Guild Wars 2

Brother Grimm.5176:

Cactus.2710:

I sure hope ANet is proud of themselves for creating an event that puts players at cross purposes with each other in a large group context. It doesn’t matter where you stand on this topic … ANet is at fault here, not other players.

That attitude is 100% cop-out …. take responsibility for you own actions and expect the same from others (tho you will be hugely disappointed with them most of the time). Anet can certainly modify the content to try and change player behavior, but full out BLAMING them for player actions is absurd and laughable.

You can moderately farm and still get completion.

Exactly.

Bullcrap. It’s not a copout at all … because both sides have perfectly legitimate reasons for playing the game as they the want to. It has nothing at all to do with anyone, me or anyone else, “taking responsibility for their own actions.” The problem purely comes from ANet creating a situation that requires cooperation among large groups of players yet gives them different and essentially opposite objectives.

Yes, it is possible to do both if you play enough hours, but anyone who justifiably wants to do just one is at odds with those who want to do the other in any particular event. That’s poor game design, pure and simple. Conquest in Rift proved that over a year ago, but ANet somehow didn’t pay attention.

I sure hope ANet is proud of themselves for creating an event that puts players at cross purposes with each other in a large group context. It doesn’t matter where you stand on this topic … ANet is at fault here, not other players.

Oranisagu.3706:

have seen this happening as well. some people might find it annoying, but I find it hilarious and very in-character for scarlet. it really fits her to lock onto one target and simply go after it, ignoring the giant army on the map. batkitten crazy but still very focused ^^

I’ve heard people complaining about it, but since chances are it happens only once, if at all, to anyone, it will only ‘interfere’ with the mindless farming for one invasion, I really hope people can endure it without crying too much.

Actually, we weren’t complaining at all. Even my wife found it pretty funny after a while.

Last night my wife and I were running Chaos invasions, and early in the event in one zone Scarlet spawned on top of my wife. My wife managed to apply quite a bit of damage before she had to run off, and Scarlett emoted something to the effect of “naughty girl, I’m going to put you on my list.” After that for the rest of that event, no matter where Scarlet spawned after we closed a portal she went straight to my wife. It happened eight or ten times in a row … didn’t matter where my wife was relative to other players, Scarlet just homed in on her. My son was playing with us as well and we both witnessed it. It was really comical. Is this part of the game or mere coincidence?

Gabby.3205:

Let’s be honest here, both sides have been pretty nasty to each other. Farmers calling completers whiners, completers calling farmers sploiters and everybody SCREAMING in map chat.

The thing is, we can’t tell people to play the way we want. We can tell them what to do if they want to complete the event, since a lot of people don’t know how the event works, but if they just want to farm, they will farm. And you know what? That’s alright! Variety is good! Imagine if all of us liked only one play style, or if everybody wanted to do just one thing all the time? It would be boring as hell. People should play the way they want, and that’s all.

Players shouldn’t be yelling at each other over this. They should be yelling at ANet for designing a kittened up event that pits the community against each other.

Seraph.9635:

Guys, looks like a fix ain’t coming

Josh Davis.6015:

Hi guys,

After some careful investigation of these achievements, we believe there are a few technical restrictions and communication issues that are causing the problems here.

First, Molten and Pirate events do not grant achievement credit. This means that if you hop into an invasion right as scarlet spawns, or if you spend an entire invasion on pirate and/or molten events, you will not get achievement credit for that map.

Second, disconnecting during an invasion seems to have some odd effects on participation credit, especially if you end up switching maps in the process (i.e. moving to a different overflow). You should still get credit if you participate in at least one watchwork event after reconnecting, but if you disconnect, you should assume your participation credit up to that point has been lost. This is far from ideal, but it would be a code-level fix, and we wouldn’t be able to get it in before the end of the event.

Lastly, because the previous two issues are not super obvious, people may be losing track of which maps they have already gotten credit for. The meta rewards are always given as long as you’re on the map when it ends. Many players expect this to mean that they also received achievement credit (which ideally should be a reasonable assumption). However, as this is not always the case, they may mark off a map as complete, even though they did not receive achievement credit.

So in order to receive achievement credit, you need to participate and complete at least one watchwork portal event, and still be on the map when the meta ends. It doesn’t matter how far the meta gets progressed, and you don’t need to participate in any Molten/Pirate events.

Hopefully this clarifies some things for you, and many apologies for any frustration this has caused. In the future, we will try to ensure that large-scale achievements like this are more easily trackable to cut down on any potential confusion.

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/merged-Invasion-Canceler-not-advancing/page/5#post2705862

" In the future, we will try to ensure that large-scale achievements like this are more easily trackable to cut down on any potential confusion."

Because that was so hard to think of in the first place????

King Amadaeus.8619:

What else do you expect when a game was designed by casual people for the casual masses, and said masses get killed by someone “not-so-casual”…..

Besides they all know if they whine enough everything will get “adjusted”…It has been proven many times.

The single biggest problem in this game is that there are large groups of people that think they should win every fight. And when they do not, they think surely whatever or whomever beat them is OP.

