GW 2 Devs/Playerbase Twitter Discussion

[Scorn.8524]

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Azrielvon.7836 said:

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Azrielvon.7836 said:

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Azrielvon.7836 said:

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Azrielvon.7836 said:

@DaShi.1368 said:

@"Mike O Brien.4613" said:Recently two of our employees failed to uphold our standards of communicating with players. Their attacks on the community were unacceptable. As a result, they’re no longer with the company.

I want to be clear that the statements they made do not reflect the views of ArenaNet at all. As a company we always strive to have a collaborative relationship with the Guild Wars community. We value your input. We make this game for you.

Mo

Mo. Thank you for your response. I do hope you reconsider and look to this whole situation as learning opportunity. I agree that they weren't exactly respectful to certain fans. But this was done through their private accounts as private people. Perhaps a reminder that their social presence can impact the company would have been more appropriate. And an apology would probably help to smooth things over, if the fans involved were genuinely sincere in their interactions. On the fan side, they could use a reminder that GW2 staff are real people and aren't there for their pleasure. Private accounts are private, even if the user discusses topics related to their careers. Harassment of your staff by customers should be treated just as seriously, if not more so.

Anyway, I've really appreciated what both Jessica's and Peter's contributions to GW2 and will miss their presence.

I agree, private accounts should remain private, however, once you attach your job title, discuss your job and not limiting it to your own selected audience, you're no longer private, people will perceive you as a professional.

Actually, further reading Derior's full response, he was being extremely condescending. She kindly told him to kitten off and he demanded more of her time.

I'm sorry, I fail to see where Derior is condescending. May I request you to point that out for me?

Sure. He implied that players weren't invested in their characters because of her writing. Whether that's the case or not doesn't matter. You don't go to a writers private twitter account and tell them that they sucked and expect them to smile at you for it. Which is exactly what he did. Ugh, I get the creeps just thinking about what he did.

I believe Derior's comment is that of an opinion as a fellow player and content creator. It is called constructive criticism. As a professional, this happens almost everyday, clients make weird demands or say things that may not be technically possible. So what do you do if you encounter a situation like this?

1. Explain why certain things can't be done (through technical constraints, adhering to company's policy/decision etcetc)
2. Accept the feedback, say that you'll discuss it with your team/supervisor (you may or may not do it, but personally, I feel that it is good to bring up any valid points)
3. Pull the gender/race/privilege card

Method 1 would yield a civil discussion if both the recipient and receiver are capable of intellectual discourse. This provides an opportunity to brainstorm and see what consumers actually want

Method 2 absolves yourself from responsibility, does not create discussion but a tactful and civil way to 'end' further discussion

Method 3 gets you fired.

Regarding privacy, as I mentioned, once you attached your job title, discuss about your job on a public platform, privacy goes out the window.

No, Derior wasn't owed kitten. And no, this isn't about privacy. It's about harassment, which is what Jessica was experiencing. If Derior wanted to make a respectful comment, he could have done so by saying that he didn't feel invested in the character. However, he chose to imply that players weren't invested, which was basically saying "You suck."

Well, Derior explained why he didn't feel invested. Isn't that a good thing? If someone told me something as vague as 'I don't feel invested', I wouldn't know which direction to proceed. Knowing why something happened helps you solve an issue better, no?

He didn't say that he didn't feel invested. He said "then perhaps players would be more invested." There are a lot of ways to say this. But the way he did was specifically condescending and insulting. He didn't even offer anything insightful that someone at day one of the job wouldn't know.

I've read through your comments now, and I could no longer resist replying. Derior barely wrote 100 characters, and yet you've interpreted an entire novel's worth of thoughts and intentions. I don't see you doing the same for JP's. Derior's tweets were nothing more, nothing less than what he actually wrote. It doesn't need further interpretation. This is intellectual dishonesty at its best, you're really reaching to find stuff and even then wrongly classifying them. Insulting? HOW?!

Also, Twitter isn't Whatsapp or Telegram. It is specifically designed for you to shout things to whoever is listening. You know, how birds tweet. You have no expectation of privacy or control of ensuing discussion. In fact, by using it you invite people to reply. I'm here to tell you that everyone sees through you. Please stop lying to yourself.

[Rhyse.8179]

Not to make excuses, but this is pretty much expected for this game. GW2 couldn't have been better designed as a salt mine if Anet had made it their mission statement. It's basically purpose built as a resentment-generating machine.

