Don't lose sight as to why this situation is a problem.

[draxynnic.3719]

18 hours ago, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

Hell, one moment in Teapot podcast, One of the guys flat out said Anet should have pushed the patch note eariler, so Anet can handle it better. Let me translate that for you in case people don't understand.

Teapot and crew wanted the patch note early so Anet could better damage control the situation, without fixing the core

I don't think that's a fair assessment of their position. We're seeing some fairly rapid responses to some of the feedback now - if they'd issued a preview a few weeks beforehand, that would have given the opportunity to adjust based on feedback before the patch went live.

The creators have been pretty critical on the whole, they just haven't been talking about the leaks because the partner program doesn't allow them to. So they're advocating for change in ways that don't risk breaking their agreements. But they're clearly angry as well.

[Fwog.9387]

On 6/29/2022 at 1:31 PM, Daddy.8125 said:

That isn't entirely true. Mighty teapot said this balance patch was a complete miss and went against anets balancing as a partner. 

While he's more polite about it for sure, he defiantly didn't side step or ignore it. 

 

From what i gather Mela is still very much part of the gw2 community even after he leaked everything. So if mela is safe, teapot should be safe to voice his views as well. 

And echoing the OP
I was already fed up with this game before any recent events. My friends are the only reason i am still here at all. Its not impossible for anet to turn it around. No one is unforgivable let alone over a video game (not exactly the most important matter to get bent out of shape over) but i wont be spending a penny on this game until i think they deserve it again. And once i finish what i set out to do ill be distancing myself from the game for an unforeseeable amount of time. 

[Ashantara.8731]

On 6/29/2022 at 10:31 PM, Daddy.8125 said:

That isn't entirely true. Mighty teapot said this balance patch was a complete miss and went against anets balancing as a partner. 

While he's more polite about it for sure, he defiantly didn't side step or ignore it. 

This. His detailed assessment of the patch was perfectly educated, and though there were moments were you could see him struggle to keep his cool, he remained polite and factual.

[JTGuevara.9018]

6 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I don't think that's a fair assessment of their position. We're seeing some fairly rapid responses to some of the feedback now - if they'd issued a preview a few weeks beforehand, that would have given the opportunity to adjust based on feedback before the patch went live.

The creators have been pretty critical on the whole, they just haven't been talking about the leaks because the partner program doesn't allow them to. So they're advocating for change in ways that don't risk breaking their agreements. But they're clearly angry as well.

Of COURSE they said that! Can't upset the apple cart now can't we lmao?

[standardFoe.2983]

16 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

I think a lot of those streamer/content-creator types mean well, it's just that their position biases them toward putting up with, and making excuses for, stuff that other people won't because they have so much more to lose.

 

Why, because Anet will punish them somehow? That's just a toxic work environment if affiliates don't feel safe giving criticism. If true it's as wrong as devs balancing combat for all of us around their preferred builds.

[Labjax.2465]

3 hours ago, standardFoe.2983 said:

 

Why, because Anet will punish them somehow? That's just a toxic work environment if affiliates don't feel safe giving criticism. If true it's as wrong as devs balancing combat for all of us around their preferred builds.

Maybe, I don't know the details of what goes into a given game's partner program and that kind of thing, if they are in one, but generally, I'm just thinking more of what it means for them and their life if the game is awful and they have to think about moving on or encouraging others to do so. Kinda like how some of us may put up with more from family members "because they're family"; to even think of cutting them off could be a big deal. Idk if I'm explaining this well, but I tried lol.

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, standardFoe.2983 said:

 

Why, because Anet will punish them somehow? That's just a toxic work environment if affiliates don't feel safe giving criticism. If true it's as wrong as devs balancing combat for all of us around their preferred builds.

Well, there has been that one content creator that lost his partnership status because he called Anet out on saying they will fix issues with Envoy armor skins and never following on it.

[draxynnic.3719]

12 hours ago, standardFoe.2983 said:

 

Why, because Anet will punish them somehow? That's just a toxic work environment if affiliates don't feel safe giving criticism. If true it's as wrong as devs balancing combat for all of us around their preferred builds.

