More dialogue with YOUR PLAYERBASE !!!

[Mistwraithe.3106]

I see three problems.

One is that when Arena Net do communicate (eg I'm talking over the last 6 months when I've been most active on the forums) I see an awful lot people picking apart what they said, including a lot of over-analysis and speculation on what they didn't say, why did they word things that way, and often taking the absolute worse case interpretation. This includes a lot of re-hashing what was said in previous communications and any deviation from previous communication is treated like a crime (as tho things don't change and forward facing statements should be forever future binding...). Not from everyone by any means, in fact I suspect it's a small minority of the forum readers (and a bigger minority of the forum posters) but it must be incredibly draining and frustrating for those at Arena Net tasked with communicating with the community.

The second problem is that many people have no idea of the development challenges. I presume most haven't tried to run a big project or develop software before, and sometimes even those who are don't seem to be applying what they've learnt from that to GW2 or maybe they have only worked on short term one off projects (which have different challenges). The reality is that development time is incredibly precious and in short supply once you have a software project with a large number of disparate users. What the players (users) will be requesting will be hundred or thousands of times more work than there is actually available dev time to do. It isn't wrong or bad, it is just the nature of having a large number of users who all have their own likes/dislikes and hence request different things. People don't seem to realise how much work it would take to do even 10% of the wide ranging requests Arena Net get.

The last problem is that many people (again, not all), are looking at it from their own short term interests. This is understandable but Arena Net are running a business and they need to make a profit. (BTW, it hopefully goes without saying that if people like playing GW2 (which I do!) then it's actually in our medium term interests for Arena Net to be profitable). This means they need a good game that people like playing firstly, but then secondly they need ways of making money from it. Many suggestions will be decent ideas but will run counter to those goals, eg they might be too niche and not improve the game for enough other players, or they might impact Arena Net's ability to make money, etc. Given my point above where requests far outstrip available dev time the end result is obviously that the vast majority of player requests are realistically going to have to be ignored and that is the correct decision for Arena Net to be making.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

We had times with more communication between the studio and the player-base. But for one message/post of a single developer, they get like 50-100 responses which are directly addressed to them. You cannot answer that. If you pick only one or two, the others get mad. They do not have the time to spend hours on the forums every day.

As a result of this weird behavior, they have reduced their activity drastically. This however lead to a horrible side-effect: Everything they say is analyzed under a microscope. Every letter, every dot gets interpreted and ripped out of context. Feels a bit like feeding time in the piranha pool in the zoo.

As a result of that behavior, they - you may guess it - reduced their activity even further. Currently there is no direct interaction between the studio and the playerbase. We get the official messages. ...

Oh this is another point. Due to how the forum and the quoting/addressing works, they got harassed in countless of posts directly. Although they were only the bringer of news, like ruby or ben, they were confronted directly by angry players. 

As a result of this toxic behavior, they pulled that game with those anonymous forum-accounts. Ruby only posts on rare occasions with her real account, mostly in topics that are locked or stuff that does not contain any content. The balancing team does not use the forums, at least not our section. When they want to say something to us, the public broadcasting account always delivers "A message from ...".

Did that help? No. Anyone remembers ANet Solar? Balancing team. Sure the decisions they have made were quite 'controversial' to say the least, but the 'feedback' of the community towards this person reached from lay-off requests to death-threats.

I do not blame them for hiding. The solar-incident proved that direct communication is a risk to them, to their private life. This was the bottom of communication so far. When you come to the forums, people only talk from our perspective and how unfair ANet treats us and they never listen to us - which is bs. A big chunk of what you see in the game, may it be story-content, QOL stuff or technical improvements are influenced by the player-base. We have countless of features which were player-suggestions, that made it directly into the game.

When they read something that sounds good, they take notes. Depending on their own priorities, which are secret to us, some ideas turn into projects and make it into the game. That is why the board has a purpose and still fulfills it. If our community wasn't so creative about the game and the developers wouldn't read our stuff and use the feedback/suggestions, the game would be a lot less fun today.

Am I an SJW/ANet fanboy? No. If they mess things up, I speak up as everyone else. My opinions are a bit controversial among the forum community. Some agree with me, some not. But that varies from topic to topic - as it should be. I do not think the communication between the studio and the player-base is in a good spot. But from the perspective of ANet, who is responsible for the safety of their staff, these measurements are sadly necessary.

[Obtena.7952]

Also worth taking note ... the more studios open up communication with players, the more they expose themselves to things like players directly harassing devs (or vice versa) so Anet has a responsibility to its employees and customers to reduce the risk of these very real interactions that can be harmful. 

https://www.eurogamer.net/bungie-wins-lawsuit-against-destiny-2-player-following-racist-harassment-and-threats-to-employee

Edited July 20, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Sylvyn.4750]

I'm still trying to figure out how this thread, which OP started to discuss Anet not listening with regards to Bugs and Broken Builds that have existed for too long, turned into Anet not taking advice on design choices?  That implies these Bugs and Broken Builds are part of Anet's design choices...because the shareholders want it that way for more profits?  Well kitten, I guess the new business model is to sell broken stuff because people will still buy it...I should get top dollar for my weedeater that doesn't work!

