gone now though.

http://www.mistleague.com/what-a-dev-think-about-the-official-forums/

Wow. After seeing this and reading the OP of this thread, I just lost all respect. Seriously? Copy/Paste response? I’m sorry but that is extremely disrespectful. You couldn’t even take the time to address your players with a proper response, so instead you just threw up a copy/paste response. And you want us to show you respect and treat you with kindness when you pull stuff like this?

Just… just wow. Is all. Seriously you should just delete this thread now….

The ground breaking content is a nice idea but the way I see it being ‘used’ is also a slippery slope.

It’s when they say “we want that in a GW2 sort of way”. It’s the idea where it must me different because it must be different and that imo in not a good reason and already causes some traps.

If you want to implement something don’t make it different just for the sake of it like is now happening. Dare to be not different as well. Have a look at other games and if something is bad there then indeed try to do it better but if it’s good do it the same way maybe only adding something.

Anet wants raids but in a GW2 way. They are looking for mounts but in a GW2 way and by now multiple people are already weary about the GW2 way. I remember very good when they said they where working on raids but in a GW2 way. It was not overwhelming positive.

The whole no traditional quest for the sake of it did also not worked out as planned. They had to implement hearths (and later PoI) to fix part of the problem (alpha) but still people miss a connection with the world that quest give.

So it’s fine if Anet wants to make ground breaking content but please stop doing things different for the sake of doing it different.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

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.

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.

All of this said, I wanted to make it clear that whilst we avidly read our forums, we pay little, to no, attention to posts that are disrespectful to other members of our community or our development team. Our developers work very hard to listen to the community, and work tirelessly to create content and features that they hope the community will love. Likewise, the constructive members of our community work hard to provide our development team with feedback that abides with our collaborative standards and overall community philosophy of having a productive, welcoming, and friendly culture. This is a true partnership.

Our goal with Guild Wars 2 is to drive the creation of online worlds forward, thereby creating original, ‘stand-out’ content that pushes the boundaries of what it means to journey through a Living World. Any endeavor on this scale is going to have its challenges, and therefore as a team, we are fully prepared to make mistakes, learn from them, and make even better experiences as we move forward. We see problems not as failures but as opportunities, essentially a necessary part of Tyria’s and our Team’s evolution. It is with this understanding that we work with our community to move forward in the space and truly realize great things.

One key to understanding our philosophy to building worlds is that we don’t give more attention to feedback simply because it is the noisiest, most aggressive, or delivered in the most inflammatory way. We take on board all constructive feedback and actively discuss it, and then make a decision to backlog the item or move forward with it (the development of which can sometimes take longer than some give it credit for). Therefore do not expect feedback to be implemented just because it is something you feel very strongly about. We just don’t develop like that. We instead work with our community to help us navigate these uncharted waters, taking on board all advice and measuring them against the pillars of the Guild Wars 2 and the direction we ultimately want to move in as a whole.

Therefore you have to ask yourself: Is this a journey you want to take? Are you comfortable with expecting the unexpected, and ultimately working together in a positive and productive manner through thick and thin, to pioneer in a space that the team at ArenaNet feel is of huge importance? Many of you are not only comfortable with this paradigm but embrace it, and your contribution, as you know has already shaped Tyria immensely, for which we are extremely grateful and excited about.

Chris W

Why are you asking us this now?? Where was this request for “collaborative development” many months ago when players were FAR more constructive in their comments and FAR more willing to cut you some slack?? You wait until long time players get so frustrated with your silence and misdirection (working on things we didn’t ask for or want instead of the things that need fixing) that they either leave or turn the forums into the angry mess it is now … and THEN you show up to ask for our help and understanding?? Sorry, but your message sounds remarkably disingenuous to me. So far we’ve been mostly ignored and told we are merely a “vocal minority” … where’s the mutual respect in that??

I liked that tool as well. Unfortunately, many people (including myself) gave limited or rushed feedback at the time because it was Beta and we were just rushing to play the game with the limited time we were given.

Not sure they would consider implementing it again because they would need to hire more employees to sort through the feedback…

I don’t trust these kinds of things.

Anyone who has ever created and run public surveys/polls, knows how easy it is to get the results you want by creative wording of questions, deciding which questions to ask, and even stacking the order of multiple choice response choices.

