Guild Wars 2

SkiTz.4590:

Paulie.6215:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

You’ve officially made me realize that you have zero intention of fixing the pet or the ranger. Thanks for that moving onto my thief and warrior.

Also what an awful example…you’re comparing something as integral to the ranger as the pet to a 2×4???? You do realize that it can take MANY 2×4s to build a house don’t you? 2×4s are a dime a dozen – not something as integral as, say, an I-beam?

Please oh please stick to other examples. The example you used says there is little to no value in the pet…which I agree with but I don’t think you were trying to say that.

Poor Allie, anything she says is pretty much met with backlash…. unfortunately its kinda warranted when statements like "we are supposed to be excellent skirmishers because of our allegedly awesome sustain DPS (lol, we have no sustain, no dps and defintely not the combination) or making terrible comparisions (pet to a 2×4 in the house known as ranger…. facepalm)

I’m starting to wonder if anyone at anet even plays this class?

Honest to god suggestion, scrap this class, and make a new one

If the past 1.5 years of bandaid fixed have not worked , what on earth makes you think this upcoming batch of bandaids are going to work????

Anything short of an overhaul will not help the ranger, we all know thats how badly in a spot ranger is in every aspect of the game.

Go big or go home. If anet actually believes that we currently have good sustain DPS like Allie stated, I’m afraid theres very little hope.

The past 1.5 years of incompetence speaks for itself.

I honestly still believe that after this 50+ page CDI, Anet still thinks they are right (that rangers somehow have good sustainability, dps, pets are OK, just need some minor tweaks, etc) – That is what I have gotten out of all the red posts in this CDI. It’s amazing how little they seem to care.

Just to add do your closing statements – especially on the “Go big or go home” statement.

I’m personally confused about ANet’s bipolar nature:

• - “Our Game Design philosophy has changed….. but…. This is what the philosophy of the ranger should have always been …so it should stay that way”
• - “Yeah, we burnt LA to the ground and if we think dungeons aren’t good enough, we scrap them and start over. Who says we don’t take risks? ….but…. we’re not going to look into an overhaul of a class that needs it…”*

Surely, if something needs an overhaul it should be given?
(Revamped dungeons, Magic Find, and WvW progression says hello….and they’re all asking why the ranger isn’t invited to the overhaul party.)

I think in terms of the “Philosophy of the Ranger” I think you need to be willing to re-establish what that Philosophy is.
Other parts of the game have been subject to this already and have changed in accordance with a sense of ‘Progression is adapting’.

Drop the past philosophy (which is most likely overarching from GW1 and from pre-launch GW2) and build a new one taking in all the information here, and from what you learnt during this year and a half of post-release limitations and struggles.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I know, stupid Anet… it’s like those kitten Russians… I mean how DARE they hold the Olympics according to their time zone. I work all day come home and they are Kitten Sleeping! They should be doing the events I want to see on my time, i’m a kitten American!

Dat logic.

It’s basically artificial longevity.

Kuro Zetsumei.1397:

not to sound like an ungreatful kitten , I really appreciate that you engage with the community, but I cannot help but say this. I want to add that I am aware this has to come from other departments, but you work in the same company no? confront them.

where is the topic on Charr armour? it really HAS to come, or at least some sort okittennowledgement(why does this get kittened? lol) that its being worked on, because currently its an insult to any Charr player on how much we are getting flipped off regarding any kind of new armour, almost NOTHING looks good on a Charr!

I’m really tired of being part of the group that always gets half kitten d work, look at the gorgeous art work you made of the Charr, how kitten they looked.. ingame.. not so much.. sure you can make them look decent.. but that’s only possible with loads of cultural because almost no dungeon armour looks good on them.

I apologise if I sounded rude in any shape or form, that was not my intention merely a bit annoyed at this point, feels like were being ignored completely.

Just to chime in: Regardless of you – and other Charr enthusiasts – being put on the tail end of the creative cycle (no pun intended), it also just makes the art team look sloppy.
And if there’s an issue with charr armour now…then how is it going to be when/if Kodan or Tengu races are playable. You’d potentially turn a cool race into looking like crud because of cutting corners. Oh well.

To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer was “Hardly anyone plays charr, so hardly anyone was talking about it, so we never brought it up as a concern”

Nike.2631:

nethykins.7986:

Genuine question: Anyone explain to me the reason for this thread if the discussion is to start at a later date?

The first post could have easily been the only post, and it be stickied.

