Guild Wars 2

No, for the most part it’s a discussion about getting an insight into the direction of where the game is going. Since the red-posters aren’t allowed to divulge we’ve been specifying what kind of content that isn’t LS-based that we’d like to see. But it seems that in the short term at least, LS is all we’re gonna get.

It’s like some kid getting spoonfed awful veggies and waiting painfully for dessert.

I really thought the OP was trolling, it’s stupidly easy to get the monthly done with PvE only. I think the longest it’s taken me to get my monthly achieves done for reward is about 4 or 5 days, taking it very easy and letting stuff just ding over for itself.

So even if it takes you that long, you still got another 25 days to enjoy getting more achieves that might contribute to the monthly as well. They’re all AP’s.

Iris Ng.9845:

In my opinion, Precursor Crafting isn’t the same as the “Controversial Topics” in this list. I believe that 99% of player would support a way to obtain a precursor without the means of RNG or paying endlessly inflated price. However, the main ‘controversy’ is we are always in the dark about it. ANet only mentioned it once and never tells us how and when they plan to implement it. Everytime a thread is created, it only serves as a friendly (or passive-aggressive) reminder until everyone of us is tired of telling ourselves it is not gonna happen anytime soon. There is virtually no debate about that.

I think you kind of missed the point in the controversy, ie. debate, dispute, matter of contention or argument, with precursors is the acquisition.

Most of us are in the same boat that there should be a way of getting them via new content, ie. a scavenger hunt, building your own precursor, etc. but there’s always the snarky buggers who seem to think they have more weight to throw around by telling the hopefuls that if they work a bit harder for it and save up that they can buy their precursor from the TP. I call this the ‘chump-method’.

The biggest bone of contention about it all, in my mind at least, is Anet allowing full legendaries and precursors to be sold on the TP at all. This has been debated literally since day 1. People will continue to argue for and against the different methods of acquisition of precursors until all our fingers are bleeding from smashing keys in rage about it, and Anet will continue to sit on their hands on the whole issue, knowing full well it’s been shelved for a long long time.

It should have been sorted last year and made it into the feature patch before end of 2013, but no it didn’t make it; they came out and said to us that it wasn’t going to be in that patch because of the method of acquisition getting a rework with the rewards coming into line with presumably the format we have now.

One of the rare times that a dev has the balls to come in and discuss this highly-disputed part of the game and we get the seagull treatment. Typical.

CJames.2354:

We don’t really have any real data of veterans leaving. I don’t consider myself a veteran because I am not skilled enough yet, but I have played Guild wars for 1 year + now, and I don’t feel bored at all.

My comment was said in representation of people who have been playing this game pretty much since the beta’s and if not then around launch time.

CJames.2354:

Of course, harsh critique and feedback to the developers may help improve the current state of the game but there just so many negativity thrown at the game.

Or they can stonewall it like they usually do. And no matter how realistic the feedback, negative/neutral feedback is stonewalled, as are any suggestions that aren’t vetted by Anet. The only thing that will warrant improvement of the state of the game is more people leaving, less gem store sales and a sudden urge to wake up out of this fog the Anet people have around their heads. Until then it’s LS and gemstore as usual.

I think I can sum up what GW2 has become recently — it’s a game for newer players. It has become a clearing house for older veterans who are very familiar with the content and no longer have an interest in it. There’s nothing to keep the veterans hanging around, as Casmurro said.

It seems GW2 has become something similar to an airport transit lounge. New people come in, veterans leave.

Orpheal.8263:

Gaile Gray.6029:

skullmount — I am not sure, with the visual bug, which Collections people may think they have been working on, even while the Collections weren’t live.

I think we need to wait and see as these are rolled out. Not all will be coming in the immediate future, because a couple of them need additional design work and testing, but a couple are coming pretty soon, as I mentioned.

As for your bags, congrats on getting a head start! A few bags of bags sounds… impressive.

Can we take this basically as an educated guessed confirmation, that:

Fine Wining and Brewing Master are coming with one of the next 2 patches??

I’m more likely to think that Fine Wining and Hero of the People might be better candidates to be addressed than Brewmaster, which doesn’t even have a complete collection yet. As I mentioned earlier, the Stein of Golden Ale would have to go to another NPC in order to be obtained (Brother Vince at Eldvin Monastery selling booze goes against the NPE, didn’t ya know?), and Spider Brew will have to be created or omitted from the list of booze.

Hero of the People has less to fix up and Fine Wining, well, I didn’t even get that one started before I looked on Dulfy’s site and found that it was bugged on 9/9 patch day, and then never fixed.

Khisanth.2948:

I am not sure what is worse, getting no responses and not seeing anything happening or getting multiple responses and still nothing happening. This is in regard to bugs in general not just the specific things in this thread.

I’ll have to use an army metaphor here. Option A (getting no responses and no action) is akin to not even presenting yourself at the Parade Ground. Option B is the same as being on the Parade Ground and ‘marking time’ (marching on the spot). Yes they’ve seen it, and no they’re not actually going anywhere.

