Is current developer criticism warranted or are we just demanding too much?

Lately there's been a real shitstorm brewing in OF and reddit with pitchforks and torches and I wanted your thoughts on the matter. I'm not sure whether this anti-dev sentiment is piggybacking from the EA drama or this is a genuine problem with our community. Like Christ, just look at General page 1 there's someone complaining that the new patch changed the daily fractal and another post complaining that items shouldn't take inspiration from real world objects. I don't even want to touch the posts about the 2000 gem mount/RNG lootbox COSMETIC SKINS that have been spammed the last couple days. I get that criticism is important to developer feedback but are we really criticizing or do we just want more things given to us easier?

Its easy to be a spoiled brat on the internet because they dont think there are any consequences.

Little do people know, devs from games used to communicate all the time back in the day. Rampant, ungrateful whiners ruined that.

@Jacuzzi.1643 said:we just want more things given to us easier

a mix of both actually.paying 2,000 gems is quite pricey for people who don't have access to a solid income with room for pleasure spending, thus trying to grind for that many gems can be a daunting task even on the best of days. Even among those who do have that luxury, that same price usually comes from combo deals with multiple items versus the single item purchase of mount skins. The implementation of RNG based skin boxes was also ill done - had anet simply decided to implement a 'ticket' system - EG: 3 tickets for celestial griffon, 1 for tiger griffon, 2 for fire griffon - then that may have been fine as this left choice in the hands of the player. however putting hard earned gems into a gambling machine means you could very well spend well over 4,000 gems for just the two/one/three skins you wanted..on the other hand a lot of the fanaticism is in fact a spread over from the EA incident. moreover people on the forums generally tend to be saltier than the dead sea due to past grudges they have with the decisions anet has made - whether for good or ill - and not all of it is entirely logical or without favoritism, as we're only human. the people who are generally happy tend to play the game far more than surf the forums. Plus with the economy still not exactly in the best of conditions people are quite sensitive about how far they can stretch a buck, and thusly overreact when something that they desire is outside their budget range. On top of this you have fashion wars 2 as the meta endgame for a lot of people, and not everyone wants to get their hands dirty to look cool. And lastly remember that what you may be looking at may in fact be the vocal minority rather than the majority, as we have no precise way of validating exactly how many people share the same opinions on certain topics.just my two cents on the matter.

If its about the game no matter how much you or the devs may not like seeing it, it's warranted.

I'd say that a lot of the ire is overreacting.

The whole issue with mounts is, at its worst, a misstep. I can think of several reasons why people enjoy a random loot system and why the devs would also see these reasons. People already gather together in lions arch to show off their recently pulled mounts. A total mount set is about as expensive as a legendary weapon, and those are everywhere. I think that we wouldn't have as big of an issue if EA didn't take lootboxes to the level of sin.

The account bound black lion skins is a much greater mistake. I discovered these existed after hearing people complain about them. It is hidden, exclusive, RNG based, limited time items that you cannot make progress toward. Either you get the skins, or you don't. You can't eventually get the skin like you can with mounts. That aside, the loot crate system in GW2 is benign.

I recognize the need for income. Free things are awesome, but there's no such thing as a free lunch. If there's something I want but cannot afford, I simply resolve myself to not get that thing. If there's something I want but can afford, I buy it.

I think most complaints have some merit to them. My issue is usually not complaints but how complaints are worded. There are ways to say what you want without being aggressive or attacking and I prefer posts like that personally. If the whole environment is in an uproar due to outside circumstances, then it causes a lot of over-reaction and hyperbole, which makes the game look worse than it is. To me that's the real problem here.

A new person goes to reddit, sees a bunch of complaints. Those complaints are from people who have played the game for hundreds if not thousands of hours. They clearly like the game enough to still be part of the community. But that doesn't necessarily come across in those posts. I've also seen posts on reddit asking is the game really that bad, and then, some of the same people complaining, have come into those threads and said, well know, I've just played the game for so long, I focus on minute things that over all don't mean that much, but they seem really important to me now.

At the end of the day, MMO communties are often their own worst enemies.

