Guild Wars 2

MikaHR.1978:

phys.7689:

Nokaru.7831:

phys.7689:

But would you prefer a game designed such that it makes 80% of the people who play it disatisfied?

democracy may not be perfect, but leadership that enflames 80% of the people usually leads to revolution.

The best argument against large-scale democracy is just watching 2 minutes of Twitch Plays Pokemon.

If this game was designed democratically, we’d never see things like Liadri or the revamp to Tequatl and the Crown Pavilion.

If you want to change the game, then enter the gaming industry and become a designer. This might come as a shock to you, but It takes more than just having an opinion and clicking on a poll to actually make a good game.

And you still miss the point. Saying people dont know what they want/what is good is fine and dandy, i agree to an extent, but thinking that any small group of people will automatically make the descions that will improve the game as a whole, is a bad premise.

And no matter how good a game designer you think you are, if 80% of the people who play your game, thinks your latest design was unsatisfactory, you will fail.

lets say dark souls II sold 2 million copies,
new dark souls team makes dark souls 3
80% of people dont like it
you have failed as a designer, democracy or not.

now, someone can try to appeal to 80%, and in doing so make a game that 80% of people dislike as well, he is also a fail, but neither invaildates the feedback that 80% of your intended audience is unsatisfied with your product.

80% people of what exactly?

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/03/turbine-raiders-make-up-the-smallest-player-group-in-lotro/#comments

thats an irrelvant statistic?
what exactly is your point?

MikaHR.1978:

Nokaru.7831:

The last thing I’d want is a game designed democratically.

Absolute truth.

“What players want” is such a hogwash. If you ask 1000 players what they want youll get 5000 different stuff.

And if you pick 3 to make youll get 997 saying they dont listen to community and 3 saying you are lazy and didnt make ALL they wanted

the skill of being a good engineer/designer is figuring out what people need/want from feedback and giving them solutions that work.

Figuring out what a project needs, is not always about listening to what everyone says, but if when it actually comes to fruition, everyone dislikes it, you have failed at making a product.

Nokaru.7831:

phys.7689:

But would you prefer a game designed such that it makes 80% of the people who play it disatisfied?

democracy may not be perfect, but leadership that enflames 80% of the people usually leads to revolution.

The best argument against large-scale democracy is just watching 2 minutes of Twitch Plays Pokemon.

If this game was designed democratically, we’d never see things like Liadri or the revamp to Tequatl and the Crown Pavilion.

If you want to change the game, then enter the gaming industry and become a designer. This might come as a shock to you, but It takes more than just having an opinion and clicking on a poll to actually make a good game.

And you still miss the point. Saying people dont know what they want/what is good is fine and dandy, i agree to an extent, but thinking that any small group of people will automatically make the descions that will improve the game as a whole, is a bad premise.

And no matter how good a game designer you think you are, if 80% of the people who play your game, thinks your latest design was unsatisfactory, you will fail.

lets say dark souls II sold 2 million copies,
new dark souls team makes dark souls 3
80% of people dont like it
you have failed as a designer, democracy or not.

now, someone can try to appeal to 80%, and in doing so make a game that 80% of people dislike as well, he is also a fail, but neither invaildates the feedback that 80% of your intended audience is unsatisfied with your product.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I doubt very much that the complaints of players who left the game after a very short time playing centered on rewards, at least the way you mean them.

my guess is new player who left quickly was probably based on,

i dont see the point
i dont understand the purpose

i think their solutions hit some of these issues from the side.
they tried to give them a more familar system, so they would feel comfortable, and focus the purpose on leveling.

I dont think they gave them much feeling on the point though, and i dont think the purpose, leveling solely for reward, will keep them engaged in the game past the initial phase. I think more people will quit in the middle rather than the beginning, and overall less people will be interested in the game as whole.

Becka Williams.4978:

If you’re exactly the same as a low level character in a low level area, what’s the point of having levels at all?

What this change illustrated for me, is that levels are highly overated, because focusing the progression on leveling actually made the game much more boring for me, and apparently many people.

people want to progress through playing the game, and mastering the game. How good a leveling system will be, is probably more based on how well the game can track, and award experience, for playing/mastering the game, and not so much on the mere existence of levels, and getting stornger through levels.

Nokaru.7831:

The last thing I’d want is a game designed democratically.

But would you prefer a game designed such that it makes 80% of the people who play it disatisfied?

democracy may not be perfect, but leadership that enflames 80% of the people usually leads to revolution.

MikaHR.1978:

Changer the Elder.2948:

Djinn.9245:

Yep, they nerfed the wonderful heart where you turn into a fern hound in Caledon. I loved that heart!

SERIOUSLY?! This update is getting more stupid by the minute. No pet control until you have driver’s license, removing renown hearts that were actual FUN to do because new delicate babies might die of the awesomeness overdose or something…

Could someone on the forum staff please parade the individual who thought all these changes were a good idea to present and defend WHY they were a good idea in their twisted little personal universe?

Because they observed you playing/collecting feedback for past 2 years and this is result.

I know, i know, its everyone elses falut but yours and all that.

Which suggests that their choice of getting feedback, or the solutions they chose for the problems presented, is not good, because a large number of players dislike the last few implementations of these major features.

Now i am not saying people are stupid for proposing these ideas, but somewhere along the development process, some of these ideas should have been adjusted or tweaked, or had tangential systems considered.

Vayne, the problem with all your logic, is it starts off with arenanet are the guys who know everything, therefore, they will make few mistakes and in general choose the best course of action at any time.

But this has proven not to be the case, its not even their companies self percieved style of development.

They believe, not in finding the perfect answer, but making an attempt, then trying it out, then iterating on that attempt. Therefore its not a good idea to assume that their solutions to any problem are always the best answer.

Also your idea that you have a package, and cannot alter that package, because it would throw off your data is a very very poor tool for the scientific method, or testing an engineering solution.
For example, even if their new system is retaining players, they dont know what facet of it is retaining players.
Is it new graphics/visual stimulation on level up?
Is it a content guide?
Is it locking of core abilities?
Is it less information?

by taking it as a package, you have the worst information on what changes are producing the effects you want, and what changes are not, or are effecting other things.

anyhow point is, the system isnt good, to be honest, even though a lot of people speak loudly here, usually the poll results are usually more balanced. I agree that new players wont know that it sucks, because they will never have played a superior system. But what this poll actually shows you is that it is not that likely that even new players would enjoy the system as much as old players did.

Which ultimately means, less people will enjoy the game as much. Which no matter how you slice it will probably lead to less profits at some point down the road.

Also consider this version of the game is not doing as well in china as it did over here, even though china has a larger market. I wouldnt say that this system is a winner for actually making a more appealing game overall. Retaining a higher % of players with less players being interested/reccomending the game may be a losing strategy.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Roybe.5896:

The overall point ….is what retail has known for years, making things that make it fun to part with your money means more will come and do just that.

And apparently, ANet has done well in that regard, since they continue to make money from the gem shop.

I’m not against ANet doing even better with the offerings, in terms of pricing and selection and how they influence how much fun we have. But for now, they seem to have done quite well in terms of profit.

There are a number of likely reasons that some players (even a sizable number) might be unhappy with the gem shop, but that’s very different from saying “monetization is done wrong” for this game.

a good monetization plan gives you the most money, while improving the user desire to spend, at the same time providing what you need to keep your product viable in the long run.
That of course would be measured in different levels of success, but simply making money does not mean you have a great monetization plan. If you have a product in demand, any where below its price point, you will make money, that doesnt mean you are maximizing earnings, and giving the product a strong sustainable ability to earn

Star Ace.5207:

Compared to many other more game affecting changes, these are among the most inappropriate overreactions I have ever witnessed in the game so far. Ascended gear, trait changes, the megaserver, karma changes, wardrobe, etc. are all way more “game changing”, yet people have focused in these (to me) genuinely little shifts that ultimately aren’t very relevant in the grand scheme of things (unless you want to add your own “I don’t like the direction this game is going” take, as is usual with this type of rhetoric.)

