Guild Wars 2

I think my takeaway from this poll is that, despite everybody feeling strongly about their particular preference, there is not a consensus from the community on the best way to handle future content updates.

Slightly more than half the votes are for some form of Living World, whether at the current pace or a slower one.

Slightly less than half the votes are for some form of paid expansion, whether a typical full box or smaller “gem store” expansions.

Dusty Moon.4382:

timmyf.1490:

RIP 14/14/14/14/14 OP build.

It was never meant to be a build – jeez – get over it.

(That was a joke.)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Belenwyn.8674:

Currently the vast majority of voters reject an expansion with costs. So people should enjoy LW like the majority seems to do

It’s 102 votes for the current Living Story model to 101 votes for paid boxed expansions. How do you get a vast majority rejecting said expansion???

You include the 70 who want a slightly less frequent LW.

Belenwyn.8674:

Currently the vast majority of voters reject an expansion with costs. So people should enjoy LW like the majority seems to do

I’m surprised by these results, but we must remember, 300 votes is a very small minority of the overall community. The forums and Reddit don’t represent the community as a whole.

RIP 14/14/14/14/14 OP build.

“announced”

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Odd….115 views, 125 votes.

I also posted this on Reddit.

I think everybody wants new zones, new weapons, new armor, etc. That’s pretty much a given.

Charak.9761:

you need to add

-Permanent LS updates

tired of temp stuff b/c its still the same game after almost 2 years

This might be a good topic for a follow-up poll. I was really curious about pitting cost vs free and frequent+small vs large+spread out.

Rezz.8019:

I seriously don’t understand why would people want to spend more money on this game. The game is amazing and all that but why pay for something when you can have it for free, like it should be.

I think it comes with the implicit suggestion that there will be less gem-store pandering (animal hats, animal mini pets, animal backpacks, etc) and more skins, etc available in-game through completing content.

Dual.8953:

I think I’m gonna keep this tab up. It’s proving interesting.

I was expecting paid expansions to be OVERWHELMINGLY the favorite. I’m rather surprised with the results so far, but we’re still at a very small sample size right now. (32 votes.)

Hopefully this is kosher with the rules of the forums, if not, I apologize in advance.

I’ve seen a lot of discussion over Living World, expansions, etc, and I thought it’d be fun to take a vote. How do you want content to be delivered? ArenaNet is sticking with the bi-weekly format for now. Do you agree?

I made a quick poll here: http://strawpoll.me/1721041

I gave options for box expansions, gem store expansions, bigger LW patches, and current-size LW patches.

I built this so you can only vote for one, so pick your favorite. Feel free to discuss below.

Personally, I’m torn, but I went with larger, less-frequent LW content. I think that the idea of “seasons” is okay, but I’d rather see bigger releases slightly less frequently, perhaps every 3-4 weeks. That said, I don’t want huge gaps in content like we’re seeing now.

Yes, this should be fixed.

The way around it is to go into the dungeon before starting party, creating LFG, etc. Then you own the instance.

Of course, everybody in your party then has to worry about you…

Brother Grimm.5176:

This might be a very long post if someone complains about every aspect of the in-game world that does not adhere to RL natural laws of physics…..

I would be interested in taking a gander at that list, however.

cough boob bounce while running in heavy armor cough

Ashen.2907:

timmyf.1490:

In the image you posted of Queen’s Gauntlet foes, you list Doobroosh as having a variable weight of 150-450. (I think, don’t have it in front of me.)

This is OBVIOUSLY a VIOLATION of the law of conservation of mass. Did you not think your players would notice?

You are mistaken.

Mass and weight are not (quite) the same thing. Of course Doobroosh’s mass remains constant, but gravity fluctuates to produce a variable weight.

I thought that might be the case at first as well, but the variable “weight” is listed on international language options as well. Those should be in kilos. So mass.

I just wanted to say how sad I am that a mod edited my trollbait title even though I understand why you did it.

pdavis.8031:

But for the variable weight of Doobroosh, it would seem that his petuitary gland is somehow flawed, and with the hormonal imbalance this dramatically effects his size and weight.

That would make sense if he were eating, but do you ever see him eat?

Wormhole bags are bigger on the inside. They’re also like quantum physics: nobody understands how it works, but everybody agrees that it does work.