[Obfuscate.6430]

There used to be a person with Anet whose job was specifically to engage with the community; to let people know about community events and field questions. 
They let that person go a couple of years ago. 
 

[Mistwraithe.3106]

9 hours ago, Sylvyn.4750 said:

I'm still trying to figure out how this thread, which OP started to discuss Anet not listening with regards to Bugs and Broken Builds that have existed for too long, turned into Anet not taking advice on design choices?  That implies these Bugs and Broken Builds are part of Anet's design choices...because the shareholders want it that way for more profits?  Well kitten, I guess the new business model is to sell broken stuff because people will still buy it...I should get top dollar for my weedeater that doesn't work!

Is GW2 really a buggy game though? I've had a few bugs but compared to other games I've played I would put it as above average in quality TBH. Maybe I've just been lucky, and certainly I'm a relatively new PvE player, I've done core and am just finishing LWS1 so I haven't hit the expansion maps (I've also played quite a lot of WvW). But, I'm not seeing it as a particularly buggy game.

Keep in mind that, as I mentioned in my post above, developer time is very precious. Visit any long running software dev team and you will find a long list of bugs which are marked "Will Not Fix" because they are too minor to be worth the time required to fix them. It's a fact of life for a software project.

So, yeah, all software has bugs and GW2 doesn't seem particularly blighted in that department.

It's worth pointing out that while OP mentioned bugs a few times he also talked about a bunch of other things where he felt Anet should have spent their dev time differently, talked to the community more, or monetized less/differently which is why the thread has the replies it has.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Urud.4925]

I play a game if I find it fun, I don't care if devs don't tell me their plans/what they're working on. I work as video game tester, and I often have no idea what my devs are doing, so I don't expect to know it as a player. From the OP's post, it seems the problem is not the lack of communication (they provide the best patch notes I've ever read), but the fact that they don't do what the OP wants (more raids, PvP, dungeons, less bugs). Even if 200 players asked for the same things in this forum (and that's already difficult, as we always have different opinions), this would still be a super tiny percentage of the whole player base. There are things that I would also change, but I would never claim to know what's better for their business. The "you think you do, but you don't" works both ways.

[Holmindeboks.3490]

Me2. Previously i got hyped for an expansion and i pre-ordered right after announcment when it came available. But EoD ruined my fun. The maps are beautiful. But there is nothing to do. There is 1 big meta in every map and only 1 meta has a real reward. Thats soo-won. The others are just junk loot grinds. Time wasting. I dont like storys in guildwars 2 because they are hard to understand, are forced, long trash talks thats not skipable. Makes me hate it even more. Sure they like their work, but you should not force others to play your work if they dont want to. 

 

EoD had a bad start, everyone killed soo-won and i only had fail maps every time. My anger build up. Even an organized map got destroyed by a mass map disconnect. And then the annoying turtle following in arbor stone and cant remove it without forcing to finish the collection. Also the way too soo-won is an hour work and afterwards a big middlefinger as rewars for hard work and support for a succesful run (yes after 7 tries it happened) 

 

Then there came new maps, with gas. Bad map. Sure the maps looks beautiful. But gameplay should be better then visuals. The meta is just killing endless and at the end you have 100 chests with junk loot. Not even ONE reward. All skins goes to the store. Meta’s are just silver coin runs, and if you do that thousand times you can buy 1 thing from the store. 

 

About the gemstore sales, my hate got bigger here because i HATE GREED. Irl and ingame i am not greedy so i hate if others are. The gemstore sales where 25% discount. BUT THE GEMS from gold were 25% more expensive. So that means only rich players ingame get advantage of the sale. OR the ppl who already had gems. OR ppl who buy gems with real cash. 

 

Also in the last few years many things prices dropped. So getting gold is an even longer grind. 

The gemstore get flooded with skins. But meta’s never get skins. 

 

Also i put sometimes a suggestion here on the forum and sad ppl just put cry or confused emoticons on it. 

 

For me as a loot player i want to play for a reward. A skin. And not farm months for a bit of gold to convert to gems. And yes a hobby may cost money. But guildwars 2 came as a non subscription based game and so that means you should be able to have fun by just buying the expension. But looks like their profit is not enough so they focus mostly on selling skins and ignore other content. And because the low chance making tons of gold it triggers ppl faster to spend money. So no difference then buying a subscription based game and loot the skins. 