Even the initial fiery light armor human T3 complaints had more substance than this.

I am firmly convinced it’s mass hysteria ("my friends hate it, random youtube videos hate it, this “important player” hates it, so I must as well.") I can’t see well-informed people hating the game just because of this patch-maybe they didn’t like the game as much anyway, and used the changes to justify their “this is the final straw” moment. This patch is really of no long-term consequence, and actually brought some other good changes that are being conveniently ignored, because you know ANet must be evil, “money-hungry/too commercial”, uncaring about players (usually meaning “my needs/preferences”), etc.

We are lucky they have responded a bit the last few days. If it was me I would ignore this stuff more than they do-and I am a VERY caring person, but won’t stand for irrational, sarcastic, cynical, and/or troll-ish comments, mostly made in bad faith, with self-serving agendas, and/or in a fit of bad temper (calling some of these posts “childish” is rather offensive to children.) And even the times they dare to respond, they’ll get attacked and words will get twisted by a few among the forum crowd.

The "I appear like a hater because I “love” the game and want ANet to notice" is not holding water anymore-if it ever did. Go play the games you like but stop spreading the hate-it’s a darned game when it’s all said and done, with some players loving what you precisely may despise. Leave-if that’s what you want and the game is “unplayable/not fun anymore” for you-and let others play it in peace.

It’s always OK to hate the patch or GW2, just don’t be a jerk about it and spread misinformation/your hate to other players. We don’t have to like the same things.

I feel bad about them because the only time the did go “astray” on the manifesto was with Ascended gear, and they did make an explanation on why it was a necessary shift, like it or not (and that grind to this day remains wholly optional, for those players who care, and not needed to enjoy gear gated content.) All other changes have actually never gone against their all-too-frequently quoted manifesto, unless you are really stretching its meaning to mean the game must be the way you would like it to be.

i think this change is actually so hated in combination with the last patch. its not just one thing, its the build up.

its like people were already vexed, then this was the straw that made em go oh wtf.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Sunshine.4680:

Leo Paul.1659:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Leo Paul.1659:

Zoso.8279:

Leo Paul.1659:

He should’ve worded it better then. It’s silly to assume that someone would think that ABSOLUTELY every single person in the game hated the patch anyway.

If you look at the forums some people where trying to say just that. (ABSOLUTELY)

Hyperbolic vs categorical

Which is the argument being tried anyway – the patch was terrible and kills puppies and if you disagree you must be fanboy white knighting.

I don’t like the patch. But whoever (if there’s any) thinks that anyone who likes it is just being fanboy white knighting let’s fighting is a kitten and a puppy hater.

I’m sure there are a few obnoxious ones but it’s mostly the update defenders that lump everyone that has a problem with the patch as some horde that hates everything, doesn’t know how good we got it or something. Using a bunch of misleading words and political talk to muddy the water.

I like what I have played which uses update material so far. I haven’t done NPE yet as I haven’t had the time to get my teeth sunk into it and evaluate for myself, but most of the people in my guild I asked said they found it “okay” and “not as bad as the forums make it out”.

And that’s the last I have to say on it right now.

its not the end of the world, all you have to do is level through it.
that said its boring, makes you feel like you should be grinding. They reduce the go and explore elements, and the choose your own destiny elements.
before, you leveled a weapon by choosing your weapon
before you could use any weapon set you choose
before you can go anywhere, and interact with whatever you see (now you cant do skill points)
before you could do story, or not do story.

now, in order to do those things you have to level, and doing anything else is a waste of time.
go do your hearts, catch random events, dont kill anything you dont have to kill, its a waste of time.

its not horrid, its just boring,

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Leo Paul.1659:

Zoso.8279:

Leo Paul.1659:

He should’ve worded it better then. It’s silly to assume that someone would think that ABSOLUTELY every single person in the game hated the patch anyway.

If you look at the forums some people where trying to say just that. (ABSOLUTELY)

Hyperbolic vs categorical

Which is the argument being tried anyway – the patch was terrible and kills puppies and if you disagree you must be fanboy white knighting.

if you are trying to swing this poll into, people arent that upset, thats not what the poll shows.

I’m not talking about the poll, I’m talking about the . . . atmopshere, around here. Though I should point some guildmates at the poll – they were really liking it.

well my personal feeling is less sour, because they say they are planning to change it by next week or so. However many people probably didnt hear that. But the reason it is so negative is because really, they should have known, if they even looked at the result on the trait system, they would know people really dislike being locked out of basic traits, how do they think they would react to skills?

when this info first came out as part of the china plan, it was overwhelmingly negative, they were like hey guys thats just china dont worry about it.

they should have known people wouldnt like the skill lockouts, they should have edited that out. They also really didnt need to do some of the new level streamlining of hearts, they really killed the atmosphere of some of those low level hearts. no feeding of bear cubs? that was kind of the point.

its a bad trend for a lot of people. They did this change that almost anyone could have seen would be poorly recieved, (which is why people think they arent listening) and they seem to be changing the game direction to more of a grind exp, checkbox philosophy.

they really underestimated how many people alt, or plan to alt in the future. i would guess the large majority intend to level more than one time.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Leo Paul.1659:

Zoso.8279:

Leo Paul.1659:

He should’ve worded it better then. It’s silly to assume that someone would think that ABSOLUTELY every single person in the game hated the patch anyway.

If you look at the forums some people where trying to say just that. (ABSOLUTELY)

Hyperbolic vs categorical

Which is the argument being tried anyway – the patch was terrible and kills puppies and if you disagree you must be fanboy white knighting.

if you are trying to swing this poll into, people arent that upset, thats not what the poll shows.
40% actively dislike it
10% like it
40% think it needs changes
10% dont care.
80% think are disatisfied, that is good enough that almost everybody doesnt like this NPE is fairly accurate.
saying almost no one likes this NPE is even more accurate.

now, for a system that is supposed to attract players and smooth out leveling, thats a pretty bad result

Zoso.8279:

Leo Paul.1659:

He should’ve worded it better then. It’s silly to assume that someone would think that ABSOLUTELY every single person in the game hated the patch anyway.

If you look at the forums some people where trying to say just that. (ABSOLUTELY)

80% of people not being satisfied with a change is relatively unheard of, and 10% of whats left doesnt care.

thats a really bad rate for people who like it.

the poll is fine, what it means is that only 20% of the population likes/doesnt care.

This mean 80% of people are disatisfied.

thats really a large %

as far as with some changes, yeah, with some changes it would be fine.

remove skill locks, remove skill point locks, make personal story attemptable at any level.

i guess the problem with your poll is with some changes is a really vague statement.

edit:problem 2 is that he breaks disliking it into 3 categories, and liking it into 1. but eh, you can just add it up, and you see a pretty telling picture.

What all the people saying its clearly people not knowing whats going on, the real question is why is the tool tip telling you something that implies that you could not before? Wouldnt have made more sense for that pop up to trigger at the level when rare gear is first a possible drop?

Point is if this was made to clarify things, it is doing the opposite.

Vayne.8563:

This isn’t all about hand holding though. It’s about pacing and feeling rewarded. The only people who will really be able to judge this are people who have never leveled a character the old way. Because we’re all stuck on various limitations that we supposedly didn’t have before.