I think what would improve player trust in the company is knowing who there is responsible for each decision on issues of interest to players, plus regular feedback that addresses player concerns and explains the basis for controversial decisions that is fact based, and not spin. For a company that claims to have massive data collection tools in place, they should publicize more of this data instead of keeping it hidden.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

(snip)

Chris W

Hello Chris and the other ArenaNet developers

I get it that you want us to have some patience while you progress this game to a higher level, but some of the changes we have seen were lower quality content than the original game. I’m willing to wait off a few months and come back after that to see if the game got better, by making these added features better or adding more.
At the moment however I don’t see that happening with ascended (because everyone who doesn’t get them will be at a disadvantage) and living story (so much missed temporary content).

I hope you read this, because I really am a fan of Guild Wars 2, but so many parts of the game lack motivation to play. WvW doesn’t define personal skill or group skill, but instead selects victory based on the number of WvW players you have on your server.
PvE is generally a mass experience on end-game… 80 people fighting 1 boss… I really feel like I meant something killing him using auto-attack and standing in one spot (not). Spvp is just meaningless overall, because it doesn’t connect to the other parts of the game.

BUT – and that’s important – most of the other content is absolutely genius (jumping puzzles are awesome, the landscapes are magnificent, the combat itself is rich, easy to handle and certainly not static… and so forth and so forth.

Yours sincerely,

A (once) devoted GW2 player

Chris, I am concerned. Rage is the emotion of unmet expectations. I am really concerned that ArenaNet may not be able to distinguish between a rude noisemaker, and a customer, or more importantly whole community of customers, whose expectations were set, but then not met.

There’s a huge difference between the two.

And that inability to distinguish could be the difference between a vibrant game and a ghost town, as soon as there is a competing game.

Your letter has made me more concerned, not less concerned, that ArenaNet does not intend to continue to provide a game I want to play. I am also more concerned that my feedback, and that of people like me, is being dismissed by ArenaNet executives as “disrespectful”.

Respectfully, I’d like to play an MMO. I hope ArenaNet chooses to continue to provide one.

Dseaver.8740:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I ask that you remain respectful to your fellow man/woman, and be constructive in your approach to the development of the game, and understand Tyria is made up of communities and not individuals.

Chris W

It is such a simple concept, yet its always ridiculed by folks consumed by anger, bordom and frustration.

You guys at ArenaNet have done hell of a job dealing with endless negativity.
Keep up the good work.

Let’s face it … the guys at ANet CREATED a lot of the negativity that shows up on these forums. I’ve played this game since launch, and along with many others posted lots of constructive requests and suggestions that were (and still are) ignored. It isn’t even necessary to read the posts to figure out which issues are considered the most significant by the player base in general … all that is necessary is to scan the thread titles to see the ones that show up over and over again.

After a while the patient voice calling at the customer service desk gets pretty negative after seeing nothing but empty chairs on the other side month after month.

LordByron.8369:

If you really care for the game you need to check 3 things asap:

1) “vertical progression” got out of hand…..it became a grinding like the worst korean mmorpg….
Fully equipping single character to be optimal for PvE and WWW requires not less than lineage 2 probably….and considering the lack of trinity and the need to change equip often this game can t follow the vertical progression road.

With armor you risk to give the final blow to this game for many players…..tie ascended armors to story missions and such…not to gold farming that is making a HUGE disparity between players.

If you force people to rush 10 dungeons daily to farm money they get old quickly…
If you let people play for fun, the game is better for MOST player…leave the few grinders following legendary stuff etc….

2) PvE and WWW are the most popular gamemodes…..yet they are suffering from PvP balancing….PvP is ruining PvE.

3) Some decisions you made pushed the friendly community we had at launch to what we have now…..consider that also please.
People start measuring time with gold profit rather than fun…..

I would like to add to this:
The base game is a good foundation- build on that with the Living Word

At the moment the game feels very disjointed because there is no connection between your character, the world, the personal story and the Living World

For the Living World to be truly living instead of barely coherent you need to use what you have in place i.e the main plot- the orders – the personal story, the DE’s etc and use that to drive the Living World forward.

Temporary content should drive permanent content.