I’ve learned to take anything CJ says with a grain of salt. Expansion-type content isn’t really good enough – an expansion however would get more people into the game and increase sales for Anet. However, they don’t look at this as being a big enough win-win as we do.

In order for this game to progress it has to be addressed not only depth-wise (story development, etc.) but also breadth-wise (expanding the playable area to different maps) which, no doubt, will have to be introduced.

There’s a hidden agenda going on and it’s based on the LS, because the commonsense to do the right thing and retain players is just being defeated hand-over-fist. LS alone isn’t going to keep players in the game. It’s become very clear that commonsense isn’t enough to win over the devs.

The only way they’ll see any more of my $$$ is with an expansion. I don’t speak for players, but a lot of people I’ve seen have the same mind about that.

rhael, DeceiverX, rather well said. Some great ideas which I personally will applaud, however there’s a problem. The people at Anet don’t seem to give these threads very much credence, even though the information within is probably invlauable. The communication of these threads to the appropriate people is also something that’s lacking.

No, sadly, here we’re just the forum users. As much as we’d love for them to sit up and pay attention to some of our great ideas, it won’t happen… not until 1. the people who can put up red posts start actually taking heed and implementing this information, and the processes behind them, and 2. the policy is either amended or abolished.

Gaile’s doing a great job for what it’s worth, in the position she’s in, considering she’s bound also by the very same policy.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Revised points 1-5, started adding some extra formatting.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

One more to add to the list:

• Precursor Crafting

Long overdue and plenty of debate on it from hoarders, TP ‘gurus’ and people who legitimately want a non-RNG way to obtain the hardest-to-get item(s) in the game.

Could you provide some links to representative threads?

Here are some (found in my upvoted section of profile), but this is just a few from the 2+ years of threads created about this very topic.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Precursor-Rage

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Precursor-Bull-Kitten

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-precursor-crafting-going-to-happen-or-not

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-this-a-fair-fix-for-precursors

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/gw2-precursor-recipe-scavanger-hunt-news

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-living-story-and-Precursor

Some of these are quite old and have EXCEPTIONALLY good ideas implemented in them.

Revilrad.1962:

Very very very very bad idea.
There is almost NOTHING in this game which is not aquirable by doing mindless CoF Runs and buy it in TP.

What actually need to be done is to make Pre-Cursors accountbound so they are not tradable.
Only that would make a legendary an actuall long term goal and reason to farm.

Fixed the second paragraph for you.

I deliberately did not elaborate on the method of acquisition of precursors and their bound-state because I was waiting for a backlash response like this. Go to ANY one of the threads I’ve just linked and see how many people will actually go and save enough gold to pay for someone else’s good luck. This is not the point, and certainly not the method being discussed. Save gold & buy… chump method. In those threads also you’ll see the cost of precursors as they were back then (about 1/5th the amount), and compare them to the cost they are now. The bottom line here is your first comment isn’t necessary and is subject to a lot of adversity from people championing the scavenger hunt method.

The method is mostly about getting an account-bound precursor from a scavenger hunt implementation of some kind. It’s been suggested for virtually as long as the game has been live. It has no reliance on RNG, it doesn’t reward the lucky with heaps of gold so you can feel ‘legendary’, no; in fact it’s more about acquiring something that you can work on FOR YOURSELF, which I have advocated for as long as I’ve been playing.

Fantastic!! /sarcasm.. but there’s still no fix for them after all this time.

Ogre Wars post (first link) verifies what I’ve said all along about the longevity of the event after a server reset. It seems appropriate for the obligatory Inculpatus Cedo’s /shrug at this point.

I can’t even remember when the Ogre Wars bug started happening, but it was well more than a month ago, and I can guarantee that heaps of people have submitted bug reports in-game. I personally have submitted 3 or 4 for each one of the Dredge Commisar and the Ogre Wars when I find them both bugged (which is usually).

Bottom line: I really can’t understand why it takes them this long to get to the root of the bugs in these event meta’s. Like I said above, it’s not like they just happened yesterday. Yes it’s nice to see they’ve acknowledged it, but no it’s not ok that they’ve taken so frkn long to do so.

One more to add to the list:

• Precursor Crafting

Long overdue and plenty of debate on it from hoarders, TP ‘gurus’ and people who legitimately want a non-RNG way to obtain the hardest-to-get item(s) in the game.

Torsailr.8456:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Zietlogik.6208:

All of this info has been available shorty after the update went live…and they never batted an eye.

Now months later they are finally looking into it? and as incing on the cake we have Gaile giving us what is essentially an “have you tried turning it off, then back on again?” post….

It is so, so hard to find you guys credible anymore.

. . . bear in mind, Gaile is probably the most proactive person I know of with red name privileges who actually acts and goes to deal with things. Barely edging out Chris.

So if anyone was going to notice it and go knock on some doors to get movement or answers, it’s those two. And Chris has other foci than these issues – this is now Gaile’s job to take care of.