Yes, they can lose their affiliate status.

They're being really critical about the substance of the patch, but leaks are something that they're not supposed to publicise. That's a rule that's more intended to cover things like leaked upcoming features (like the leaks of the PoF elite specialisations back in the day) rather than leaks that appear to confirm the bias that has been observed in the past few balance updates, but I don't blame them for playing it safe. Losing that status can be a significant hit to their own businesses, and I don't think the content creators deserve to lose their livelihoods over this.

Call that "sellout" if you like, but they haven't been afraid to compare the patch to, say, worms found in canine faeces (and I'm the one bowdlerising that). If ArenaNet hasn't realised they need to do something about how their balance team operates by now, I don't think the content creators calling them out is going to change that. Stressing how bad the patch is and spotlighting each of the many issues that make it bad is a means for them to put the pressure on that doesn't risk hurting themselves.

Sure, they're calling out the death threats, but death threats probably are an overreaction.

Edited July 3, 2022 by draxynnic.3719

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

On 7/3/2022 at 3:20 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Yes, they can lose their affiliate status.

They're being really critical about the substance of the patch, but leaks are something that they're not supposed to publicise. That's a rule that's more intended to cover things like leaked upcoming features (like the leaks of the PoF elite specialisations back in the day) rather than leaks that appear to confirm the bias that has been observed in the past few balance updates, but I don't blame them for playing it safe. Losing that status can be a significant hit to their own businesses, and I don't think the content creators deserve to lose their livelihoods over this.

Call that "sellout" if you like, but they haven't been afraid to compare the patch to, say, worms found in canine faeces (and I'm the one bowdlerising that). If ArenaNet hasn't realised they need to do something about how their balance team operates by now, I don't think the content creators calling them out is going to change that. Stressing how bad the patch is and spotlighting each of the many issues that make it bad is a means for them to put the pressure on that doesn't risk hurting themselves.

Sure, they're calling out the death threats, but death threats probably are an overreaction.

If they don't want to lose their status, fine. But Have the balls to not kitten on the community you "Care for" For being pissed that the devs are favoring classes and among other things in that leak. I said it before, and I said it again. Not even 1%  of the community going out of their way to make the devs a living hell, and quite frankly, I'm not concerned with that. It's a few bad apple spoiling a bunch, and shame on the content creators that's grouping us up with them.

You know I a content creator I trust in another MMo? Fengrush. He has this "No nonesense" Attitude when it comes to the games he main. If there's a problem, he plays the game long enough to understand the cause and effect, and he will let you hear it. Regardless whatever or not he's "Affiliated." I respect the guy because he's not afraid to give out that harsh tough love to the games he play, and he isn't afraid to call a dev incompetent If something REALLY Puzzles Feng.

This game would REALLY benefit from someone telling it like it is, instead of sugar-coating like the content creators are doing now.

[eXruina.4956]

the thing is, content creators are only that, they are players with viewership, some of them aren't even qualified to consult with, even among some of the big name content creators.

 

there are many people who exist in-game, just as qualified and just as skilled, or more. they just don't appear in media.

 

people shouldn't believe everything they watch or read and think for themselves.

 

these people are not the be all end all. and cannot be a representation of the entire community.

 

in fact nobody can truly be a representation of the entire community.

 

also, ultimately i put my *expectations (edit: expectations is the word im looking for) in the devs, it is their profession, i believe that even left to their own devices, behind closed doors without communication, that they should be able to do their job, because it is their job, and this is ultimately reflected by the product they push out.

 

if it is a terrible product, then it will inevitably fail and come crashing down. regardless of who is doing the work or who they consult.

 

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by eXruina.4956

[Labjax.2465]

14 minutes ago, eXruina.4956 said:

the thing is, content creators are only that, they are players with viewership, some of them aren't even qualified to consult with, even among some of the big name content creators.