1. It's a sequel to a beloved and popular game.
2. GW2 departed from the beloved original in many, many ways, not all of them good. Many original, industry leading features were abandoned and not replaced.
3. GW2 promised many things in their place, aka the manifesto.
4. GW2 did not deliver on it's promises. In fact, many of them were 180 reversed (starting with the ascended gear debacle and moving on from there. to make a short list: power creep is crazy, dungeons were abandoned, mounts were added, raids were added, living story content is formulaic and repetitive)
5. In spite of all it's flaws, GW2 still offers the only casual-friendly MMO on the market, drawing people back even if they'd rather not deal with it's crap anymore.
6. Add all this to the seemingly permanent, ongoing issues (mediocre dialogue/writing, class balance is TERRIBLE, pvp is in a laughable state much less esports worthy which is a pipe dream now, WvW is basically pointless, patches are months apart) and you can see why long time fans would have problems with the game, why they would be passionate about it anyway, and thus why they would complain A LOT.

Anyone that works at Anet needs to understand this history. You WILL get criticism. Lots of it. Anet brought this on themselves, perhaps not even by the people who currently work there, but it's part of your product and company history. None of it is secret or unexpected. Your employees should be prepared for this, not thin skinned like a Hylek tadpole. There seems to be a pool of resentment at Anet towards your players (todays is not the only incident of this kind), especially towards old GW1 players. All I can do is laugh - you guys made this bed yourself. It's tragically comical how unwilling you all are to sleep in it.

[Cyrin.1035]

I really liked hearing about the process and her approach to the story design. I wish she had stayed focused.

[Omyrah.7389]

I'd also like to add my voice in support of this decision. I am a female gamer, and I support equal opportunities for females in game development, however, this is not how you deal with criticism, and she had no room to play the sexism card. I can and do disagree with people a lot, and often have had discussions with them on such disagreements, but not once have I ever even thought about trying to play the sexism card just because a male dared to disagree with me. That's how a civil discussion works. JP was not being civil in her response. Call it what you want, but both she and PF disrespected the community by showing how they react to player criticism, and I am glad they no longer represent Anet. I want to know that any feedback I provide would be thoughtfully looked at and at least taken into consideration, and not blown off with profanity because someone feels entitled.

Thank you, Anet, for proving that I can still trust you.

[Linken.6345]

@Rhyse.8179 said:Not to make excuses, but this is pretty much expected for this game. GW2 couldn't have been better designed as a salt mine if Anet had made it their mission statement. It's basically purpose built as a resentment-generating machine.

1. It's a sequel to a beloved and popular game.
2. GW2 departed from the beloved original in many, many ways, not all of them good. Many original, industry leading features were abandoned and not replaced.
3. GW2 promised many things in their place, aka the manifesto.
4. GW2 did not deliver on it's promises. In fact, many of them were 180 reversed (starting with the ascended gear debacle and moving on from there. to make a short list: power creep is crazy, dungeons were abandoned, mounts were added, raids were added, living story content is formulaic and repetitive)
5. In spite of all it's flaws, GW2 still offers the only casual-friendly MMO on the market, drawing people back even if they'd rather not deal with it's crap anymore.
6. Add all this to the seemingly permanent, ongoing issues (mediocre dialogue/writing, class balance is TERRIBLE, pvp is in a laughable state much less esports worthy which is a pipe dream now, WvW is basically pointless, patches are months apart) and you can see why long time fans would have problems with the game, why they would be passionate about it anyway, and thus why they would complain A LOT.

Anyone that works at Anet needs to understand this history. You WILL get criticism. Lots of it. Anet brought this on themselves, perhaps not even by the people who currently work there, but it's part of your product and company history. None of it is secret or unexpected. Your employees should be prepared for this, not thin skinned like a Hylek tadpole. There seems to be a pool of resentment at Anet towards your players (todays is not the only incident of this kind), especially towards old GW1 players. All I can do is laugh - you guys made this bed yourself. It's tragically comical how unwilling you all are to sleep in it.

Can say I like gw2 alot more then gw1 played to 20 in the first campain and never really clicked with it.

[Crinn.7864]

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@"xarallei.4279" said:

Okay, I don't see that as a backhand. She says the genre is the fault point here but the partner says "perhaps it's just your game"? That's exactly right. SWTOR is the anti-thesis to her observation.