And it is truly amazing how many players can’t grasp the rock/paper/scissors aspect of the game. GW2 has LOTS of faults, but expecting every class/spec (no matter how well played) to be competitive any other class/spec … in every context no less … is just ridiculous. Somebody not posted this not long ago, which I thought was hilarious:

“Dear ANet,

Rock is over powered.
Paper is fine.

signed, Scissors"

Achilles.3128:

WXP is still a fairly new addition if I’m not mistaken. Most likely it’s on their to-do list.

If you really want it, you’d better hope that it isn’t on ANet’s to-do list. That’s where all good things go to die. Your best tactic is to never ask for it and to pretend you couldn’t care less about it … then it might suddenly appear out of nowhere in a patch.

No matter which side of the fence you are on, it is simply stupid game design to set up different objectives that require cooperation to achieve. I mean pathetically stupid.

I don’t really think that this has “brought out the worst in GW2.” Rather, it highlights the total cluelessness of the people plotting the direction of this game. It should have been readily apparent that creating a game environment where there were two fairly radical different objectives, but where both objectives required cooperation among the majority of players, would create a rift in the player base. Even if the devs weren’t astute enough to figure this out themselves, they had a highly visible example in the form of Conquest in the game Rift, where players were constantly at each other’s throats because the rewards for winning each match were different than the rewards for farming. I find Anet’s lack of insight here astounding.

Pleurodesed.7625:

Yes, zergs are an issue; but they’re being looked at.
I feel a bit lazy to find the source but WvW is going to change as stated on the news.

You’re way more gullible than lazy if you think that WvW is going to materially change. Compared to almost everything else in GW2, WvW has fewer resources and less attention from ANet, so where is all that “change” going to come from?

But let’s pretend you are right. How long will it be before you expect we will see some evidence of significant change? I’m serious … please specify a time frame so the rest of us can get an outside opinion on what “soon” means.

souless.1935:

Your frustrations aside, a lot of the commentary on this thread reeks of ADD, baby powder and diapers. Back in my day and age whining wasn’t something grown folks did and a lot of this feedback is exactly that. Learn to critique, save the tears for the Mohave.

Most of us spent 8 months respectfully commenting … all to no avail. Those of us still here “whining” are the ones who still give a crap, and even if we’ve progressed from being unhappy to being kittened ANet should be kitten happy we haven’t left yet.

And for the record, I can practically guarantee that I am older than you … I’m just not such a wuss.

Asudementio.8526:

Cactus.2710:

Asudementio.8526:

There is a difference between airing your complaints and being petulant.

There is a time threshold between airing complaints and becoming frustrated. You either haven’t been playing WvW for very long or your expectations for it were far lower than the rest of us. Being ignored, or worse … being bullkittened with endless “soons” … leads to petulance from the most patient of us. If we still actually give a kitten, that is. Anybody who progressed past petulance has left the building.

No i am frustrated, i just choose to conduct myself better than many in this thread. We need more WvW objectives, more maps, new maps, more ways to assault and defend, GvG areas, new guild features, but i will discuss their merits and advocate for them rather than kick and scream that this game sucks …

How long have you been doing that (seriously, I’d like to know) and how has that passive advocacy worked for you? I’m not sure I consider tolerance for being totally ignored a virtue.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Bailey.6892:

That is a disappointing fail on their end, to bad they did not plan better. Perhaps they didn’t think they would ever have the population to need a bigger map other wise not sure why one would not have a scale able option.

Its like they picked the engine and were making the content as they go rather then decide WHAT they wanted before actually picking/making the engine.

Actually, I think it goes even deeper than that. After viewing and reading several interviews and online presentations from ANet personnel (as well as various forum posts from the devs), it seems to me that GW2 has had lots of mostly independent development teams operating with VERY poor coordination with each other. If there has been any sort of centralized decision making, it has been pretty loose and ineffective. Just look at all the times patches were floated two hours after WvW reset, and look at the the huge differences in the cleverness of the race story lines and animations (you’d think they were crafted by different companies). I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find out that the people who chose the game engine, wrote the server software, coded the game mechanics, wrote the rendering software, and determined content were all working more or less in isolation.

I’ll bet some ANet insider could write a master’s thesis for software system design (kind of like a Harvard Case Study for business) that describes how such a disconnected and inflexible result happened.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

As for WvW, the FIRST thing that needs sorting – The Matchup system, it is a JOKE.

It’s interesting that you say that. Matchups are horribly unbalanced with results that are an order of magnitude more dependent upon raw numbers (which includes coverage) than any sort of strategy or team skill, a fact that is obvious to everyone except ANet. It’s the single most destructive aspect to the original intent of WvW, and yet most players now seem to have abandoned any hope that it will ever be fixed because you don’t see many threads on it any more. Probably anybody who gave a crap has already left and the only folks left are those that simply prefer open world mashing.

Asudementio.8526:

There is a difference between airing your complaints and being petulant.

There is a time threshold between airing complaints and becoming frustrated. You either haven’t been playing WvW for very long or your expectations for it were far lower than the rest of us. Being ignored, or worse … being bullkittened with endless “soons” … leads to petulance from the most patient of us. If we still actually give a kitten, that is. Anybody who progressed past petulance has left the building.

Manuelito.6081:

don’t feed the troll, guys.

I don’t think he’s trolling. I’ve read several of Burnfall’s other posts and they don’t make any more sense than this one.

