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Let's talk about anet's communication problem


Pixel.8012

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Hey everyone, the world's loudest willbender player here again to talk about something that is, surprisingly, not willbender this time – I want to talk about the way ArenaNet approaches Guild Wars design, the concerns I’ve seen from a large portion of end-game players across modes, and (hopefully) how ANet can actually start moving in the direction of actionable solutions. While I feel like my reputation on this subreddit is mostly “the willbender person” I actually have a background in community management and specifically parlaying community sentiment into actionable, discrete feedback for the development team – something I think the community at large would agree that ANet kind of desperately needs. I think most people agree that there’s a severe lack of community management and official community interaction between ANet and the broader playerbase that have, in my professional opinion, directly led to a handful of issues that I’d like to draw some attention to. So consider this a bit of an open letter to ANet and, hopefully, create a productive discussion for what ANet can learn from its community and, in turn, what the community can realistically expect from ANet.
TL;DR: There's no expectation shared between the devs and the community in any capacity and it's a massive communication issue that manifests in other parts of the game's balance, and anet needs to be willing to invest in open communication with the community if this is a problem they feel is worth solving.
 
Up at the top, I would really love to highlight some positives that I've noticed recently in the past year of the game. With all of the issues with the content release cadence, both in general and as a function of living world season 1, ANet is really honing in on a much more diverse game than I think a lot of us have been historically used to, and a lot of the community discussion with and around ANet hasn't quite caught up to that fact yet. I really do want to commend a lot of the hard work that has happened over the past 8 to 9 months, because it's really not easy and while there's still a lot of work to be done, the work that's already been done should not be understated or underappreciated. Balance at a meta level is markedly more diverse than it's been in a very long time and I really, really think anet has done a good job iterating towards that direction.
 
But the biggest thing that concerns me here is that, by and large, no player deeply entrenched in any mode actually feels like ANet designs the game for them. Open world players feel like balance is focused around endgame PvE content, WvW players feel left hung out to dry from years and years of a stagnant meta with no meaningful movement on alliances until very recently, sPvP barely gets any attention vis a vis rewards or incentive to drive players to the mode so it just hemorrhages players, and endgame PvE players feel like the content cadence and balance indicates little development attention to that kind of content. This is a problem. No part of the player base feels heard or catered to, and both balance and content feel like an afterthought. In order for a game to have a community with a long-term relationship with its developer that propels the game forward, the communities within the game need to feel heard and understood, and it hasn’t really felt like there’s been an active effort to interface with the multiple communities that make endgame guild wars so diverse and vibrant.
 
Part of this manifests in balance. I want to speak mostly to PvE balance here because it’s my primary mode, but I do also play PvP and a lot of what I’m going to articulate here is broadly applicable there as well, and I’d imagine WvW balance is similar. In any case – expectations for class/build output feels largely arbitrary. Why do some classes (guardian, mesmer, engi) get to do everything, but warrior, thief, and necro have incredibly limited utility? Why does Condi Quickbrand get to have 37k dps but Condi QuickZerk loses like 8k off that for absolutely zero net gain? Why does staxe mirage get to do 35-36k dps on content but Alac Specter sits at 28-29k? I could go on, but the point is, ANet doesn’t seem to have an internal goalpost for what output they’re okay with among builds, and it’s frustrating trying to play within that framework when a lot of it leads to builds that just sort of obviate everything else because they can either do WAY more damage or have WAY more utility – or, often times, both. ANet could really stand to benefit set an upper bound for the damage output of builds, and try not to stray from that except for in exceptional cases, and work down from there in terms of percentage of that damage and/or utility other types of builds should have access to, so content desifn and spec balance feel more cohesive and intertwined. This sort of fluid design would be more acceptable if the top end of GW2 content was constantly moving upwards and the design could evolve with it like other MMOs, but because GW2 stops at a lv 80 cap, this sort of emergent power creep both within roles and on the game at large has a knock-on effect on how compelling endgame content can remain in the long-term, and that’s dangerous. I think most people want to see ANet make big moves on balance and make the game interesting and dynamic – given the alternative is atrophying that Reaper/Dragonhunter players have been contending with for god knows how long now – and fail openly with a willingness to make changes and address feedback, but ANet needs to be 1) open with their expectations for what they want from different kinds of builds (how should selfish DPS compare to more utility focused dps builds? What percentage of the pure DPS builds’ damage do they want the boon dps builds to meet? How much utility is too much utility for a build to have access to?) and 2) Willing to invite public feedback on when and where they miss the mark, and then adjust their balance approach accordingly so the game can evolve to a point that the community understands why and how the builds have landed where they are, at least broadly.
 