Aidan Savage.2078:

timmyf.1490:

I just wanted to make a science joke. :-/

Most science logic in a game forces a “404: logic not found” error. Otherwise, how can you explain a character carrying up to 40 thousand gold ingots? Or 40 thousand planks of wood? Not only is the first example going to weigh quite a bit (possibly several tons), the second example is going to be awkward to carry considering the planks are going to be up to 6 feet in length.

Wormhole bags.

Duh. ;-)

This is a widely-known complaint about crafting. Dual-wielding is roughly (but not exactly) twice as expensive. It’s existed across multiple tiers of weapons through multiple acquisition methods.

Dungeon tokens are similar. Two-handers are, what, 390 tokens? Singles are 300 or 210? So it’s 390 vs 510 or 600.

I get the feeling most of the people on these forums aren’t actually asking for potatoes, they’re asking for attention and validation.

Given the number of features and systems which this game needs… badly… as a developer, I certainly wouldn’t be prioritizing housing. Maybe in 3 or 4 years once they finish all the features you would have expected at launch for guilds, for example.

That said, why I personally don’t give a kitten about housing (although I’d enjoy a GW1-style Hall of Monuments), I don’t think it’s worth talking down to people who do. We all have different things we’d like in game.

Me? I want account-unlockable dances so I can /thriller or /wobble all over Tyria.

Overall I like the drum, but I too experience latency which makes it unusable. I get that there’s quantization, but I’m having to guess-hit the drum roughly an 1/8th note early to try to add notes to my loops.

It makes it very, very, very hard to use for me.

I think the problem was that the drum was built so people without musical experience can sound good… at the expense of people who have musical experience and just need a responsive instrument.

If we get a pure black dye, I’m also going to need more fire on my armor to make sure I hit all the stereotypes.

First, to nitpick…

Danicco.3568:

Community
The game has guilds, but they’re virtually useless except for Guild Missions.

This is a pretty good sign you’re not in the right guild. I totally think there should be more functionality around guilds, but if you’re not getting value from your guild, perhaps that’s a sign?

I think this game overflowing with gigantic, anybody-gets-in, mapchat-spam-recruiting-400+-member megaguilds and people are suffering for it. But that’s just my personal opinion.

As far as what it’s missing, it depends on the person. My friends left because there was no obvious gear treadmill. They went back to Rift. I don’t get it – they always complain that “X MMO we are playing is sooooo grindy” but they quit GW2 because it wasn’t grindy enough.

If I had my choice, I’d be adding new zones every 2-3 months and adding 30-50 dynamic events around the world every month while cycling out an equal or slightly smaller number. (You want the number to grow slowly, maybe 5-10 per month, because of the new zones.) But they didn’t put me in charge of the Living World strategy, so there’s that…

It’s funny, I was just about to create a sylvari to replay through the Malyck storyline with some guildies ahead of the next living world season. Not that I think the story’s execution is fantastic or anything, but I still find reason to play it, especially the early parts.

Clawr Island is usually where I call it quits…

Skan, I understand you want more detail, but it is currently ArenaNet policy to not share that detail. This is a long-standing policy. They will announce dates ONLY when they are ready to do so.

Complaining about that will get you nowhere.

It’s not like the devs are sitting around a table going, “You know what our players like? Indefinite timelines. Man, we sure think they get a hoot out of those!”

They hold back information until they know, with very high certainty, that it is correct. This minimizes the number of after-announcement changes they must make.

…because you know what causes more uproar than silence? Changing things after they’ve announced them. For example: precursor crafting. Or megaserver rollout plans. Etc.

That said, if you want to complain about official ArenaNet policy on the forums, you’re welcome to do so (though I do believe it’s against the Code of Conduct), but know that it is incredibly unlikely to change.

I’d much rather try to discuss and shape the game in ways that are possible.

Look, the truth is that there are players (such as myself) who enjoy the game substantially and are willing to let Anet off the hook for a few missteps here and there. There are other players who will be critical of any change that impacts them whatsoever.

I’ll continue to show up in threads and remind you guys that game developers are people who don’t deserve abuse from anonymous forum-posters (and get called a White Knight) just like Romo will continue to show up and complain that his Fractal level was reset on every single post with a red-tag (and get called a Whiner).

I’m just surprised this thread is still open, as it mostly consists of mud-slinging and personal attacks. It seems like it has outlived its usefulness.

Chauncey!?!?

HE’S SOOOOO FANNNNCCCYYYYY

…the games are not connected in any way… Different trading posts, you can’t message between the two, etc.

Astralporing.1957:

timmyf.1490:

It’s not like it’s a completely crazy thing for the Game Director to leave for a big launch. And it’s borderline insane to suggest that they should have hired an additional game director for the China launch.