There is only 1 reward and that are infusions. But they are so very low. Its not worth wasting time on. I once met someone who killed pinata sincd pof release DAILY for TWO YEARS without looting it. I asked him if it dropped and he said he bought it. Imagine how much life time wasted here for just a visual reward. Every pinata is 15+ minutes. *700+ days. Good thing is. It was a commamder so he or she always have an active map because the others join. 

 

Also i asked for open world legendary armor. But when i dont like to play much anymore it got announced. To late for me. still havent bought new expansion. 

 

But there is ONE BIG reason i also have to mention thats not guildwars 2 related. Thats rsi. I dont want to get a rsi arm so my overal interest in games that use a gamingmouse are gone. I dont like to game with a mouse anymore. So i play only controller games. Also i was always an fps gamer. But because campers and bad fps games i played mmo games more. But i hate dailys, i hate storys. I hate pvp, and i am a loot player. But many mmo loot is low droprates for nice loot and so bigger disappointments after every loot run. 

 

[Debesyla.7102]

The main problem is that - players tend to overreact about anything and everything. If only some players would understand that this is only a video game and theres no reason to get that upset about small changes...

[Nash.2681]

The point is- there are different styles of communication. It can range from "we make an announcment in a fire-and-forget style once a year" up to "we respond to each and everyone".  Of course those are the very extreme boundaries and yes- you will never be able to satisfy everyone.

However, most people would be way more happy if Arena.Net would do three things:

a) when they have to say something, they should just say it upfront and honest. no fancy marketing speech, no salesman language, just serious and honest information (positive side effect: they could free up quite some ressources in their PR department)

b) when they announce changes, they should elaborate on why they decided to do so

c) when they recive feedback (especially when they literally beg for it, like with balance previews), they should give one more explainatory post addressing the most common feedback and the reasoning why they chose to stick to their initial decision

That way they wouldn't have to communicate much more with us, but imo that would be an overproportional step in the right direction.

[Null Hypothesis.5374]

On 7/19/2023 at 7:42 PM, Obtena.7952 said:

The biggest problem is that players have somehow forgot that it's in EVERYONE'S best interests to make the game as good as it can be, including Anet. So when Anet makes a hard decision to change something, it's not done with malice or spite or lack of care or anything else. It's simply because they need to make that change for the game to go in the best direction they want to take it. 

Yes! Unfortunately, you'll never get some people to believe this. For some, every bug left unfixed is a personal affront and proof that nobody cares and that the game is dead.

[Nash.2681]

1 hour ago, Null Hypothesis.5374 said:

Yes! Unfortunately, you'll never get some people to believe this. For some, every bug left unfixed is a personal affront and proof that nobody cares and that the game is dead.

You're aware that this topic is mainly about the way they communicate and moderate (or more so- that they don't) those changes and not the changes themselves, do you?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Not so, today.  Check the Dev Tracker.

[Null Hypothesis.5374]

5 hours ago, Nash.2681 said:

You're aware that this topic is mainly about the way they communicate and moderate (or more so- that they don't) those changes and not the changes themselves, do you?

You're aware that I was specifically commenting on Obtena's post on the the disposition of some to take things not being done their way personally, and to devolve into doomsaying, do you?

Edited July 21, 2023 by Null Hypothesis.5374

[ugrakarma.9416]

I prefer Anet talking little doing more.

Those times when there was a "community manager" treating this place like a children's playground, it was just a lot of noise and little result.

[Smoky.5348]

On 7/21/2023 at 1:01 PM, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Not so, today.  Check the Dev Tracker.

It's still the same one person doing everything. They need more than one, lone person posting on and reading the whole forum. It's too much for just one person. That's part of the greater problem.

[Tere.4759]

See, here is what people don't understand, the more you complain, the more they DON'T listen.  The content is NOT HORRIBLE.  And complaining about the skins in the store, are you kidding me.  How do you think this game lives?  You think buying expansions is enough money for them to pay the team and keep the servers up and running?  If you do, you do not know anything about business.  If you don't like playing, leave the game.  It's a simple as that.  It's not like you have a subscription.  I honestly think that people like to hear or read their complaints and believe that they speak for the majority when they absolutely don't. 

I have been here since beta.  I have several level 80 characters, every profession, several max level crafts so yes I am a veteran and you don't speak for me and many others.  Most of what I see on these forums are complaints, not constructive criticism.  There is a way to speak to people to get them to respond.  The moaning and complaining is not it.  And my goodness, if I wasn't happy with a game, I would stop playing it.  It IS just that easy. 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

1 hour ago, Smoky.5348 said:

It's still the same one person doing everything. They need more than one, lone person posting on and reading the whole forum. It's too much for just one person. That's part of the greater problem.