I'm not anti-dev. The devs have been knocking it out of the park lately. PoF was a lot of fun, the mounts are fun, LWs4 has been great so far (I'm not quite done the story campaign yet, kinda busy lately). I'm anti-whoever is running the gem store, because they are choking hardcore and ruining it for everyone else.

They took what could easily have been a cool addition to the game, 30 mount skins, and squandered them with kitten loot boxes. Rather than fixing the problem, they decided to double down on it and make the ridiculous claim that they would never fix it because it would "devalue the people that bought into their scheme." Even EA didn't have the bloodstones to pull that one.

So ANet as a company needs to get their kitten together and get those mount skins out in some other method, or at least promise that they are working on such a solution but that it'll take them a little time. That would be good enough. But their continued silence on the topic of actual solutions is becoming deafening.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:The whole issue with mounts is, at its worst, a misstep. I can think of several reasons why people enjoy a random loot system and why the devs would also see these reasons.

Nobody blames them for making a mistake. Mistakes happen. The blame is for them not fixing the mistake. We can't forgive them until they actually make it right.

I think gamers are generally fed up with gambling mechanics as a whole for items that can be purchased directly or indirectly for real world cash. Stop the predatory business tactics, and you'll see the outrage disappear. Get rid of the BLC keys, lootboxes, and any other gemstore item that depends on taking advantage of gambling mechanics. This type of shady practice is going to lead to governments stepping in to regulate it. IMO there isn't enough outrage.

I'd much rather see an expensive item available for outright purchase. Sure there's going to be those that complain about price, but nothing like we are seeing about the gambling.

I wouldn't say it's a bad thing to criticize the devs, the harsher the better, but a critic should be prepared to be the target of further criticism.

@Vayne.8563 said:I think most complaints have some merit to them. My issue is usually not complaints but how complaints are worded. There are ways to say what you want without being aggressive or attacking and I prefer posts like that personally. If the whole environment is in an uproar due to outside circumstances, then it causes a lot of over-reaction and hyperbole, which makes the game look worse than it is. To me that's the real problem here.

A new person goes to reddit, sees a bunch of complaints. Those complaints are from people who have played the game for hundreds if not thousands of hours. They clearly like the game enough to still be part of the community. But that doesn't necessarily come across in those posts. I've also seen posts on reddit asking is the game really that bad, and then, some of the same people complaining, have come into those threads and said, well know, I've just played the game for so long, I focus on minute things that over all don't mean that much, but they seem really important to me now.

At the end of the day, MMO communties are often their own worst enemies.

This. People react emotionally and post in a state of upset. Since one of the primary mechanisms of the human mind is the ego, people get invested in the things they posted, and vehemently defend their positions. It doesn't help that other posters attack, which tends to get peoples' backs up, resulting in back and forth arguments which can devolve into ad hominem attacks and worse.

There are real issues in a lot of cases. Sure, some of them are trivial (I won't single any out, but I'm sure anyone can pick one out with half a moment's thought). RNG sales techniques definitely favor the seller rather than the buyer. Pricing some of your customers out of the market for frou-frou items may be financially sound, but when an MMO's item pursuit is based more on frou-frou than anything else, then some of those customers are going to be unhappy.

The fact is that almost everything ANet could do to the game is going to rub some people the wrong way. ANet has done a lot of things in the past couple of months, so there is a lot of criticism.

@Firebaall.5127 said:I think gamers are generally fed up with gambling mechanics as a whole for items that can be purchased directly or indirectly for real world cash. Stop the predatory business tactics, and you'll see the outrage disappear. Get rid of the BLC keys, lootboxes, and any other gemstore item that depends on taking advantage of gambling mechanics. This type of shady practice is going to lead to governments stepping in to regulate it. IMO there isn't enough outrage.