So we get our weapon swap unlocked later…but Anet said it’s about the same amount of time playing. We’re looking at a level not time played and assuming we have less options. Same for the elite skill. I get to 40 as fast now as I used to get to 30, roughly anyway. If they gave it to you at 30, you’d getting it sooner.

And since this is undoubtedly about getting more players from free trials and not what veteran players think, it doesn’t really matter what we think.

It’s not that bad that it’s unplayable and for some of us it’s better. If you think it’s just me, the I’ve never had so much fun leveling post on Reddit did get about 400 upvotes.

There was a kneejerk reaction to this part of the patch (the rest of the patch got ignored because of it) and as a result, people started yelling, some before they even tested the experience. Several people have now admitted after testing it it’s not as bad as people are saying it is.

no vayne, i can tell you for a fact that i got weapon swap withing 30 minutes of play. now its at 15, which takes me 1 hour and 40 minutes to get to. now, i do think my current play can be optimized, perhaps i could do it in an hour, thats still twice as long.

the thing is, the rewards and tutorials, are not the skill locks. they could have done one without the other.

point is, at the end of the day, the experience now, is more boring other than more rewards. The best people can say about it is, its faster in the beginning, and they like the rewards.

Now you have just said what is good about it.

what is bad about it?
weapon skill unlocks
skill lockouts
skillpoint lockouts
lack of option to do personal story early

imo the bad outweighs the good, i do believe they needed more progression, and a clearer direction for newbies, i dont think level up to gain basic abilities was a good choice for this game. I think they needed some new content/objectives to fit into their new player progression.

Elsdragon.5109:

What you described was the same thing as I did, but it’s still disjointed with your previous suggestions. Also for the utility slots, I would think they are part of the progression system rather than the learning system as it is as you’ve said that the utility skills are the same ones you can choose from for any slot. Unlocking that utility slot will help players feel stronger. The reason they are pushed back (from what I can tell) is due to the faster leveling speed for levels 1 to 15. You need to take things into context or else everything will seem ridiculous.

Now based on that and your paragraph about letting players feel satisfied about gaining a level and having a goal to work towards, doesn’t it make more sense? They see they could have 3 utility skills, but only have 1 unlocked at level 15, wouldn’t they want to level up first rather than deciding to run into WvW thinking they can win against someone with applied strength and fortitude buffs?

I wouldn’t say 50% of the people they already have would leave. That seems to be very exaggerated especially since maps feel more full now than they were before (and not just because of all the commander tags). You really shouldn’t argue with numbers you make up since it’s hard to back them up.

map fullness doesnt mean much with megaserver.
progression systems and rewards make sense, but the actual gameplay doesnt support their current implementation.
aka, leveling now feels boring/painful. Games that build these systems generally have a lot of skills available and they tend to power up skills, so not having 4 skills isnt a big deal, in gw2 it is.
Other games usually design synergies in early then expand on them or create new rotations/synergies
gw2 doesnt work this way. The weapons are designed to work with all 5 skills, every theif weaponset for example feels incomplete with 3 skills, the synergy skills are usually in the 5th slot.
f1-f4 skills are integral to gameplay. rangers without pet abilities, mesmers missing half their shatters.
skill points that dont work until you come back to them later.
the personal story was designed to take you through level appropriate areas, now you go back to old areas.

the game itself just doesnt work well with the changes they put on top of the existing systems. This is why people say it feels boring now. They improved the desire to level up at the cost of good overall game design. When what they really needed was to make the game feel more rewarding and give new players more direction and goals.

my point is the current system may retain more of a specific type of player, but it they will probably quit later, with a feeling that the game just isnt that fun.
instead of quitting at level 10-20 because they dont know why/what to do, they quit at level 50 knowing that the game feels kind of boring.

the 10-20 guy may come back if he sees big enough hooks, but the level 50 leaving guy has decided the game is kind of lame.

another thing games with the heavy gating on skills, have is well developed endgames. People will not be satisfied when they slog up to 80 not enjoying it that much, when there is nothing really special at 80.

Elsdragon.5109:

phys.7689:

from what i can see, you like the shinies, and you like the guidance icon. Thats cool, thats not really what bothers people, its the unlocks. And honestly leveling is boring now, and you feel like you have to level, because you are still incomplete/weak.

I definately realize they did what they did more for progression and making people feel like they should keep leveling, however, i dont think their game design supports it. You feel incomplete without many of these things. And the timing feels slow. Games that use these methods, often have a lot more individual skills to give people, and many skills are power ups to old versions with similar functionality.

I understand their goals, but they probably needed new content to fill the gaps, instead of relying on the old system which is based of very basic level skills/trait synergies.

i think their best bet would have been to go with cosmetic upgrades to skills, and introduce new types of content with direct goal focuses at specific levels. Either that or just add elite level skills.

I also think they put too much focus on leveling. The game works a lot better imo, when leveling is what happens while you are doing other goals. Making leveling the primary focus leads to a very rote playstyle.

You claim to realize that this is for progression and stuff, but I think you’re missing the whole point of the new system. From what you said, you seem to think this new system is their new hook to keep existing players playing the game, but it’s not. It is to help new players in learning the game and getting a better experience from it.

What I got from your suggestions were not things to help a new player but rather things to try to keep existing players around.

You as (what I assume) a veteran player of this game (and maybe many others) will see less value in it than say someone who just picked this up as their first video game.

they actually admited its not all there to help new players, and some of it is just for progression.
Do you really believe a new player cant handle a 2nd utility slot until they are 24? a third until they are 35? keep in mind 1 utility slot is exactly the same as any other utility slot, learning wise there is nothing more complex about picking a second utility than there was for picking a first slot.

they said the point was retention of new players, the progression system is to keep to new players playing by feeling they have new goals, and that they havent achieved full power yet. As well as tying a satisfied feeling tied to gaining a level.

i am not saying trying to do that is bad, i the implementation doesnt really fit the style of the game that well, it doesnt accentuate the game style.

also, as to the this is only for new players thing, i think that is the biggest flaw in judgement they made.
lets say 40% of people who play used to stop playing before experiencing most of the game, lets say the new system retains 15% more, making their drop off only 25%
however, the NPE effects about 50% of the 60% who stayed with the game because they liked the system for leveling and play their alts.
you now lose 30% for 15%.
not a good strat, and of that 15% that stayed longer, you will probably lose 5% of those who kept playing the first time, but lost interest because the experience was not that fun.

Vayne.8563:

Sogradde.8016:

Vayne.8563:

Way to miss the point.

Anet isn’t talking about long time players leaving the game. That’s not what they’re talking about. They’re talking about people playing the game at start and getting bored and not continuing.

If you like the initial experience you might think everyone does or most people do. Anet’s testing shows them that’s not the case. Leaving the game long term has nothing to do with this update, but Colin said until they fix this, they can’t move forward with other things they want to do.

Not everyone who buys your game likes your game. That’s true for every single video game out there. And honestly, maybe people who are overwhelmed by one of the easiest MMOs out there aren’t exactly the target audience. The devs have to draw the line somewhere and right now they are catering to the worst players big time, which ultimately hurts veterans and enthusiasts. If this is the direction you want to be heading, fine but don’t expect no backlash when the people who actually bought the game firsthand and made it big get the short end of the stick.

It’s not just about being overwhelmed. It’s about pacing. It’s about being rewarded. People like to be rewarded. To older players it’s like something’s been taken away. To newer players, they don’t know what it was like before.

Anet’s tested it and they say the tests show this keeps people playing longer. I’m willing to see if it’s true.

giving out better rewards, and creating a structure for people to follow would have acheived a similar goal, without locking of skills.