 

there are many people who exist in-game, just as qualified and just as skilled, or more. they just don't appear in media.

 

people shouldn't believe everything they watch or read and think for themselves.

 

these people are not the be all end all. and cannot be a representation of the entire community.

 

in fact nobody can truly be a representation of the entire community.

 

also, ultimately i put trust on the devs, it is their profession, i believe that even left to their own devices, behind closed doors without communication, that they should be able to do a good job, and this is ultimately reflected by the product they push out.

 

if it is a terrible product, then it will inevitably fail and come crashing down. regardless of who is doing the work or who they consult.

 

 

Speaking of that, I've watched some of those longer teapot discussions between streamers or whatever it is and sometimes they do raise interesting points, but you can tell none of them really have any practiced understanding of game design. And I'm not saying this to say they shouldn't be allowed to speak, of course they can say what they want, but when it comes to sounding authoritative about anything, a lot of what they're doing is a mixture of speculation and their opinions about the game. It is occasionally on point analysis, but generally pretty shallow in its understanding of the hows and whys. Those kind of people tend to be better at sounding like they know their stuff than actually knowing it, cause it is at the end of the day more of a performance art role (streaming) than anything else.

That said, I don't put trust in devs either. I can put trust in specific designers who have a solid track record, but when it comes to devs and studios as a whole, it's often hard to know who really screwed up where and why unless anonymous tell-all stories come out. Usually when they do though, it's the same story told in different flavors: management, management, management.

[captrowdy.9561]

Streamers are the worst thing to happen to gaming. Sure a YouTube guide is helpful. What’s ridiculous is people thinking these folks opinions matter more then Anyone else. 

[Lighter.5631]

"content creators goes on to tell people that Anet might not want to talk to us again"

lol yea, nobody cares.

anet better start begging to talk to us, else they gonna lose a lot of things.

[Fueki.4753]

6 hours ago, eXruina.4956 said:

the thing is, content creators are only that, they are players with viewership, some of them aren't even qualified to consult with, even among some of the big name content creators.

Any content creator who skirts around the actual issues is not qualified to consult anyone.

If they ignore the grave issues because of their partnership with Arenanet or something similar, they are nothing but shills, no matter how big their names are.

6 hours ago, eXruina.4956 said:

also, ultimately i put my trust on the devs, it is their profession, i believe that even left to their own devices, behind closed doors without communication, that they should be able to do their job, because it is their job, and this is ultimately reflected by the product they push out.

And the products/patches they shoved out over the last few years showed that they can't do their job properly.

We know that they only do what suits them best, while ignoring or even destroying what doesn't fit them.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[JTGuevara.9018]

17 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Speaking of that, I've watched some of those longer teapot discussions between streamers or whatever it is and sometimes they do raise interesting points, but you can tell none of them really have any practiced understanding of game design. And I'm not saying this to say they shouldn't be allowed to speak, of course they can say what they want, but when it comes to sounding authoritative about anything, a lot of what they're doing is a mixture of speculation and their opinions about the game. It is occasionally on point analysis, but generally pretty shallow in its understanding of the hows and whys. Those kind of people tend to be better at sounding like they know their stuff than actually knowing it, cause it is at the end of the day more of a performance art role (streaming) than anything else.

That said, I don't put trust in devs either. I can put trust in specific designers who have a solid track record, but when it comes to devs and studios as a whole, it's often hard to know who really screwed up where and why unless anonymous tell-all stories come out. Usually when they do though, it's the same story told in different flavors: management, management, management.

See, this is the problem with so-called "content creators". They are insulated from peoples' actual experiences with games. That is because they essentially function as company insiders, influencers and sponsors. They supposedly represent the community as spokespersons, but their real interests lie with the game studio and industry in question.

It's typical of how corporate america operates, mainstream news for instance, where you can only criticize and report on things that CNN, ABC or CBS likes!