Yup. I keep seeing people try to bash Deroir and state how doing what he asks is impossible and he doesn't know what he's talking about. They specifically point to the genre and say it can't be done with MMOs....but, well SWTOR did it, so it's obviously not so impossible as they think it is. Now maybe there is something regarding the Living Story in particular that makes it not work? Who knows, but instead of biting the head off of player she could have just answered in a civil manner. Instead she was rude and dismissive. That kind of behavior is simply not acceptable. She is an Arenanet employee in a public setting talking to a customer. When interacting with customers some thought must be put into your responses.

SW:TOR had a 200million dollar development budget (this number doesn't include marketing) just for the vanilla game, and has gone down in video game history as the single most costly video game ever produced. (The second most expensive game to produce is GTA V at 137 million)

What SW:TOR did isn't really relevant for studios that have sane budgets. Price's original comment (before she exploded) was more or less on point with the limitations of game writing.

They also made, like 8 branching stories with different scenarios, choices and branching dialogs. I'd assume GW2 making, like, 3 wouldn't break the bank (so to speak).

It also took them over 6 years to make those stories, and that's with Bioware outsourcing the engine work.

Do you want to wait a entire year between living world episodes?

[Rhyse.8179]

@Linken.6345 said:Can say I like gw2 alot more then gw1 played to 20 in the first campain and never really clicked with it.

It was a game of it's time. It's far too slow paced for modern gamers, but it was truly innovative and it's style of strategic counterplay can't be found in any other game, even today.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

wait, what is this all about? im confused?

[Leo G.4501]

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@"xarallei.4279" said:

Okay, I don't see that as a backhand. She says the genre is the fault point here but the partner says "perhaps it's just your game"? That's exactly right. SWTOR is the anti-thesis to her observation.

Yup. I keep seeing people try to bash Deroir and state how doing what he asks is impossible and he doesn't know what he's talking about. They specifically point to the genre and say it can't be done with MMOs....but, well SWTOR did it, so it's obviously not so impossible as they think it is. Now maybe there is something regarding the Living Story in particular that makes it not work? Who knows, but instead of biting the head off of player she could have just answered in a civil manner. Instead she was rude and dismissive. That kind of behavior is simply not acceptable. She is an Arenanet employee in a public setting talking to a customer. When interacting with customers some thought must be put into your responses.

SW:TOR had a 200million dollar development budget (this number doesn't include marketing) just for the vanilla game, and has gone down in video game history as the single most costly video game ever produced. (The second most expensive game to produce is GTA V at 137 million)

What SW:TOR did isn't really relevant for studios that have sane budgets. Price's original comment (before she exploded) was more or less on point with the limitations of game writing.

They also made, like 8 branching stories with different scenarios, choices and branching dialogs. I'd assume GW2 making, like, 3 wouldn't break the bank (so to speak).

It also took them over 6 years to make those stories, and that's with Bioware outsourcing the engine work.

Do you want to wait a entire year between living world episodes?

Honestly, it depends on the quality of the product. Would I want to wait an entire year for GW2's living world episodes? No. Would I wait over a year for half of one of SWTOR's class scenarios? Of course!

[Shoyoko.7309]

@Sylv.5324 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

What happen to "innocent until proven guilty"?

That's a legal term that not even the courts take seriously, so it doesn't have anything to do with anything.

The term is not just legal it's also a saying that you shouldn't assume too quickly and accuse someone without evidence or "receipts".

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

@DaShi.1368 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:I'm disgusted by this community's reaction to her tweet, calling for her to be fired and being genuinely happy about it afterwards. To me it's simply inconceivable how so many could overreact like that to blow this matter this massively out of proportion.

She obviously perceived herself as being treated in a sexist way and called it out. It doesn't matter whether this indeed was the case or not, because it is very understandable how she could arrive at that conclusion:She posts a long, well thought out comment explaining why it's state of the art in the MMORPG genre to present the player character the way they do. A hardcore fan chimes in to "politely" tell her he disagrees and suggests to implement branching story lines as if she was a complete amateur and never heard of it. That fan implied she as a dev on the narrative team was incompetent at her job to then kindly tell her how to do it better. He probably didn't mean to but this is what you'll take from his comment when you read on the relationship and appeal layer from her perspective instead of taking it purely as factual (if you're not familiar with the four-sides model of communication you probably won't be able to make sense of this). Given the fact it was posted on her personal twitter account and the outlined context, she wasn't wrong in taking the comment as a personal slight. She then reacted accordingly.Women wrongfully being regarded as less competent than they really are is a VERY common symptom of sexism in our society. This happens even despite them having years of professional expertise and for no other reason than their gender. It unmistakably is sexism, although in a more subtle way and therefore in many cases hard to detect.

