Guild Wars 2

Hermes.7014:

As much as I’d love to see this in opposite of the Thief = Dagger stereotype. Generally, thieves don’t wield heavy two handed weapons because they’d be an hindrance to their mobility.

ninjas?

I don’t know, that’s all I got.

I strongly support the f2 idea… really sucks trying to steal from anti-melee bosses in my ranged build then having to blow an evade, or a wad of init on getting back out to range.

keep in mind that the Charrs tech in GW1 was a LOT lower than it is now. They didn’t have “tanks and bombs”, they were lucky to have well made swords.

Almost all the Charr’s tech has been developed recently, since the overthrowing of the Shaman Caste.

oh rage can easily be legit, and often with good reason… but it is NOT useful feedback from a dev standpoint.

If you want to rage, please, rage away… but if you want to post something that actually gets read by a dev and acted on to get things changed, leave your rage at the door.

KirinDave.6451:

1. Dev quotes can and should be used against them. Each of us, as software engineers or coders or whatever you call yourself, is not somehow exempt from the day-to-day rules of communication that govern everyone else. If you say something, you’ve said it and people will listen. If you say something foolish, you may later be required to admit you were wrong. It is the sign of a healthy mind to be able to do this.

This is exactly why most devs are BANNED from posting on the forums for live games. Admitting I was wrong was not the issue, the issue was that management was so utterly terrified of players taking what I had said out of context that they require any and all posts to be run past senior management before being put online.

If you want more dev comments, make us less scared to do so. The more you throw quotes back at us, the more management is going to lock us out of talking to you, and the fewer dev posts you will see.

I never said it was an excuse, I said it was reality. If a fix, ANY fix, was a 1 min data change, I can 100% guarantee it was done, ages ago, likely 5 min after it was first reported.

Please re-read the part on devs wanting their product to be perfect. We NEVER want to see a buggy product go in front of players. “Annoying” and “I don’t want to do it” never enters a devs mind. We take great pride in our work, but, there are deadlines. I’ve never once heard of any dev saying that they just didn’t want to fix a bug, hell I’ve seen dozens try and squeeze a few extra days/hours/even minutes out of a pressuring manager just to get one more bug fix into the patch before it goes live. I’ve also seen managers trying to wiggle CEOs to get more time…

Simply put, patches have schedules, and they are set pretty harshly weeks or even months before they are even announced. This patch date,was likely decided on pre-launch. Asking for another week or more to put a bug fix in simply wasn’t going to happen.

Yes, there are pretty big issues left in the game. And they know it. They also know, far better than any of us, what the priority is on those fixes. Priority is based on how critical the bug is (exploit, blocker, critical balance issue etc) and how quickly it can be fixed. An short change that has a lower impact may get bumped up a patch or two because there is just enough time to get it done before the deadline even if there is a more pressing issue (pressing to management, not pressing to players). If I have one hour before the deadline, I’m going to pick one of the one-hour bugs to cram one more fix in before lock… rather than picking one of the 5-6 day bugs that will have no impact until the next patch cycle.

Our job, as players, isn’t to tell them their bug priority. We can’t, we don’t have enough information on how long it would take to fix. Our job is to put forward, as cleanly and clearly, how we found bugs, how to reproduce those bugs, and how those bugs affect our gameplay WITH MATH. Not swears, not table-flipping rage-quits… math. If you post emotional laden hate, the post becomes unusable in a bug report, the devs who are reading the posts (and they are) can’t forward it on to their management, and it generally gets us absolutely nowhere.

I’m not trying to excuse their bugs, or their fix priority. I can’t, I don’t have enough information to do so. What I’m trying to do is give other players the guidelines needed to get their complaints in front of the eyes that they need to be in front of for changes to happen.

So, that’s what not to do, what SHOULD you do?

First up: math, math and MORE math. Prove your point. Show that X > Y, show it in as many ways as you can. This is doubly true for new issues after a patch. If all you have to go on is a vague sense of how X and Y relate, do not expect (much less demand) a dev response. Bluntly, your post isn’t ready yet. Still make the post! let others who are better at math than you tinker with it and find the proof you need, but don’t expect a dev response at that point.

Second, justify your emotions, don’t just state them. If you are angry, say “I’m angry, and here are the 13 reasons why:…” posts littered with “kitten this” and “kitten that” will be of radically less use than ones that impartially list the reasoning behind their complaint.

Third: Just because you don’t have a red post in your thread doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been read. As I said above, very few devs are even allowed to post on the live forums, but we are all allowed (and often required) to read it. At my old job, some devs were required to spend no less than two hours a day reading the forums. They couldn’t post, but must read it every day. Hundreds of posts, maybe thousands were “getting dev attention” that never saw an official response. Please, don’t demand a dev post to ease your worries… if it’s well written it will get read.

Lastly, be patient. You are a player, you can’t set development priorities. Some fixes will get a higher ranking than others. Sometimes this is due to how vital they are to the game (exploits, blocked missions etc) and other times because of how easy they actually are to fix (“I have 30min to kill, I can fix bug A, but B will take me 4 hours… A it is”). This is set by management more times than the devs. As a dev, we always want our games to be flawless, we want every single feature to be the best it possibly can be and we don’t mind taking the time to do it all… but business is business and eventually someone has to say “This is the deadline, if it can’t be done by X date it is going to be cut/pushed back.” If you want X feature to be fixed, you need to show why X feature needs to be fixed before the other ones. Again, with math or other justifications. “Because I want it”, while an ok justification, isn’t nearly as good at convincing management that it needs to be a priority as hard math.