Why do we even discuss the basic rewards when overall, most people’s beef is specifically the locking of skills, and push back of charachter specialisation (traits). They wanted to increase progression goals, but the type of game they built doesnt work well with that.

They also are apparently losing/discouraging many players. No player i know said that the traits/skill pushback has helped them or made them more excited during the process. Out of the people who like the system, they say they like getting stuff when they level up.

The point is yes, they needed better progression systems, but no, the one they built doesnt mesh well with this game, and many of its users. The process of leveling is returned to a grind. While they may have improved the desire to level, they reduced the actual joys of the game.
Leveling is almost 100% something to be avoided if you could now.

TrOtskY.5927:

HandOfKane.5409:

TrOtskY.5927:

pdavis.8031:

TrOtskY.5927:

wow do people actually take these threads seriously? OP is probably about 14 years old anyway.

A 14 year old with a 6 year old son? They were 8 when they became a parent? Not likely. The point of the thread, is that the OP is unhappy with the NPE changes, and many of us are as well.

No, my point is that the “son” is entirely fictitious, the OP is probably about 14 and has made this thread in an attempt to undermine/expose how patronising some of these new gameplay changes are.
How or what I feel about the update aside, this sort of behaviour is ridiculous and rather immature, and actually undermines the feedback of people based upon real experience.

Can you show where in the thread it specifally states this?

I don’t need to, it is obvious from both the style of writing the content within that the OP is most definitely not a parent.

Sorry man, life must be difficult when you are so gullible.

you make a lot of assumptions. Im pretty sure most people in the world become parents at some point. I dont think there is any specific writing styles or traits that you can apply to all parents with that in mind.

GuzziHero.2467:

Yes, I have been whining and moaning but I don’t think the new patch is the world-shattering disaster that I, and others, thought it would be.

I’ll keep this brief:

Positives:
The new compass is very useful. It would have helped me when I first started playing, even if it does make the game seem a little linear. Being able to set it to help with map completion is also a boon.
Lots of loot. I mean, I haven’t had to buy anything and I am level 23 so far.
USEFUL loot! Often with selectable stats. This is a good way to introduce new players into stat combos. It would be nice if a tooltip was added when you select the stat to say, eg: “Berserker: This is a powerful attack set with little for defence”, or “Ravaging: Useful for increasing condition damage”.
The story system. If it had been like this from the start, noone would have complained. I did like doing story missions higher than my level previously, but it is no massive loss and helps the story feel less disjointed.

Negatives:
Anything where content is REMOVED is a big negative in my eyes. The Fear storyline, the crafting nodes and worst of all, actual reknown missions and tasks removed or unnecessarily altered in early zones.
The goshdarned weapon skill gating. Everything was fine before. You learned slowly bit by bit what each skill on which weapon did what. “Oh, new skill? Lets see if this is more powerful than the last one” and you look at the tip to see it in action. There was nothing wrong with this.
The pandering: Whats with the skulls? Tamini death markers have had skulls removed? We ALL know it is because the Chinese market have issues with skull iconology. Why don’t we remove the number ‘4’ because it is unlucky in China?
Carrot-on-a-stick and lying about it. We KNOW that the weapon skill and utility skill changes have NOT been made to help new players. New players are generally not stupid either, they work things out. The locks are in place to act as an incentive for the Chinese market to keep playing because it is traditional in games they know.

So, generally, things are not as bad as they first appeared. I can see why some decisions were made, just as much as I disagree with others.

from what i can see, you like the shinies, and you like the guidance icon. Thats cool, thats not really what bothers people, its the unlocks. And honestly leveling is boring now, and you feel like you have to level, because you are still incomplete/weak.

I definately realize they did what they did more for progression and making people feel like they should keep leveling, however, i dont think their game design supports it. You feel incomplete without many of these things. And the timing feels slow. Games that use these methods, often have a lot more individual skills to give people, and many skills are power ups to old versions with similar functionality.

I understand their goals, but they probably needed new content to fill the gaps, instead of relying on the old system which is based of very basic level skills/trait synergies.

i think their best bet would have been to go with cosmetic upgrades to skills, and introduce new types of content with direct goal focuses at specific levels. Either that or just add elite level skills.

I also think they put too much focus on leveling. The game works a lot better imo, when leveling is what happens while you are doing other goals. Making leveling the primary focus leads to a very rote playstyle.

Labjax.2465:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hey Phys,

What about folks knowing the plot of Living World for example and leaking it?

Chris

I don’t know that a PTR would really make market stuff more fair. I think you would actually want to disable things like Living World and market-affecting-info on a PTR. The main benefit of it, imo, would be to let us play with (and sometimes break) the stuff that has long-ranging effects. Like being able to help iron out bugs in the NPE might have been nice. Or being able to go on a PTR and play around with balance changes before they go live, so we can help catch anything that looks like it could work a bit better. That sort of thing.

the problem with disabling stuff on a test environment, is that you arent testing the actual interactions.
also, economic/reward stuff needs player review as well. Once againg there is no economic advantage to playing in a ptr, because its open to the public, people who want the info can look in the ptr forum, or reviews, and find out what is going on. Not only that but ptr often change these things due to feedback.
people suggest things like tokens, special drops, say rates are bad, etc. The people dont have an advantage the day of the main patch because everyone who wants to know, knows already.
the people who dont want to know, are the same people who tend to be behind the market anyhow.

Well its a suggestion i guess we ll see if it ever comes to more than just a suggestion

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

It’s a meta which can be countered with relative ease, and I know that because I still get the crap kicked out of me 1v1 or 1v2 on WvW.

This just smacks of “we can’t figure out how to smack them around so they must be nerfed”.

wvw is different than spvp. its based on holding smaller areas, not that i have tested this particular build in spvp, but some things just play out very differently in spvp.

how would you counter a long bow ranger while you have to survive on a small area? I guess you can chase himby getting off the point, but thats kind of a win for him.

Longbow really reeks like a Risen Krait in small spaces though. There’s not a lot of room to get the most out of it.

How would I counter it? Well on my ranger, Axe/Torch and rely on conditions to keep them busy with Wolf out for the fear/knockdown. I might, if I liked it more, go Sword/Axe for keeping them in melee and wailing on them until they left.

Other classes I can’t speak too much for but . . . Guardians and Warriors can do it with Greatsword or Hammer. I know, I got the lumps to prove it.

in spvp, doing those would mean coming off the point you are trying to claim, which means he is winning while you try to run him down.
basically he can defend a point while taking minimal risk from a long range.

this what i mean about wvw being different, its not about dueling the ranger its about how do you achieve objectives

ipan.4356:

I haven’t used a Bow on my Ranger in a long time – might have to pull it out again.

Seems like projectile reflection would help a lot against this.

hard counter style play? hmmm

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

It’s a meta which can be countered with relative ease, and I know that because I still get the crap kicked out of me 1v1 or 1v2 on WvW.

This just smacks of “we can’t figure out how to smack them around so they must be nerfed”.

wvw is different than spvp. its based on holding smaller areas, not that i have tested this particular build in spvp, but some things just play out very differently in spvp.

how would you counter a long bow ranger while you have to survive on a small area? I guess you can chase himby getting off the point, but thats kind of a win for him.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

phys.7689:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

phys.7689:

phabby.8945:

some interesting reading the last few pages . I feel for Chris in here being the only one to really show up .

someone a page back said what about testing patches before they go live, which if you have been paying attention like the old garden gnome here, you would understand that they did have some ppl testing the new system and I think Colin or Mike even jumped into that thread on the subject of the testers, or someone close to them, using the information gained before patch release to control the market. everyone not happy about that one even the big boss.https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Insider-trading-is-kind-of-unfair/first

Back to the rest of the comments , I agree that even with the current level of communication from Chris and a few other devs, there should be some major input from the big guy Mike since just about every post currently up is so damming towards the game someone needs to be in here and take ownership of the situation.