Imo her reaction was perfectly understandable - although it was unprofessional. She shouldn't have replied to criticism on her own twitter account like a private person.

Thank you! A thousand times this! Many may not understand where she's coming from, but that doesn't make her wrong.

The definition of sexism:prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

Now please tell me, where did Deroir imply that his comment was influenced by her gender. Even as a woman, I can see that it was clear that if anything, she could have taken it as a personal slight workwise at most but there was never any indication that his comment was negative due to her gender anywhere. What Jessica Price did was verbally one of harshest thing you could to someone which was implying Deroir a sexist.Imagine if I was the one who wrote the piece, Deroir replied the same way and I called him racist. Pretty harsh right?! That's how harsh calling someone sexist is. It's literally one of the worst labels you could give someone, especially to someone like Deroir who was not only a gw2 player, he was a partner of Anet?! What happen to "innocent until proven guilty"?Whilst you have point about the current sexism in our society, this is clearly not the right battlefield for such debate rather the only reason we are having this conversation is due to JP's accusation and nothing else.I believe she was too quick to judge and was naive to believe that any tweets in her private twitter would gain attention and responses from GW2 players even though she was clearly talking about GW2 and her bio mentions arenanet.

I don't think so at all. Deroir did come across as a sexist. If he wasn't, he would have recognized how his comments could have been taken that way and apologized. It's really that simple.

His post was a clear case of mansplaining with a touch of negging, which is totally sexist.

Oh come on, it was clear for anyone to see not just deroir that she could have been uncomfortable of his feedback workwise , even deroir did ever so carefully to frame his feedback constructive and politely when he said "allow me to disagree slighty". Again, where is the indication that it was due to gender?

[Sarrs.4831]

@Crinn.7864 said:It also took them over 6 years to make those stories, and that's with Bioware outsourcing the engine work.

Do you want to wait a entire year between living world episodes?

For the initial storylines, it took that time.

What's worth looking at is the KOTFE content; released on a roughly monthly/bimonthly cadence with new chapters with real impact towards both gameplay and later chapters (at least, as real as you can get in an MMO). Choices between characters, characters dying, romances, distinct flavors between the classes depending on the choices you took both during the KOTFE story and the other storylines. While it wasn't perfect, there was a bit of filler and ultimately all roads led to the throne ship, different choices did have impacts.

 

The end of KOTET's post-release story was disappointing though, traitor Shan's reasoning was spot on if you were darkside

 

What I'm actually curious about is how much pre-production went into the entire cycle rather than on a per-episode basis.

[DaShi.1368]

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

@Sylv.5324 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

What happen to "innocent until proven guilty"?

That's a legal term that not even the courts take seriously, so it doesn't have anything to do with anything.

The term is not just legal it's also a saying that you shouldn't assume too quickly and accuse someone without evidence or "receipts".

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

@DaShi.1368 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:I'm disgusted by this community's reaction to her tweet, calling for her to be fired and being genuinely happy about it afterwards. To me it's simply inconceivable how so many could overreact like that to blow this matter this massively out of proportion.

She obviously perceived herself as being treated in a sexist way and called it out. It doesn't matter whether this indeed was the case or not, because it is very understandable how she could arrive at that conclusion:She posts a long, well thought out comment explaining why it's state of the art in the MMORPG genre to present the player character the way they do. A hardcore fan chimes in to "politely" tell her he disagrees and suggests to implement branching story lines as if she was a complete amateur and never heard of it. That fan implied she as a dev on the narrative team was incompetent at her job to then kindly tell her how to do it better. He probably didn't mean to but this is what you'll take from his comment when you read on the relationship and appeal layer from her perspective instead of taking it purely as factual (if you're not familiar with the four-sides model of communication you probably won't be able to make sense of this). Given the fact it was posted on her personal twitter account and the outlined context, she wasn't wrong in taking the comment as a personal slight. She then reacted accordingly.Women wrongfully being regarded as less competent than they really are is a VERY common symptom of sexism in our society. This happens even despite them having years of professional expertise and for no other reason than their gender. It unmistakably is sexism, although in a more subtle way and therefore in many cases hard to detect.

Imo her reaction was perfectly understandable - although it was unprofessional. She shouldn't have replied to criticism on her own twitter account like a private person.