Hule.8794:

Guys stop whining at Devon. Yes he showed the carrot, but before You smach him with the stick, first wait 2 days to see fridays livestream.
If Your bad dreams come true at friday, well then you will have the right to smack Anet with the stick.

Well, recurring nightmares tend to … uhh, reoccur. It’s not like we haven’t had several iterations of this sort of thing already over the past year.

Nightshade.2570:

I have played alot of other games, where Devs don’t talk to you at all. While I know its their job to do the things they do, there are always people in every job that go above and beyond.

For all its warts, Rift (which I played for almost 18 months) was WAY more responsive to its player base on the forums than ANet has been. The devs would give candid replies to most questions/complaints, they actually gave timetables for fixes, and they often just plain admitted when they screwed up. There is no reason on this earth that ANet couldn’t do the same … except for maybe that the Trion devs actually played and understood their own game.

In anticipation of the inevitable query from lordkrall/Vena/VOLKON/etc, I switched to GW2 because Conquest in Rift was a TERRIBLE implementation of open world strategy-based PvP. WvW in GW2 promised to be so much more, and in many respects even is … just way less than it could and should have been.

You guys know that the game engine is incapable of handling maps larger than they currently are, right??

Bailey.6892:

I would love bigger maps. Take the maps we currently have and make them into a single map. And introduce new maps of a large size. Have some objectives give more points for the team that holds them based on the amount of people that took it. The fewer players that contributed the higher the points for it. Encourage the breaking up of zergs.

Not going to happen … ever. There are about 8 months of posts from ANet pointing out that the current maps are as large as the game engine can handle.

TheAmpca.1753:

Cactus.2710:

TheAmpca.1753:

Cactus.2710:

Genji.3258:

ArenaNet, I have a question for you: why don’t you reset WvW ability points whenever you implement a new line of ability?

Because it’s more difficult than not resetting them.

Yeah and making a video game is more difficult than not making one.
Talking is more difficult than not talking.
Running is more difficult than not running.

So let’s see you come up with your own reason why we don’t get resets. Or why you think we shouldn’t.

I can’t, because there isn’t any other reason other than Anet saying “Well we don’t feel like it” which is a bull kitten horrible reason.

Hhmm … I think maybe I misinterpreted your earlier comment. Sorry about that. Sounds like we have the same impression.

TheAmpca.1753:

Cactus.2710:

Genji.3258:

ArenaNet, I have a question for you: why don’t you reset WvW ability points whenever you implement a new line of ability?

Because it’s more difficult than not resetting them.

Yeah and making a video game is more difficult than not making one.
Talking is more difficult than not talking.
Running is more difficult than not running.

So let’s see you come up with your own reason why we don’t get resets. Or why you think we shouldn’t.

Genji.3258:

ArenaNet, I have a question for you: why don’t you reset WvW ability points whenever you implement a new line of ability?

Because it’s more difficult than not resetting them.

I think this is ANet’s way of averaging things out. Give us something we never thought of before we ever asked for it to compensate for stuff we asked for almost a year ago and still don’t have. It halves the average adjustment time … a major improvement. Somebody at NCSoft just saw the trend chart on a PowerPoint slide and gave somebody at ANet a bonus for it.

Just another example of ANet gifting WvW with something we didn’t ask for and mostly don’t want to take our minds off all the stuff we’ve been begging for.

Troop.1369:

Today marks the last patch we will have (next one being September 3rd) before the 1 year anniversary of GW2!! After this, we will be passed the 1 year anniversary mark.

What do you think Arena.Net has in store for us World vs World players today?? I’m excited! I cannot wait to see!!

What’s your predictions??

My prediction is that you will be disappointed. History is on my side, not yours.

Mbelch.9028:

I think Devon deserves a kitten medal for his slew of responses in WvW topics.

Even if WvW is in a terrible place right now, and maybe it will be for several months into the future, he’s at least acknowledging there are issues and trying to offer the changes he wants to implement.

I just wanted to say thanks. Especially after seeing so few responses from Devs in other places where responses are desperately needed. (COUGH Ele forum..)

Let’s continue to repair the broken WvW climate.

So let’s say you bought a light truck last year. You really liked the basic design and many of its features, but after driving it a while you discovered that it didn’t handle very well, stalled out in heavy traffic, had some rattles, and somehow forced you to drive the same streets over and over again. You complained to the dealer, who pretty much ignored you but after several months finally put you in contact with somebody in the service department named Habbib. Habbib was a nice guy who occasionally explained some of the problems you had, but mostly told you to keep your chin up because better days were coming in spite of the fact that the service department was so understaffed.

Eventually Habbib stopped answering your calls and in his place popped up some cosmetic retrofits that you really didn’t ask for, some of which didn’t even match the style and fit of the truck you thought you had bought. As best you could tell, the phone line in the service department got disconnected and the list you made documenting the defects got lost.

After a couple more months, a new guy named Devon starts answering the phone again. He’s also a nice guy and tries to reassure you as best he can that “improvements are in the works”, but very few of the “improvements” you can discern by reading between the lines sound like anything you had on your list and the best you get in terms of projected timing is “soon.” You ask Devon why changes are being made that he wants to change instead of the ones that you want to see fixed, and the answer you get is that “it’s complicated.”