Most of us are actually very appreciative of Gaile getting us answers. It’s a stretch, but I can understand how Gaile might have missed this issue and is trying to help.

The problem is one of two things:
1. Either the devs knew of this bug and refused to acknowledge it
2. They were unaware of it.

The first is just an insulting slap in the face to players. It takes all of 2 minutes to post a response that they know the bug is there and they’re working on it. Doing so prevents a lot of rage from the players and doesn’t take any appreciable time; even less time if they just tell Gaile to post about it.

The second is just plain scary. It means the devs either aren’t reading the forums like they say or those that do are completely failing in passing on the information. And that they aren’t really testing their features well.

Maybe it’s just me but the implication in Gailes posts were that the devs were aware of some of the problems, but not all.

It’s both.

I find both options hardly credible as a professional game-developing organisation, but the more I post bugs in the Bugs forum and in-game and the less that’s done about them (as evidenced with the patch notes each time), the more I believe they’re sweeping this stuff under the Anet rug. It seems their opinion of us is “It’s not game-breaking, they can deal with it.”

Newsflash QA team!! It’s game-breaking to us, because that part of your game is broken, and you refuse to fix it… no matter how many people post and submit bug reports however many times. Also [insert policy whinge], if they are working on it then they couldn’t tell you anyway. Not even a status update of anything that’s been reported bugged. Once again, your policy is your Achilles heel.

As an organisation, communication intra- and inter-department is crucial. But hey, I figure if the communication between players and devs is such a one-way street, the same can normally be said about how they run things internally.

This has come back to bite you, Anet. (next time I’ll find something more constructive to post)

DeceiverX.8361:

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Stick to the topic, guys… this is about GW2 not it’s competitors.

On the contrary. The antics used by a company often determine whether or not it is successful, and monitoring the competition is essential for understanding good and bad practices to succeed.

If all companies operated in a vacuum, there would effectively be no such thing as competition in business. And with this being a luxury business, offering a reason to stay is much harder, and thus more competitive than anything, so focusing on the competition is absolutely important for the success of one’s company.

I don’t disagree, but in saying that, the mods get quite picky with what gets said about which competitor’s games. I’ve seen heaps of other threads shut down for a lot less than what’s been talked about here.

Sogradde.8016:

Vayne.8563:

It’s not that I didn’t care about high end elite instances. It’s that a percentage of the playerbase didn’t care about elite instances. Not one or two people….a significant percentage.

I guess you can back your claim? Or are you speaking for everyone else again?

I don’t think he can help but try speaking for everyone else. Here’s your significant percentage, Vayne… I was an officer for two rather large alliances (not guilds, but many guilds put together under one banner). One of them was a UK-based alliance playing on NA servers as well as Euro. Elite content was pretty much all these guys did, and there were thousands of people in these alliances.

Now, what percentage of the playerbase doesn’t like elite content again?

Regarding the elite content within GW2, you’re trying to push the philosophy of what GW1 devs had in comparison to GW2 devs, which “never the twain shall meet” (yet, anyway).

GW1 devs pushed elite content as well as expansions, EotN, etc. Hard Mode was eventually implemented and widely accepted by the community at large, so much so that when the Zaishen quests were being utilised the most (early-mid 2012, ie. pre GW2 launch), much of it had the Hard Mode option for the extra coin, which most people went for.

GW2 devs as you know will push the story and the gem store, again and again. This in turn makes people quite bored after a while (apart from the freaks who love the gimmicks) and eventually pushes them out of the game (some temporarily, a lot permanently).

My guess is that the devs weren’t expecting people to level to 80 so quickly and get the gear they got, so as I’ve read in a lot of reviews, many players got bored with the game after one month and left. That pushed them up against the wall as far as getting new content, which brought about hardcore farming of Orrian areas and subsequent nerfing because people were doing it too easily and exploiting eventually. Southsun came around and gave people a bit of a challenge, even for a massive zerg. The devs didn’t want to push out anything content-wise after they got fractals/southsun introduced, 2 years ago. LS was going to be it.

The only way to force their hand will be a big shift in game participation/sales which is what feels like is happening now. If all they can do every other Tuesday is bring out another crappy gem store item, I don’t want to be a part of it. This is no way to retain players. The LS content might be enough for some to keep them going; for others, when you see a dev post about an expansion or some content within the game that we haven’t seen before, expect there to be a massive influx of returning players. This is what they want; it’s been said over and over again in these forums alone.

Stick to the topic, guys… this is about GW2 not it’s competitors.

Vayne.8563:

So, as I always ask, what percentage of the playerbase ever did those things, or did them regularly.

I played Guild Wars 1 for well over five years. During that time, I did all of the end game instances once. That’s it. Once. It wasn’t fun for me. It wasn’t entertaining. It was annoying. It’s not why I play this game. I assume I’m not alone. Well I know I’m not because I play with other people like me.

