Guild Wars 2

I understood what he was saying, but couldn’t help but chuckle throughout most of it (or what I read, it skips around the points on something that can be said in a single sentence). You’re trying, we get it. But saying you aren’t one for excuses and then saying you’ve been busy is frankly laughable. The only people who aren’t busy are the < 18 crowd and people with no need to work for a living. I know you guys can’t be frank with us and just give a direct answer in fear of driving off the community (which I’ve seen obliterate game communities in the past), but the whole twinkie on the end of a fishing pole attempt to keep us playing is beginning to wear us down. Either communicate (Don’t most large companies have some sort of community manager(s)? Why do I never see them?) or demonstrate capability. I think that’s all most of us ask.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

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

If you don’t want us discussing forum moderation, perhaps it would be best for all involved if CC Danicia’s post about forum moderation were removed to avoid any confusion? It would be very easy for someone to assume that an ArenaNet employee’s post regarding forum moderation makes it fair game/on-topic.

I’m never going to forget that there was probably a Scope’s Broke thread per month on the Engineer boards before the 285-day mark, where somebody posted about it in the sPvP boards. A month or two later, the thing’s been replaced with something functional.

You want us to think you’re paying attention, actually do so.

Also, I can’t help but recall seeing a blog post by a particular member of the staff wherein they claim to have been pulled aside by management for setting a standard of communication that they didn’t feel other departments should feel the need to meet.

Presumably they were talking to us when they didn’t have breadcrumbs to throw.

A concern I have is the majority of “content” that has been added is temporary. I’m sure others would agree with me that I want to consume content at my own pace, not be forced to play the flavor of the week living story events…

I wouldn’t exactly call the current crop of content we’ve been getting from the living world “ground breaking.” But whatever. As long as the development team starts making an effort to fix some of the hundreds of bugs and balance issues with this game, and swiftly gets over the “your professions is only 10%, so you’re not worth paying attention to” development philosophy I’ll be happy.

Thanks for this post Chris – though I think you have to be “black and white” and your choices you’ve made in game.

So far, what i’ve seen is:
- Ascended gear was added not because we asked for it (in fact, you guys stated you didn’t want to be like other games and add another tier of gear), instead it was because you found that people were gaining their legendaries too fast for you too curb. You underestimated player’s potential then fumbled and released something which Anet had openly said, they’d wished they’d released it in a better fashion.

- Living story – was this really added for benifit to players or to keep server numbers up?
Colin had mentioned, the reason you’re doing this crazy 2 week cycle is because you saw player numbers drop off after about 2 weeks….not necessarily because of player feedback, not because people wanted more storytelling (because after the personal story being less about the player and more about Trahearne, it was baffling you decided to go the story route)

Up till now as well, it seems that metrics seem to trump player feedback, but that’s a pretty long argument. All I can say is…I’ve barely seen anyone say that they wanted a DR implementation.

what am i…
…what is this…

wut do

I feel like… they miiiight be listening, but then somehow Professor X very carefully avoids adding that Catalyst beaker we place adjacent to their experiment, and instead they very predictably add the same beaker of sparkle quaggan gunk instead only to have 3 MojoJoJo’s pop out of the mixture

That’s their entire development process…. they listen to everything, and then only “take” the advice they were going to DO ANYWAY. …instead of taking the suggestions that truly are innovative, risky, or atleast similar to GW1’s solutions for similar problems.

Chris, I appreciate the post. However, I would appreciate it even more if you guys could do something like a State of the Game. And what we should expect moving forward. A lot of players don’t know where GW2 is going and they don’t know what to expect. It seems like a game without direction at the moment, and to me that is the key issue. There seems to be some sort of indecisiveness within GW2 (real or perceived).

You don’t have to do something like that, but players would like to see something like that. People are not being negative for no reason (most of the time). There are some underlying issues why it seems like people are upset. And yes I agree, being a troll or angry is not the best way to go about it.

I am afraid without tackling the root issue, nothing will change.

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.

