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Anet and the impact of not following up on your word


K THEN.5162

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Anet has had quite the streak in not following up on their word since the start of 2018. Between alliances and promising more communication on balance patches last February, the developers have been infuriatingly silent on both of those fronts. Now I would have been excited with Cantha's "announcement" back a couple months ago, but considering anet's track record on slowly or never releasing updates on these type of things, this looks like a desperate attempt at keeping interest in the game and we probably won't see them "laying the groundwork" on it until we are well into the decade. So in this post, I'm going to share how the constant silence and letting my frustrations fester caused anet's words mean nothing to me now.

Let's look at exhibit A: Alliances - In the first announcement 2.5 years ago, Gaile Gray (an employee laid off last year) stated that alliances would be a long term project, which is fine as I don't think anyone expected it to come out within a year (despite Gaile saying that it will take "several months of work"). Now the last official update before progress on it went silent was around 10 months after the first announcement. As of today, we are coming up on 17 months of no alliances updates. Worse yet, in their "expansion level" ice brood content announcement on August 30, 2019, they stated that they are "really excited to talk about world restructuring in the coming months." Well it's been almost 10 months now without any talk on Alliances so what exactly is anet's definition of "coming months". We know according to Gaile Gray that their definition of "several" is apparently at least 17 months.

Now exhibit B: The balance patch nuke on February 25, 2020 - This patch brought actually significant changes to nearly all professions and considering how lackluster previous balance patches were, it was a nice breath of fresh air. The problem is, the changes were heavily targeted towards power damage ratios and MANY people were concerned that it would push the meta back towards the rather tedious and frustrating bunker condi meta..which it did. To match these concerns, the devs stated in a twitch stream (https://clips.twitch.tv/HedonisticFunWolfPogChamp) that "whatever the problems are, we're going to get in there and it's not going to be 3 months until the next balance patch". Now to give them credit, they have released balance changes more frequently as they said in this announcement, with the 3 mini balance patches we've had since February releasing anywhere from 3-6 weeks after the last one. The issue is, there has not since been a "regular balance update" and the combined changes of these 3 mini balance patches have actually less changes than the regular 3 month balance patches beforehand (around 51 changes in March 17, April 28 and May 26 to 115 changes in October 1, 2019). Another thing to note is that the changes from those 3 patches did little to impact the meta that rose from the February 25 nuke. PvP still has bunker core ranger, condi thief, and condi rev as highly optimal builds while none of these changes have made any significant influence on zerg and roaming specs.

Although I understand that the COVID-19 pandemic must have affected development progress, but in anet's official announcement on COVID-19, they stated "We’re making steady progress on all our planned Guild Wars 2 releases, and we’ll keep everyone up to date if that changes." The fact that they haven't released the end of PvP season balance patch last week nor gave any reason why it was not released only proves that they once again didn't keep their word.

Anet I don't know what to tell you, I love the combat system, the world you have built, and you've done some pretty amazing things recently in PvE. But if the PvP and WvW communities are still large enough to take up a significant fraction of your player base, then you need to start establishing a positive relationship with a lot more transparency or you will risk losing these dedicated players.

TLDR: Take everything anet announces with a grain of salt because it will mostly likely come very late or won't even come at all

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@"K THEN.5162" said:Anet has had quite the streak in not following up on their word since the start of 2018. Between alliances and promising more communication on balance patches last February, the developers have been infuriatingly silent on both of those fronts. Now I would have been excited with Cantha's "announcement" back a couple months ago, but considering anet's track record on slowly or never releasing updates on these type of things, this looks like a desperate attempt at keeping interest in the game and we probably won't see them "laying the groundwork" on it until we are well into the decade. So in this post, I'm going to share how the constant silence and letting my frustrations fester caused anet's words mean nothing to me now.