The game could also benefit from having emotional roots-
if you are interested in how communities interact in the game you need to give them anchors.
Some things like decent guild tools, guild halls, personal housing etc
A zerg is not a community

Another thing is communication- sure you see the lack of it but we are where we are as a community because we are left in a vacuum by you guys.
You do not communicate enough, you know this.
It is all good to ask that we step on for the ride/ or not.
But what is the ride?
State where you want the game to go- do it honestly and decisively but do it.
The reason the forums are such a cesspit is because we are all at sea here.
You cannot have a one sided collaboration

Oh and please- not sure how you collect data via metrics or actually from in-game but please take a look in game- just because a million people are running up and down does not mean they are enjoying themselves- it means they are farming because they are afraid of being left behind.
Sometimes I feel that there is a disconnect between what is happening and your interpretation of what is happening

I love this game and I have been here from the betas- so far I am along for the ride but sometimes I feel like you guys- as awesome as you are- need a bit of tough love.
Less PR, more honesty and transparency.

as a complete aside
Recently Kirsten Perry did a podcast about her work process- that was amazing and incredibly appreciated

I hate to say it but the hostile community can be blamed on other big name companies. Example EA being voted twice for most hated. From what I have noticed over the years “screwed” by dev’s/publishers has basically caused a revolution of gamers tired of having bugs that are a huge problem based on what that game is based on. Example Mass Effect 3 had a bad ending, people went nuts about it, Total War 2 had terrible AI in an RTS game.. people went nuts over it, Guild Wars 2 having cosmetic bugs and refusing/unable to fix them.

These types of glaring flaws have caused gamers to just say “screw it I have had it and I will let everyone know it”. Has anyone seen the Battlefield 4 Beta forums? It is literally a warzone because dev’s/publishers keep making the same mistake and ignore something that is “rude” when it is at its core a real issue that needs to be looked at.

Now that the community’s have just gotten so “hostile” dev’s are just afraid to say anything so they don’t.. making it worse, it is a spiraling issue and it will most likely just keep getting out of control. They bring this on themselves and then try to tell us to calm down and be respectful when basing community likes and dislikes by how many people log on that day of content doesn’t give great data.

Asking players to calm down will do almost nothing because the damage has been done. When you mess up something and then get told to fix…. then pushed to fix it….then yelled at about it and slapped in the face… going and saying hey thats not nice don’t do that.

People have paid real money for this game and when the people who take that money and then put it into content nobody/select few people like is not how you do it. Being biased about content in the game that plays a major role is a bad way to do things and it will only get worse sorry to say. You brought it on yourself and you need to fix your priorities because at the moment they are pretty messed up.

Nage.1520:

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.

Why don’t you understand that?

You make it sound like no one at all likes the changes. People don’t hate these things, some people do, at least in regards to temporary content and ascended gear. Some things you call mistakes, other people quite like. The balance stuff, well yeah, that needs a whole lot of work…but if you keep using the world people as if everyone things the same, you completely lose any kind of credibility.

Agreed, some people do like them. Also some people like exploiting and some people like hacking. When we refer to large groups of people their is always going to be variation about opinions on a subject, particularly if it involves change. My post did not state that every player or forum reader shared a collective opinion or my own. I did use plural terms, however given the nature of these terms and the amount of evidence that these points are shared by a considerable number of people on the forums, I believe said usage is justified.

The points I am referring to are the ones which are constantly brought up in the forums and attract a lot of negative feedback – again for a reason. If people like said content, I am also sure they have a reason for liking it. If people are angry, and are angry for a reason, maybe that reason should be considered instead of just making condescending threads about how you want people to agree with your approach.

If there were polls on these subjects, on the forums, I think we would find an overwhelming majority of people don’t like many of these points. We could say that this is only representative of the people posting in the forums not the game altogether, however this thread is only targeted towards the people in this forum.

tldr; Semantics aside, people are angry for a reason. Said changes have affected a lot of people in negative ways and they respond with negativity. If Anet doesn’t expect that or think it’s warranted giving the nature of some of these changes, they need to spend more time trying to understand their forum community and less time enforcing group think. This tldr is far too long.

If you really care for the game you need to check 3 things asap:

1) “vertical progression” got out of hand…..it became a grinding like the worst korean mmorpg….
Fully equipping single character to be optimal for PvE and WWW requires not less than lineage 2 probably….and considering the lack of trinity and the need to change equip often this game can t follow the vertical progression road.

With armor you risk to give the final blow to this game for many players…..tie ascended armors to story missions and such…not to gold farming that is making a HUGE disparity between players.

If you force people to rush 10 dungeons daily to farm money they get old quickly…
If you let people play for fun, the game is better for MOST player…leave the few grinders following legendary stuff etc….

2) PvE and WWW are the most popular gamemodes…..yet they are suffering from PvP balancing….PvP is ruining PvE.