The traditional thought of many players who like that sort of thing is that most people like that sort of thing…but I’m not sure it’s true.

I think if a lot of people by percentage did run DOA or The Underworld or FoW, then Anet would have put more of it in Guild Wars 2. They didn’t.

Maybe there’s a reason for that.

The reason they didn’t is because they took it into an entirely different direction. It was not merely a simple follow-on from GW1, there was a 250-year hiatus. Obviously with different writers in the game the story is going to go in different directions as well. It’s our job as players to influence the writers/designers/implementers of the game that we want this kind of content back in GW2.

Whose problem is it that you didn’t llike GW1 content? Anyone’s here? Certainly not. But that’s what I see people looking for when asked about new content, I mean the elite areas weren’t exactly pleasant; they were designed to be testing to a good team. I had as much exposure to GW1 as you did, and I managed to clock in 3 GWAMM’s. Yay me, right? Nope. Clearly I enjoyed the game a fair bit more than you did, as well as the challenge the game offered as end-game content.

So, at the risk of going off-topic, if you played GW1 for all of 5 years and only did the content once over, what the hell else did you do in the game? Maybe what you meant to say was that you owned GW1 for 5 years, played the content once, didn’t like it and moved onto something else. That stops you big-noting yourself.

Even in the middle of 2012 before GW2 was released, when Zaishen quests took people to elite areas, I found no shortage of people LFP. Get a team going, execute the content, cash in at the NPC. Simple enough in design and execution. The hard bit would be getting a team together, but like I said, there was plenty of people partying up.

I’m talking about end-game content, such as revisited version/iterations of Fissure of Woe, Underworld, Urgoz’s Warren, The Deep, etc. That was end-game content. It required skill, knowledge and a good cooperative team to execute successfully.

What we have right now is fractals (which some people get bored of very easily) and not even a hard mode for dungeons. Just because you have two new L80 zones which are getting thinner by the day (yes I’ve seen it happen for myself) which are LS-invoked hardly qualifies it as veteran content.

Obviously the game needs more challenging content in ALL modes of gameplay, but our voices aren’t being heard… and even if they are, there’s no way they’ll respond back with “yes we can implement this”… why is that? (besides being mentioned in a CDI) Oh that’s right, the policy, again.

Kythan Myr.4719:

Just to add to the broken collection list. While not directly a bug related to a collection unlocking it is a bug that blocks progress of the collection. It’s the Ancient Stone Summit Shoulder Spike via the vendor that appears after the Protect krewe leader Dobbs as the krewe clears the excavation site Event. I submitted a bug report and left something on the forums. It’s a well documented bug on the wiki with an odd work around of trying to complete the event after a patch. If you were unlucky enough to miss it then, you have to wait until next update. Not cool

I’ve submitted bug reports about this as well, and still it’s as broken as ever. It’s the same with the Dredge Commisar and Ogre Wars chains.

I’ve discovered the best time to get this quest going is immediately after a server reset. Everything goes back to ‘situation normal’ for about half a day if you’re lucky, and then it bugs out again.

For me, this is the best time to get it done; it’s how I got mine done.

It’s beyond time.

It’s probably 18 months past when veteran content should have been added.

Unfortunately Anet won’t implement it because we’re not worthy.

Xander.9024:

I was able to unlock the Fine Dining collection by eating a Plate of Truffle Steak, but it won’t acknowledge the Seared Beef Steak that I ate. Just thought I’d throw this in.

I managed to get this one done before it glitched.

Still…

• Brewmaster (which requires Stein of Golden Ale, recently removed as part of the NPE (previously supplied by Brother Vince at Eldvin Monastery), which he now only offers a karma item, not the required booze for the Collection; also Spider Brew which no one apparently knows who/where/how to obtain). The smart thing to do here would be to change the NPC that offers the Stein of Golden Ale at the very least to somewhere that isn’t in a starter zone.

• Fine Wining (unknown as to what to collect)

• Hero of the People (collect all grades of Embroidered Saddlebags, Elaborate Ritualist Bags, Gilded Strongboxes, Heirloom Seed Pouches and Deluxe Gear Boxes)

All this info obtained from the Dulfy Collections Page.

This is relatively basic stuff, and it should not be that hard to fix or given priority to fixing seeing as it was released as part of a Feature Pack.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

But with the sheer amounts of (unanswered) threads in the bugs section (as well as general discussion and players helping players) it is really hard for me to keep believing that the devs “read everything even if we don’t reply”. :’(

Nailed it, Pixel.

It really has become a case of post-‘n’-hope on this site. Sometimes you’ll get a dev to respond to your query for the betterment of the game and your playing experience. As I’ve experienced, other times they’ll go largely ignored.

I’ve posted so many times about these bugged collections that I’ve literally given up trying to swim against the tide. I only posted about these collections to Gaile in another thread two days ago. She asked for more info, I gave it to her. I even PM’d her about the collections, to which I still don’t have a reply.