I am pleased to see that GM Talon had taken the bull by the horns and created a thread for the patch so quickly after it went pear shape. This has shown me that you have learnt from the past mistakes of not addressing things as fast as you have this time.

Anyways cheers and great job Chris trying to calm the storm

if there was a ptr, or something similar, the info would be public knowledge, open to all, and ever changing, so no unfair advantages there

Hey Phys,

What about folks knowing the plot of Living World for example and leaking it?

Chris

same thing can happen on release if you play it later. While it might be an issue, what i noticed working with other PTRs, is the non PTR people always seemed surprised and shocked, which i never really understood, all you had to do was click the PTR subforum for many spoilers.

I honestly dont think its would be that much of an issue, but perhaps someone who is a very big living story person could say how it would effect them.

I would cry )-:

Chris

lol you know everything beforehand anyhow, you work with the guys. If you dont, its probably due to willfull seperation from spoilers, which is probably what would happen anyhow.

Essence Snow.3194:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hey Phys,

What about folks knowing the plot of Living World for example and leaking it?

Chris

What’s there to leak? “Dragon of the jungle shows up, wrecks people’s sheet, and we kill it.”

I’m more worried about people using the PTR data to work the Trading Post.

I cannot emphasize how important this is when this game is so ingrained with using the tp for every….EVERY…..reward. A few other players can have a massive effect on a tremendous amount of other players via the trading post.

you guys realize a ptr is a public testing realm, meaning everyone has access to it, and can freely share info if they choose? They wouldnt have any more advantage than they do now. Also ptrs tend to shift things like rewards/amounts/etc a lot from what i have seen.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

phys.7689:

phabby.8945:

some interesting reading the last few pages . I feel for Chris in here being the only one to really show up .

someone a page back said what about testing patches before they go live, which if you have been paying attention like the old garden gnome here, you would understand that they did have some ppl testing the new system and I think Colin or Mike even jumped into that thread on the subject of the testers, or someone close to them, using the information gained before patch release to control the market. everyone not happy about that one even the big boss.https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Insider-trading-is-kind-of-unfair/first

Back to the rest of the comments , I agree that even with the current level of communication from Chris and a few other devs, there should be some major input from the big guy Mike since just about every post currently up is so damming towards the game someone needs to be in here and take ownership of the situation.

I am pleased to see that GM Talon had taken the bull by the horns and created a thread for the patch so quickly after it went pear shape. This has shown me that you have learnt from the past mistakes of not addressing things as fast as you have this time.

Anyways cheers and great job Chris trying to calm the storm

if there was a ptr, or something similar, the info would be public knowledge, open to all, and ever changing, so no unfair advantages there

Hey Phys,

What about folks knowing the plot of Living World for example and leaking it?

Chris

same thing can happen on release if you play it later. While it might be an issue, what i noticed working with other PTRs, is the non PTR people always seemed surprised and shocked, which i never really understood, all you had to do was click the PTR subforum for many spoilers.

I honestly dont think its would be that much of an issue, but perhaps someone who is a very big living story person could say how it would effect them.

phabby.8945:

some interesting reading the last few pages . I feel for Chris in here being the only one to really show up .

someone a page back said what about testing patches before they go live, which if you have been paying attention like the old garden gnome here, you would understand that they did have some ppl testing the new system and I think Colin or Mike even jumped into that thread on the subject of the testers, or someone close to them, using the information gained before patch release to control the market. everyone not happy about that one even the big boss.https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Insider-trading-is-kind-of-unfair/first

Back to the rest of the comments , I agree that even with the current level of communication from Chris and a few other devs, there should be some major input from the big guy Mike since just about every post currently up is so damming towards the game someone needs to be in here and take ownership of the situation.

I am pleased to see that GM Talon had taken the bull by the horns and created a thread for the patch so quickly after it went pear shape. This has shown me that you have learnt from the past mistakes of not addressing things as fast as you have this time.

Anyways cheers and great job Chris trying to calm the storm

if there was a ptr, or something similar, the info would be public knowledge, open to all, and ever changing, so no unfair advantages there

Michael Walker.8150:

Kuldebar.1897:

Michael Walker.8150:

Just let people put 2 lvl 20 scrolls in the forge, some stones or coins or a goat and out comes a lvl 40 scroll.

New players can’t get it and it solves the whole issue

(or 1 scroll and make it lvl 500 craft, whatever)

time spent IN THE GAME…the thing that supplies everything to the company and the players.

which you have done enough if you have that many birthday scrolls/slots.

new players don’t have them and people who log in after one year could be asked to spend 30 laurels to upgrade a scroll or whatever feels appropriate.

and it still leaves you the choice to start at either lvl1, lvl20 or with that scroll lvl 40.

since you level to 20 very quickly now, the old scroll feels a bit dated.

the problem with what you are saying, is that what they have done has made people enjoy the process less, and want to use tools to skip as much of it as possible. That is a failure in design imo.
What makes everyone so certain that only vets well be bored with having to wait to 40 to unlock basics?

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

lets take an iphone, should they lock all functionality and give you 1 new function each day until you fully know the phone?

the solution is bad.

That is actually the only method which worked for teaching my mother how to do general low-level maintenance (data and physical) and preventative measures to keep her computer from burning out every year.

which is excellent for your mother, but horrible for many other users. To be clear, its not bad to teach things slowly and one at a time(for some learners). Its bad to force all users to operate a similar pace.

But what pace are we really talking about here. As many people have said, an hour to get to level 15 where most of your stuff is unlocked. And as Colin said the overall time played to unlocking stuff like your elite is the same roughly in this system as the old system.

People see numbers like levels and they think, oh level 40 they rolled it back. But if level 40 takes the same time to get to, they really didn’t.

That’s if, of course. But I think it’s probably relatively true. The way I’m leveling now, if they gave me my elite at 30 I’d be getting it faster than I used to.

this doesnt make sense because 10 levels in the begining were never equal to 10 levels later in the game, although the curve is more drastic now, you always leveled faster in the first 10 levels.
therefore it is unlikely that 30 is the new 40
even more unlikely is that 35 is the new level 20 (last utility unlock)

as far as you leveling 1-15 much faster, that is specifically because the new system is essentially made for your particular playstyle.
people who did personal story as it was available, or before the reccomended levels, leveled much faster than you would have, waiting for level 10 to do all your PS.

we will have to see where they put the unlocks after the coming changes, but honestly i think you would still get your happyiness from shinies with just the gear, and they could make skills unlock from the start for vets.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

netting your mother isnt worth crippling all your current users.
its a bad solution.

From all I have read – that crippling wasn’t supposed to happen anyway. Not that it matters anymore.

actually based on a what was said, it likely was supposed to happen, however they now see it went too far. The implication is they will reduce the effect, but it will still be in place.

The implication was, from what I read, it wasn’t supposed to hit people who had already “passed” that point. Which would be most current users.

And while it sucks for newbies . . . allegedly, since I haven’t tried it yet . . . it’s a lot less painful than having done EverQuest 1-15. Or as tedious as FF14 1-10 was.

the stuff that wasnt supposed to hit new users were some of the stuff like no salvage, poi, vistas, etc. The stuff that was supposed to was the skill unlocks. He implied with second post on it, that some was bugs, and somethings were reworks.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

netting your mother isnt worth crippling all your current users.
its a bad solution.