Let's look at exhibit A: Alliances - Now in the first announcement 2.5 years ago, Gaile Gray (an employee laid off last year) stated that alliances would be a long term project, which is fine as I don't think anyone expected it to come out within a year (despite Gaile saying that it will take "several months of work"). Now the last official update before progress on it went silent was around 10 months after the first announcement. As of today, we are coming up on 17 months of no alliances updates. Worse yet, in their "expansion level" ice brood content announcement on August 30, 2019, they stated that they are "really excited to talk about world restructuring in the coming months." Well it's been almost 10 months now without any talk on Alliances so what exactly is anet's definition of "coming months". We know according to Gaile Gray that their definition of "several" is apparently at least 17 months.

Now exhibit B: The balance patch nuke on February 25, 2020 - This patch brought actually significant changes to nearly all professions and considering how lackluster previous balance patches were, it was a nice breath of fresh air. The problem is, the changes were heavily targeted towards power damage ratios and MANY people were concerned that it would push the meta back towards the rather tedious and frustrating bunker condi meta..which it did. To match these concerns, the devs stated in a twitch stream (https://clips.twitch.tv/HedonisticFunWolfPogChamp) that "whatever the problems are, we're going to get in there and it's not going to be 3 months until the next balance patch". Now to give them credit, they have released balance changes more frequently as they said in this announcement, with the 3 mini balance patches we've had since February releasing anywhere from 3-6 weeks after the last one. The issue is, there has not since been a "regular balance update" and the combined changes of these 3 mini balance patches have actually less changes than the regular 3 month balance patches beforehand (around 51 changes in March 17, April 28 and May 26 to 115 changes in October 1, 2019). Another thing to note is that the changes from those 3 patches did little to impact the meta that rose from the February 25 nuke. PvP still has bunker core ranger, condi thief, and condi rev as highly optimal builds while none of these changes have made any significant influence on zerg and roaming specs.

Although I understand that the COVID-19 pandemic must have affected development progress, but in anet's official announcement on COVID-19, they stated "We’re making steady progress on all our planned Guild Wars 2 releases, and we’ll keep everyone up to date if that changes." The fact that they haven't released the end of PvP season balance patch last week nor gave any reason why it was not released only proves that they once again didn't keep their word.

Anet I don't know what to tell you, I love the combat system, the world you have built, and you've done some pretty amazing things recently in PvE. But if the PvP and WvW communities are still large enough to take up a significant fraction of your player base, then you need to start establishing a positive relationship with a lot more transparency or you will risk losing these dedicated players.

TLDR: Take everything anet announces with a grain of salt because it will mostly likely come very late or won't even come at all

That's all good and well but most long term players came to this conclusion yrs ago. Given how populated this game is currently after the obvious player boon that the pandemic and ice brood obviously caused imagine when players have finished the lw story and aren't laid off and or in lockdown. The pandemic is awful in every way but gw2 and other mmo's gained from it as far as having the opportunity for new players and or more playtime for players already playing.With the current devs and their proven cadence it will be interesting to see where gw2 is in 2021

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I don't mean this in a negative way at all, just trying to help those that this may bother including yourself. There is only one way to handle companies that do business in a way you don't like and that is to not do business with them at all. Then they either modify there business model or they don't. That said, there are a lot of good features about the game as you pointed out. Yes, over the years Anet has seem to have grown a bit more silent on particular issues on these forums. That could be that they want the free advertising that they would receive by going to other social media platforms or more likely that there just isn't really anything of note to say. My opinion is that with the recent covid 19 thing and layoffs as well as an upcoming expansion, including day to day operations, they have their plates full.

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I'm honestly glad more of the community is starting to see the status quo. It remains to be seen how much of the trend is due to the player base aging with the game and how much is the community gaining understanding of how the industry works. Either way this is promising development. A lot of us have been saying this since 2015, to me it feels like long overdue recognition.

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@Justine.6351 said:Maybe wvw is so good that no changes are needed at this point?

No news is good news.

No. CC needs to be addressed still. taking damage was good start but being able to be stunlocked on perma inturrupt which is even easier needs to be removed. No onr should die being rendered unable to counter constantly.

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This is nothing new, for example there was almost a year and a half for HoT to come out, during which there was little updates; the team barely even bothered with Festivals back then, too , since they weren't designed to be recurring.

People keep saying "maintenance mode" , but the game's always been that way. It has short bursts of major activity once every few years and then goes to sleep. I have a feeling that after ArenaNet is finished with every major project, the developers get laid off (this is standard industry practice), and then NCSoft contributed to that massively last year which made things worse.