You don’t actually need a Game Director to act as a community go-between. It’s because all the community communications outside of direct support are done by people who should really be doing other things that creates this problem (well, is a part of the problem – the other part is that it seems they are just unwilling to engage in any communication when what they hear is not all sunshine and rainbows). They need a dedicated community relations person. Not someone doing this as a side job (not even paid, btw, from what i understand). And they need to communicate not only when it is convenient for them to do so, but even when (especially when) it is not.

And by the way, this is not the case of “China first”. As far as i remember, there’s always been something other going on that was more important than talking to community.

I don’t disagree with you. I find that ArenaNet’s communications have been somewhat lacking, both in and out of game.

I just don’t make the link between “bad communication” and “they don’t care/aren’t fixing anything/are ignoring us.”

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

timmyf.1490:

It’s not like it’s a completely crazy thing for the Game Director to leave for a big launch. And it’s borderline insane to suggest that they should have hired an additional game director for the China launch.

Video games are not retail, anyway, and I wish we’d quit with the rather tortured metaphors.

Your credibility just evaporated.. the little you had.

Just what does selling and servicing a product directly to consumers mean to you? If it isn’t retailing, what is it? And what does having YOUR exact label/interpretation matter anyway re the analogy.

Bottom line. It isn’t wise, for any business, regardless of how you label that business, to neglect a current, agitated customer base in favor of new customers.. for any length of time.

I’m just excited to find out that, for a moment there, some random guy on the internet thought I had even a little credibility! That’s pretty amazing. I’m sad that it’s gone now, but I’ll never forget the time we had together.

I agree that it is unwise for businesses to neglect their current customers in search for new ones. I also work in the enterprise cloud software world where this is commonplace. You know how much easier it is to get a bug fixed if it means losing a big sale than it is if a current customer is complaining about it?

I’m not saying it’s right. It’s just reality.

That said, I don’t agree that ArenaNet is neglecting its customer base. I do think it is neglecting the often hyperbolic, toxic, angry, vocal minority of its customers that have come here to post demands.

As far as I can tell, they’ve recognized that changes need to be made and are working on making those changes. For most of their customer base, that’s good enough. For a lot of people who require personal attention to their every concern on the forums, it’s not good enough.

You’re welcome to feel that way and I’m well aware that nothing I can say will change your mind. I’m just trying to ensure that the other viewpoint is also represented.

Kalarchis.8635:

The fact that the guys who can answer us are busy with China is exactly the issue. They did not leave anyone behind to handle the existing market. Why not? And why shouldn’t they be taken to town about this? If we did the same exact thing with one of our stores the community for that store would flip their kitten. It would do irreparable damage to that community and our reputation as a company.

It’s not like it’s a completely crazy thing for the Game Director to leave for a big launch. And it’s borderline insane to suggest that they should have hired an additional game director for the China launch.

Video games are not retail, anyway, and I wish we’d quit with the rather tortured metaphors.

Kalarchis.8635:

As for developer involvement in the forums….make a post about not being able to buy gems, or ask how to put in custom music. The devs have no problem responding to those right away.

I don’t mean this in an insulting way, but how old are you? Have you held a job in a corporate environment before?

I’ll give you an example. My company has a big message board where people can ask questions. We’re an enterprise software company. I work within my company’s Education group, so if people have questions related to training, I’ll pop in and answer. I’ll occasionally also answer questions about the product when I know the answer.

Sometimes people have questions about the next version of our product. I might know the answer. Or at least think I know it. But it could have changed. I’m not directly involved in those talks. Or the meetings they have about how to communicate the changes. etc.

So yeah, somebody came in and gave the link for the playlists. What makes you think he is in ANY way knowledgeable or authorized to respond on behalf of the company on THIS thread?

He isn’t.

You guys keep acting like every single human being at ArenaNet is equally capable of answering your demands here. They are not. And the guys who are? They’re busy with China.

You don’t have to like it, but you should at least understand what’s happening.

Kalarchis.8635:

You really screwed the pooch on this one guys. You’re going to have to really work to win back the good will you’ve lost with this fiasco.

Or you’ll have to downgrade your expectations for developer involvement on the forums.

It is nice to see that the predictions made by myself and others that a simple “we are reading this” confirmation would be considered insufficient turned out to be true, though.