Think of it as a dress rehearsal, or maybe the previews before the movie .

Ok. Just find that difficult to understand while chris is telling people not to go into detail.

Genuine question: Anyone explain to me the reason for this thread if the discussion is to start at a later date?

The first post could have easily been the only post, and it be stickied.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

One thing of note:

’ I would hate to see the CDI become the tune that we all dance to around the uncomfortable issues.’

The CDI would be utterly pointless if this became the case (-: The game gets better because of tackling tough issues in the CDI. The Living World CDI was ‘Uncomfortable’ and Iam extremely happy with the positive impact that topic has already had in the game.

Chris

Playing devils advocate here:
I recall the first set of CDI’s heavily reinforcing the notion that if you guys can’t talk about something, then it’s off limits, no questions asked.

That’s not at all uncomfortable for us, but it’s a hell lot more uneasy for you to discuss – meaning, you can’t simply say you’ll tackle tough issues, when there are things, no doubt, be required for us to “back down” on, (so to speak)

I’d love to quote from one of the CDI’s but, hell…they’re titan threads.

Apparently because “Exploits”

:S

Blude.6812:

nethykins.7986:

Lexandro.1456:

Would be nice to know what suggestions people made in the last CDI actually got paid attention to and are being looked at for implementation.

Unfortunately, I think the same phrases we’ve heard in the past are going to be stated when asking anything in relation to the status of CDI implementation:

“It’s something we’re talking about”
“xyz isn’t something we’re looking to do but It’s not off the table”
“We’ve talked alot about xyz”

Personally, I think it’s a just a ‘Black Hole’. It only serves to placate the masses and eventually becomes too large and unweildy to particpate in. When some of the top suggestions such as a house will do absolutely nothing to correct problems that have existed from day 1, I question it’s relevance other than to seem like the community is being engaged.

And yes a written report by a dev that summerises the suggestions as well as ranking them by how many players supported/suggested.

I’ll agree, it does seem somewhat like a ‘Black Hole’.
We know the CDI hasn’t been out for very long and that is definitely a defining factor to why it feels this way, however the suggestions forums have been doing that since the launch of the game, and a lot of the posts were reinterpretations, reiterations and links galore to previous examples stated many months earlier.

On the aspect of housing, the one thing that boggles my mind, is that why, when everyone had been saying from launch, “the personal home instance is not the same as housing” then reading an interview where ANet stated that they were focusing more on personal story having an effect on your home instance and that housing “isn’t something they’re looking into”, why they can just turn on a dime now instead of trying to work with the playerbase earlier on.
And hey, if this issue was rectified a lot earlier, we wouldn’t be having housing as a ‘most wanted’ feature in this discussion.

Currently it’s relevance is just that. Engagement. We can’t say otherwise because we have no proof. All the words in the world could be poured out for all to read, with innovative ideas solving many of the games problems, and the devs could agree 100% and nod heavily in agreement…but until something actually gets done…thats when we’ll see the power behind those words.

Lexandro.1456:

Would be nice to know what suggestions people made in the last CDI actually got paid attention to and are being looked at for implementation.

Unfortunately, I think the same phrases we’ve heard in the past are going to be stated when asking anything in relation to the status of CDI implementation:

“It’s something we’re talking about”
“xyz isn’t something we’re looking to do but It’s not off the table”
“We’ve talked alot about xyz”

Plot twist:

The LFGTool is the bug.

I desperately hope you guys (Anet) really look at working on the current meta….I mean, a real, hard, in-depth look.
(Considering a while back, when asked about this and how it affected LFG, they just brushed it off as a community issue.)

Please don’t come out with mediocre fixes. Do something drastic.

Vol.7601:

Dev interview will be coming later today, perhaps past 5 pm EST, according to guild2hub

Curious – who’s conducting the interview? Just an internal Anet dev interview?
I have a really strong feeling it’ll beat around the bush of anything specifically, and probably reinforce the comments about 2013 being a strong year, and 2014 being even stronger.

:s my post was deleted…. And I actually edited it so I complied with what the thread wanted…

Big news?
I have a strong feeling he’s talking vaguely. Probably in terms of “big news for us, not so much for you”…

I think, in 2014, they’ll have the China Release.
Last I heard of it, they were doing beta tests mid 2013… and even a quick snoop on the GW2 china forums shows that it’s still not up there.

Just to curb everyones expectations, this isnt far from what we heard at the start if 2013.
Expansions worth of content and all, pre-living story, etc, etc…

Expect something….just dont expect it to be groundbreaking.