Its not just ANet in particular, the industry's just in really bad shape, especially now with the pandemic.

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Anecdotal, but yesterday was the first time I'd participated in a PVD raid in 2020. Like literally NOBODY was on (NA 4pm EST). We even went to both enemy BL's to try and stir up some interest for a fight and nada. Ended up maintaining SMC while capping both enemy keeps in EBG before the raid ended.

Now, it should be said that the Steam Summer Event started this past Wednesday, so maybe it's not much of a mystery after all ;)

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@"primatos.5413" said:Working on wvw/alliances maybe 1... and a hamster i think"Sry guys, alliances will be delayed by another year, cause our hamster ate all our sketches and blueprints with all the great ideas on it."

a hamster to put the blame on :#

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@"BeepBoopBop.5403" said:"We are too busy creating PVE content most players will spend a few hours on to focus on game modes that players will spend hundreds of hours on"

This is what I don't get. Gw2 is unique in a lot of way and I get that mmo's alway have a higher pve population than pvp, just how it always is but with gw2 combat mechanics coupled with the fact even with the increase in development for pve gw2 doesn't really have a super story pve. What I mean is the story and writing is ok at best and the replayability of the pve content coupled with the fact the stories are not that time consuming to complete I wonder why pvp wouldn't be more of a focus given its replayability and potential player rententative properties when compared to pve. I get why ff14 for example treats pvp as a after thought, though I wish I didn't personally but it makes sense given its expacs are like 150-200 story quests which although can be burned thru still takes far longer. With how short lw stories are etc and how quick players go thru the new content in gw2 pvp is a huge missed opportunity to do something great while providing gameplay that promotes replayability and player retention cuz lets be real at rate these devs work it take forever for them to develop and release any actual meaty pve content.

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@Turkeyspit.3965 said:Anecdotal, but yesterday was the first time I'd participated in a PVD raid in 2020. Like literally NOBODY was on (NA 4pm EST). We even went to both enemy BL's to try and stir up some interest for a fight and nada. Ended up maintaining SMC while capping both enemy keeps in EBG before the raid ended.

Now, it should be said that the Steam Summer Event started this past Wednesday, so maybe it's not much of a mystery after all ;)

NA prime is 8pm usually...so maybe transfer to EU?

D:

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@Turkeyspit.3965 said:Anecdotal, but yesterday was the first time I'd participated in a PVD raid in 2020. Like literally NOBODY was on (NA 4pm EST). We even went to both enemy BL's to try and stir up some interest for a fight and nada. Ended up maintaining SMC while capping both enemy keeps in EBG before the raid ended.

Now, it should be said that the Steam Summer Event started this past Wednesday, so maybe it's not much of a mystery after all ;)

To be fair, that's not NA prime, it's actually a few hours before. Most people in the country are still working during those hours.

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ANet stopped following some of their own words when they introduced new maps with non-interchangeable currencies and soul/account/whatever kitten -bound non-tradable items (fun fact - I actually intentionally used the word "k i t t e n" , its not some censored bad word, because I think this fits perfectly in this case). Thats not exactly the "play the game how you want" and "fun, not grinding" from their GW2 Design Manifesto, right? Well, to be honest, we should forgive them this mistake, because GW1 was basically a singleplayer game with the possibilityof coop gameplay, and GW2 is their first MMO game from that studio. And for a first MMO game from formerly small game studio, GW2 is pretty darn good game. On a contrary note, they still keep their words in basically every other game design concepts, being it very large story developing differently according to player choices, dynamic map events chaining to each other accordingly if they are succesfully finished or not, Gems buyable with ingame gold etc etc. In all those other things they still keep 100% of their words. Sadly for us WW-ers, most of these applies and exists only in the PvE game mode.

But I agree, 2.5 years of alliances and final ingame implementation is still nowhere to be seen, add on top of that tragically low or even basically nonexistence of any ANet <-> WvW players communication, thats an unforgivable lack of interest from game studio. Maybe they dont want money from WvW players anymore?

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