I’m not sure what else I can do about getting this message through to the appropriate people, but it’s certainly not for lack of trying!!

The metrics on GW2 are NOT to be relied upon. As already explained, my guild is proof of that.

Thanks for the offtopic again. /smh

Vayne.8563:

Well I’m sure there are more than just hundreds considering in my guild alone 98 people logged in and played last week. And we’re not a huge guild.

Interesting point – to show just how flawed the metrics in this game are, did you know that 16 people logged in last week from my guild? I find that kind of interesting, since I’m the only one in it.

I don’t put too much stock into the figures/metrics this game possesses, and neither should anyone else. And it’s no surprise that I and others are trying to redirect the topic of the thread back on course from another Vayne segué.

On topic, I like the idea of getting more constructive and somewhat definitive information in the form of updates on the game’s direction. If we can be told what to expect in some more defined type of outlook (stuff that we know will be happening, not could be happening, as clarified by Gaile) it would go a long way to appeasing the ‘angry mobs’ here, helping the dev’s focus on certain points of the game and giving the players something to look forward to.

^

Whichever way you cut it, it’s still not a good policy to withhold information from your customer base. As long as I’ve been playing this game for (since BWE1) I just can’t get excited about a game that I know nothing about the future of… not even plans for the future.

It’s… a Revive Orb… on a stick.

Used to be #3 but more #2 now.

I wish it didn’t have to be.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

The latest feature packs have been broken from the start, and no attempt has been made to either fix them or at the very least communicate with us why there is such a major delay in fixing them+*.

This is a sweeping statement that is difficult to analyze. Which feature pack. What specific element is broken? How is it broken? Are you certain that whatever was broken remains broken? (IOW, are you tracking bug fixes, etc?)

If you’re saying “the whole thing is broken” I’m going to call that hyperbole and move on. If you can detail exact, quantifiable elements that were and remain broken, I’m all ears!

Ask and you shall receive. (A bit of a pity more of this isn’t commonplace within the game and its development)…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Collections

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/About-collections

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Early-Feature-Pack-Speculation/first#post4561082

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collections-Treasure-Hunter-and-salvaging

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Customer-Support-9-9-Feature-Build/page/3#post4451833

For clarity, once more, it was the September feature pack. I’m sure there are other threads which I’ve posted in describing my dissatisfaction with the QA of the last feature pack. I even sent you a PM about this 9 days ago in fact, describing my concern for these collections and their bugged state.

I also applaud the efforts of others who have detailed where other feature pack stuff (ie. April) has gone wrong. For me, right here and right now, it’s the Collections and why 3 of them can’t be activated. Ever since September I’ve been anxiously awaiting the patch notes which tell me the moment I can clear at least 2 of my bank tabs and finish off my Collections.

… now back to regular programming.

EDIT: at your request Gaile, I haven’t posted details about the feature pack bugs here, just links to the posts, which also include feedback which was initiated by a red post in the General Discussion, and a thread in the Bugs forum already.

It seems to me that communication is being stifled, and/or not getting through to the right people.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ok, here’s some info on these specific comments:

• No, the game is not lacking direction. Nor is it lacking vision or goals, plans, ideas, concepts, or any of the other properties that guide our future. The quiet now is not an indicator of anything other than the fact that, at this time, the company is not talking about the future but is, instead, working on it.
• Game companies, like most major industries, experience a certain level of turnover, and hire to fill those spaces. They also hire for new or expanded roles. Nothing startling here whatsoever.
• The silence is decidedly not a distraction effort. As Mike O’Brien said, "We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: “We don’t talk speculatively about future development. We don’t want to string you along. Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t; sometimes we go back to the drawing board over and over before we get something right. If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers. So when we attend a trade show or give an interview, we’re there to talk about what we’re getting ready to ship, not to speculate on what we might ship someday.”
• Living World and holidays are important, yes. They are not the only thing on which the team is working, quite clearly, when you see substantial updates coming out on a regular basis. (Case in point: feature packs, the coming PvP update, etc.)
• We are not “afraid” to lay out a roadmap. Quoting Mike again, “The intention of the CDI threads is to talk with you about the roadmap.” If you’re not participating, you’re missing out on a means of sharing your feedback and a method that we may use to give information, when the time is right.
• No, we’re not fearful of player reaction to our plans; we’re simply choosing a different path in communicating in the here and now.
• In general, with nearly anything, there are ebbs and flows in communication. If we’re in an ebb right now, you can count on there being a flow in the future. That’s just logical.

I’ve bolded the parts I want to repond to.

• We respectfully beg to differ. If the game isn’t lacking direction, then why won’t you at least share it with your concerned players? To hell with the policy… we want to know where the game is going. Gaile, put yourself in our shoes for a minute — wouldn’t you want to know too?

• CJ must be ruing his announcement (last year?) in a vid on youtube, about precursor crafting before the end of 2013. Disregard the fact that it was announced to people looking forward to this particular feature that it wouldn’t make it in the feature patch that it was supposed to be released with — in the interview it shouldn’t have been discussed at all.