Unless you believe the Devs are lying, they have stated that there is more than one person reading the forums (QoL Suggestions, Feedback threads).  And, there is more than one person posting, as well (Cal Cohen, Bobby Stein, Branded Employee, etc.). 

[Smoky.5348]

3 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Unless you believe the Devs are lying, they have stated that there is more than one person reading the forums (QoL Suggestions, Feedback threads).  And, there is more than one person posting, as well (Cal Cohen, Bobby Stein, Branded Employee, etc.). 

Sorry, l didn't realize one post per month qualified someone as actively participating. You and I have very different definitions of community engagement, I suppose. I'd expect Rubi's activity to be divided between about three people, not all concentrated within one saint. Especially for bug reporting. A vast majority of bugs go completely ignored and unresolved, probably because Rubi's the only one who tells the bug team about any of them. But by now...l'm just speculating again.

[kharmin.7683]

Reading the forums and engaging the community are two different things.

[Sirvaleen.1379]

There's a difference between communication and dialogue.

Personally I'm not hoping for the latter at all, for a good number of reasons. But an increase in communication would honestly limit the wild conspiracy theories and general gloominess every time we have to content with unexpected changes. I mean, modifications being sometimes not even mentioned in patch notes lead to players not even knowing if they're confronted with bugs, which is ridiculous.

A friend who's playing LoL made me read its latest patch notes after hearing me grumbling about the complete lack of mention concerning certain changes, and I was a little surprised to be honest. There's clearly not a novel per adjustment, but the general intent behind each champion touch-up is there. You're not left scratching your head or wondering if that specific change was made by someone never having played the class before.

If you provide a decent communication to players - not a dialogue with them - the general atmosphere of the game will be healthier imho. You can agree or not with what is done, but at least you know why it's done and where it might lead. You're not left in limbo wondering what is going on and where in the kitten the boat you're in is taking you.

It's not asking for too much. It's not asking for interactions with players. It's just doing a minor effort to make your players feel respected, valued and included.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Sirvaleen.1379

[Sylvyn.4750]

On 7/20/2023 at 6:06 PM, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

Is GW2 really a buggy game though? I've had a few bugs but compared to other games I've played I would put it as above average in quality TBH. Maybe I've just been lucky, and certainly I'm a relatively new PvE player, I've done core and am just finishing LWS1 so I haven't hit the expansion maps (I've also played quite a lot of WvW). But, I'm not seeing it as a particularly buggy game.

Keep in mind that, as I mentioned in my post above, developer time is very precious. Visit any long running software dev team and you will find a long list of bugs which are marked "Will Not Fix" because they are too minor to be worth the time required to fix them. It's a fact of life for a software project.

So, yeah, all software has bugs and GW2 doesn't seem particularly blighted in that department.

It's worth pointing out that while OP mentioned bugs a few times he also talked about a bunch of other things where he felt Anet should have spent their dev time differently, talked to the community more, or monetized less/differently which is why the thread has the replies it has.

For the live game play, no, it runs pretty well. However, in doing the Return To story lines where you revisit all the past LW seasons, all the old bugs that they never fixed come to light.  I've had to refer to the wiki and/or other player's posts on how to get around them.  Pretty annoying that they still exist. 

[Obtena.7952]

15 hours ago, Smoky.5348 said:

Sorry, l didn't realize one post per month qualified someone as actively participating. You and I have very different definitions of community engagement, I suppose. I'd expect Rubi's activity to be divided between about three people, not all concentrated within one saint. Especially for bug reporting. A vast majority of bugs go completely ignored and unresolved, probably because Rubi's the only one who tells the bug team about any of them. But by now...l'm just speculating again.

Well, I would argue that bug reports and effective resolution aren't really a good measure of Anet engaging with players on the forum because that's not a direct way to report them to begin with.  It's not even clear to me it's the same devs that people want to talk to who make class changes that fix the bugs. 

Edited July 23, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Astralporing.1957]

On 7/21/2023 at 12:44 PM, Debesyla.7102 said:

The main problem is that - players tend to overreact about anything and everything. If only some players would understand that this is only a video game and theres no reason to get that upset about small changes...

You are right, if players weren't so much emotionally attached, they would complain less. What you are omitting is that they would complain less, because they'd just stop playing. It's exactly that emotional attachement you complain about here that keeps them in game even after that game starts changing in ways they strongly dislike. 

In short, if players overreact, it means they stil care. You do not want them to stop caring.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[Dante.1508]

On 7/20/2023 at 4:33 AM, Crono.4197 said:

Seems that your idea of "communication" is for devs to do everything that the complainers say and not follow their own vision of the game? Doesn't sound like communication to me.

"Change the game or it means you're not communicating".  If they "communicated" the fact that they won't add/change the things people wanted, then they would still be bitter and rant on the forums because it wouldn't be the type of communication some people would want.

Whats the point of a vision if nobody else shares it..