The thing is, though. These influencers are not a new thing. They've been in the game industry for decades. It's the same crowd from E3 and such. Industry insiders. Having said that, I do acknowledge that there is some dissent even from streamers. That is, dissent from the inside. If there is dissent from the inside, you can only imagine how the outside must be! If streamers are hesitant on drinking the company kool-aid, why should the rest of us drink it?

[JTGuevara.9018]

12 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Any content creator who skirts around the actual issues is not qualified to consult anyone.

If they ignore the grave issues because of their partnership with Arenanet or something similar, they are nothing but shills, no matter how big their names are.

EGG.....ZACKLY.

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

On 7/2/2022 at 3:13 PM, standardFoe.2983 said:

Why, because Anet will punish them somehow? That's just a toxic work environment if affiliates don't feel safe giving criticism. If true it's as wrong as devs balancing combat for all of us around their preferred builds.

Lmao, they already punted Nike from the program for making valid criticism.. Here's hoping this little opsie will make Nike more "Free" With his opinions now.

[Serephen.3420]

56 minutes ago, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

Lmao, they already punted Nike from the program for making valid criticism.. Here's hoping this little opsie will make Nike more "Free" With his opinions now.

Nike was asking for it with his attitude problems to be honest.

[Zaret.1450]

On 6/28/2022 at 6:17 PM, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

I know a lot of gw2 content creators are telling people "People overacting" Or "Whining over a balanced patch." This Isn't the case anymore. The death threats were uncalled for, and I hope the people who made them got banned, but lets be honest here. If you think that even 20% of the community are calling for the dev's head, you're sadly mistaken. At best there's maybe like 1% of the population who are most likely doing that, and even then I think 1% is too generous. Point is, The Extremely toxic groups are a few bad apples spoiling a bunch, and we shouldn't be paying attention to those type of people.

What you have to understand that this huge backlash didn't happen overnight. This have been building up for a while now. The end of Dragon meta was the first sign where people were slowly getting fed up. But let me make this clear. It wasn't the patch note that ultimately send the community into a frenzy, as conversational as it is. It was merely a stepping stone for what came after that really RILED people up. Anyone who were surprised by this outcome, or didn't think the community would be capable of such thing, they either haven't payed any attention at all, or were too naive to understand why all of this happen.

The truth of the matter is, Anet? The leaks have caused a huge distress among your community. That is something no one should pretend didn't happen. No matter how many purges you do, we're in a age where people can archive those type of information for all to see if people look hard enough. Any conspiracy theories people had about the dev team came into fruition, any faith people have with you are now gone. And people genuinely believe their class are bad because they're not being favoritize by the devs, and that's a problem. We shouldn't be in a situation where people now know that their class are garbage because the devs doesn't care about it.

This whole situation created a stigma where people understandably don't trust you guys anymore. Again, content creators goes on to tell people that Anet might not want to talk to us again, but how about the people who now know that their class isn't being given the "Favoritism" Treatment? Why bother giving feedback at all, when it's now confirmed that it gets dismissed, or at worst, patronized by the devs? Hell, one of the devs have to use Wiki as a reference so they can balanced a skill they know nothing about. That is embarrassing to a lot of folks, myself included.

I think this is important to point out because the last thing that should happen is to muddle the main reason people have such a problem with the patch, and why they acted the way they did, for good or ill. And I think this is something that needs to be addressed, and I didn't feel like anet did that in the follow up thread.

the funny thing here is, a lot of people had doubts about favoritism, classes neglection, and devs treating players like pest.

That leak, even if it was a bad joke, a social investigation, however you wanna call it, made everyone doubt anet, so people with doubts exploded, dead threats are too much, its a game after all, but i understand if many people asked for that person to be fired, noone likes feeling manipulated, lied and becoming laughting stock, anet should have said something in my opinion, a simple sry, it wont happen again, might have been enought for most.

Were just players, we cant make decisions, but were the ones that play the game, were the ones putting our time in this and we deserve a minimun respect, and some times it looks like we dont even get that.