From all I have read – that crippling wasn’t supposed to happen anyway. Not that it matters anymore.

actually based on a what was said, it likely was supposed to happen, however they now see it went too far. The implication is they will reduce the effect, but it will still be in place.

most likely they will lower the level requirements on utilities, elites, and possibly f1-f4 skills.
However, it would be better if all the skill based unlocks were back to what they used to be, for veterans at least. In fact, i might take this chance to complete remove unlocks, and let veterans get a much more free, you are only limited by what you choose to focus on method of play.

however, i doubt that will happen greatly

i still think it sucks for newbies, but ill throw them to the wolves for my own benefit.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

which is excellent for your mother, but horrible for many other users. To be clear, its not bad to teach things slowly and one at a time(for some learners). Its bad to force all users to operate a similar pace.

But unfortunate if you want to be assured the players should have experienced X before planning for it to show up in a zone/event/story instance.

The game isnt designed that you must know X before you do anything. there are multiple solutions for enemy situations.

netting your mother isnt worth crippling all your current users.
its a bad solution.

ilr.9675:

My concern about the gemstore…. is the “new improved Capitalism” of game design as outlined last week by ExtraCredits. That the Developers look way more frequently at the Metrics and Datamining of players who buy from the Gemstore, and only look at the metrics of “poor players” when there’s some overlap between the two.

This applies particularly heavily to Holiday events as the OP brought up, but also things like WvW, Pve story & group content, and even which weapon, class, & skill types should receive the most Artist Resources or balance tweaking.

This is why you only see them come to the Forums to justify a decision they already made. They don’t need your input. If you contribute a lot of money to the game, they already have your input in datamining form. And if you’re not a rich kid, then good luck having your voice heard. They already have tons of IRL friends nagging at them about every possible issue under the sun as it is. Why would they play the live server or come to the forums to hear even more of that when it doesn’t immediately serve their most profitable Demographic?

Behellagh.1468:

I hardly call a couple of art devs “a lot of resources” to knock out a few skins every few weeks.

You’ve clearly never touched a Modeling program in your life then if you think knocking a few of them out every couple weeks is a minor thing.

I have, and its kind of normal, of course it depends on what level of detail you are required to go through. Its not unreasonable to knock out new skins every 2 weeks, if thats your primary goal for those 2 weeks. Its also substantially less, if you can reuse, and modify existing resources.

However, i dont think most game companies usually hire that many 3d artists at a time, unless they are in early development.

bearing this in mind, their are other things they could be using 3d artists for,

Behellagh.1468:

On the buy side, quantity available is first filtered by the max price filter. You can’t say you want X amount, price is no object as before.

I have not had problems selling any size quantity but that’s likely due to me not trying to match high bid.

In the past, if you didn’t realize it, if you sold a stack to high bid and they didn’t want all of your stack, it auto created a sell order for the remaining at that price. If I’m understanding the OP correctly, it sounds like that doesn’t happen anymore.

yes, and honestly, the current system, if i understand it the way you do, is actually better, because before people were unintentionally creating big undercut situations. which artificially lowered the sell prices, for different amount of times depending on the item.

Not only that, but if you actually wanted to sell instantly, you basically couldnt without losing your 5% cost of selling. when you take it off.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

lets take an iphone, should they lock all functionality and give you 1 new function each day until you fully know the phone?

the solution is bad.

That is actually the only method which worked for teaching my mother how to do general low-level maintenance (data and physical) and preventative measures to keep her computer from burning out every year.

which is excellent for your mother, but horrible for many other users. To be clear, its not bad to teach things slowly and one at a time(for some learners). Its bad to force all users to operate a similar pace.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Leo Paul.1659:

It really is very inefficient as a source of gold and one of the least intrusive methods of farming. I dunno why it gets demonized so much. /shrug

Because normally keys cost Gems (never mind that they do, in fact, drop…) and it’s perceived as people “cheating the system”.

. . . for mostly junk nobody wants and a chance at cool stuff.

well it has changed with value of gold, and effeciecy of farming, but you could get the cool stuff faster via farming and buying on the TP.
I think the people who did it a lot, honestly just liked opening black lion chests, and the gameplay involved.

Malchior.5042:

Swizzle.7982:

ColinJohanson.2394:

- Over a years worth of testing

You do realize that comment was referring to Usability Testing, don’t you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing

He said they had players of different types evaluating the system and giving their feedback on it over a year. A heck of a lot was probably changed over the course of that year, because usability testing is usually one of the final phases of testing, after everything has already been tested for quality and functionality by in-house testing.

We don’t know what the system used to be, just what it is.

problem with testing for usability, is you are asking questions you shouldnt necessarily be asking yet.
If i ask a newbie at basketball how easy it is to do a spinmove crossover, they will say its hard. Or a 3 pointer.
does this mean its a good idea to outlaw everyone from doing a spinmove the first day they play basketball? No 3 pointers allowed?
does this mean, overall basketball will be unappealing to a new player because it has things they cant do right now?

lets take an iphone, should they lock all functionality and give you 1 new function each day until you fully know the phone?

the solution is bad.

Dean Calaway.9718:

Leo Paul.1659:

You make it sound like farming is a bad thing. For all we know, key farmers are doing so because it’s the only thing left they enjoy in the game. How would you feel if the last aspect of the game that you like gets removed for no valid justification? Anet already stated that it is acceptable after all.

Nobody enjoys key farming, it’s a 10~15 minute loop people repeat N times for a chance to get tickets so they can trade them for expensive skins to sell them on the market for gold.

And I didn’t say it was specifically a bad thing, although I’d rather get shot on the back of the head than key farm all day.
What I said was, they’re discontent because these changes affect their farm, but they complain like it’s a bad thing mechanic-wise when in reality they couldn’t care less about that.

Even if they do make an alt to actually play, they’ll sail over this new leveling to 10 in less than hour.
In the old system people would just #1#1#1#1 anyway, now they’re complaining there’s not enough dept in the first hour of the game? Not to mention a veteran player has a few tomes to jump to 20 right away by now.

actually a couple of months ago i used to key farm with a friend, it was more entertaining than anything else i had left to do in the game.
why?

• specific goal
• basically a timed challenge
• smartly doing things made it faster
  • like knowing where to go before the next area
  • making the charachters beserker style play early through transferable eq
  • smartly using your weapons/available skills to move quickly etc.
• low man small group activity, with a quick pace for fights
• black lion keys as a reward, on paper its less money than farming, but there is a thrill with being able to target specific unique rewards and the chance for something grand. The math quickly showed that the champ train or etom etc netted more profits on average

that said it did get boring after awhile, we usually only did 1-2 runs a day(17-40 minutes), and after about 20 ticket scraps (two weapons, well he got like 4 while i got 2 but such is the gamble) we stopped. Still everything else was stale at that point. I wouldnt mind similar designed content/reward systems elsewhere.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Entrea Sumatae.7830:

There’s a key group here that everyone’s ignoring that are going to have more problems with this patch than most: Players with lots of mid-level characters getting their foot in the door. While this doesn’t apply to me directly, a lot of my friends play this way and I’m worried for them. There’s a lot of level 20-some characters out there who have already pushed past the initial 15-level area back when it wasn’t such a breeze, and now have to wait even longer for systems that, before, they were just a few levels away from unlocking. That newly minted Level 30 who was saving up skill points for the first elite skill unlock is going to be pretty upset when they log in and have to get another 10 levels first.

Yeah, it’s a small problem relative to the total player base, but that’s not very much comfort to the people left high and dry in the middle of the level system.

