BLTC Kickstarter for meaningful improvements and new content.

Can we get a like 500 gem item that feeds a kickstarter fund for the resources necessary to give WvW the love PvE gets? I'd gladly pay.

I doubt very much anyone would end up enjoying the GW2 that results from allowing decisions on style, content, and mechanics to be influenced by those with the most money to donate. Not even, in the end, the people who donated the most. Plus, the crowds that support crowd-funding tend to be every bit as cranky as stockholders about "what happened to my investment," if not more so.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:I doubt very much anyone would end up enjoying the GW2 that results from allowing decisions on style, content, and mechanics to be influenced by those with the most money to donate. Not even, in the end, the people who donated the most. Plus, the crowds that support crowd-funding tend to be every bit as cranky as stockholders about "what happened to my investment," if not more so.

Like a world where PvE and the BLTC get regular content releases and WvW gets.....?

I don't care who decides, but alotting resources seems a barrier. Why not let those that want the game mode to evolve contribute.

i want dolyak mount in pve or char cycle.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:I doubt very much anyone would end up enjoying the GW2 that results from allowing decisions on style, content, and mechanics to be influenced by those with the most money to donate. Not even, in the end, the people who donated the most. Plus, the crowds that support crowd-funding tend to be every bit as cranky as stockholders about "what happened to my investment," if not more so.

Indeed. Kickstarting is more like an investment for a chance at something to work. Not a guarantee. If anything they're worse than stockholders when it comes to risk vs. reward. Also they don't understand that even a board game takes more than a year to develop from ground zero... D:

@Tinnel.4369 said:I don't care who decides, but alotting resources seems a barrier. Why not let those that want the game mode to evolve contribute.

Buy gems while WvWing. Or is that not the way to contribute to Gw2? Idk.

Also why did I not hit edit instead of quoting again? Or did I do it wrong. W.e.

Call it whatever you want, can we funnel money to resources dedicated to WvW content development?!?

dolyak alpine could be the rabitchar cycle could be the raptordesrt char can.be the wolfgolem could be the mantaand char copter could be the grifon

@Tinnel.4369 said:Call it whatever you want, can we funnel money to resources dedicated to WvW content development?!?

Phrase it however you want, it's not good business to let fans push the direction of development. If you don't think ANet does a good job, spend less money on the game; if you think they do, spend more.

@Tinnel.4369 said:I don't care who decides, but alotting resources seems a barrier. Why not let those that want the game mode to evolve contribute.Resource allocation is always an issue, no matter how large an organization; there's never enough to spend on all the worthwhile projects.

There's also a "be careful what you wish for" scenario here. If ANet actually agreed to allow people to earmark cash spending to WvW, they would then start diverting discretionary funds to other projects. Frequently, that ends up meaning that less is spent on the target project(s), rather than more. We've seen this happen at US states that adopt the lottery to fund education for the arts in public schools. The first year, spending is steady or somewhat up, but the first year that there's a shortfall, all funds except the earmarks are pulled, resulting in fewer resources available.

For businesses, though, tying up discretionary spending is nearly always a bad idea. In part because quite a lot is already tied up: benefits, building infrastructure, software licenses, legal, etc... those all already reduce what resources a firm can move around. A strong business needs to be flexible enough to adapt to changing conditions and earmarking does the opposite. In ANet's case, there's no chance that they could pull of the planned Great Restructuring of WvW 2018, if they were depending on player contributions to fund it — they will need some of the resources that are mostly used to support PvE initiatives, along with the expected WvW team.

I get that fans of specific parts of the game want to see their preferred mode get more attention, whether it's WvW or PvP or even SAB. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to try to tell ANet how they should run their studio.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Tinnel.4369 said:Call it whatever you want, can we funnel money to resources dedicated to WvW content development?!?

@Tinnel.4369 said:I don't care who decides, but alotting resources seems a barrier. Why not let those that want the game mode to evolve contribute.Resource allocation is always an issue, no matter how large an organization; there's never enough to spend on all the worthwhile projects.

You're right, you should never let your customer base drive decisions, you can generate money from the ether without them.

I'm ill convinced you understand how ANet already preferentially allocates resources or how they generate revenue.

PvE and BLTC continue to see new content releases, there is obviously quite a bit to spend on what they consider worthwhile projects. We were recently asked for improvement ideas for WvW (fucking weird to ask consumers what they want, right?) and the community provided a gigantic list from which I believe two(?) things were chosen. You can find the thread, the response was overwhelming, almost as if the consumers had something to say!! Even the success of those two being implemented hinged on, among other things, resources. It's clear, based on aforementioned PvE and BLTC content additions, that they have resources. Those resources are just not being preferentially allocated to WvW content development.