Meanwhile, the dealership starts advertising that it has four complete service teams handling a car that they also sell.

And you think the solution is to join hands with other truck owners in a circle around Devon and sing Kumbaya.

Niim.9260:

When they remove the lake, I think they should fill the entire area with the ruin like structures in front of the blue keep in ebg. That would be fun, like praag in WAR.

It sounds very cool.

I guarantee that it won’t happen.

Kaamau.5341:

Cactus.2710:

Kaamau.5341:

Cactus.2710:

Zietlogik.6208:

Limm.8401:

Random mobs? You mean the crap that gets me in combat by strolling in my symbol of switness or the crap that randomly walks into our AoE to rally our kills?
WvW doesn’t need random mobs, they’re just an annoyance. It’s a PvP-mode. If people want to go kill raports there’s an entire game mode committed to it. If people wanna kill stuff in WvW it should be other players or maybe guards, doors and lords.

WHOOSH That was the sound of it going right over your head…re-read it and see if it makes sense the second time around.

WHOOSH That was the sound of the air escaping my lungs as I gasped with incredulity that you think adding more PvE to WvW is an improvement … and don’t even seem to recognize that your suggestions are indeed pure PvE. We can read it a dozen times and it still won’t make a lick of sense.

I think he means to remove the random mobs. And replace this with guard out posts and stuff like that. He could have worded it a bit better though, so I see why your confused. aka, less random mobs and more WvW stuff.

Uhh, no …. he’s suggesting the addition of a bunch of PvE:

“Make the Tamini and Skritt area mini-dungeons, each with their own jumping puzzle for completing it. Turn the pitiful Tamini camp into an actual stronghold/Skritt area into a full cave system, add a champion/legendary, make it like an actual DE, when you defeat him/finish the event, they are actual on your SIDE, and send more than simply 4 mobs that insta-die to guards.
<snip>
And lastly, fill in the vast open spaces full of random mobs (raptors, rams, etc.)”

I was talking about the section that quoted about the user nothing else. If you go back and investigate, you’ll under stand. As I said it could be worded better but you should get the idea if you use your mind a bit.

My mind works fine .. give yours a try. Champions, jumping puzzles, and dungeons are PvE.

Kaamau.5341:

Cactus.2710:

Zietlogik.6208:

Limm.8401:

Random mobs? You mean the crap that gets me in combat by strolling in my symbol of switness or the crap that randomly walks into our AoE to rally our kills?
WvW doesn’t need random mobs, they’re just an annoyance. It’s a PvP-mode. If people want to go kill raports there’s an entire game mode committed to it. If people wanna kill stuff in WvW it should be other players or maybe guards, doors and lords.

WHOOSH That was the sound of it going right over your head…re-read it and see if it makes sense the second time around.

WHOOSH That was the sound of the air escaping my lungs as I gasped with incredulity that you think adding more PvE to WvW is an improvement … and don’t even seem to recognize that your suggestions are indeed pure PvE. We can read it a dozen times and it still won’t make a lick of sense.

I think he means to remove the random mobs. And replace this with guard out posts and stuff like that. He could have worded it a bit better though, so I see why your confused. aka, less random mobs and more WvW stuff.

Uhh, no …. he’s suggesting the addition of a bunch of PvE:

“Make the Tamini and Skritt area mini-dungeons, each with their own jumping puzzle for completing it. Turn the pitiful Tamini camp into an actual stronghold/Skritt area into a full cave system, add a champion/legendary, make it like an actual DE, when you defeat him/finish the event, they are actual on your SIDE, and send more than simply 4 mobs that insta-die to guards.
<snip>
And lastly, fill in the vast open spaces full of random mobs (raptors, rams, etc.)”

DevonCarver.5370:

Knightmare.8634:

DevonCarver.5370:

mjharrison.3209:

WVW needs a Darkness Falls. That is all.

But why?

It doesn’t have to be Darkness Falls exactly, but a “mechanic” needs to be introduced to the stale state of WvW. I’m not saying it isn’t fun it can be, but I think it could be a whole lot more than one blob fighting the other spamming 1.

That’s more the crux of my question. I totally agree that we can and should add more to this part of the game, but I’m not convinced that Darkness Falls would do it. As a WvW player would you really be excited about a map that takes you out of WvW and does something else? Or would you rather have changes to WvW proper? I know how I feel.

This was my suggestion from a few weeks ago for how to make WvW a more fair and dynamic experience. It’s basically just an outline, but I think it points to a way to possibly get more variety out of existing maps … and more importantly represents a departure from server-vs-server-vs-server, which I think is forever doomed to unbalanced matches.

“My preferred solution would be to totally revamp WVW. I’d make matches instanced (more or less equal populations determined by dynamic queues), and I’d have matches start on a blank map … terrain features only, no structures. I’d scatter ore deposits randomly around the map (different for each match) so that the first thing each team had to do would be to scout for deposits and secure the surrounding land. Mining the ore would develop the camp, and the ore thus mined would be used to build towers and keeps anywhere on the map that players chose. Towers and keeps would require a blueprint just like siege does now, with each blueprint costing Badges of Honor or some such non-gold currency. Siege (both offensive and defensive) would be pretty much as it is now, with possibly some changes to address current grievances. Towers and keeps could be destroyed, but not captured … they’d have to be rebuilt, either in the same place or somewhere else. Ore locations could be captured and recaptured, but would need to be redeveloped to be productive. Ore could be stockpiled in keeps and towers by players.