You may as well name names. (This isn’t a theatre, and we’re not screaming macbeth)

The only thing that would be able to contend against rival mmos is if they were to take that step into the expansion territory, but its highly unlikely that they’d not be able to do that now.

Not trying to knock gw but its kinda inevitable that they wont be able to keep players invested in the game. It happens to all games. At some point that fuel tank starts to empty and the momentum goes.

Personally, i think in april some of the cdi initiatives will come to fruition (good god, i hope!), and the game will finally begin to start changing its direction to the playerbases suggestions instead of focusing on experimenting with more living story content.

I asked this once before in the PVE/Living World CDI thread but never did get an answer. Seeing as it’s a question you created (and seem to repeatedly ask), I can only hope you have an answer for this too. I’ll rephrase it this time.

What games do you devs look at as a reference for what you want to see in game in terms of horizontal progression?

Guhracie.3419:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

-snip-

…I’d be totally happy to sit out of a CDI called “Ascended Armor” and let the people who feel strongly about it discuss it. But I currently feel like I have to plod through posts about ascended armor so I don’t miss something that might be relevant to my interests… which is why I mentioned a summary of what has been mentioned about vertical progression. I’m anxious to get to horizontal progression because it’s one of the biggest reasons I switched to GW2 from WoW. And if I knew I wasn’t missing out on any of that discussion (or other vertical progress ideas not pertaining directly to ascended armor), I’d probably be spending way less time in this thread…..

Not to harp on about this, but therein lies the issue that was evident before the CDI even began. You have a subject “PvE” or “PvP” or “Character progression” or whatever, then guiding the discussion (mostly only one or two ways) you are actually encouraging loads of topics to get steamrolled by a single major point. While they may read all of the posts, it’s not likely they’ll take the same emphasis back on feedback for “general crafting progression” or “the road to a legendaries progression” than they will on just ascended gear as a whole.
Not to say ascended topics are of a lesser value, but I just think you can get yourself stuck in a rut with the broad CDI question.

/rant

…carry on…

Hey chris,
Not sure if anyone’s mentioned this, but I kinda think you should time the “Game/class balance” CDI topic to a little later behind the dec 10th patch. By then, people would have seen the changes your team has made and be able to give you feedback on it as a whole without being told “Well, just wait until the next patch”, like we did with complaint’s about scarlett’s character being “Well, wait until her arc finishes”.

Just a thought really.

Vayne.8563:

The toxic events are relatively easy to avoid…you try it once, you see its too hard, and you stay away from them. It’s not like the big orange circle doesn’t tell you they’re there.

There are more high level characters in low level zones now than low level characters.

Just wondering…Do you think this is something that will stop people from doing any LS stuff?
If they start with the notion that something’s too hard in a starter zone, will that notion not continue down the line?

But yeah, I agree, you can avoid it at the risk of never doing the LS content.

Number 1 rules of MMO development.
“Never say never”

I’m sure they’ve said something in the past as “not something we’re considering” but then, due to the nature of a constantly developing game, would have had to change that.
Hell, they’ve even said they’ve changed their philosophy about the game now, compared to pre-launch.

Besides, in the long run, if they’re faced with lacking server pops, and burning money keeping them active, it’s more likely NCSoft will give them some direction to cut servers down/merge them.

leman.7682:

Brutal Arts.6307:

“You never feel like you’re grinding”

Hahahahaha. Hah.

Same reaction, I almost spit my cocoa listening to this.

Same reaction, I almost spit my Mango, Pineapple and Passion fruit smoothie listening to this.

Would have been a very fruity mess.

Nike.2631:

I’m not sure why you say that. The community managers still handle thousands of threads each day. Moderators will still be needed even (maybe especially…) in CDI threads to comb out off topic and abusive posts. Community managers also serve an important function in identifying and forwarding along specific concerns, but in this case that’s unnecessary as there is a Developer-Owner present to do that directly.

I say it because from what interaction they have with the community (and from what you’ve also described), it feels like it’s closer to a alternative title of Moderator.

I stated in an earlier post when i first asked the question, why is it that I see the community managers never really communicating with the community, and when it is, it’s often to give a warning, tell someone they’re incorrect and present them with fact, or closing a thread.

Even my single interaction with a community manager came from asking why threads were being deleted/closed on a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ policy way back earlier this year. First I got an infraction for bringing it up, then I got a response from a community manager, and I even Thanked them for responding, then the thread was closed.