Thank you! A thousand times this! Many may not understand where she's coming from, but that doesn't make her wrong.

The definition of sexism:prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

Now please tell me, where did Deroir imply that his comment was influenced by her gender. Even as a woman, I can see that it was clear that if anything, she could have taken it as a personal slight workwise at most but there was never any indication that his comment was negative due to her gender anywhere. What Jessica Price did was verbally one of harshest thing you could to someone which was implying Deroir a sexist.Imagine if I was the one who wrote the piece, Deroir replied the same way and I called him racist. Pretty harsh right?! That's how harsh calling someone sexist is. It's literally one of the worst labels you could give someone, especially to someone like Deroir who was not only a gw2 player, he was a partner of Anet?! What happen to "innocent until proven guilty"?Whilst you have point about the current sexism in our society, this is clearly not the right battlefield for such debate rather the only reason we are having this conversation is due to JP's accusation and nothing else.I believe she was too quick to judge and was naive to believe that any tweets in her private twitter would gain attention and responses from GW2 players even though she was clearly talking about GW2 and her bio mentions arenanet.

I don't think so at all. Deroir did come across as a sexist. If he wasn't, he would have recognized how his comments could have been taken that way and apologized. It's really that simple.

His post was a clear case of mansplaining with a touch of negging, which is totally sexist.

Oh come on, it was clear for anyone to see not just deroir that she could have been uncomfortable of his feedback

workwise

, even deroir did ever so carefully to frame his feedback constructive and politely when he said "allow me to disagree

slighty

". Again, where is the indication that it was due to gender?

I stated it in the last sentence of my post. His post if unintentionally sexist, was still sexist do to ignorance in communicating with women.

[Eternity Theory.5392]

I am incredibly disappointed in ANet for this. While the Twitter comments were out of line, the only reason this blew up so much is because it involved a woman talking about sexism; if it had been a male dev mouthing off just because he was having a bad day or whatever, people would have been upset, but it wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention or vitriol, and this is incredibly obvious if you read any of the threads on the subject here or on the subreddit. ANet isn't stupid, they obviously know this. And they chose to feed it, to give in to the seething misogyny instead of taking a more measured approach, jumping straight to firing and shaming the employees instead of taking a more measured approach.

If this had happened a day earlier, I probably wouldn't have bought all the gems I just got. I will definitely have to think twice about any future purchases I make from them, if the cesspit that the forums and subreddit have been is the sort of community they want to encourage.

Also, TotalBiscuit supported a hate movement and encouraged his fans to harass his critics and other people he didn't like. Him being dead doesn't change that he did some absolutely repulsive things and hurt people for no good reason. He was mean and abusive, and that shouldn't be forgotten or downplayed, and expecting decorum towards him when he showed none is rather gross; chastising people for not being appropriately respectful of an abuser is implicitly supporting what he did. There is something seriously wrong if you have harsher words for people who are critical of his actions than for his actions themselves.

[squallaus.8321]

@Rhyse.8179 said:

@Linken.6345 said:Can say I like gw2 alot more then gw1 played to 20 in the first campain and never really clicked with it.

It was a game of it's time. It's far too slow paced for modern gamers, but it was truly innovative and it's style of strategic counterplay can't be found in any other game, even today.

Actually other mmos combat are too slow. GW2 combat is in fact very fast paced.

[Shoyoko.7309]

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

@Sylv.5324 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

What happen to "innocent until proven guilty"?

That's a legal term that not even the courts take seriously, so it doesn't have anything to do with anything.

The term is not just legal it's also a saying that you shouldn't assume too quickly and accuse someone without evidence or "receipts".

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

@DaShi.1368 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:I'm disgusted by this community's reaction to her tweet, calling for her to be fired and being genuinely happy about it afterwards. To me it's simply inconceivable how so many could overreact like that to blow this matter this massively out of proportion.