I suspect that such a scheme would have some unforeseen (by me) flaws, but I think the general concept would entail much greater strategic play, require better overall coordination (possibly questionable in an instanced setting), and generate some much harder fought battles over key locations."

Zietlogik.6208:

Limm.8401:

Random mobs? You mean the crap that gets me in combat by strolling in my symbol of switness or the crap that randomly walks into our AoE to rally our kills?
WvW doesn’t need random mobs, they’re just an annoyance. It’s a PvP-mode. If people want to go kill raports there’s an entire game mode committed to it. If people wanna kill stuff in WvW it should be other players or maybe guards, doors and lords.

WHOOSH That was the sound of it going right over your head…re-read it and see if it makes sense the second time around.

WHOOSH That was the sound of the air escaping my lungs as I gasped with incredulity that you think adding more PvE to WvW is an improvement … and don’t even seem to recognize that your suggestions are indeed pure PvE. We can read it a dozen times and it still won’t make a lick of sense.

Great question. Too bad we’ll never know the real reason … because it seems obvious that ANet has already decided which one they believe.

SomeoneElse.3685:

I actually don’t even think that the buff is gonna turn out to be that bad, because unlike popular beliefs, Arena Net knows what they are doing and they aren’t stupid…

They may not be stupid, but the evidence is overwhelming that they sure as hell don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to WvW.

I have never, ever, ever understood how people think that the way to improve PvP is to convert more of it to PvE.

VOLKON.1290:

Cactus.2710:

VOLKON.1290:

Cactus.2710:

Curiosity question: What is your definition of “soon”? One month? Two months? Three months? Six Months? I will bet $100 that you don’t even care, whereas the rest of us would greatly prefer something more definitive. An answer that can’t reasonably be quantified is not an answer at all.

Besides, there are SO many more things that WvW drastically needs (balanced matches, reasonable queues, bug fixes, better grouping mechanisms, less lag, evolving content, newer maps, etc) that giving us orbs is like fixing the cigarette lighter socket on a classic car that’s been abused. It’s amusing that you have such lower regard, and therefore lower expectations, for this game than the rest of us do.

Lower expectations? No.

Less need to issue demands and whine and complain about things I can’t control and a greater willingness to trust them to do what’s right when they can? Yep.

What can I say, I’m a fanboy that’s still having a blast in WvW. I look forwards to what’s coming rather than lament about what hasn’t.

I notice that you didn’t answer my question, but then again … yes, you are most certainly a fanboy.

By the way, exactly what are you looking forward to? I’ll bet you can’t describe it in terms that wouldn’t make you look foolish to someone contemplating buying the game.

What is ‘soon’? Whenever. When they say soon, it’s within a couple months. I’m patient, I can wait. What am I looking forwards to? Right now, a few things. Treb mastery is something I’ve been waiting on. I can already knock a flea of a sleeping dogs butt with one without waking the dog, so this should quite nicely enhance my gameplay. New BG maps coming soon with the new orb mechanics, looking forwards to seeing how that plays out. I’m also curious as to what the ‘huge’ announcement is going to be made in the Queens Speech. Supposedly it’s going to tie together the L.S. updates to date, should be interesting.

Why exactly did you ask again?

“Why exactly did you ask again?”

Because I wanted to see how silly your answer would be and you obliged. Treb Mastery enhancing your game play? LOLOL

As I said before, you clearly have much lower hopes/desires for WvW than many of the rest of us. Just because you’re willing to settle for fluff doesn’t mean that we will.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

I am actually quite happy with the many enhancements that have been made over the past 5 months.

Please list them for me. I’m honestly curious.

I doubt that time dilation, which is a linear function (actually almost a fixed constant) as you described it, would make a significant reduction in lag, which is a quadratic function of the number of players in close proximity. A few extra players would totally defeat the intent of time dilation while simultaneously ruining the experience for everyone.

LOL! What about the elephant in the room?

“We have quite a few big plans in store for the borderlands that we’ve started working on so we can hopefully start revealing more about that in the near future!”

Let’s see now, February to August is six months. Hhmmm …

VOLKON.1290:

Cactus.2710:

VOLKON.1290:

Look at the changes to the orb system. For so long we’ve heard that that’s something they’d really like to do. Now, suddenly, bang. It’s not just something they’d like to do, it’s something that they can confidently tell us we’re getting and getting soon. We have no idea how many times they came across issues and had to go back to the drawing board or even that it was definitely being worked on, and as such you didn’t see people demanding details on when it would be released, why they lied about when it would be released, why they hired such crappy developers and other ridiculous complaints. It’s ready, it’s coming, it’s as it should be.

Curiosity question: What is your definition of “soon”? One month? Two months? Three months? Six Months? I will bet $100 that you don’t even care, whereas the rest of us would greatly prefer something more definitive. An answer that can’t reasonably be quantified is not an answer at all.