Fwiw, I played for about 2 hours yesterday on a level 27 that I had not touched since midsummer. I still had 3 utility skills (not sure if a bug) but was unable to change the #9 skill directly. Given that one of the slots was a speed signet, even if I had been down a slot, it would have meant only that I was slower out of combat. Otherwise, the character played substantially the same as before.

Yes, I have to reach L30 to finish chapter 3 of the personal story, but I was glad to see that my progress was not lost, which I halfway expected. The delay in getting the elite skill is not that big of a deal to me. Elite skills in GW2 have too little effect with too long of a CD for them to be the centerpiece of play.

After the systems get patched next week, I’ll see how the real low levels feel to play, but I don’t believe that the NPE changes affected the 20 somethings nearly as much as the trait changes did. Ommv.

you were bugged, you were supposed to only have 2 utilities, the second utility is unlocked at level 24. the last at 35. at level 21 on my mesmer, i was missing f3 and f4. you also unlock being able to do skill points at 13, and get skill points in big sums, you get 8, at level 20. this means you probably as an old player have 10-15 more skill points (which at this points translates into utility options) available at level 27 than your average player would have.

the traits is a big effect as well, but the unlocks and setbacks are also noticeable. Note that both of these changes were unified in china, the real point was to gate what we used to have behind leveling, so as to create a greater desire to level, and a feeling of not being complete, so that new players feel they should continue.

I understand the need, but there are better ways to do this, they may have been more costly, but they would improve the game for all players, and not mess up the game for others in the process.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

It is unreasonable for any QA department to demand a 100% result rate of finding bugs (because that would require an astronomical amount of both time and money). Thus, there must be a trade-off for time and costs. So a compromise must be found. ArenaNet decided on a ratio of time-and-money versus quality of bug-finding. The compass exhibits a bug. It is likely that the QA department did not encounter or identify the bug during testing. The bug slipped through the cracks. A certain amount of bugs that slip through the cracks is unavoidable, and they can get fixed by patches afterwards.

Players who demand zero bugs upon release of an update are unreasonable, because some bugs are so unexpected that they are unavoidable. What is reasonable, however, is for players to expect that any bugs that do appear can be fixed later, within a reasonable timeframe.
(What is a “reasonable timeframe” depends on the severity of the bug. A client crash bug must be fixed very quickly. An in-game marker that provides misleading information can get a little more time than that. An event with an unintended difficulty level has a longer timeframe. A minor typo in an item description has very low priority.)

These are my assumptions. I challenge you to challenge them.

QA is imperfect, i never debated that, but the assumption that these mistakes werent in the test version is a kittenumption.

The question is, is the amount of time/effort/design of their QA systems giving them the type of QA they expect/need. If not, what methods can be done to improve the effeciency of these systems.

I was simply saying that i would not assume that the problem didnt happen in the QA phase, not that it could not have happened elsewhere, but it wouldnt be a starting assumption.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I believe the ‘Diessa Plateau’ incident mentioned was from a reviewer that played on the live servers…magicalmike. His video was released Sept. 10th. So, I’m afraid that isn’t a very good example.

nah the magical mike incident was diessa plateau to snowden to frost gorge.

the review i vaguely remember was the guy saying offhandly im not going to go there. However i dont remember specifics so maybe im wrong on that specific case.

However, the level requirements for unlock were shown, as well as the locking of various functionalities, and certain things not showing up on the map, in Wooden potatoes video.

So yeah, a lot of the “bugs” were in the test environment. With that as what we have seen, i wouldnt assume that the arrow was working perfectly, its more likely that it, like other things reported as bugs was in the system.

Danikat.8537:

I don’t find it hard to believe that bugs could appear when the patch went live that didn’t show up in tests, I have to deal with the same thing all the time at work.

For example we just started using an updated version of our database. I was one of the people who tested it and I know for a fact bugs appeared in the ‘live’ version that weren’t in the test one. In fact I can run them side by side, the live version on my real desktop and the test version on a virtual desktop, do the exact same steps in both and get different results.

I don’t yet know why, but I know it can and does happen. And this is much simpler software than GW2.

Swizzle.7982:

Elsdragon.5109:

That question’s been answered. He has a friend who follows the Chinese version updates and stuff: this one.

No, it wasn’t answered and keeps being ignored. How does he know anything about what happens on the test server? Not the chinese servers, the test servers.

You know all those preview videos people like Wooden Potatoes and Dulfy posted the day before the patch hit? How do you think they made them?

Since I assume none of them have access to time machines the only logical explanation (and the one given when they’ve been asked) is that they were given access to the test server so they could preview the new content in advance.

Which means all those videos were created on the test server and Vayne, you, me or anyone else can see how the new stuff worked on the test server just by watching the videos.

the bugs were present in the test videos. Much of the info people were talking about early was in the videos, like the level lock requirements, the lockouts of vistas/mining/etc I believe i heard some one mentioning being pointed to diessa plateau in one of the preview updates.

So, yeah, if they were on test accounts, its likely all of these things were there. And the things that were not, and related to managing existing data, means they have a poor test environment. How can you test how old data interacts if you delete and create new data with every build.

yes some things slip through the cracks, but no, its highly likely that these things are poorly tested. whether it be design of the testing environment, number of testers, or effeciecy of testers. Its likely that Wooden potatoes and others were told that some of the issues would be dealt with in a newer build, so they will generally ignore things they find buggy

the probably need a ptr.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

Swizzle.7982:

Jornophelanthas.1475:

That means it is an assumption by Vayne, and not actual (or factual) knowledge.

Exactly, as I said at the start, he’s just making kitten up.

Assuming things is not (always) nonsense. If you disagree with someone’s assumptions, you can challenge them by giving arguments why they are based on unsound reasoning.

For example, I am assuming that Vayne is not a time travelling dolphin from the year 4149. I have no way of knowing this for a fact about Vayne (or anyone on this forum), but am I making stuff up just by assuming that you are all non-time travelling humans using computers (or phones)?

The same goes for Vayne’s assumption. I tend to accept the assumption that the compass was working well enough in ArenaNet’s testing environment for it to be deemed worthy of inclusion in the update. Because I believe ArenaNet’s posts where they explain their “When It’s Ready” policy of talking about future content.

You can challenge Vayne’s assumption by refusing any of the premises I gave or alluded to, or even any that I forgot to mention. For example:
- You can claim that ArenaNet’s testing procedures are insufficient.
- You can refuse to believe ArenaNet’s explanation for why the “When It’s Ready” policy exists.
- You can claim that ArenaNet does things entirely differently than how Vayne is assuming it to be.

However, you need to back up your own claims as well, because they are also based on assumptions. (E.g. how much time and effort is reasonable for ArenaNet to put into testing, why ArenaNet’s explanations of their “When It’s Ready” policy would be unreliable, or what would be a more plausible way for how ArenaNet is really doing things.) And your assumptions can also be attacked if they are not strong enough.

This is how intelligent debate works. Simply saying: “Nuh-uh!” does not win an argument.

you are making a kittenumption, especially if your goal is to pinpoint where something went wrong.

obviously it is not true that the QA succeeded, so assuming that that the QA must have worked correctly because that what QA is for, is kittenumption.

in fact the other assumption is more likely.

• QA’s job is to make sure no unknown bugs are delivered in release
• Unknown bugs are delivered in release
  therefore, for some unknown reason it is a fair assumption that QA is failing some facet of their job.

so assuming it must have been working in the test environment or QA would have caught it, is a kittenumption. Not saying its not possible, but you have no reason to logically believe QA couldnt have made a mistake, when we know there was a mistake made

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Sometimes the short-sightedness of some of the GW2 community is really amazing. I can’t believe how anyone could say this is not something that badly needed to be done. There should have been a tutorial or similar functions in the game at launch.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I want to make it clear: what we used to have absolutely wasn’t good enough for our standards of retaining new users.