3) Some decisions you made pushed the friendly community we had at launch to what we have now…..consider that also please.
People start measuring time with gold profit rather than fun…..

What groundbreaking content?

If we look at PVE, most of the content is repetitive achievements that are rendered differently when in reality they are the same as half the content in the starting zones. We also get a constant temporary content and constant bugs with anything released while existing bugs take months for Anet to admit exist, let along fix. Some content has been great- though most of said content disappears after a couple of weeks so what difference does it make.

You know, you could have skipped this living story entirely and added new permanent content, every month that was meaningful and required skill. You know, like completing some chain to get a rare skin. Or working on world bosses after it was initially obvious the old system didn’t work. Or you know, precusor quests? Since the precusor system is obviously the epitome of your groundbreaking content.

For PVP, you released a major balance patch which messed up the meta totally creating a number of completely over the top builds. Not only do you not admit it, even when you admit the meta is bad, but it has taken nearly 4 months for a balence patch… which from the look of it, won’t help with the current situation. The entire concept of balance is based around which classes are require pointless spamming and passive functions to be casual friendly. Who needs a skill cap right.

Let’s not even talk about your amazing game mode and after a year how the competitive scene is flourishing with talent and has so many fans.

As for WVW, you have done nearly the opposite of what people have been requesting since the game mode was released. Instead of making things more balenced, you add more and more passive bonuses which benefit the winning side more. Then you add leagues, which will fracture the server balence and populations even more. You still haven’t fixed the exploits, and didn’t even admit to some of them until people had video recordings of your own developers exploiting into towers. Class balence doesn’t exist, server balence doesn’t exist outside of T1, worse you treat your ‘vision’ of how things are meant to be perfect, regardless if things are not that way nor will be with the decisions you make.

I won’t even get started on ascended gear.

So I welcome you to continue to praise your efforts and how well you think you are doing. You have delivered a good platform with a lot of potential. But the constant group think and obsession with living story and esports is showing in the way you progress.

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.

Why don’t you understand that?

I’m all for decency, civility and respect. However, one thing about the OP concerns me. The post creates the impression that the only feedback that will be listened to is that which would move the game in the direction it’s already going. For example (not making a statement about Teq, here, just using it as an example), saying, “I like the Teq event, and it could use these few tweaks.” would be listened to, while saying, “I dislike the Teq event, and wish it were gone from the game for these reasons.” would be ignored.

I hope I’m wrong. Negativity in and of itself is neither rude nor uncivil. The way it’s expressed is the indicator of that. Some posters may not have any ideas on how to fix what bothers them, but their comments, if posed respectfully, should also be looked at. Knowing what someone doesn’t like is important feedback.

zeromius.1604:

See, the problem is that you have different people with different and often contradicting opinions. Meeting the demands of one person may in fact upset another. You have mixed opinions about gear progression, mixed opinions on itemization, mixed opinions on types of content to be released, and most importantly mixed opinions on the direction the game should move in. It would be impossible to meet everyone’s demands not due to lack of resources but simply because they are conflicting.

As I said in my post earlier in this thread, I feel that this is something of an excuse. With an MMO, especially one with the size and scale of GW2, you’re always going to have a very large player base that you have to cater to in specific ways. It’s absolutely important to respect all of the players you want to keep in your community but you can’t let indecision and fear of offending some of those players force you to sit on your hands and remain quiet. All that causes is infighting amongst the player base and arguments over what the development house and/or parent company intends for the game.

When no one is “right” it means that everyone is wrong and no one has any true idea of what the development house is really intending for the game and what their plans are. Sure, some decisions are going to annoy people or potentially cause them to leave the game. If, however, those decisions are rational, discussable and explainable, it goes a long way to at least confirm that the development house has a well considered plan. When the only communication on repeat obvious contentious issues is something like “we see you’re talking about this” as in the case of Ascended Gear or “we haven’t decided yet” in the case of Expansions then you’re just asking for animosity. Develop a plan you can stick to and defend if necessary, then at least be honest with the players about what your intentions and thoughts are. As some others have posted, a published roadmap could be a decent first step in this process.