• These ‘substantial updates’ have very little actual content involved. It may be an LS update where a new zone comes out, but that’s hardly what a lot of people here are looking forward to. When you see quite a lot of complaints about LS being pushed too hard over actual player-retaining content releases (ie. stuff people actually want in the game and have been crying out for for over 2 years), then ‘what’ is substantial to ‘whom’ would have to be brought into question. The latest feature packs have been broken from the start, and no attempt has been made to either fix them or at the very least communicate with us why there is such a major delay in fixing them. You’ve brought out a couple of new zones in the recent LS updates; don’t pat yourselves on the back too hard.

• You say that the communication ebb and flow is logical, but that doesn’t mean that it’s right. It might be the ‘done thing’ with you, but to keep invested players in the game, you communicate with them about stuff that’s going on, you know, keep them excited for something. This is why we’re so concerned about the direction the game is going in, and silence DOES NOT HELP IT.

The bottom line is we’re looking for a direction this game is headed, mostly regarding actual content and less so about LS. While no one knows what direction it’s headed, and no one who knows talks about it, the air of uncertainty thickens. And while you’re marking time with LS and not fixing stuff like the player story, traits, feature packs from previous patches, etc. players will continue to leave.

Yeah, there’s a few of them now, none of them have been addressed.

Another to add to the list of removed Gem Store items is the Boxing Gloves.

PS: Just curious, but this thread isn’t listing the bugged Collections (ie. Fine Wining, Brewmaster and Hero of the People), is it?

Linken.6345:

3 days and 4 pages with no reply have Gaile forsaken us?

She didn’t say that she’d be out of contact, not here at least. Probably she’s not got a lot left to say in the thread; it pretty much speaks for itself by now.

Fact is, Anet’s policy is to prevent information getting out about the game and its ongoing developments. I’ll say it again — this is bad. Problem with this policy is you’re stuffed if you don’t talk about it, and stuffed if you do. Where will you lose more customers?

I keep in touch on these forums and log in to see what’s going on patch-wise. I finish the LS episodes, but the last one didn’t take a lot to get through; even the new achieve to get the ‘Dark Traveler’ title didn’t take much. Other than that I have not a lot of reason left to log on daily. I don’t want to talk in place of people here, but that’s what it feels like with plenty of others as well.

A lot of people got off the hype train a long time ago, and as such there’s not much to get them excited about stuff, apart from what’s been discussed in this thread. One thing to remember is people will convey positive feelings for this game when something they want is introduced into the game. Those feelings quickly turn sour and a backlash occurs when that part of the game in development isn’t being worked on anymore, and people know that it isn’t (precursors, SAB, etc.).

It’s a double-edged sword to try to keep people involved in this game for the longer term. Keep us excited by telling us what’s going on, or turn us away by not telling us, or removing that part of the development. Either way, you need to be more communicative with your customers.

But it’s still just words until they physically implement something. And coming from CJ, well… we all know what to expect there.

dlonie.6547:

~brevity snip~

Why are so many people leaving? Usually it’s some combination of:

a) Having exhausted the content that they liked playing.
b) Having waited up to two years to see that content updated/expanded, with little to no attention paid to it.
c) Seeing and hearing absolutely nothing about the future of that content.

~/brevity snip~

All of the above. Another +1 from me, btw.

Agree with all you’ve said in this post, because I’ve been saying the same things to them for the past 2 years and been ignored for it, as well as a heap of others with the same sentiments.

I have to ask the devs and those with the capability for red posts, if they supposedly read through these forums and these concerned posts, yet don’t/can’t respond because of the policy in place, then what’s the point? It’s the same as trying to hold a conversation with a deaf person. They couldn’t respond to you even if they wanted to. All we’re doing is effectively talking to ourselves, and I don’t care what business you’re in, that’s not a good policy.

Astralporing.1957:

You do realize, that all those gems do need to be bought first, for real money, right? And that more gold used to buy gems only means that price of gems goes up.

Except for every 5k AP’s you earn where you’re given 400 gems (and 30g and a massive chest).

This has been happening more and more often lately. I’ll be in the map doing my bit trying to defeat the golem, when everything slows down and eventually becomes dead still.

At this point I realise I’ve either had a major lag spike or been kicked from the server and just don’t know it yet. This has been happening once in every 4 or 5 times on average, but tonight I was kicked from the server, re-logged, put into a new instance with < 10 people in it, and about halfway through it disconnected me again.

There’s nothing wrong with my connection and there’s no background activity at the same time. I’m being booted from the server or suffering major lag with no explanation.

DanzBurG.8635:

I don’t want to sound like a negative Nancy but it seems as if every time we create these kind of threads it attracts attention but eventually gets swept under the carpet as if our opinions don’t matter.

It’s because they are only opinions on a forum and, essentially, no they don’t matter. I said from the start that this policy and the direction they’re taking this game is going to be its noose, and that still stands now while we have only Gaile to occasionally talk to about what direction we feel the game is headed.