So please, complain responsibly and we will all have a better chance at getting our voices heard, our voices respected, and our complaints addressed.

Thank you.

I’ve been seeing a LOT of complaint posts after the last patch, a lot of hurt feelings and I totally understand. But I’m also seeing a lot of table-flipping, rage induced drivel that is doing us no good. I love the engie class and it pains me to see all these feedback posts done so… WRONG.

First up. Yes, I do make games for a living. Yes, I make MMOs. No I do not work for ANet, and no, I will not tell you who I do work for. I’m telling you only this much so that you can see why I have the views I do, I’ve seen these posts from the dev’s point of view and I’m going to give advice on how to make your posts such that they have the greatest chance of being a) read, b) forwarded on to the devs that need to see them, and c) forwarded on to the management that needs to see them.

First of all, there are NO easy fixes. Anything that was an easy fix was fixed months ago. What looks easy for you, and what looks easy for a dev are radically different. Case in Point: Scope (+10% crit when standing still). I’ve seen a LOT of flak from players that this is “an easy fix”. Yes, adding 10% crit is easy, but depending on how their tech works the “when standing still” part may not. There is client/server issues, synch issues, data logging issues, and likely a half dozen others that I don’t know about because I’m not an ANet dev. My point is, saying “X is an easy fix!” will only get your post ignored.

Insulting devs, or management, is a near 100% guaranteed way to ensure that your post is never read again. No one is going to forward a post internally that calls your co-workers “lazy”, “dumb” or “stupid” (or any of the other colorful comments I’ve seen here the last few days). I understand you are angry, THEY understand you are angry, but no-one is going to send a post to their boss that calls said boss “a lazy kitten!” and say “this post has some good ideas!”.

Likewise, “I’m going to quit!” and “I’m never going to buy another gem again!” and “I’m going to burn my copy of the game in an unholy ritual to summon the Elder Gods from their home at the bottom of the sea” isn’t helping your point. You are basically saying that they can ignore you now since you are no longer going to be a revenue stream.

Lastly, and most importantly, DO NOT use dev quotes against them. This may sound odd, but we hate that. The reason why 99% of devs not only do not want to post on live forums, but are actually banned from doing so by management, is because players utterly FAIL to grasp what is actually being said. Ascended gear is a perfect example. The quote that keeps being brought up says that the best gear wont be the kind you spend 1000s of hours grinding for… and it isn’t, it’s the kind you spend maybe 10h on, if that. The quote says exactly what they meant, but it has been blown so far out of context that players assumed it meant that there would NEVER be any gear advancement. Just don’t do this… you will get more dev comments that way.

can I have your gold?

I would love to see dual-maces. Mainhand would focus on conditions, offhand on boons.

1) Smash It, Crack It, Break it (chain). Weakness, Vulnerability, Confusion

2) Jackhammer. Multiple rapid hits, each strike applies Bleeding

3) Nailed It! immobilize.

4) Induction. Hit causes all allies in the area to gain 3 stacks of Might

5) Precision Strike. Long windup, applies Fury if it hits.

weapons and sigils affecting kits would be at the top of my list.

oooh, that Arah armour looks sweet… only need to get about 50 more levels on my engie

or swords, or axes… heck I wouldn’t mind another underwater weapon while we are at it!

that is a depressingly short list

is there such a thing? (other than cultural) I see lots of amazing pics of charrs, from the front, and my first thought is always: “how bad is it from the back?”

Can people please fill me in on some cool looking medium armor that doesn’t clip the tail?

maybe I’m not running into the right warriors, but I’m not getting 1-shooted. (thiefs on the other hand…)

wicket.2485:

Like SteepledHat said, “We need a legitimate and hard-work-rewarding way of obtaining precursors. Gambling is just fricking stupid.”

uh, you have one…. the trading post. Unless you think grinding 250g isn’t “hard work”.

mam actually, not sir :P

But seriously, people have been saying that they “don’t mind if it is really hard”… well, getting 250g is really hard. There ya go, problem solved.

Now, if people want a dead easy way to get one, that’s a whole other thread.

you are also forgetting that crafting gives XP. Lots of players use crafting to get over level humps and sell the results at a loss because the product was never their goal in the first place.

As for low level items selling for 1c over vendor. That is a direct result in aNet’s choice to have players gear up for a given level quickly and the “grind” be for visual looks. While this works very good at max level, where there are a LOT of looks to go after, it falls apart at the lower end as there simply are not enough visuals to fill the loot tables. When there are only 4-5 swords, all with the same stats, being picked up by thousands and thousands of players, it is no wonder that the prices are so low.

ok, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there already a 100% guaranteed way to get a precursor?

From the trade post?

my only real eyebrow raising moment was when I saw that the focus is more defensive oriented than the shield.

All the classes I’ve played thus far have had an “ah ha!” moment when things just started to make sense. For most of them this has been around lvl 15, but my engie is hovering around 25 and I’ve yet to figure out how to make everything click into place to form a nice, flowing playstyle.

So my question is, what made your engineer click? Was it a new way to use packs, did you swap out for turrets? Are elixers the key? Does it just take enough levels to unlock higher traits to make things come together?