[Zaret.1450]

On 7/5/2022 at 5:35 AM, captrowdy.9561 said:

Streamers are the worst thing to happen to gaming. Sure a YouTube guide is helpful. What’s ridiculous is people thinking these folks opinions matter more then Anyone else. 

but thats mostly because people dont think, i like to see teapot, but i dont agree with wim in lots of things, people need to use the brain, the same goes for anet, sry to say but what would be better, having a comunity that supports the company, gives feedback and is happy playing for years or a comunity were more and more people find the company toying with them and start becoming toxic and leaving, leaving not without a couple of commentaries, not recomending the game, etc etc.

Yeah an utopia isnt possible, but come on it isnt that difficult to do a minimun of not leaking you have favoritism for example.

[Valisha.8650]

Guys let's be honest, this whole "death threats" thing is greatly exaggerated and mostly used as a scapegoat to hide the elephant in the room, that this patch, and discord leaks, were.

Those were (most likely) not even legit threats to begin with, just bunch of people with too much testosterone throwing salty/edgy comments in the internet out of mere anger, while hoping it won't get reported for any legal investigation.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Valisha.8650

[JTGuevara.9018]

And of course, this thread has aged like a fine wine.

On 7/24/2022 at 10:55 PM, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

Lmao, they already punted Nike from the program for making valid criticism.. Here's hoping this little opsie will make Nike more "Free" With his opinions now.

As I've said before in this thread, "can't upset the apple cart now can't we?" (July 2, 2022)

On 7/24/2022 at 11:53 PM, Serephen.3420 said:

Nike was asking for it with his attitude problems to be honest.

Attitude problem or not, influencers that don't tow the company line get the boot! Of course, at that point, they're not influencers anymore are they?

[Serephen.3420]

3 hours ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

And of course, this thread has aged like a fine wine.

As I've said before in this thread, "can't upset the apple cart now can't we?" (July 2, 2022)

Attitude problem or not, influencers that don't tow the company line get the boot! Of course, at that point, they're not influencers anymore are they?

 Well try think of it this way, they're not exactly employees but partners which while they can give criticism are meant to help promote the game too. What company would want to partner with someone who almost always trashes their game? It would be an extremely poor business decision. It's just simple logic, they don't owe partnership to anyone, they obviously would want people who would help the game grow, it just so happen that largely negative people don't do that.

 

Not saying I agree or disagree with anything he has said but from a business standpoint it makes little sense. Like having kiss promote a new pixar movie to kids.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

On 7/4/2022 at 11:48 PM, Lighter.5631 said:

Anet might not want to talk to us again

Abusive actors be like:

 

*Does something empirically scummy*

*Gets backlash*

"Wow, how rude! I can't believe I even tried to be nice to you!"

*Unfriends anyone that doesn't agree with them*

Quote

Guys let's be honest, this whole "death threats" thing is greatly exaggerated and mostly used as a scapegoat to hide the elephant in the room, that this patch, and discord leaks, were.

I dont know if it is exaggerated or not, I'm not in a position to make that claim. If it is not, that's never to be defended and those people do not speak for the community or belong here.

Still, that should not be used as a shield to obfuscate the issues that led to that behavior. 

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[LSD.4673]

23 hours ago, Valisha.8650 said:

Guys let's be honest, this whole "death threats" thing is greatly exaggerated and mostly used as a scapegoat to hide the elephant in the room, that this patch, and discord leaks, were.

Those were (most likely) not even legit threats to begin with, just bunch of people with too much testosterone throwing salty/edgy comments in the internet out of mere anger, while hoping it won't get reported for any legal investigation.

This is the reality of it. If you look on MassivelyOP, you have a collection of people who don't even play saying how wrong death threats are, and most highly voted comments are about how the community is salty over a patch.

They've spun it into making GW2's community look even worse. 

There's legitimate outrage: an enormous timesink of a game with fundamental, extremely longstanding balance issues is being balanced by a team of one guy who plays one specific build of one class; it's balanced based on whims and Wiki info (not experience and understanding), and community concerns are both ignored and, evidently mocked.

And the official response is "we had death threats and thats not ok".

Winner!