Part 1
Let me start by saying this isn’t a “I know better than you, do it my way” thread. I would like to discuss some problems currently with the relationship between Customers, Arenanet, Marketing, and NCsoft.
There seems to be a large disconnect between all 4 sections of the business. In order to keep things clear and legible I will attempt to address them one by one.
Customer>Arenanet: As customers we value a business that serves us well, supports us and is open about their actions. Most times as a customer we generally receive good feedback, some examples:
Devs/designers/leads posting directly to us one on one.
Customer service fixing errors in accounts, fixing many bugs, and improving the game.
Devs and designers continually pushing out content.
There is much more.
The disconnect here is when Arenanet has patches, updates, changes, and they are not clearly written in patch notes. Either information is missing, or information in patches can be wrong at times. Now we are smart enough to know not everyone is perfect, but we expect a certain degree of integrity and clarity when it comes to changing a product. We also understand there is no perfect game or service, and unintended bugs will happen. But what we truly need here is a check, a double check, and for someone/some group to read off the notes back to those who affected the changes. When devs and designers have lists of things they changed, they deserve getting credit for such.
By leaving out this information its almost discounting their efforts, which we as customers greatly appreciate. If it is a negative effect on many players we would rather know the truth than have to do extensive testing to ensure our game provider is on the level. Ignoring marketing and parent companies, we are the first group of people to experience your product. We deserve the full information, an open dialogue between us, as we are the most vital part of the company. (Some may read that sentence wrong, I am speaking financially and as the core of the game. Obviously the company itself is very important.)
Next I’d like to address Arenanet>Marketing. For some time now there has been many slip ups when Arenanet staff are told to say something by marketing or even perhaps NCsoft. Often times it was a poorly worded, poorly constructed form of advertising. We know not everything said comes from the minds of devs and designers and leads. We know marketing is a vital aspect of any company. But when people who are not gamers, do not have experience as gamers do, make claims they do not understand it makes Arenanet and by proxy NCsoft sound bad. We know it is an unintended affect, but there needs to be a fix before more credibility is lost. An example is “expansion worth of content”, this has been discussed largely and I won’t go into it. Secondly, you may have heard the recent “dungeon” was even discredited by those who created it.
Calling it “more of a boss instance” which is far more accurate. i don’t mean to be blunt but sometimes you need to turn off your marketing/advertising peoples voice. Let the devs talk among each other and call it what they feel we will be comfortable with. Don’t call a small update an expansion. All of you at Arenanet are gamers, you love games just as we do. And you deserve to call things what they are, not be foot in mouthed by a marketing team. It takes away credibility, our trust in you as a gaming company when marketing or a parent company tells you what to say or do. You know how to be successful, you don’t need a marketing department to tell us gamers what a dungeon is or is not. You don’t need to let them put words in your mouth that you later have to retract and apologize for. We are far more understanding if Colin says “I made a mistake, I apologize, this is what we meant”, than if he says “marketing told us to say it, we were wrong, sorry”. It is pointing blame, and even if it is rightfully so, we would rather you all could make your own mistakes than take our complaints directly as a result of a 3rd party interfering.
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This was a while ago though as you can see.