So much for communication.

I sincerely hope you, or Anet don’t think community managers should just sit back, collect info on what’s bugging us, but never reach out to us?

I understand this is a dev owned thread, but does that make them exempt from adding to the discussion, or visibly assisting, and hell, maybe they may even communicate…with the community.

I suppose I’m just alone in thinking this.

Pssstttt, Chris,
Still waiting on that response about community manager/community co-ordinator roles being a little ‘redundant’ for lack of a better term. :P

Chris Whiteside.6102:

As you have read in point three i have expressed the issues that i think were core to that CDI not being more successful. Each thread has an owner, I am the owner of the PVE thread. My plan is to work with each of the owners to help them grow to better handle the topics moving forward. I want the individual owners themselves to reply and connect in a meaningful and relevant manner, thus it is disingenuous for me to go in and own another thread (never mind taking into account the time that would eat up for me). However this does not preclude me from working with the guys and girls to build a better path to success in this initiative. Thus i would ask you to remain patient, see how things improve and continue to feedback in a manner that is productive to the evolution of CDI as a whole.

Chris

Not to dwell on this too much, but perhaps there’s a case here for setting up rules for yourselves as well as us. We currently have to comply with a few ground-rules before starting the discussion, and we (mostly) adhere to them. Maybe we should have a few set ground rules for the Anet team to make sure it’s not lopsided.
For example a single one to start off with that isn’t going to break the CDI overall would be:
- If an Anet employee “owns/coordinates” the thread, they are expected to participate in it too, or it will be designated to someone better suited.

That way, we and you know where we both stand on this. You don’t contribute to a discussion you start; you’re in the wrong….if we don’t give constructive feedback/put out personal attacks; we’re in the wrong. Simple.

I know, it sounds a little patronising, but I think it’s fair game, if you set up a big initiative, and can’t follow through on one section at the very start, it’s not likely to progress in a positive manner from there on. However, I did notice this:

Third, i am sorry that the WvW thread wasn’t more like the PVE one. This is my fault in that i underestimated how busy the guys were

You honorably take the fall for time mismanagement but, strangely won’t jump into the WvW thread to relay that over to them, and discuss those failings? (I can’t say if you have, i’m only taking yours and gidorah’s word for it)

Not sure if I completely follow that logic, (but hey, I can’t complain I watched and participated in the PvE thread) but it’d be nice to see some of that newly created disdain for a WvW CDI disappear, so you can actually move forward.

Hope that all made sense!

Nike.2631:

B) Have time freed up on the their schedule to host the topic for the week/10 days/whatever fixed length you want it to run. Give them 45 minutes each day their expected by ANet to read and comment during the thread’s run. You’ve been the voice of several of these and might be again in the future, but for some of these more tightly themed topics ANet needs a spokesman who literally knows it better than anyone AND is clear that they are being pushed forward to listen and consider ideas that might be outside their comfort zone.

Fo’ real.

Chris!
Put those Project Managers/Production Managers to use!!!!
Get them to factor in time for the CDI without fail. The main thing here, is you should be treating the CDI as a must-have component of your working day. You clock in, you start work on project X, break for lunch, come back from lunch and do your short CDI time (or do the CDI during lunch if you’re that eager!), have a meeting/status update etc, then continue with your projects till closing.

The sooner you take it on board as a factor of your timetable, the less “sorry, don’t have much time” situations will arise.

Any chance at commenting on the use of community managers in something like the CDI to help manage the discussion?

@Chris -

Just to go a bit back on topic on how to better evolve the CDI:

Why don’t you get the community managers to handle this? I rarely see them contribute or post, and when they do, it’s usually to tell people Not to do so-and-so, or a warning of sorts. They act closer to moderators than community managers.

Considering you guys are busy, ya’ know, keeping the game on it’s feet, it’s only fair that the community managers do something to help streamline the feedback you get from us.

Let them post after every 3 pages the rundown of main questions that need to be answered or the summary.
Let them be some sort of adjudicator to the whole discussion so the subject doesn’t derail instantly.

Conner.4702:

The whole LW collaboration thread to me was just more of the same. Players making suggestions. That is NOT collaboration. Devs need to put in their concerns and ideas as well. Would the playerbase like this, would going in this direction be a good idea. You don’t have to disclose anything that is currently being worked on to do so. This brings me to another point. Don’t use “we can’t talk about this” as a way to shut down something when it isn’t an issue to begin with. You can talk about things without revealing details. I felt that a lot of posts were being to defensive as if you are trying to justify your actions. Among them the 2 week release schedule. Not wanting to discuss it now means nothing will change for the next 8 months and then it might as well be to late. Nothing should be off limits. Yes, you have a schedule for the next 4 months already. That does not mean you ignore things because you don’t want to think about it or change it right now.