Ashen.2907:

timmyf.1490:

Imagine a restaurant that seats 50 being filled with 200 people. 25 like the food. 150 are complaining about the food. 25 are threatening to punch the chef.

Now the 150 keep complaining that the chef isn’t walking around the restaurant to listen to their complaints.

Edit: forgot to note… the chef is in the back trying to fix the food for the 150 who are complaining…

Another very interesting response. It implies that:

1) GW2 can only handle 25% (50/200) of its current population.
2) 87% (175/200) of the players are dissatisfied with the game.
3) GW2 has only one dev.

You might be taking this metaphor a bit too far.

Or way, way too far.

(Also, I’m talking about the forums, not the game, in this metaphor.)

munkiman.3068:

People overreact all the time, this isn’t new. But this time, the almost endless people with valid concerns not getting addressed is really troubling, to say the least.

I want you to consider scale with me for a moment. Suppose you have a team of 3-5 programmers who spend 6-12 months building code. You have teams of people who spend months testing it. You ship it.

There are some obvious problems. There are some less obvious problems. Which of these do you do:

1) Quietly evaluate the effort it will take to fix the problems, make quick fixes where you can, and determine a strategy for moving forward.
2) Bow to the pressure of your community forums and tear the system out entirely, negating thousands of man-hours of work and taking an embarrassing public image hit.

You can, of course, take issue with the “quietly” part of option #1 and agree with the rest of it. Given those two general choices, though, they’re doing the right thing.

I imagine they are 110% overwhelmed with the China launch today and will be much more responsive in the next couple weeks. If that’s not “good enough” for you, that’s fine. If you expect more, that’s fine. You’re welcome to be upset.

I just want people to 1) provide useful feedback, not hyperbole and 2) keep their expectations of ArenaNet somewhere in the realm of “reasonable.”

Devata.6589:

Not sure who you are referring to but I think most people are talking mainly about community / guild related stuff.

I typically don’t like to call other people out, so here’s a few quotes I gathered from around the forums without names attached.

" I have only completed a whopping ONE world boss event since April 15th. I used to be able to do several a day. Now, every single time I’ve attempted to participate, the WB never spawns. Either I miss the event because I can’t make the tiny window of the exact time it starts, OR when i actually do happen to make it, the event always ends early because someone didn’t know you aren’t supposed to do this or that or the boss won’t spawn."

“So far I have been paired with my guild/friends/world mates a whopping zero times”

“The pve side of things have be totally ruined. I log on now to stand around waiting for something to happen. And if nothing happens, I continue to stand around. Is there an achievement for loitering/standing?
Is there anything substantial that I can do when i log on? Please do not ask me to water the plants for Farmer Diah in Shaemoor Fields.”

“Getting rly sick of this… everytime i do a zerg i DC and cant get back.. mostly when its a really good group aswell… I was gonna finish tequatl today… random DC.. gets put in overflow where they didnt even dent him… this is pretty much forcing me to quit the game since i cant play lol.. will try again in a few weeks i guess”

“I’ve lost many dungeon rewards coz of this.
Fix it please!!
Now I cannot complete any dungeon.”

That’s a smattering. Keep in mind the worst offenders have their threads deleted, so I can’t even include the really bad stuff here.

There’s quite a bit of complaining about quite a wide range of things, at least based on my perusal of the forums.

Romo.3709:

timmyf.1490:

I totally agree! That’s why I’m hoping a few people will take me up on my offer and show me how nothing works for them.

The easiest way to experience this would be attending an organized Guild Missions with a decent size guild. This way it shows clearly how it’s an issue getting everyone on the same map during bounty or challenge. Other than that if you’re doing your own thing with 3-4 people it doesn’t matter much, unless you happen to zone to a map that has a World Boss Event happening at the moment. That can easily create a lag fest very quickly.

The people on this thread and many other threads are making complaints for many, many other things beyond just guild missions. I do agree that guild missions are made more challenging with this system and have offered several suggestions for ways they could be fixed without a single response from a single person on this thread.

So while you personally may not be making these claims, others are and I’d love for them to show me, in-game, how bad it is.

munkiman.3068:

You do realize that you might be in the “sweet spot” for sorting. You could possibly have a guild roster and (server obviously) that has a far better chance to see what you’re seeing than what others might be seeing.

For example someone solo in a less populated server and maybe a very small guild of friends may constantly be running into packed full world event, not getting rewards since bosses melt or find themselves in glitched instances more often than you might.

That’s one of the problems too, with this magical algorithm. Peoples experience could very easily vary wildly depending on the sorting criteria they use. Food for thought.