She obviously perceived herself as being treated in a sexist way and called it out. It doesn't matter whether this indeed was the case or not, because it is very understandable how she could arrive at that conclusion:She posts a long, well thought out comment explaining why it's state of the art in the MMORPG genre to present the player character the way they do. A hardcore fan chimes in to "politely" tell her he disagrees and suggests to implement branching story lines as if she was a complete amateur and never heard of it. That fan implied she as a dev on the narrative team was incompetent at her job to then kindly tell her how to do it better. He probably didn't mean to but this is what you'll take from his comment when you read on the relationship and appeal layer from her perspective instead of taking it purely as factual (if you're not familiar with the four-sides model of communication you probably won't be able to make sense of this). Given the fact it was posted on her personal twitter account and the outlined context, she wasn't wrong in taking the comment as a personal slight. She then reacted accordingly.Women wrongfully being regarded as less competent than they really are is a VERY common symptom of sexism in our society. This happens even despite them having years of professional expertise and for no other reason than their gender. It unmistakably is sexism, although in a more subtle way and therefore in many cases hard to detect.

Imo her reaction was perfectly understandable - although it was unprofessional. She shouldn't have replied to criticism on her own twitter account like a private person.

Thank you! A thousand times this! Many may not understand where she's coming from, but that doesn't make her wrong.

The definition of sexism:prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

Now please tell me, where did Deroir imply that his comment was influenced by her gender. Even as a woman, I can see that it was clear that if anything, she could have taken it as a personal slight workwise at most but there was never any indication that his comment was negative due to her gender anywhere. What Jessica Price did was verbally one of harshest thing you could to someone which was implying Deroir a sexist.Imagine if I was the one who wrote the piece, Deroir replied the same way and I called him racist. Pretty harsh right?! That's how harsh calling someone sexist is. It's literally one of the worst labels you could give someone, especially to someone like Deroir who was not only a gw2 player, he was a partner of Anet?! What happen to "innocent until proven guilty"?Whilst you have point about the current sexism in our society, this is clearly not the right battlefield for such debate rather the only reason we are having this conversation is due to JP's accusation and nothing else.I believe she was too quick to judge and was naive to believe that any tweets in her private twitter would gain attention and responses from GW2 players even though she was clearly talking about GW2 and her bio mentions arenanet.

I don't think so at all. Deroir did come across as a sexist. If he wasn't, he would have recognized how his comments could have been taken that way and apologized. It's really that simple.

His post was a clear case of mansplaining with a touch of negging, which is totally sexist.

Oh come on, it was clear for anyone to see not just deroir that she could have been uncomfortable of his feedback

workwise

, even deroir did ever so carefully to frame his feedback constructive and politely when he said "allow me to disagree

slighty

". Again, where is the indication that it was due to gender?

I stated it in the last sentence of my post. His post if unintentionally sexist, was still sexist do to ignorance in communicating with women.

no, show me the exact quote, im not playing chinese whispers here.

[squallaus.8321]

@"Cyrin.1035" said:

I really liked hearing about the process and her approach to the story design. I wish she had stayed focused.

She does know what she's talking about in regards to narrative and story construction.https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014234740772126720

But the way she respond to criticism however leaves much to be desired....

[DaShi.1368]

@Eternity Theory.5392 said:I am incredibly disappointed in ANet for this. While the Twitter comments were out of line, the only reason this blew up so much is because it involved a woman talking about sexism; if it had been a male dev mouthing off just because he was having a bad day or whatever, people would have been upset, but it wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention or vitriol, and this is incredibly obvious if you read any of the threads on the subject here or on the subreddit. ANet isn't stupid, they obviously know this. And they chose to feed it, to give in to the seething misogyny instead of taking a more measured approach, jumping straight to firing and shaming the employees instead of taking a more measured approach.

If this had happened a day earlier, I probably wouldn't have bought all the gems I just got. I will definitely have to think twice about any future purchases I make from them, if the cesspit that the forums and subreddit have been is the sort of community they want to encourage.

Also, TotalBiscuit supported a hate movement and encouraged his fans to harass his critics and other people he didn't like. Him being dead doesn't change that he did some absolutely repulsive things and hurt people for no good reason. He was mean and abusive, and that shouldn't be forgotten or downplayed, and expecting decorum towards him when he showed none is rather gross; chastising people for not being appropriately respectful of an abuser is implicitly supporting what he did. There is something seriously wrong if you have harsher words for people who are critical of his actions than for his actions themselves.

Thank you for this post! I completely agree, and you've said all this far better than I could have.

[Dreadshow.9320]

@DaShi.1368 said:All I'm seeing through searches about this is a bunch of white men defending other white men. Can someone please help me find some articles and comments from women on this topic?

So you don't know how to search or just read what you want?Not in this particular thread but one of the many others:

@"Dreamwolf.7423" said:I've seen posts defending her actions and I was to ask this:If it had been a man saying those things to a female player, would you be defending their actions then?