Besides, there are SO many more things that WvW drastically needs (balanced matches, reasonable queues, bug fixes, better grouping mechanisms, less lag, evolving content, newer maps, etc) that giving us orbs is like fixing the cigarette lighter socket on a classic car that’s been abused. It’s amusing that you have such lower regard, and therefore lower expectations, for this game than the rest of us do.

Lower expectations? No.

Less need to issue demands and whine and complain about things I can’t control and a greater willingness to trust them to do what’s right when they can? Yep.

What can I say, I’m a fanboy that’s still having a blast in WvW. I look forwards to what’s coming rather than lament about what hasn’t.

I notice that you didn’t answer my question, but then again … yes, you are most certainly a fanboy.

By the way, exactly what are you looking forward to? I’ll bet you can’t describe it in terms that wouldn’t make you look foolish to someone contemplating buying the game.

VOLKON.1290:

Look at the changes to the orb system. For so long we’ve heard that that’s something they’d really like to do. Now, suddenly, bang. It’s not just something they’d like to do, it’s something that they can confidently tell us we’re getting and getting soon. We have no idea how many times they came across issues and had to go back to the drawing board or even that it was definitely being worked on, and as such you didn’t see people demanding details on when it would be released, why they lied about when it would be released, why they hired such crappy developers and other ridiculous complaints. It’s ready, it’s coming, it’s as it should be.

Curiosity question: What is your definition of “soon”? One month? Two months? Three months? Six Months? I will bet $100 that you don’t even care, whereas the rest of us would greatly prefer something more definitive. An answer that can’t reasonably be quantified is not an answer at all.

Besides, there are SO many more things that WvW drastically needs (balanced matches, reasonable queues, bug fixes, better grouping mechanisms, less lag, evolving content, newer maps, etc) that giving us orbs is like fixing the cigarette lighter socket on a classic car that’s been abused. It’s amusing that you have such lower regard, and therefore lower expectations, for this game than the rest of us do.

VOLKON.1290:

Cactus.2710:

That is total garbage. A customer is a customer, period. It doesn’t matter if the “customer” has signed a contract for a deliverable, or if he pays for a collection of items on a per-unit basis as he sees fit, or if he doesn’t pay for anything at all. If the company wants to keep people on the hook they need to meet some minimum portion of their expectations … the obligation on the part of the company is exactly the same in each situation.

Fundamentally, ANet isn’t giving out free anything … that’s simply a clueless perception. Their business model requires that they meet customer expectations on an ongoing basis or their revenue stream dries up. Maybe Anet has decided that WvW isn’t a significant contribution to their customer base, and that would be fine and reasonable if so, but until they have the integrity to tell us that directly we have the right to expect better service than we’ve been getting.

I’ll make you a deal. You go on ahead and keep believing that and I’ll properly respect your right to be wrong.

There are more than 11,000,000 Google responses to the search phrase “economics of meeting customer expectations” (not to mention my 35 years managing a large scale business) that say I’m right.

VOLKON.1290:

Gamadorn.2659:

VOLKON.1290:

Hello, I’m reality. Have we met?

You’re doing one of those apples/oranges things you realize, yes? As a developer myself, I realize that there’s a difference between delivering something to a customer that has paid/is paying for a product at a certain deadline and a gaming company like ArenaNet that is effectively giving out free content when it’s ready to enhance the existing game. You’re describing the former, the business contracting out work to a developer and expecting a deliverable at a certain deadline. This is not that scenario. A more realistic scenario based on what you’ve mentioned is a customer that already paid for and received the product and finds that they get free updates to the software as they become available.

Now that sniff of reality. They know exactly what they’re working on, and they know exactly when they’d like to have it ready. They’re also realistic enough to utilize the fact that there’s no hard deliverable deadline to perfect the deliverables before they ship, giving themselves release flexibility in exchange for quality of product.

You know… as a developer I too wish I had that degree of flexibility in delivering the product. That means I’d be working at ArenaNet on Guild Wars 2 and would be absolutely giddy about how life is going. Hey Devon… if you ever decide to shift a lot of data to a mainframe for the massive data-crunching capabilities let me know, ’k?

Fair enough, even using your example, you have a project plan no? You know what you are currently working on….how long it will take…a best and worst case scenario…and you can at least predict a month or so out what you PLAN to deliver even in a generic sense…

example: We are currently working on fixing the commander system and how it functions, it’s at the top of our list in priorities and we’re hoping to have it done in 2-3 months.

If it changes…so be it…kitten happens….but for crying out loud don’t sit here and give us a BS answer that you have NO IDEA about ANY time frames or priorities on what you working on? That’s a load of BS, I don’t care what developer it comes from….paid for…free…open source….

Do you actually think they don’t have any project plans or projected completion dates? Seriously? There’s a significant point you’re missing, either willingly or by misunderstanding… they don’t need to share with us their project plans or expected completion dates. They choose to do so when something is near enough to completion that they can reliably and reasonably be sure that they’ll meet that date, because that means the deliverable is pretty much ready and nailed down. Now look at the commander system you’re mentioning… we don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes. They could be in the early design phase, in which case there’s concepts being gone over and not much else. Kind of hard to place a date on that, yes? Maybe they’ve settled on a design and are hammering out the features. Maybe they know exactly what they want, on paper, and are starting to code. Could they give a date then? Not really. What if something else comes up that takes greater priority? What if they find the new system is having integration issues with the existing system and parts of the existing system will need a redesign if they progress with the current commander system design so they need to decide which path to follow? Even if they have a system up and running in alpha it’s still too soon to give a hard date, who knows what testing will turn up. Everything seemed to be going fine, but integration testing found a fairly significant error that requires it being backed out. Until whatever is being worked on is in Beta and performing up to expectations, has been enhanced with ideas and changes that were determined to be worth adding/making, etc. you’re fooling yourself if you think we’ll get a date or even the fact that something is close to release.