I'd much rather see an expensive item available for outright purchase. Sure there's going to be those that complain about price, but nothing like we are seeing about the gambling.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that RNG lootboxes are satan spawn but they're a necessity for GW2's business model. In terms of cash shop purchases, there's a spectrum where subscription base games have no RNG items and completely F2P games have RNG based character progression (Maplestory, I'm looking at you). GW2 falls in between where RNG doesn't gate progression but only cosmetics (similar to Overwatch). If you buy a $25 Griffon skin, more likely than not you're not going to spend another $25 to buy another griffon skin. There needs to be an RNG element so that money can be constantly funneled into the game, otherwise everyone will buy the mount that they want on day 1 and never buy another mount for the following 6 months-year which is horrible for sustainable revenue.

It is the job of sellers to identify what products and prices their audience desires.

It is the job of buyers to inform sellers when they find the product or price unacceptable.

There is no such thing as "too much criticism" and it is never the fault of the consumer if the seller is attempting to give them a product or price point they don't want. It is the fault of the seller for misunderstanding their market or failing to adapt to it if it changes.

The players are not ArenaNet employees. They are people Arenanet is selling things to. It is not the responsibility of the players to do anything but honestly evaluate the products or services on offer and decide whether they are value propositions they deem worth their money. If they don't want to buy something, it is in Arenanet's best interests to hear why, as it gives them additional data points to consider when pricing their products in order.

Products and services do not improve when people have a problem and don't say anything about it. No business has ever done anything because a handful of customers demanded it. All criticism, and especially the reaction of other customers to that is useful in the decision making process.

People complain about everything, but do try to differentiate real issues from less important issues.Lootboxes and gambling are a huge deal. An extra fractal being added and throwing someone's daily routine off is a small issue. There's a difference there you should strive to differentiate.

Anet is one of the least greedy/mercenary devs I’ve bought from. Heck almost all the loot boxes I’ve bought in the past from other Devs contained items that gave you an upper hand in the game. Here, it’s all cosmetics.

They have employees, medical insurance, and servers to pay for.

I criticize devs for balancing classes around xpac sales (nerf everything that was bfore there, make new specs OP; if they don't attract buysers, make new specs even more OP and nerf old specs). I am sick and tired of this. It is sooo forced, it is so stupid and it makes me hate the game. GW2 was amazing at launch, surely it had it's issues like every game but combat was sooo good, now old devs are gone and new ones have nothing but sales in their head by the look of it (or at least their managers). It kills the competitive community. Most of my friends quit because of how it was going downhill for a while now.As far as cosmetics go, as the name says, it is cosmetics, they don't give you huge advantage in game or prevent you from playing. Don't want to pay the price for few colorful pixels, don't do it. Nobody forces you.Class balance based on xpacs however does - you don't have the new spec -> you can't compete -> your friends/team might not want to play with you anymore (i lost my team at HoT launch because revs were made so stupidly OP and i wanted to play thief which was nerfed to oblivion for xpax sales). This is second xpac and they continue the tradition. THIS is huge issue, imo. Whole competitive community is screaming right now at them because of scourges for example but no, we didn't sell enough PoF copies yet, we leave scourge untouched for now. I don't have words to describe how stupid and frustrating it is and how it is killing the game for a lot of people.

Am i demanding too much? I don't think so. Competitive environment should be relative fair to every class AND NOT BE BASED ON XPAC SALES!!!!! WvW/PvP literary turned into p2win since HoT. This is what cheap Asian MMOS do: drop your coin = gain huge advantage.

@Jacuzzi.1643 said:Lately there's been a real kitten brewing in OF and reddit with pitchforks and torches and I wanted your thoughts on the matter. I'm not sure whether this anti-dev sentiment is piggybacking from the EA drama or this is a genuine problem with our community. Like Christ, just look at General page 1 there's someone complaining that the new patch changed the daily fractal and another post complaining that items shouldn't take inspiration from real world objects. I don't even want to touch the posts about the 2000 gem mount/RNG lootbox COSMETIC SKINS that have been spammed the last couple days. I get that criticism is important to developer feedback but are we really criticizing or do we just want more things given to us easier?

You're demanding too much.

Keep in mind that, in this day and age, considering the state of the MMORPG market, I doubt very much a possible new player would be knowledgeable enough to find the forum and not knowledgeable enough to understand that forums for MMORPGs are filled with criticism. This kind of game has been reduced to somewhat of a niche right now, in a big departure from the huge MMO boom from years ago.