In short devs need to bring more to this table than they have. You say it is important than treat it as such. Don’t merely ask questions or be defensive in your replies. Also try not to manipulate. Quite a few posts were pushing towards something you wanted. It might have been subconsciously, but that make it a good thing.

Now while the PVE thread had at least some interaction the WvW one was just sad. I really don’t feel Devon Carver is suited for the position as lead. As I don’t see him truly understanding the problems with WvW. To me it seems he’s in an ivory tower ignoring the masses below. WvW has a lot of problems. A lot of them boil down to bad implementation to begin with and I don’t see that changing even though redoing some of the things would greatly benefit things in the long run. What the WvW team does though is making a inherently bad situation worse and worse.

The funny thing is, this “CDI Process Evolution” thing isn’t going to even hint at changing the current norm either. The Original threads consisted of players discussing between themselves mostly, and now, this thread discussing the last threads (Woah, Meta) is most likely going to come to the same conclusion.
Probably open for way longer than needed, will have little discussion with the dev team, and will probably have most dev posts simply nodding and saying “Uh-huh”…on agreeing that things need to change, but again, just agreeing with the player base, and not adding to the discussion doesn’t really progress anything.

I almost think something like a General Mass Posting of the single line:

“Dev’s. Please add to the discussion, please”

Might do more to benefit the progression of an actual ‘discussion’ than just us spouting until the end of time between ourselves on something that we ultimately have no real control over, because that’s honestly all we really need to make this pseudo discussion a real one.
At the moment it feels like any other company saying “We appreciate your concern, thanks for your input”, then just going about their normal business.

EverythingXen.1835:

To those saying they never answered the tough feedback/questions… what exactly do you mean?

The only one I recall from that monster thread was why they insisted on sticking with the bi-week cadence.

What did you want them to say?

I think it’s more along the lines of:
They’re cool posting one-liners on feedback that seems to have been “always discussed with the team” at Anet. Akin to Colin’s “It’s something we’re looking at”, and Mike Z’s Recent “Nothing’s off the table”, so surely if they’ve been discussing it since the dawn of time….it’s nothing new hearing it from us. However, what they probably don’t get in their meetings are a real “fresh eyes” or “outside perspective” critique of their work.

Now if we give them that feedback that they ask for, no matter how bad it sounds, shouldn’t they be tackling some of the issues they’re not likely to have come across before?
Isn’t that how you improve? Not just building upon ideas that you have already come across.

And tbh, if they cant answer a question about why the cadence is sticking, then the only “assumption” i can make is that they’re not going to bother responding to questions of that nature and keep on keeping on with patting on the back for positive stuff.

Sure…give him a statue…in your home instance where it’s relevant, but unfortunately where you’ll never probably see it.

I’d prefer to have to take him on as a champion risen mob during the personal story, including the crucial 90’s action movie cliché of a one liner just before you deliver the finishing blow, but not before a glimmer of his personality shines through the ‘risen’ state, where he slowly draws out the word…“Aaapplees!”

TL;DR:
There needs to be a better way of focusing the discussion. The discussion topics being honed to specific points would be more helpful at getting concise and pinpointed feedback.

I personally think the problem with the first CDI was it was tackling a subject way too large for just one discussion.

Saying “Discuss your opinion on the Living World” is just asking for a multitude of categories to appear in a single strand of conversation:
-Story
-Pacing of both release cadence and story beats
-Characters – mainly Scarlett
-Loot gained from LW
-Living world dungeons
-What is considered as “challenging content”
-Temp vs Perm
-The impact of the story on the world on the whole.
-The impact of achievements on the story and playtime

I’m definitely missing out some key points but, I think taking this on-board as a large subject kind of bogged down the thread towards parts where people thought discussing stuff like Scarlett’s character arc/back-story/presence was not relevant, when it is, but there was just a lack of general direction.