Or, let’s ask this question… what if they “promised” a new commander system in three months and it turned out it wasn’t ready?

What if they didn’t even acknowledge the issue or tell us what they had planned for it? Oh wait … we already know how well that is being received.

So let’s say you take your car to a repair shop and ask for an estimate. They initially ignore you but eventually tell you that they have no idea what the problem is, no idea when they will be able to work on it, and no idea whether they will be able to fix it. You try a different shop and they tell you that they aren’t sure what the problem is, but they’ll do their best to start working on it two days from now and unless something totally unexpected is found they should be able to fix it within a week. Which response do you prefer?

VOLKON.1290:

Gamadorn.2659:

DevonCarver.5370:

Convenant.7092:

Devon’s a PR.

What the heck is a PR? I am a designer and the coordinator of the WvW team. I am in charge of making the decisions as to the implementation of and final versions of anything that gets put into WvW. While part of my job is to post on the forums to keep y’all informed, it’s also part of my job to not make promises that we can’t keep. So, my answers come off as vague, because that’s as much as I can say. If I’m saying anything, you should consider that to mean something, because if it is a topic I have absolutely no information on, I won’t talk about it at all.

I am just curious as to how the heck you guys do release/version management and project planning and have absolutely ZERO idea WHAT your working and WHEN it will be finished? I can tell you as a developer I WISH I had a deliverable’s like that….

Customer: Hey when is that feature or functionality going to be finished, a week? two? 3 months? a year?

Developer: It’ll get finished when I get to it….could be 2 weeks could be 3 months..or a year? I DON’T KNOW YET…

Customer: Maybe a ballpark… rough idea?

Developer: Listen, I don’t even know IF I will be working on that feature….heck I don’t even know if i’m GOING to implement it after I work on it for a few weeks…heck I don’t even know if I AM going to finish it…so just shaddap and when I get it all done…I will let you know a week a head of time…that I will push it to production…so quit asking questions!

Customer: You’re fired…i’ll find someone else.

LoL

Hello, I’m reality. Have we met?

You’re doing one of those apples/oranges things you realize, yes? As a developer myself, I realize that there’s a difference between delivering something to a customer that has paid/is paying for a product at a certain deadline and a gaming company like ArenaNet that is effectively giving out free content when it’s ready to enhance the existing game. You’re describing the former, the business contracting out work to a developer and expecting a deliverable at a certain deadline. This is not that scenario. A more realistic scenario based on what you’ve mentioned is a customer that already paid for and received the product and finds that they get free updates to the software as they become available.

That is total garbage. A customer is a customer, period. It doesn’t matter if the “customer” has signed a contract for a deliverable, or if he pays for a collection of items on a per-unit basis as he sees fit, or if he doesn’t pay for anything at all. If the company wants to keep people on the hook they need to meet some minimum portion of their expectations … the obligation on the part of the company is exactly the same in each situation.

Fundamentally, ANet isn’t giving out free anything … that’s simply a clueless perception. Their business model requires that they meet customer expectations on an ongoing basis or their revenue stream dries up. Maybe Anet has decided that WvW isn’t a significant contribution to their customer base, and that would be fine and reasonable if so, but until they have the integrity to tell us that directly we have the right to expect better service than we’ve been getting.

Talyn.3295:

The main problem that we face in WvW or any other portion of the game/life in general is the sense of entitlement.

I play this, I own this. I want this. This is mine, not yours. It’s My Way.

It could also be a lack of patience.

I try to enjoy every aspect of Guild Wars. I don’t have alot of time to be spending playing a MMO. As an Active Service Member in the U.S. Military my time is limited, and what free time I do get is usually reserved for other things.

I enjoy Guild Wars 2 and Guild Wars 1, because they didn’t require that I have to play every day. Or Every hour or even every week to be good at them. There was no power-creep. There was a good story, and fun to be had with my Guild Mates.

However, I will be the first to say WvW is not without problems. I could make a long list of things I feel need to be fixed. This list would start with small issues like party bugs and not being able to right click to mail/whisper/invite from my guild/friends list. (giving me only a report option for my friends is silly) all the way up to game breaking bugs like Glitched towers and blatant use of hacks and cheat programs which have yet to be addressed.

However there is a extreme sense of entitlement in the WvW population. Just reading the forums the population comes off as elitist. Remarks such as PvE kittens and Sarcastic remarks about the Living World Content don’t do any favors to win over the rest of the Populations from sPvP or PvE.

If I was a new player reading the garbage that I see here I would be put off WvW in a second. Almost all of it is hate post and sarcasm, in addition to flat out attacks at the development team. I understand that the this is common amongst forums around various MMOs. Maybe it doesn’t help that GW allows for people to buy the game once and we are stuck with them forever, almost as bad as any free to play game which is out on the market.