With that in mind, all the criticism here is not going to hurt ArenaNet. If anything, players are doing them a favor by being so eager to offer feedback; ArenaNet has access to a lot of data, but they won't know the motivation behind said data unless players tell them.

And if you consider how the majority of the criticism here isn't against the content of the game, rather against the business model... I think what you call a "real kitten" is actually very tame. The louder opinion here and in Reddit appears to be that the content of the game is great, just the Gem Store is the issue.

Yes and yes. But also no.

Both 'developers actions' and 'player criticism' are large categories with many different things in them, not single items. Some criticism of some decisions is (IMO) warranted and some is totally unreasonable. Likewise some people are making very valid points in a terrible way.

And I'm including myself in that. Even after 17+ years on forums I tend to forget that other people can't hear my tone of voice or see what kind of mood I'm in when I'm writing a post so unless I remember to say it explicitly a post I imagine myself saying quite calmly can come across as extremely angry, especially when read in the context of the other posts which preceded it. Giving feedback is a skill in it's own right, and it's not one everyone will be good at or have much opportunity to practice. (I do however, so I really have no excuse.)

On top of that there's the underlying assumption that if you're on this forum then of course you like the game, and if you're complaining about a feature then of course you like some aspects of it or you just wouldn't care. (Case in point, look at all the people saying RNG box only minipets were ok because they didn't want the minis, but now it's something they do want it's totally unreasonable.)

It's the same with everything. Spend 5 minutes on an Xbox forum and you could easily believe it's the most hated platform of all time and it's amazing Microsoft have kept making them when every single one has been so unpopular. Make one post suggesting maybe they should all get Playstations instead and you'll have a never-ending stream of posts on why the Xbox is far superior. Bring out the tired old "superior PC gamers" idea and they'll probably contact their Playstation sister-site to join in on 'correcting' you.

And here you are creating thread complaining about other people complaining :)

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I think most complaints have some merit to them. My issue is usually not complaints but how complaints are worded. There are ways to say what you want without being aggressive or attacking and I prefer posts like that personally. If the whole environment is in an uproar due to outside circumstances, then it causes a lot of over-reaction and hyperbole, which makes the game look worse than it is. To me that's the real problem here.

A new person goes to reddit, sees a bunch of complaints. Those complaints are from people who have played the game for hundreds if not thousands of hours. They clearly like the game enough to still be part of the community. But that doesn't necessarily come across in those posts. I've also seen posts on reddit asking is the game really that bad, and then, some of the same people complaining, have come into those threads and said, well know, I've just played the game for so long, I focus on minute things that over all don't mean that much, but they seem really important to me now.

At the end of the day, MMO communties are often their own worst enemies.

Not really my point. I come from a publishing background and when you critique something you can be hard and that's fine. But that doesn't mean you have to be, or that it's okay to be rude. And yes, I know forums are not a profession environment, but I still believe in courtesy. You can critcize without attacking.

This isn't just to the benefit of the game or the company, it also benefits the person doing the critique.

I know for a fact that human nature will put people on the defensive if they're attacked. I used to run a business and if anyone attacked one of my employees, right or wrong, I'd defend the employee. They'd get more action from me being reasonable. They'd be more likely to get what they want.

People who engage in highly charged emotional posts or hyperbole leave behind people who are just as vested by more reasonable, just by using the tone. Because when you attack someone, there's going to be a percentage of people who feel sympathy.

Developers are human beings will feelings and emotions and they don't make decisions specifically to hurt us or the game. Sure they get things wrong, but there's a fine line between critique and abuse. And in any event, the more over the top your complaint, the less likely it will be taken seriously..

@PopeUrban.2578 said:It is the job of sellers to identify what products and prices their audience desires.

It is the job of buyers to inform sellers when they find the product or price unacceptable.

There is no such thing as "too much criticism" and it is never the fault of the consumer if the seller is attempting to give them a product or price point they don't want. It is the fault of the seller for misunderstanding their market or failing to adapt to it if it changes.