Shockwave.1230:

It’s incredibly exciting that ANet does listen to forum goers. It’s important to understand as well that ANet will not act on some feedback, because it is in conflict with the game’s direction or because they simply don’t have the time/money/resources to have acted already on some feedback.

ascended gear says hello

i dont think Anet really cares about feedback at this point, its all about what will benefit game/ gem sales the most positively, and damage control/ spin, the Anet brand is already severely compromised at this point.

if they did care they would give us something like 3 months notice of major game changes rather than 3 days, you know enough time for feedback to be given, considered and acted upon.

but if you want collaborative development consider implementing some of the following

Test servers -since you seem to having problems fully testing releases also faster feedback
Non ascended servers – at least half the population would probably move to these
Fix Jewel crafting – its currently obsolete (will probably craft infusions in a year)
remove DR and diminish RNG – reward players for effort not luck
Less gold based content – end game is basically farm gold to bypass RNG
Better communication- actually communicating without PR spin and pointless embellishments

Shockwave.1230:

3 of 3

One key to understanding our philosophy to building worlds is that we don’t give more attention to feedback simply because it is the noisiest, most aggressive, or delivered in the most inflammatory way. We take on board all constructive feedback and actively discuss it, and then make a decision to backlog the item or move forward with it (the development of which can sometimes take longer than some give it credit for). Therefore do not expect feedback to be implemented just because it is something you feel very strongly about. We just don’t develop like that. We instead work with our community to help us navigate these uncharted waters, taking on board all advice and measuring them against the pillars of the Guild Wars 2 and the direction we ultimately want to move in as a whole.

Some of this stuff is repeat again, but important to note is that they haven’t put more time into feedback as being part of their philosophy, because of how unrefined most of it actually is. Again a lot of it is raw emotion with a lot of negativity, which most people would prefer not to filter through, because people don’t like negativity (even companies are made up of people).

Most importantly of note here, is that ANet measures feedback against the pillars of Guild Wars 2 and the direction they want to move. This is crucial. This means that regardless of player feedback, ultimately ANet is in control and driving this game. This is possibly one of the most important things to keep in mind when understanding how/why the game is going in the direction that it is.

But what are the pillars NOW? Because they have definitely changed over the life of the game and one of the big issues is that anet haven’t communicated enough about why and what they are doing.

I feel like this is partly a response to the “no crafting precursors this year” comment made by Colin recently.

I believe we can all agree with what you have said Chris, less rage, more maturity and more collaboration.

However like the majority of other people posting i could not help but roll my eyes and chuckle while reading your post. Respect go’s both ways and sadly the community at large feels like the entire ArenaNet team dose not respect its players, you say you’re listening to us yet it dose not show in game or even here on these forums.

I would love for the community and the ArenaNet team to collaborate like it use to back in Alpha and Beta, but after an entire year of broken promises, lies, content being removed, bugs, class imbalance how are we meant to take your post seriously?

It is up to you ArenaNet to win us back, dont through all the blame on us, sadly i think your post has just made things worse.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

style.6173:

Actually I think ANET for the most part does listen when it comes to PvE. The problem is that the PvP team is stubborn and won’t increase game modes (hello team deathmatch) and the WvW team is completely out of touch. The WvW team in particular is a problem.

This is just disrespectful towards the PvP devs, the teams have clearly stated why they don’t want too many modes. They also mentioned that they are testing a lot of other modes as well. I’m happy that they don’t listen to knee-jerk reactions, maybe it would help to watch a few of the older released PvP-state of the game videos to get a bit of insight. It’s quite complicated.

WvW team out of touch? Because they don’t open WvW to the GvG-crowd which isn’t playing the mode as intended? You don’t play basketball in the last minutes of a soccermatch which is already decided, because soccer fans would hate this. I love the implementation of the new map-centres of the borderland maps. I’ve played quite a bit WvW since the implementation of the buff and it is half as bad because of the nature of it’s implementation: it changes quite fast and often.

Personally I would have gone with something different than a statistical boon, but it’s not easy to come up with something which gives people reason enough to capture these points. I would have enjoyed more breakout events / npcs who bring along siege when 3 of 5 points are capped instead of the buff, but I guess the crowd which is stubbornly against any npc-interaction in WvW would have been against such a thing.

You think adding a team deathmatch mode is difficult? I bet it would be more popular out of the gate than conquest. Thanks though you did make my point for me. The PvP team is stubborn around the game modes.