However, I would like to point out that if you want any one to take seriously “we,” meaning all of us have in WvW. We all need to start start acting a little more like adults and a little less like spoiled children who didn’t get the shiny new toy we wanted this year for Christmas. Lay down on the floor and kick and scream, cry and yell. But when your done throwing your little tantrum the wold will still be the exact way it was before and nothing will have changed for the better.

Lets try to be mature, and lets try to have fun. We don’t need to be any bigger kittens then we already are.

Cheers.

Oh give me a break. Chalking up dissent to “a sense of entitlement” is one of the most hackneyed and ignorant attitudes there is. What you fail to realize is that ANet (or any other business) NEEDS us to use and enjoy their product, and when they don’t perform to the satisfaction of their customer base it represents a failure on their part, not ours. That’s the way things work in an open society. I have over 35 years experience in a global industry and I will tell you with great certainty that demanding customers are the lifeblood of any successful company. Those companies reliant on customers who passively accept whatever they deliver, or who ignore what their customers are telling them, are doomed to be eaten alive by competitors who embrace criticism and constructively respond to it.

Whether ANet realizes it or not, they need a lot more of us and a lot fewer of you.

King Amadaeus.8619:

brandon.6735:

Angu.3021:

lordkrall.7241:

Do you actually have any kind of proof about this or are you only assuming stuff?
It is highly likely that the maps have been worked on for MONTHS before release.
It is also quite unfair to compare something that is not competitive and therefore don’t need exact balance to something that is based around PvP.

This was ment to be a serious conversation. Fantrolls please. Atleast try stay on level of reality in self-denial and stop attacking everyone criticising Anet.

You know whats funny is i find us who complain and harass them to a point are the true fans of this game. I want this game to become better but i feel like we aren’t pushing them hard enough to do it. I mean we still don’t have housing or guild halls in this game.

I took a class in continuous improvement, I remember the guy teaching saying companies need people that are “willing to turn over rocks and look at the all creepy-crawly things underneath”. Companies need less people willing to ignore the rock all the while knowing likely what is below it.

The same could be said in this scenario, the people doing the griping may seem “entitled whiners”, but I agree that most of them are doing it because they care. Like someone said yesterday, when people stop complaining you have either fixed the problems or more than likely everyone has left for good.

Exactly this. For several years I managed a large segment of a business serving the tech industry, and the customers who scared me the most were the ones who were unhappy and just left without saying anything. They never give you the chance to learn what you’re doing wrong and address problems so that you can keep them. The vocal complainers are the bread and butter of your future success if you don’t ignore them. Several fan boys here (like lordkrall, who I actually think must be on ANet’s payroll) don’t seem to understand any of that at all.

Jayne.9251:

Simple. Reduce map pop size to 60 players per team per map.

The resultant queues will either force stacked servers to spread out to other lower tiered less populated servers in order to play, or people will quit.

Lag is reduced, queues reduced, servers become more competitive instead of top heavy …

“or people will quit”

At least you got a small part of that post right …

Gadzooks.4687:

Devon needs to take this post with him to the next WvW meeting and really take it to heart. Small team? Thats a hidden truth. Small team means that Anet doesnt place much importance on WvW. Small team means WvW is low priority. Small team means that Anet thinks that WvW isnt going to bring in $$$ as much as other aspects of the game. If Anet felt WvW was important as other game elements, it wouldnt have limited resources like such a small team working on it.

GW2 is a HUGE AAA title. There is no reason that a major part of the game, such as WvW, should have such limited resources or such a small team working on it. Nor should they have so much trouble giving what most people are asking for. People arent asking for uber weapons. People are asking for purpose. Make the weekly matches matter, make the commander pin matter, make a guild claiming something matter, make defending matter, etc etc. An experienced game developement company like Anet shouldnt have so much trouble giving players these types of things, yet almost every dev post makes it seem like this epic struggle to do so.

Here is a starter tip: WvW gemshop specific items and services. Things that will only show up or can only be used while doing WvW. (the finishers are a good example, now just keep adding stuff like that) That will help make WvW more profitable to start, which should give you incentive to increase the number of resources working on WvW.

That was a kitten fine post.

edit: can’t believe dam with an “n” at the end gets censorbotted.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Angu.3021:

Wait what, so new minor WvW content and changes takes 3-6 months to make and balance while there is PvE patch every 2 weeks with new maps, recepies, features, items, npcs and 100 other things. Im not really into dev hating but just how stupid do you think we are? Atleast be honest and say you dont create content for WvW because you dont get revenues from this.

Please stop with this “every 2 weeks” nonsense. ANet has already said.. they have FOUR TEAMS working on the LS updates, each team taking 1-2 months for all of their content. IE the team that just put out the last update has been working on it since early June. It does not take 2 weeks to develop, test and polish any of the PvE updates. It’s a 4 team, rotation based update schedule.

Learn to comprehend. He never said that LS content only took two weeks to develop … he said it only takes two weeks (yes, on a rotating development platform) to release new LS content. The fact that LS has four full time teams doing this, while WvW has only one partial team, is EXACTLY the issue he and others are complaining about.