Its hardly random. There’s so much anger in this forum you could show it to religious zealots (any of them, lets not be discriminatory) and they’d step back and go “whoa guys, chill a little.”.

And some of it is warranted, most of it less so, and it kindof feeds itself until everyone loses their reason and focuses on the negatives.

And honestly, I don’t think the rage level is indicative of the actual player base, but like all things, that’s heavily tinted by my opinion.

And I honestly would have expected this sooner. And much more rudely. Some of the posts are really inflammatory and I’m certain its hard not to just whip out the ban hammer in a rage, or at least respond angrily. I’d have been tempted myself, especially if they work as hard, and for as many hours, as I think they do on this game.

Well this is random

I’m not going to be around a computer tomorrow for the live QA session. Anybody want to be a pal and post this to Devon for me? It’s a proposal to balance league play.

http://youtu.be/qHcO6Xo8eJ8

Sorry if this sounds awful, but the way I read Mr. Johanson’s response, was this:

We plan on allowing you to make precursors via crafting, but the piece of paper that says “Make precursors craftable” and that’s it, is somewhere on a desk of stuff that we aren’t dealing with right now. I know we already said that it would be available before the end of the year, but since we are not dealing with it and haven’t even bothered with it, I’m now going to tell you that it’s more than likely not going to make it by the end of the year. But don’t worry, we got plenty of other temp content and more stuff to delete from the game so we can replace it with new content to distract you from this and hope you forget about it (like they have done with plenty of other things already).

Sorry but after all the mistrust, lies, deceit, disrespect, and the complete reverse of direction for the game, that they have spread around, I find it hard to believe that they are actually working on this.

Ludwig.4138:

Besides, from the Scarlet short story, I see a huge difference. The Joker “just wants to watch the world burn” and Harley just wants to please him. Scarlet wants to burn the world and have a hand in recreating it. She is not crazy, she is enlightened. Still that is not a motive, just a frame of mind. Her motive is fueled by pure evil, self importance, and a paranoia that if she does not do this, then she doesn’t matter. To her, it seems like everyone lives and dies and the world is still how it is supposed to be, and she doesn’t like that. Crazy? No, she knows what she’s doing, and she is smart enough to know how we perceive right and wrong, but she just doesn’t care. Evil.

She’s a narcissistic, psychopathic sociopath. She’s self-absorbed, self-important, incapable of empathizing with others, and she hates what everyone else is doing and refuses to try and fit in. Instead, because of her narcissism, she wants to make everyone love her and do things her way. She’s bullied and threatened the Aetherblades into conforming to her will (“Have you met my Aetherbaldes? They work for me because… they like living.”), and when she gets defeated at the Jubilee, she sends mailbombs to the players.

While she is one of the most unbalanced characters to ever have been kittened out of someone’s fevered imagination in forever, she isn’t enlightened. She’s too self-absorbed to ever be enlightened. She cannot even conceive of what true enlightenment is because it isn’t her, and if it isn’t her, she doesn’t care.

And then there’s her “back story”. I put it in quotes because it’s the sort of thing that I was writing when I was 6. She’s applied to and been accepted by all 3 colleges of the Asura. What? No Asura has ever done that, so why would the racially stuck up and self-important Asura allow a walking salad to do it? She’s a blacksmith, but quit because it was too easy. In what universe? Smithing is hard work and leave very little time for anything else. She’s the Six’s answer to everything you’ll ever need. Blindly fall to your knees and worship her.

Excuse me, I’m actually becoming physically ill thinking about how poorly written and implemented she is.

Scarlet isn’t the best villian ever. She’s the worse plot device ever contrived. She’s the laziest type of writing there is. Evil isn’t monolithic, and yet she’s quickly making every evil faction in GW2 fall under her sway. What’s next for her? Dominating the Elder Dragons? The Inquest is secretly working for her all this time and they would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling players? Grand conspiracies don’t all tie up neatly under one little bow. They’re big messy self-conflicting affairs. They have lots of heads and lots of agendas, and none of them get along with one another for too long.