Again, call it whatever you want, if I can donate $10 or $20 dollars to fund resources to develop new WvW maps, events, siege, etc. I'd gladly ante up, if you'd rather not, great. Weird, don't really understand business business lectures aren't really adding anything.

@Tinnel.4369 said:You're right, you should never let your customer base drive decisions, you can generate money from the ether without them.You seem to think that being interested in customer preferences is the same as letting customers make the decisions for how to allocate resources. We customers know what we like; we don't know how to run a business that succeeds on choosing among the things that we like.

I'm ill convinced you understand how ANet already preferentially allocates resources or how they generate revenue.Of course they allocate resources preferentially; setting priorities is how businesses succeed (or fail). They have choose among the areas they can do the most good in, that have the most importance to customer satisfaction, the things that ultimately lead to strong profits this week, next month, and the following years.

You keep insisting that things would be better for WvW if only ANet divided up the money differently, even though that's unlikely to be the case. If they spend too little attention on PvE, if there's too little in the cash shop, well, there's no game at all.

Again, call it whatever you want, if I can donate $10 or $20 dollars to fund resources to develop new WvW maps, events, siege, etc. I'd gladly ante up,The point is that is that's an unrealistic model. You are specifically asking for ANet to work on things because you (as well as others) will donate 1-2 gemshop items worth of additional funds.

if you'd rather not, great.I haven't actually said if I would spend on such projects. If/when a company exists that offers that on a regular basis, I'll let you know.

Weird, don't really understand business business lectures aren't really adding anything.I don't understand why you wouldn't be interested in what's important to a business when you're asking them to change how they run things.

So my point remains. I, as well as others, would "prefer" some WvW content development. Don't take any money from PvE, it's clear you're already getting enough to preferentially fund it. Please provide a way for those that prefer a game mode you still provide, yet don't invest in, to help promote development of.

I never, once, insisted WvW would be better. I said it's clear it's not getting any love and could use some in my opinion (let's not include the pages of suggestions from the community in the thread). Better is subjective, like the value of these little lessons. ;)

tinel u should insist. i do. =)

@Tinnel.4369 said:

We were recently asked for improvement ideas for WvW (kitten weird to ask consumers what they want, right?) and the community provided a gigantic list from which I believe two(?) things were chosen.

Two things were chosen for immediate allocation of resources while the rest were put on a list that he very specifically was talking about potentially making public once they make some decisions about what will be easy to implement and what will take unreasonable amounts of manpower because of unintended interactions. People overwhelmingly gave suggestions, but like always read absolutely none of what was said by the devs.

@Sojourner.4621 said:

@Tinnel.4369 said:

We were recently asked for improvement ideas for WvW (kitten weird to ask consumers what they want, right?) and the community provided a gigantic list from which I believe two(?) things were chosen.

I read it. My point, which you just reiterated, remains. Two things were chosen, the rest is gated behind unavailability of resources. There's a discrepancy in content. Development of said content is gated behind resources. It would seem that it's not felt that the WvW community generates enough revenue to warrant the resources that other aspects of the game do. Therefore, it'd be nice if there were a way to contribute to resources directed specifically at the game mode. I'm not implying you get to submit a list of demands with your purchase or that we get napalm air drops on SMC. Something like: we get X contributions, we'll allocate Y resources to a new map on Z timeline.

@Tinnel.4369 said:

@Sojourner.4621 said:

@Tinnel.4369 said:

We were recently asked for improvement ideas for WvW (kitten weird to ask consumers what they want, right?) and the community provided a gigantic list from which I believe two(?) things were chosen.

Everything, 100% of everything ever, is gated behind resources. There is a seperate wvw team, one that only spends its resources there, and that team is currently working on the long term implementation of a completely new world grouping system. Would you suggest that this massive update to the way wvw works and potential QoL improvement be set aside so we can focus more on getting the list of superficial minor improvements suggested by the community out quicker?

@Sojourner.4621 said:

@Tinnel.4369 said:

@Sojourner.4621 said:

@Tinnel.4369 said:

We were recently asked for improvement ideas for WvW (kitten weird to ask consumers what they want, right?) and the community provided a gigantic list from which I believe two(?) things were chosen.