(Thinking about it now, I can see just how “Living world” won overall on the topic to first discuss. Because people often posted “Temp vs Perm content”, “LW Story”, “Achievements from LW” and “Cadence of LW releases” which all fall under the umbrella of general LW discussion)

Though, the way it’s been done through weeks and weeks of polling to even get to the discussion, I feel if we started highlighting separate points of the LW to critique and give feedback on, we’d still be polling on whether we want to talk about Achievements or Cadence of releases and wouldn’t get anywhere. It’s all good and fair telling people to be concise in their responses during the discussion, but the question or thread should also reflect that.

If you were to ask us for opinions on the world IRL, and expect only a sentence, you need to really hone your question.

Shriketalon.1937:

We all need to be concise.

Brevity is the soul of wit. Many of the posters in the Living World thread, myself included, wanted to use it as a soapbox for their enormous essay about expanding the world. This produced pages and pages and pages of long text blocks, many of which said the same general things. This makes it very difficult to read, let alone form a discussion. It might help to enforce a simple standard. If your post is more than a midsized paragraph or two long, it needs to be a spoiler quote block OR a link to another thread that lays out your essay in full.

I’m equally guilty of contributing to the problem, but if we’re going to have a really good conversation, we can’t be giving speeches over one another’s heads.

The real question is, even with more concise feedback, if we had 45 pages of that, but the same amount of red posts over the whole thread. Would we be any further than we are now?

(considering many posts were of this nature: “I expect Bobby will speak to this point in more detail.” and “Yep i think this point is valid.”)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Please do not try to derail a thread about how we can improve by building arguments around assumptions…

Hey Chris,

Just an observation -

If a thread about the progression/improvement of CDI in the future ends up being steered towards “You don’t seem to be responding to questions that supply negative feedback” and assumptions are spawned from the lack of information/communication, then isn’t labelling it as “derailing” doing more damage?

Surely, the first point of action is to realise the lines of communications are thin on ANet’s side? Look at how and why assumptions are made in the first place? Look at ways to counteract that or better yet to avoid it ever coming to that conclusion?

StriderShinryu.6923:

My top 3:
1.) More actual discussion from the developers and less “Hey, here’s a topic, you guys talk about it!”

In the first CDI topic, it really felt like there was little meaningful interaction and discussion with the developers. Instead it was the developers giving players topics and asking that they talk about it. In the cases where there was interaction, it was often in the form of “This is how we’re doing things. Period.” This isn’t just something that can be solved by the developers having more time to post. Instead it’s something that requires a shift to more openness amongst the development team.

Pretty much.

A discussion can happen, but if it’s between us guys, that have very little control over the game’s direction, but a lot of ideas, then it’s not going to be very productive, and to be honest you can scroll pages through suggestions section of the forums to see that if you really wanted that.

I do have to say, that I saw more “Yes, I concur…[insert very short question to stretch more discussion from players]” instead of hard lined disagreements.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

bravoart.5308:

I’d love to see focus on talking about what the players of that region are concerned about. After having been told by a community manager that the first community discussions was about Living Story because other regions found that more important than EN GW2’s issues, it felt a bit disingenuous.

If EN gw2’s primary focus is rewards and drop rates and DR, don’t tell them that FR’s concern with living story is more important, even if it is more convenient.

Pushing hard work and difficult issues to the back just means it never gets done.

Hi Bravoart,

The topics were chosen from the global feedback we got from all of our forums. Therefore the first topics were inclusive of all suggestions for discussion from the global community.

Chris

I think if you look at it from another angle you’ll see how ‘out-of-the-loop’ you can become with pockets of your playerbase if you collate and execute an idea though a blanket response rather than localised areas.

Let’s say, For example: You have data about how NA and most EU players are playing – They’re fully behind dungeons and fractals, but want changes.
…But on release of GW2 in china, you find, that they’re way more into the LW, alts, the and the home instance, but they’ve started to bring up points that this can be improved.

These are different locales, that play differently as a collective. Surely they should be seen as separate entities in relation to wants/needs?
While it is more time consuming and accurate, it’s obvious that it’s also more convenient on your part to collate and execute as a whole group.

BobbyStein.2315:

smitske.4912:

I think what he means is, something I pointed out before too, that he does not understand why you decided to make a completely new villain and a story that for the most part is completely unrelated with the story we get throughout the game. This while there are so many stories on which you could have build on to that are already in the game. For example Kodan reclaiming their lands, tengu seeing the need to open up and combine powers with the current races to fight the evils, still many dragon bosses to defeat. Zhaitan may have fallen, but he other ones don’t seem to do anything at all.

Dragons being one of the big enemies but there are also smaller ones, like the corruption and battle for power between different groups that we often see in the first part of the personal stories, why doesn’t anything seem to happen there?