The players are not ArenaNet employees. They are people Arenanet is selling things to. It is not the responsibility of the players to do anything but honestly evaluate the products or services on offer and decide whether they are value propositions they deem worth their money. If they don't want to buy something, it is in Arenanet's best interests to hear why, as it gives them additional data points to consider when pricing their products in order.

Products and services do not improve when people have a problem and don't say anything about it. No business has ever done anything because a handful of customers demanded it. All criticism, and especially the reaction of other customers to that is useful in the decision making process.

This.

And on that note, I don't want things for free. I want them to price the mount skins like they already did the outfits and the gliders. I just don't understand why a single mount skin should cost almost thrice the price for an outfit skin. Most outfits are sold in the gemstore for 700 gems and one mount skin costs 2000gems. I just can't understand that huge price gap.

And about RNG: I wouldn't mind RNG so much if we could at least trade all the items and mounts. Or if they put the mount skins in 5 different boxes(one for each mount. Raptor, Springer, Jackal etc).

Do you know what my boss always tells us? A good customer is a customer who tells us what's wrong with our company. If they think something is wrong and they tell us, then we can DO something to change for the better. That customer gave us a second chance and we should be thankful for that. Our worst nightmare are the customers who think something is wrong but won't tell us what. And who just decide to leave us without telling us what we did wrong or could do better. Those customers don't give us a chance to make things better. If a customer complaints about something, then they care about us in some way. If they don't even feel the need to complain and just go away, then we already lost them and that sucks.

And sure, some people just LOVE to complain about everyone and everything. Some people are just nasty. But those people are a tiny little minority.

And I have the feeling here in this forum it's the same. Most of the users here love the game. Sure they complain about this and that...because they care about the game and want the game to be even better than before. And sometimes they complain very emotionally and sometimes quite rude. That's not ok, but understandable. They really love the game, they got attached to it and they really really want the game to be better. They could phrase their critique better, but still.

We WANT to support the game financially but we need to be careful with our hard earned money too. Buying skins was always a good way. You could give them 10€ and get an outfit as thanks. That felt good. That gave me a happy feeling. It just felt right. Balanced. But spending 25€(that's a lot money for a lot of people!) and only getting ONE mount skin even though there are 5 different mounts...getting only one skin when 10€ always gave you at least the same(outfit skin) or even more(glider skin)...that feels wrong and I don't feel good about that exchange.

Anet would get more money out of me if they would put those skins at a reasonable price. Buying a skin for 10€ doesn't hurt that much. Buying a skin for 25€ wouldn't feel good at all. That's soooo much REAL money for...one tiny little skin. I would feel bad and ashamed afterwards for WASTING my money like that.

Sounds stupid, but that's my thinking process: spending 10€ feels more like...getting a skin instead of a little bit of candy. I can live with that. But buying a skin for 25€ would feel like...getting a skin instead of something important I could've bought instead. 25€! That's a hardcover book! Or half of my fuel tank for my car. That's a LOT of cat food. That's a WHOLE game. One nice dress! I could buy SO MUCH with 25€! One mount skin can't compare to that, doesn't matter how pretty and awesome the skin looks like. It's just not worth it. But if the skins are priced at 10€, I don't think much. I just buy it if I like it. 10€ doesn't hurt much.

I don't care if someone thinks that's silly. That's just the way I think.

@Lome.8239 said:Its easy to be a spoiled brat on the internet because they dont think there are any consequences.

Little do people know, devs from games used to commumicate all the time back in the day. Rampant, ungrateful whiners ruined that.

Like what games? Even in Ultima Online they hardly posted, except for useless event hosts and seers.

I agree our playerbase has become spoiled brats. However some criticism is warranted the game's very poorly balanced some classes have had changes that made no sense and ruined build diversity etc.

@Rezzet.3614 said:I agree our playerbase has become spoiled brats. However some criticism is warranted the game's very poorly balanced some classes have had changes that made no sense and ruined build diversity etc.

That's the common complaint in any game community. Players seems to have trouble understanding how hard is balancing a game with a rich combat system. For the same reason you can (and do) have a lot of playable builds but very few optimal ones. There is no build variety if you choose to care about min-maxing. There never was, there never will be.