Lastly, and this is a personal grievance of mine but one I’ve seen echoed by more than a few players – There’s a sort of underlying sentiment that ANet’s balance approach, for better and for worse, has a tendency to focus its attention on the builds/specs that are currently already noteworthy, and this is dangerous because over a long enough time this leads to a sort of bias that begins to exclude builds that might not have yet captured their audience, or may have lost that audience long ago. Spellbreaker took almost 5 years to be a reasonable choice for PvE play, willbender finally found a meaningful identity a year into the expansion that released it, Harbinger STILL doesn’t have a mathematically optimal rotation because the inherent design is so jumbled that it feels inconsistent to an almost unpredictable degree, Vindicator’s had a dodge bug where you can force an equipped weapon strength modifier onto the dodge instead of the intended unequipped damage mod for five months now without even an acknowledgement from ANet. And this isn’t just constrained to specializations either, Warrior rifle and offhand dagger, revenant hammer and shield, guardian offhand sword, thief sword and mainhand pistol, and basically every core necro weapon save for staff have pretty major issues inherent to the weapon’s usability that ANet has largely ignored because they’re weapons that are kind of sitting quietly by so they aren’t receiving any attention, which is indicative of a larger pattern – ANet’s design philosophy is built around the squeaky wheel getting the grease, with quieter builds getting pushed to the forefront basically at their internal whim without much conversation happening with the players that do play and enjoy those builds/weapons. As a rhetorical question, why did firebrand tomes get fixed the patch after they got reworked but warr rifle, rev hammer, and thief sword have been near useless for years and years? These are the kinds of things anet needs to bare in mind during design, and the community should remember when it comes to the way we discuss builds and expectations for builds with ANet.
 
Discussion with your community is important. Hard conversations with your community are important to have. But for the long-term health of both the game and the community, this kind of communication is inherently worth investing in. That’s how you end up with communities like Final Fantasy XIV that are willing to be empathetic to their development and work with the dev team insofar as they’re able, instead of feeling like an outside observer at the whims of the development team. For a long-term live service game like an MMO, this sort of relationship is critical to long-term growth, retention, and player well-being, and a lot of the issues I’ve highlighted above indicate that these aren’t investments that ANet has seen worth it in the short term, but both inherently and implicitly they have value for the game that can absolutely pay for itself. ANet, we love this game. We love this community. We want to see it succeed, and we want you to do so in a way that’s sustainable long term and lets us enjoy the game for years and years to come. But there needs to be investments in the community and in balance that makes the game feel sustainable, and establishing that expectation comes with a lot of active work. Hopefully, this open letter begins that conversation, because I don’t ever want to see it end. Thank you 💕
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As a creative in a different field, I know I get nervous whenever my workplace gets super excited about having the staff spend more time interacting with the community.

This is not because I don’t see the value in more openness, feedback from our customers, and being accessible to those we serve. It’s because I know this kind of thing is incredibly time consuming, and we are often stretched thin just creating the product. The idea of being public facing leads me to look around and ask,  “With what staff?”

I hear ArenaNet saying they are revising their content delivery to try and manage workload. I hear them saying definitively that they will not “crunch” their staff. I see them, like they have several times over the past ten years, say they want to be better communicators, followed by a flurry of increased communication that then quickly starts to taper off.

All of this looks to me like a bunch of well meaning creators who probably agree with what you wrote, OP. They want to have the kind of open give-and-take you describe. But at the end of the day, have they been given the resources to staff at a level that can produce while also engaging in that level of interaction?

Edited by Gibson.4036
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I don't know.

They are sharing more.  They share the roadmap.  They share principles.  They take input prior to changes.  That's more communication than before, and probably sharing more than I would in their shoes.

 

Reality is that they have limited resources and need to make decisions on what to be prioritized, and deprioritized.  And whatever gets deprioritized will have people unhappy about it.  The fact that all constituencies seem to feel they get less than others is probably a good sign when you think about it.  