Reuses of Braham and Roxx is nice, but often I feel like they are just put in so that people recognize them but they play no real role, they have no real connection with the story they just happen to show up. I mean we can see them with the current one where they replace one of the vigil/whispers agents at the destroy the spore events, but they have no real use there. They seem to be just dragged in out of nowhere and that is just silly.

The biggest reason why we introduced new characters for Living World story content was because we weren’t able to separate the Personal Story and Living World timelines and characters. So while we could have used iconics or existing characters more liberally in the Living World releases, we couldn’t put them through any meaningful changes because it could potentially break continuity elsewhere.

If you create a character that has no dependencies to existing content then you have a lot fewer restrictions in how you use them. The good news is that we’re taking steps to address this very concern and we’ll be sharing more details on our solution in the coming months.

I still don’t understand why the personal story holds so much weight. It’s time-frame and relation to the rest of the PVE world is not something that is set in stone, which means that the lore surrounding it could easily be placed in the same category, lore-wise, as the dungeons or fractals. “Slivers of history replayed in time”.

You could literally state that now and continue on the progressing story.

Kingmutez.4931:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

…
Exp: After completing a DE:
(Lost)
Xp + sum coin
(Win)
Gold-> Karma/Xp + (rare) Loot bag
Silver-> Karma/Xp + (green) Loot bag
Bronze-> Karma/Xp + (blue) Loot bag

This can’t be implemented properly until they fix the Gold, Silver, Bronze requirements as it should have been way before hand. Playing the epic support role (rezzing, boon application etc) while everyone plays DPS does not net you a Gold rank.

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

Karma is pretty useless right now unless you want a temple set or are going after a legendary. Other than that, it is useless. Suggestion: Make karma more useful.

GW2 is littered with too many currencies and reward types.
-Gold
-Gems
-Different dungeon tokens for every dungeon
-Karma
-Laurels
-Globs of Ecto
-Guild Commendations
-Badge of Honor
-Skill points
-Fractal relics
-Fractal pristine relics
-Guild Influence

Did I miss any? Point is: You need to reduce the amount of currency you have, and make Karma a universal currency. And make Karma universally available from literally anything you do in game.

Doesn’t necessarily fix the issue at hand, but its a start.

Funny thing was, this was highlighted as a key thing that they’re looking into removing/cutting down. A few months later though, I’m still seeing currencies being introduced.

Sure they may not be permanent like laurels and fractal relics, but hell, they’re not at all improving on the “too many currencies” issue.

timmyf.1490:

nethykins.7986:

Or better yet, why not just do incremental rewarding?
So for example;
- After doing 5 DE’s in a day, you receive a chest. It contains a handful of very low level crafting items, and most definitely some junk.
- After doing 10 more DE’s, you get another box, with some other rewards slightly better, with less junk.
- Repeat for after 15 more, 20 more, ad 25 more.

I mean, you can change the chest rewards up completely to whatever you desire, and it also takes off some of the pressure on Champ Trains, which is kind of where people get their rewards from instead of DE’s.

Here’s the problem: champ trains become MORE popular because you get the champ bags AND you start to get chests for finishing DEs. I don’t know of any faster way to complete DEs than the champ trains…

Unintended consequences.

And therein lies the problem with my idea.

In that sense, all DE’s will hard to lure players away from champ trains if they are ultimately knocking 2 birds with 1 stone.

In terms of DE? I’d even say, follow the K.I.S.S. Method.

Keep it Simple, Stupid.

Don’t try and come up with a new-fangled idea that will only put pressure on your dev team for both brainstorming and implementation. While ideas are your strong point, I think it’s the execution that usually suffers.

In all honesty, I’d just say, look to other games for inspiration. It’s not bad to do so.
A few things I’ve seen in other games that reward long play time, that can easily be translated to “You’ve done X amount of DE’s today!” are things like:
- Timed Offensive or Defensive buffs.
- Timed Loot drop increases.
- An overall increase in overall rewards for longer DE’s (You guys seem to always be on the edge of not wanting us to really “profit” from doing stuff in-game, only to really ‘break even’ for lack of a better term)

Or better yet, why not just do incremental rewarding?
So for example;
- After doing 5 DE’s in a day, you receive a chest. It contains a handful of very low level crafting items, and most definitely some junk.
- After doing 10 more DE’s, you get another box, with some other rewards slightly better, with less junk.
- Repeat for after 15 more, 20 more, ad 25 more.