As for the WvW team, there is a lot bigger issues than GvG. Ranks, siege, failed bloodlust model, an upcoming fail league model, glitch bugs that have been open for months, zoom hacks, bad matchups, no new maps, a broken commander system…. Do I need to go on? They are out of touch. Instead if implementing valuable features we get new siege mastery skills.

zeromius.1604:

See, the problem is that you have different people with different and often contradicting opinions. Meeting the demands of one person may in fact upset another. You have mixed opinions about gear progression, mixed opinions on itemization, mixed opinions on types of content to be released, and most importantly mixed opinions on the direction the game should move in. It would be impossible to meet everyone’s demands not due to lack of resources but simply because they are conflicting.

There are of course instances where the community agrees on certain things. Often times, incorporating feedback might not result in something positive even if initially it seemed like it would. In the past before there was the Internet, game developers did have the “this is our game and we will do what we want with it” attitude and many of those games turned out to be great. There were all the old Mario games, Sonic games, the old Fallout series, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, Oblivion, Final Fantasy, etc.

I agree, there are many things where the community is split like how LS is updated or should we get new maps or update current maps, however there are still numerous instances where the seeming majority of a populations (ie PvE, PvP, WvW) has been against an addition or subtraction and yet it was done anyway.

Some Examples:
-Player base has spoken out against temporary content since the start – we were given temp content for months
-Player base wants a way to aquire weapons from special events without RNG – we are given a ticket system that is based on RNG from some of the most useless items in the game (BLTC)
-Player base has asked for the game to be more rewarding – we have recieved updates to dungeons in order to bring all dungeon paths in line while nerfing profitable methods of game play to ensure “no style is more profitable then another” (unless of course you play the TP)
-WvWers have been outspoken against bloodlust or any buff that causes snowball effect – those such mechanics were defiently added
-PvPers wanted skill balance since summer – we were put on hold so 10 total players would not be forced to think of new strategies even though… as top players in the world… that should not have been an issue
-PvPers want increased rewards and rank to mean something… no increases besides PvE skins has ever been added and rank is even more easily farmed

And many things could be added to this list.

What is extremely funny is the community really yearns for more information. Anet refuses to say anything till its basically already been added to a release. If only they would take some features – precursor crafting for intance – and wrote blogs about how its being designed, what work needs to go into the project, how coding is coming along, ect… I think you would find people much happier. Its win win too as the player base will then become pretty aware that updates wont and cant happen over night. However this would be a pretty substantial culture shift for Anet.

You should introduce something like Roadmap that SOE is using for Planetside 2 and EverQuest Next.
Instead of listening to 893264 posts of forums which most of it are random and plain stupid ideas that simply doesn’t fit the game, you should just post idea of Roadmap (by that I mean you guys in AN), and let community vote for feature they want to see first.
Based on roadmap, you can prioritize which features should be added.

I’m 100% sure that more people will be willing to participate in such community driver polling system, especially if you could manage to add it inside game.
At this point I say. Screw integrity or immersion. Just add new UI element. Let’s call it “Community Voting”, where there will ideas posted by developers, and users can vote for them.

How you gather and create new ideas is your own thing. But I can safly say that assuming which things to prioritize based on forum noise in which probably less than 5% of entire player base participate, is simply not going to work.
As introduction of ascended items showed.

I stated earlier that respect has to go both ways. Let me illustrate.

When a person is in WvW which is as we are all aware of, quite well populated with “hacks” they naturally come to the boards to voice their frustrations. The post will be deleted by the moderators and the OP will get an infraction BUT their concerns are NEVER addressed by a developer! Instead we are told to submit a report but we are never told if it was truly a hack or not. Left in the dark like a mushroom as someone has stated.

Not to mention that there is no valid choice to report a game hack or possible exploit in WvW, the population has to jump through hoops and log it as something totally different. This problem and others have been reported time and time again, the threads are invariably closed and nothing is heard from the developers.

Now I understand fully about having a priority list. Twenty years as a senior planner with a major corporation taught me the value about having such a list. However, there is one thing that ANET is remiss in doing and that is they are NOT telling their customers exactly what the priorities are. We get soon, or a list of things going to be looked at before the end of the year BUT it is a list that does not address all those little irritants such as the aforementioned hacking or the lack of a proper reporting tool.

Take all those concerns that you STATE you read diligently, place them into a list, even if it is 3 pages long, and simply state what the priority is to action those items or even if they will be acted on or not. Do not simply have the moderators close a thread and impose infractions on the poster. That poster posted for a reason, try to understand that reason first and then tell that person you understand.

Or in simple words “respect breeds respect”. Respect given will be returned in a far greater quantity.