In reality, however, more players are leaving as I speak. It’s because nothing changes around here and there’s no real communication about the health and development of the game that people like myself and a lot of others are primed to just walk out.

Sad really, because they could do something, but they just won’t.

Gaile Gray.6029:

….I do wonder something. I want to ask, and hope nobody will bite my head off here.

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right? The fact that players know there’s a team working on new content and features, and that there are releases on a regular basis? I fully understand that may not fulfill every desire, but it does show a continuing commitment to “new stuff” for us players, wouldn’t you agree?

As long as the content being developed right now doesn’t have anything to do with what we’ve been begging and pleading for years for you to release (and fix), then no; not to me, not to anyone else who has posted here who has even a vague concern for the game’s direction.

I mean come on, you can’t even tell us if something is bugged or not. All we’re left to do is find out for ourselves, ‘oh no, it doesn’t work’… why not? Anet can’t even grace us with an explanation. Would you play something that has a development team which can’t even talk to their players about the game and its future? Short-, medium- and long-term goals are what need to be discussed and implemented, and not just in CDI form.

The releases don’t mean anything to any reasonable player if there’s nothing new to add to the game. I’m not talking about how hard you push your gemstore, LS episodes or LW content; I’m talking about stuff more tangible to the players who will appreciate it more, and you know as well as I do the stuff that’s being asked for in this game.

It’s more the fact that we don’t know what you’re working on and Anet’s too tight-fisted to release any information to keep us excited for what’s happening in the game. LW content only stretches so far. As a GW1 veteran you should know what we’re looking forward to in the game. The LS episodes and LW content can be enough to keep the newbies entertained for a while. The veterans (quite rightly) expect a bit more from what Anet can deliver, and to talk about such stuff with it’s longer-term players.

This isn’t an option, Gaile, it needs to happen.

I really don’t think people would be THAT put-out by a marginal increase of everything else that goes along with the precursor for the legendary.

The real issue here is the inconvenience of never having either the money, the luck or the opportunity to get the precursor drop which gets everyone offside. RNG is the main enemy here; if the precursor were that easy to get past in terms of progress, the rest (cost aside) would be a cakewalk.

Precursor crafting would be a guaranteed way of getting the hardest-to-get item in the game via methods already established from prior scavenger hunts (mawdrey, etc.). This would add a bit more excitement to the process, actually getting somewhere rather than idly marking time waiting for that one-in-a-billion drop chance.

But alas, Anet deems this to be the easy way out, and you can’t enjoy the game without Anet’s RNG. It’s like a mandatory barrier you have to pass through and most attempts are going to take far longer than the lucky few others. Besides, they aren’t working on it, never have been working on it… this is as much as we know so I’m going on a worst-case scenario. They wanted to rework the process so it factored in the rewards system that they were working on about a year ago, that’s the last we heard. Basically they scrapped everything and started again (or permanently shelved it) for all we know.

Zaklex.6308:

*If you want to search for a topic, use plain old Google, it works…that’s how I found the response above.

Wow, that’s such an endorsement for the forums, well done Anet.

/sarcasm

It’s such a pity that the search function on this forum is still broken* after over 2 years. Most of these perennial topics resurface because the people posting about them don’t want to have to dig through thousands of pages of threads to find something relevant.

*if they bothered using the search function at all.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ok, I’m back. About Harry Potter…

I think that the whole basis for the presentation in this and other threads about communication has a few pillars. And it’s one of them that I’m thinking about. J. K. Rawlings wrote a series of well-loved books, and I am sure (although I didn’t follow it) that people gave feedback to her on every release, heck, probably every nuance of every release, and that they also provided suggestions for future books. It’s a natural thing: People were highly invested in the series, loved it a bunch, and wanted to know more, or to have input.

In that small sense — and yes, that’s only part of the communication question — I don’t think I’d want our team to communicate about the game’s direction. Like, “Yes, so in the future, all frogs will become sentient, treble in size, and take over Lion’s Arch, leading to the elimination of all non-amphibian races. Yep, yep, that’s where we’re heading with the story.” NOTE: This is NOT where the story is going. This is only a wildly-improbable scenario offered for purposes of… umm… providing a wildly-improbable scenario.

My question: Do you agree that it’s good to not share that sort of information, information related to the actual direction of the game saga as a whole?

If so, then my sense is that you want to know more about the nuts and bolts.

• “Are you looking at XXX new feature?”
• “Do you intend to improve ABC functionality?”
• “Is ### working as intended, or is it bugged, or will you incorporate player feedback to change it?”

Again, this is a small part of the discussion, but I wanted to make sure I was looking at that part accurately. I wondered if generally, no one is asking about the whole “Tell us where the story is going” bit.

Gaile, please… we may be the end users of this game but that doesn’t mean we need to be insulted. I couldn’t give a crap about where the story is going more than most of the other players here, but what I want to know is why you can’t even get back to people (or even redirect the question/comment to the appropriate person) about stuff in the game that needs fixing.