 

Then on anything shared or released you have the inevitable negative comments where  "I want" becomes "everyone needs" and "it's not what I expected" becomes "this is broken", and so on. 

And we wonder why they do not want to equip us with more specifics for us to build the fire on which to hold their feet.

Again, I don't know.  

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Two things:

1) Public Test Server

2) Something similar to what Eve Online did with the CSM - players elected representatives for modes they were invested in. The electorate vetted issues and handled the daily management. They then periodically met with the developers to share those views and in turn feed back to the players what the devs had to discuss as well.

Furthermore:

Arenanet at launch loved to talk and talk and talk and talk. At some point their passion and vision became arrogance and not only did they stop talking, they also stopped listening.

Sharing a roadmap is not communication when the player base has little to no input on said roadmap. To borrow the words from a recent Technocrat "You will own nothing and you will be happy" - kinda getting similar vibes from Anet these days. This isn't entitlement by the way. This about good business practice. This is about not killing the passion a player has for their product. This is about being confident enough in the plans a studio has to be open to sharing them and revising them should the community not agree.

Personally I've grown tired of the constant reinvention. Lost far too much faith in their balance team. And become fed up with their terrible communication.

Yet at the end of the day I still care enough about the game to hope that they can make some positive changes.

 

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16 minutes ago, MarzAttakz.9608 said:

Personally I've grown tired of the constant reinvention. Lost far too much faith in their balance team. And become fed up with their terrible communication.

Yet at the end of the day I still care enough about the game to hope that they can make some positive changes.

This just about sums up my position as well. The consistently short-lived new directions the game seems to be moving in no longer get much attention from me. I'll be genuinely happy to see certain changes and stability, but won't be surprised or disappointed if it fizzles out like it always seems to.

All that said, I still believe the game is unique and fun, and am very attached to my account. I'd like the game to succeed, the staff at the studio be happy with their work, so I can keep playing.

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Anet communicated to us that WvW is a cornerstone of GW2.

Then they proceed to ignore the 2x2x4 meter or thereabouts cornerstone thats been broken/invisible for 5+ years in WvW DBL on 2 out of 3 tiers of garri.

Thus we've had all the communication needed to understand Anet.

Edited by Dawdler.8521
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 If too much marketing or listening to playerbase is holding you back, just do barely enough of it. Make a good game, that is all. There is no need for great communication, just changes. They made so many bad decisions that they refuse to take back.

 

Anet has the power, they just need to build their own vision about each gamemodes future in logical manner, instead of listening to those stuck in the present/past. I don't know who they listened to when they removed communities and ruined all competitive balance within WvW maps, but it definitely wasn't based on logic.

Edited by Riba.3271
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3 hours ago, DKRathalos.9625 said:

@Pixel.8012Thanks it was a really good post honestly 👍

However... there is 1 problem, dev RARELY read the forum especially the kind of post like this, mostly they will just ignore it and stay with their non-communicative way of dealing things. I seriously doubt they will improve on the communication.

The onus should fall on the team lead or department project manager to handle communication either via a community manager or directly with the player base.

If they're following any modern development methodology the above approach is a fundamental aspect.

I understand and acknowledge that they have been downsized and there is a significant amount of pressure on the studio and sadly communication is one of the first things to be forfeited as a result - however I feel some effort to communicate is worth the time investment.

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9 hours ago, DKRathalos.9625 said:

@Pixel.8012Gracias, fue una muy buena publicación, sinceramente  👍

Sin embargo... hay 1 problema, los desarrolladores RARAMENTE leen el foro, especialmente el tipo de publicación como esta, en su mayoría simplemente lo ignorarán y se quedarán con su forma no comunicativa de tratar las cosas. Dudo seriamente que mejoren la comunicación.

remove RARELY and put a NO, Developers do not read the forum

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Communication was never Anet strongest suit. However, PvE balance has improved significantly over the last year. While PvP is dumpster fire, and has been since early 2020.

 

For me personally, I have given up on PvP entirely. For PvE, I have issue when Anet does unmeasured updates for some classes (which varies on which class from time to time). No clearer example than guardian recently. FB changes were poorly thought out and clunky. And we are going to spend 2-3 more patches fixing this mess. Fixing power guardian seems to be a 4-5 patches exercise. And WB, which needs the most help, got no where close to enough fixes. 

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