MatthewMedina.5419:

But we were seeing a lot of places where people who would otherwise have become active users were churning out prematurely because of the issues that we’re addressing with the NPE.

These quotes are reminders that ArenaNet has the real numbers and statistics of the playerbase. We do not. We have our personal perceptions of the game which are certainly biased and may be very inaccurate. ArenaNet would not have wasted the money and time to make these changes if they had not seen hard numbers showing there was a problem with the new player experience that needed to be fixed.

If you are here on these forums, or following the game on some other site or Facebook or whatever, you are not an average player. You are on the most dedicated end of the spectrum. You are here reading posts and learning more about the game than most. We understand the mechanics because we research them and look them up. We read dev posts and the wiki so we know these mechanics in detail. There is a whole audience out there who don’t read forums, they don’t bother with the social media communication, they just play the game.

And these players should not be forced to do research. They should not need to look up esoteric mechanics. They should just be able login and play the game. And that means the game needs to explain itself in a clear and understandable manner.

Don’t think I’m letting ArenaNet off the hook. I said the game desperately needed a tutorial back the beta. I’m very glad to finally see some effort to explain the game mechanics to new players, but I can’t help thinking this would have been accomplished in a much smoother and more effective fashion if the devs had taken the time to consider this critical and important function back during the years when the game was being planned out. A good tutorial is NEVER a waste of time and resources.

The coolest and best game mechanics in the world are absolutely worthless if they are not clearly explained to players. Developers need to spend at least as much time making sure their mechanics are clear and understandable as they spent thinking them up. ArenaNet certainly did not do that with GW1, but the one thing I’ve always said about ArenaNet is that they will learn from their mistakes. It’s good to see they are addressing this deficiency that has always been there in GW2.

tldr: The game needed this no matter what some might think. ArenaNet should have
had a tutorial at launch but at least their fixing their mistake.

data isnt nearly as usefull as correctly understanding the data, and solving those problems without creating new problems.

give 10 scientists the same data, and the same problem to solve, they will come up with 6 different interpretations, and 8 different solutions, some will be better, and more astute than others.

I dont doubt they have data, i doubt they have the best overall solutions. ( based on the last few releases)
not having the perfect solution is fine, but then you have to streamline your iteration so that you re engineer and adapt quickly.

gryph.8734:

Pifil.5193:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi there,

As a follow-up to Colin’s post, we want you to know that we’re working kitten fixing bugs in the New Player Experience system. We’re also using this opportunity to make a few changes to its design to take into account the feedback we’ve been reading. We’re aiming to deploy the fixes early next week.

As Colin explained (make sure to read this post and that one if you haven’t!), this is a complex, “big picture” system that has a lot of components. We want it to benefit all players and improve your game experience overall.

We understand that this is an important topic for the community and appreciate that players have been talking about it. We’ve been triaging bug reports, developing fixes for them and discussing what design changes we will bring to you next week. We’ll continue to both work on the next updates and read the feedback from the community on this topic!

Thank you

I’ll be very interested in seeing what you do with the redesign work, it’ll be a great metric of the kind of speed you can muster there. If you can deliver a solution to the bugs and some of the issues in that time then kudos to you all.

However, once again I feel I have to say that this would have gone better if you were a bit more open about what you were planning on changing in the game. Redesign and reworking a feature after feedback will always be more expensive than soliciting that feedback first and incorporating it (where appropriate) in the work the first time.

If your first thought is “our company policy forbids that” then, well, a company’s policies should be set up to help the company, not to hinder it. Maybe it’s time for a change of policy?

This is all assuming, of course, that the current policies really are harming the company. “I don’t like the way you are doing things” and “We don’t like the way you are doing things” aren’t objective measures of harm to Anet’s bottom line.

the harm is evident in spending time and resources first designing a system, then redesigning the same system, and the public problems it has.
like traits.
and the NPE

Both of which flaws could have, and in fact were pointed out before they hit live as soon as people heard the details of the actual changes.

No matter how you slice, it doing something in a way that makes the customer demand change, and then having to redo it, is a bad use of resources.

When i do contract work sometimes, this happens and its highly annoying, its why we often try to make sure the customer knows what they are getting, and what we are agreeing to do.
The one disadvantage to trying to get feedback, is sometimes the customer doesnt know what they want, or gets weary of having to make a lot of decisions. Luckily their feedback is mostly opt in, and of course the devs have to look at the big picture, and sometimes beyond what the customer says.

Still, there current systems dont seem to be working, april and september feature patches are basically coming up as missing the target overall, and both caused more distress than fanfare.

However, i will say if they can iterate on content to the tune of 1-2 weeks on the regular, then i could see the iterative process working pretty well to make the game better overall.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

@phys:
Your point about leveling speed balancing out against Personal Story delay is valid.

Regarding the rest of your post:
Colin Johansson already said that skill slot unlocks (especially utility and elite skills)have been put in too late in the leveling progression.

As for when this could be changed:

Hi there,

As a follow-up to Colin’s post, we want you to know that we’re working kitten fixing bugs in the New Player Experience system. We’re also using this opportunity to make a few changes to its design to take into account the feedback we’ve been reading. We’re aiming to deploy the fixes early next week.

As Colin explained (make sure to read this post and that one if you haven’t!), this is a complex, “big picture” system that has a lot of components. We want it to benefit all players and improve your game experience overall.

We understand that this is an important topic for the community and appreciate that players have been talking about it. We’ve been triaging bug reports, developing fixes for them and discussing what design changes we will bring to you next week. We’ll continue to both work on the next updates and read the feedback from the community on this topic!

Thank you

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Misconceptions-regarding-Level-gating/page/8#post4398760

ahh so bugs AND adjustments.
aiming for next week,
not so bad then. I wish they would try to get more feedback earlier though.
either need a PTS, or they need to run some of these things by the userbase earlier. A lot of dev time is being used with reworks, the reworks of the reworks.

Vayne.8563:

Swizzle.7982:

Sounds like an awful lot of backpedaling to me. Either that or the people testing the game, if there are any at all, are incredibly incompetent.

“- There are bugs! We’ve seen the content direction system (the little arrow) pointing people at super high level maps when it shouldn’t, some systems/features not unlocking as intended for all characters on your account once your first learns them, some systems level gated that aren’t intended to be, balance issues where certain levels appear to be very out of whack, etc. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, our team is working to figure out what happened here and fix these as quickly as possible.”

Sure, there are always going to be bugs. But for the whole system to be completely and utterly wrong and instantly detectable by anyone who might have decided to actually play this content, well, that’s a whole new level of unbelievability. I really hope these are just excuses to revise most of the changes, because if the whole thing is really as messed up as Colin is saying then I think it might be time to pack up and move on, for both devs and players.

As an example, the compass works perfectly in China, apparently works on the test server but didn’t work properly when the game went live.

Anyone who’s worked on this sort of thing will tell you this can happen with all the testing in the world. Microsoft products are filled with bugs, but I’m sure they test them. And this is a game.

The problem is that to get out the biggest percentage of bugs, you’d have to work for much longer, backing up everything else and everyone is already complaining there’s not enough content.

Developers are people, not supermen. They’re often overworked, they get tired, they sometimes miss stuff. But even with everything working fine on test servers, bugs can creep into the system. Sometimes changing something to fix a bug at the last minute will cause five bugs that wouldn’t even seem to be related to the code you’ve touched.

when you say as example, are you saying you have actual knowledge of the test server and china? or are you saying hypothetically if it worked perfectly.
If you actually have knowledge of either the test server or china, i would like to know where you got that info.