I totally agree! That’s why I’m hoping a few people will take me up on my offer and show me how nothing works for them.

As a side note, I’ve been a little under-the-weather lately, but I’m hoping to get back into the game regularly soon, perhaps tonight or tomorrow. If you’d like to show me how terrible megaserver is and how it never works and you’re on NA, my username is right over there.

Message me. Party up with me. Show me how we have troubles getting into the same shard. Show me how we have issues with world bosses freezing. Show me how we NEVER NOT EVEN ONCE end up in the same shard without having to jump over.

That is not my experience, nor is it the experience of my guild members. I’d be happy to be shown how awful it is and then I’ll be right back here complaining about it.

To the contrary, I’ve noticed things like this: when I do a PUG dungeon run and we leave, I can see player portraits as people exit the dungeon because they’re now loading into the same map as me. If I need to get Obsidian Shards and try to head to the Temple of Balthazar, it’s often open. One time Danicia was there and danced with me. That NEVER happened before.

When I roam in the 1-15 zones, there’s TONS of new players, players who aren’t down-leveled. New enough that they don’t have guild tags yet. If it made sense to recruit players from outside my server, I’d be in recruiting heaven!

So if you really, truly think I’m wrong, let’s get together and see if we can figure it out. I’m not a White Knight, I’m just trying to represent my in-game experience as accurately as possible.

Seth Moonshadow.2710:

Do you have a link to anything that shows Anet’s interest?

There was a whole CDI on Commander tags. I didn’t follow it closely, but it’s a safe assumption they were asking because they were intending to overhaul it. Or update it, at least.

IndigoSundown.5419:

In the meantime, perhaps you should revisit my conclusion: “Post-patch, all you can conclude is that there aren’t a lot of people in your shard because of the way the numbers fall at any given time.” You certainly cannot conclude that your reports are valid and their reports aren’t.

Which is why I included a number of modifiers like “to the best of my knowledge,” “as best as I can tell,” etc.

What I’m accusing people of – to the extent that I’m accusing anybody here – is misrepresenting one-time experiences or situational experiences as regular experiences.

For example: yes, Vigil Keep will be overrun right before WvW reset. No, Vigil Keep should not have 100 people in it all the time. I feel that people are taking images of Vigil Keep during WvW reset and misrepresenting those images as the standard experience. It is not. (At least not for me and I’ve requested, though not received, counter-evidence to my claim.)

Furthermore, it reasons that if the example of 170 people being split into 150 and 20 is true, I am 7.5x as likely to be among the 150 as I am the 20. If 470 people are split 150/150/150/20, I am 22.5x as likely to be among the 150 as I am the 20.

Why, then, do I feel like I’m constantly on servers that are more like 40-80?

The possibilities are:

1) I am lying (which I know I’m not, though you do not know I’m not, other than the the evidence I provided)
2) Other people are lying, or misrepresenting evidence, or stretching the truth to make a point, which I think is the case
3) There is a bug that is constantly putting me in 40-80 person servers and constantly putting all the people here in 150 person servers
4) I have just been abnormally lucky to always be placed in servers that are roughly 40-80% of softcap, except when major world events occur, and others have been abnormally unlucky to always be placed in servers that are softcapped+.

Reminds me of this. https://xkcd.com/1172/

Simon.3106:

Thank you, timmyf! I always thought you were a guy who acted smart, but you are truly smart. Thank you for doing your research and not just spit out kitten from your mouth like that drama-queen

I have a few long-standing disagreements with Romo, but as somebody who is very dedicated to this game, he certainly deserves more respect than you’re giving him.

Remember: argue against ideas not people.

Constructive criticism makes our ideas better and, in the long run, can make us better. Tearing somebody down only serves your ego.

Romo.3709:

timmyf.1490:

Romo.3709:

Nothing has been adjusted to this day.

Well this is obviously untrue.

I’d love to see examples that actually support your statement.

I guess it’s open to interpretation.

“Our megaserver team will continue to monitor the performance of the technology on live and evaluate your feedback. We will continue to tweak and update the way the system works until it is providing even better megaservice!” (emphasis mine)

I take this to mean they are actively making changes to the system. I can see where you would disagree.

Romo.3709:

Nothing has been adjusted to this day.

Well this is obviously untrue.

KOPPER.1458:

Does anyone know if China gets LS season 1? Will they be a year behind in that story or simply skip it?

No, they’ll get the world as we know it.