I can point out 3 active threads right now (but won’t at the risk of infraction) where they’re all dealing with the same subject and not one ounce of Anet feedback has been posted about it. Do we know if it’s supposed to be bugged? Why is it bugged? Why wasn’t it fixed in a patch just after release? WHY IS IT BEING NEGLECTED?

I’m sorry Gaile, but you’re copping the rap for this by posting in this thread; I’ve invested far too much of my gaming time to idly sit here and be either lied to or ignored about a LOT of the game’s features that need so much fixing, and no one has done a thing about it. We get this little tid bit about communication from your boss (Mr O’Brien) and suddenly the floodgates open about talking to your players. Such a facade. Us players are not the plebs you’d believe we are, and you should know that already from your interaction with us here on the forums.

I won’t support a game that doesn’t support its players. Anet’s whole philosophy is “sod the playerbase, sod their wishes for the game, we’re gonna do what we want to do, the way we want it, and if anyone has any objections to it (on the forums) they’ll either get ignored or infracted for daring to raise such issues to the broader playerbase”.

Your lack of communication with us about the game’s direction is exactly what has us all on edge, and not edge of the seat either… I’m talking about driving us away from the game. If you can’t see this then I suggest you remove your blinkers. Yes you’ll talk to us about trivial crap but NOTHING ABOUT THE GAME’S DIRECTION.

To be honest I’m not sure I want to know where this game is going anymore. I was so excited to be able to play it during the beta’s and now after all this time you’re managed to suck the life right out of it. You’ve made most of your veterans leave the game (early on I might add) because it’s nothing like what you (Anet) hyped it to be. All this because your tight-fisted POLICY won’t allow any part of the game’s direction to be revealed, or the status of any fixes. This is NOT how you communicate with your customers, by treating them like mushrooms.

Yoroiookami.3485:

Does anyone know why isn’t it implemented yet? After waiting a long time for Scavenger Hunt, nothing happened. Now we have ascended items, but still no precursor crafting options. I’m a bit confused. Adding a few recipes doesn’t seem like a lot of work to do. Why isn’t it in the game yet? Did anet say anything on the matter?

No, and you won’t hear anything about it either, cos it goes against their policy.

/headdesk

The only time you’ll hear something from Anet is “When It’s Ready.™”

more /headdesk….

What will NOT be fixed:

• Bugged collections from the last feature patch.

… maybe it’s a feature that they’re bugged, they won’t say one way or the other.

dlonie.6547:

…I’m not asking for any specific content, I’m only asking that they share what their direction is…

WHAT?! Anet share their direction?! Ludicrous!!!

What’s even more ludicrous is they shoot themselves in the foot because of their ‘policy’ and leave players in the lurch, wondering what’s gonna hit them next.

Not a great way to run a business, or get people excited for your game.

Firstly, hats off to fixing the old poison pool areas, taking them from being inocuous red rings (in the water they were near invisible) to being bright orange cricles, a-la Triple Trouble poison pools.

Having said this however, I have noticed that there’s a definite lag between when the poison is made active (when we start losing health if we’re caught in it), and when the orange circle shows up. I’ve noticed as much as a two second lag/delay between when I start taking poison damage and when the orange circles become visible.

Ordinarily I’d say it was me or my net connection, but even at the deadest times of the night when connection speeds are highest I’m still getting this same issue. This leads me to believe it’s more to do with game mechanics.

Can someone investigate this please? Also if anyone else has had similar in-game poison pool lag please share your experiences here. Thanks.

Sariel V.7024:

At this stage, it feels obvious to me that the collections were just being shown off and weren’t intended to be in the game yet. Why, we may never know.

At any rate, the items for these collections are easily obtained. Consume what you have if you need the space and write it off as a bad experience. It’s time to move on.

I think I already mentioned I have 2 bank tabs full of items waiting to be consumed/opened for when/IF the collections are fixed. I for one can’t understand their hesitance to fix these collections. To me at least, the only bug here is Anet’s unwillingness to move to get this sorted like what should have been done over 2 months ago.

Marcus, the ones listed on the dulfy site (http://dulfy.net/2014/09/08/gw2-items-collections-guide/) are still bugged, and I’m beginning to think it’s intended to be that way. There’s been no response from any Anet staffer/dev on the state of this, and one has to wonder if this was a feature in the feature pack, why it hasn’t been fixed yet.

Excelsior (n.)

fine wood shavings, used for stuffing, packing, etc.

Just sayin…

I really don’t wanna say that this kind of talk is destructive, but on this very topic it’s so true.

I’m at a loss to understand how they can ignore it for this long.

But still no one can even answer that question – why the trait stuff is bugged so frequently. Obviously the best time to get them done is immediately after a patch hits, because that’s when the servers have reset.

Why we can’t get an official word on thesequests and the collections they’re tied to, well… is the policy to blame there as well?