I mean, you can change the chest rewards up completely to whatever you desire, and it also takes off some of the pressure on Champ Trains, which is kind of where people get their rewards from instead of DE’s.

I don’t know how much time is left on this forum discussion, but at the end, could we get this stickied/locked per usual, but with A constructive and conclusive rundown on what key things you learnt from the feedback you got?

Not everything, but some key factors that you think you may have overlooked in the past which have come to light thought this thread? I’d be good to see what you guys thought before hand that you succeeded in and what you didn’t.

Atlas.9704:

cesmode.4257:

But seriously. How does Zhaitan commune with his minions to attack specific areas?

There’s probably some magical/psychic communication with a familiar human or humanoid who talks for him, or maybe the creature can interpret the dragon mutters and roars into our language.

Then again I’m using Shadowrun as a reference in my mind.

In Dragon Age: Origins, the dragon also communicated to it’s minions of the darkspawn where to go and what to do in terms of leading at attack. I’m sure that was more of a telepathic/psychic/hivemind collective with the dragon being the queen bee.

I’m curious and would like to pose a question to whichever dev’s can answer this:

Which type of shows are you referencing when you talk about wanting the LW/LS to be delivered and experienced in that style?

I ask this because, while you say you want it to be like a show, there’s a huge difference between wanting it to be like a Saturday morning cartoon, or Seinfeld, or The Walking Dead.

Be specific.

You want the long unfolding drama that seems to apparently be connected (hitting that “Walking Dead” progression) but at the pace of 2-4 weeks resolution (which, if we equate each patch day to an “episode airing” then you’re closer to a sitcom/saturday morning cartoon scenario)

I’d like to see the references you guys use when you thought out and implemented the LW.

Note: Forgive me if this is already stated previously in the thread. I’m trying to keep up, but I cant read everything. Cheers

Fenrina.2954:

cesmode.4257:

For example:
-If the players control 25% of the world, they receive 2 gold at the turn of the hour
-If the players control 50% of the world, they receive 5 gold at the turn of the hour
-If the players control 75% of the world, they recieve 10 gold at the turn of the hour
-If the players control 100% of the world, they recieve 20 gold at the turn of the hour + some small additional reward.

I don’t like ideas where players get benefits out of content they didn’t do. I’m also worried this will add to inflation as everyone would be getting the reward. 2g per hour doesn’t sound like much, but how many people are online per server? Hundreds? Thousands? The gold generated could easily spiral out of control.

Well, you must be throwing the most epic fits of rage since WvW already facilitates benefits in place for the whole server, even if a select few contribute.

While we’re at it, they may as well let us stunlock mobs.

gidorah.4960:

nethykins.7986:

I think you should look closely at the two quotes, and not just my question alone. Chris practically cuts the discussion on the cadence of release, while Bobby says it’s good to have the feedback on the cadence.
See the contradiction there?

i dont see the contradiction to me it looks like bobby is saying i am not in charge of this decision but thank you for sharing and chris is saying i am in charge of this decision the answer is no. Maybe they can clarify.

He isn’t just saying thanks, he’s encouraging us to continue discussing the cadence, while chris says that the cadence can not be changed. That’s the slight contradiction.

It’s like being told at work by one manager, “The turnaround speed of each project, from start to finish can not be changed” and the other manager only stepping in to state: “…..but continue telling me about how stressful/tiresome it is. kthxbai.”

In my later post, I chalked it up to pretty much just talking the talk and keeping all feedback noted as not to appear that this specific type isn’t being looked at.

gidorah.4960:

nethykins.7986:

You think our feedback on that is necessary, but there’s no point, because it’s ultimately futile?

he is the head writer not the guy who decides the cadence. you want to direct your complaints at the cadence at chris who makes that decision.

I think you should look closely at the two quotes, and not just my question alone. Chris practically cuts the discussion on the cadence of release, while Bobby says it’s good to have the feedback on the cadence.
See the contradiction there?

@Timmyf, @Vick and @Atlas….(especially Atlas) I think you’re all right in your own way. All we can do is speculate, but in the meantime, it’s a pretty bum deal to hear that.

My speculation: As Colin had stated many times before. Player numbers dwindle after 2 weeks. They want to keep that “Patch day! influx” up as much as possible in order to keep player numbers up, perhaps to keep the suit’s happy by throwing them more positive game statistics at the end of each quarter.

I guess that’s business.