No, did you not read the thread? More resources to match the content release (or at least close the gap). Improvements are of course needed and good, but a consolation; content, events, evolution of the game mode!! Surely you can agree there's been many many many content releases across expansions, living story, etc. and a constant flow to the BLTC. Just now they shake up the system that's been broken for years and offer these improvements, all the while heavily cautioning the resource limitation. Do you really believe we have a development team the likes of PvE? Quite obviously not.

WvW is an afterthought and fair enough if we don't bang the buck that PvE does (though I know we micro purchase and buy expansions). Since we don't bang the buck it'd be nice if there were a way for us to show we'd still like some love and even help fund it. ?

I don't think that Anet ever openly admitted that WvW isn't profitable, but that could be true, or very close. Me and many others would have supported a WvW focused expansion or DLC or whatever, far more, than paying for HoT and PoF, both of which made WvW class balance and so on worse & but also improved a bit. We understand that it's not the game we play though, but one can dream that their preferred game mode will thrive.It's just a dream though, because they want us to enjoy the whole game... it's their wish vs. ours, this cannot end well. Almost like in a bad (or normal?) marriage :)

They haven't openly admitted it that I know of. One can certainly draw conclusions from the evidence though. The alternative is that we are profitable, they just prefer to use us a revenue force for other content. This just hurts, so I'll stick with the former theory.

I wouldn't be opposed to funding wvw if I knew that the money was actually going to be used to help wvw in the right way.

@"Tinnel.4369" said:They haven't openly admitted it that I know of. One can certainly draw conclusions from the evidence though. The alternative is that we are profitable, they just prefer to use us a revenue force for other content. This just hurts, so I'll stick with the former theory.

It seems to be the availability of talent rather than resources is the issue, if you just interpret their website. An animator isn't going to do much for WvW for example...so you may be able to interpret a company's priority. Not something I care to theorize though since its pointless.

https://www.arena.net/#careers

Clearly they would have enough money to even ask for those job offerings...but unfortunately they don't state which or what teams those positions would be a part of. Also such position's salaries are 60-90k USD a year if you really care about how much money it takes.

The best way to help, as a player, is to be constructive in your feedback of the actual game play. Lead by example, and not just by throwing money hoping it sticks. That's what charities are for. This game is a creative pursuit, and not one for survival so money only goes so far...

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:This game is a creative pursuit, and not one for survival so money only goes so far...

Please provide evidence of this.

I think pointing out the discrepancy and offering a solution is rather productive feedback.

@Tinnel.4369 said:

@"GDchiaScrub.3241" said:This game is a creative pursuit, and not one for survival so money only goes so far...

I presume you understand that a game is a creative pursuit. I also presume you understand a game isn't going to fulfill any needs of survival.

So the only thing left is "money only goes so far." I already cited their careers for what ANET seeks for talent. They are looking for a lot. This means they have the money, but are looking for talent. My "evidence" was deductive reasoning since that is about as much a player can do without actually being a part of the company in question. I suggest you reread and click the link.

As for offering a solution. I said to provide feedback about actual game play elements. I did not say to evaluate a company's economics since I BELIEVE that is going to be a pointless pursuit. Ignoring Kickstarter (since I think there are some legal things ANET would have to do). Let's say we can give them money. Assume ANET is moral, and will only send that money to WvW.

Now see my original point. They are still looking for talent. They have the money. Woopie, but they haven't found the talent...

P.S. I still haven't seen any provided evidence of "funding issues for WvW." By all means, link it.

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:

@Tinnel.4369 said:

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:This game is a creative pursuit, and not one for survival so money only goes so far...

Are you not implying that ANet isn't in it for money and simply to tickle their artistic inclinations? Please prove that.

I did cite the evidence and if you play WvW you understand it well. Whether it's lack of funding or preferentially not funding I already said is unknown. Content addition discrepancy between modes; please see maps and content released per expansion, living story, etc. to PvE versus to WvW. Have you seen an expansion themed WvW map? Have you seen any additions to WvW anytime recently that weren't hand me downs from PvE?

Now, by your logic this would mean they haven't been able to find talent to fulfill WvW's needs over a span of years. It's not hard to see that argument fall down flat right out the gate.

It is a gameplay element, or lack thereof. The stated problem is my assumption based on the evidence at hand (deductive reasoning, if you will, since you validated that method for yourself). If someone has factual evidence to the contrary I'm perfectly happy to shift feedback as a result of that evidence.

Your belief it's a pointless pursuit is logged into the thread. Thanks for the feedback.