This isn’t normal, but on Scarlet Briar it is. Scarlet. Not even once.

Should of been the highest priority, a lot of your veteran players are waiting on it to progress in this game

ColinJohanson.2394:

The precursor building (and corresponding additional legendary items) is the one highest at risk to not make it this year.

No problems Mister Colin Johanson!

So… my return to the game is at highest risk to not happen this year! ;D

Anyone remember this lovely tidbit when Dusk was under 300 gold

LinseyMurdock.4165:

We have been watching the prices climbing on Legendary precursors and share your concerns about some of them becoming too expensive. We will continue to monitor the situation and will make any adjustments we feel are necessary.

Obviously you didnt share those concerns or we wouldnt be staring down 800+ gold precursors.

So one of the most requested features since almost release and its the one you guys decide to push back. GG…

ColinJohanson.2394:

words

TL;DR Not this year.

Have to go with Xcom on this. Anet employees are professionals when it comes to making statements that are either vague or can’t be taken as a direct answer.
It’s not just the wording of the statement, it’s the history of such statements. Personally I think the post was made to string people along and keep them logging in. If they came out and said “no”, people would quit GW2 simply because they refuse to play Anet’s stupid gambling game.
They are stringing people along to keep numbers up.
They are more than welcome to prove me wrong. I would like to be wrong on this one.

There’s no reason for the gauntlet and SAB to be gone. Perfectly hard and delicious solo content.

I just came back a couple weeks ago to try out all of the new content after a long hiatus. I was very happy with Super Adventure Box, and I was having a blast playing it on varying difficulties inbetween study sessions. However, I logged on today to find out that I’m unable to play it.

I simply don’t understand why new content is added only to be removed a month later. Forcing players to play the new content by locking out everything else might get bodies where you want them, but I guarantee you’ll have far less long-lasting playerbase than if you released permanent content.

I can understand some content being temporary, but locking players out of things like Super Adventure Box and the Crown Pavilion is absolutely deplorable. It’s an absolute waste of your development time to release temporary content, especially in a case like Super Adventure Box. My friend was thinking about picking the game up solely to play Super Adventure Box, but that won’t be happening now.

As a long-time Guild Wars 1 fan, it really hurts to be forced to break away from a world that you’ve spent so much time in, but I’m honestly just done until there is more permanent content or an expansion.

An option I’d really like to see is smart ground targeting when targeting areas that are out of range.

Like if I use a 900 range teleport, but I cast it at 1000 range, then it still casts at it’s maximum 900 range in the direction of where I tried to cast it. Instead, right now it just fails until you target within range, which usually means you’ll waste like 100 range.

This would be a huge QOL change.

xephire.8324:

Expansion=same kitten you’re getting right now.

Some things a Guild Wars 2 expansion would probably have:
– New zones
– Expanded Personal Story
– A coherent story

Some things a Guild Wars 2 expansion would possibly have:
– A new playable race

Some things the Guild Wars 2 Living Story absolutely hasn’t delivered:
– New zones
– Expanded Personal Story
– A coherent story
– A new playable race

Onshidesigns.1069:

I already paid for a expansion in gems!

I would never give currency to a company that does not fix major issues in game after a bloody year.

Many of the complains you see now are coming from things that are put in the game to get people to buy gems. Living story is there to have an excuse to put also temporary items in the gem-store and have people logging in. same for time-gated content.

No fun in collecting pets because they are mostly in the gem-store.

Gold driven system because them people are more likely to buy gems to convert to gold.

What do you think about an ingame barber where you can cut your hair for 15 silver.. well then they can’t sell the hair using gems.

Anet should focus on expansions as income not on gems. Then they would be able to improve the game in stead of having to make compromises to get people to buy gems.

In a way they made a ingame poll about this. Do we want a gem-store focus? The gem-store guy Evon lost the election.

So go focus on the expansions.

Then again.. while there are still many people with bad money management skills who spend many money on the gem-store because every time Anet creates a sense of urgency or whatever to get people to buy an item they can’t refuse.