As a female player, I can say that I was ashamed of her interactions with the community. Her language toward them was insulting and rude, and completely uncalled for. If she didn't want to have a discussion about work stuff on her day off on her "personal" account, then she shouldn't have opened the floor by posting what she did. If it was addressed in the AMA that should have been the end of it. But it seems to me that she went out of her way to further discussion about a game related topic and then lost her mind when someone stepped up with opposing ideas and suggestions.And...@Shoyoko.7309 said:The definition of sexism:prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.Now please tell me, where did Deroir imply that his comment was influenced by her gender. Even as a woman, I can see that it was clear that if anything, she could have taken it as a personal slight workwise at most but there was never any indication that his comment was negative due to her gender anywhere. What Jessica Price did was verbally one of harshest thing you could to someone which was implying Deroir a sexist.

[Crinn.7864]

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@"xarallei.4279" said:

Okay, I don't see that as a backhand. She says the genre is the fault point here but the partner says "perhaps it's just your game"? That's exactly right. SWTOR is the anti-thesis to her observation.

Yup. I keep seeing people try to bash Deroir and state how doing what he asks is impossible and he doesn't know what he's talking about. They specifically point to the genre and say it can't be done with MMOs....but, well SWTOR did it, so it's obviously not so impossible as they think it is. Now maybe there is something regarding the Living Story in particular that makes it not work? Who knows, but instead of biting the head off of player she could have just answered in a civil manner. Instead she was rude and dismissive. That kind of behavior is simply not acceptable. She is an Arenanet employee in a public setting talking to a customer. When interacting with customers some thought must be put into your responses.

SW:TOR had a 200million dollar development budget (this number doesn't include marketing) just for the vanilla game, and has gone down in video game history as the single most costly video game ever produced. (The second most expensive game to produce is GTA V at 137 million)

What SW:TOR did isn't really relevant for studios that have sane budgets. Price's original comment (before she exploded) was more or less on point with the limitations of game writing.

They also made, like 8 branching stories with different scenarios, choices and branching dialogs. I'd assume GW2 making, like, 3 wouldn't break the bank (so to speak).

It also took them over 6 years to make those stories, and that's with Bioware outsourcing the engine work.

Do you want to wait a entire year between living world episodes?

Honestly, it depends on the quality of the product. Would I want to wait an entire year for GW2's living world episodes? No. Would I wait over a year for half of one of SWTOR's class scenarios? Of course!

That's about 45 minutes of content once you remove the travel time. Half of the vanilla stories could be summed up with: go to your ship, fly back to Coruscant, exit ship, run for 4mins to the senate building, have a 1 minute conversation with General Garza, and then have to travel all the way back to where you where originally.

I don't understand why ya'll are holding SW:TOR in such esteem. SW:TOR was condemned by both the industry and it's own devs as a overly expensive waste of resources.

[kmdziak.1076]

@Eternity Theory.5392 said:I am incredibly disappointed in ANet for this. While the Twitter comments were out of line, the only reason this blew up so much is because it involved a woman talking about sexism; if it had been a male dev mouthing off just because he was having a bad day or whatever, people would have been upset, but it wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention or vitriol, and this is incredibly obvious if you read any of the threads on the subject here or on the subreddit. ANet isn't stupid, they obviously know this. And they chose to feed it, to give in to the seething misogyny instead of taking a more measured approach, jumping straight to firing and shaming the employees instead of taking a more measured approach.

If this had happened a day earlier, I probably wouldn't have bought all the gems I just got. I will definitely have to think twice about any future purchases I make from them, if the cesspit that the forums and subreddit have been is the sort of community they want to encourage.

Also, TotalBiscuit supported a hate movement and encouraged his fans to harass his critics and other people he didn't like. Him being dead doesn't change that he did some absolutely repulsive things and hurt people for no good reason. He was mean and abusive, and that shouldn't be forgotten or downplayed, and expecting decorum towards him when he showed none is rather gross; chastising people for not being appropriately respectful of an abuser is implicitly supporting what he did. There is something seriously wrong if you have harsher words for people who are critical of his actions than for his actions themselves.

No, the reason it blew up is because a game developer (in this case woman) insulted a customer in a very disrespectful way and her co-worker (in this case man) followed in her steps. His/her race, gender, religion etc. doesn't matter at all, both Jessica and Peter were fired because of their attrocious behaviour towards the company's customers, that's the only reason they got fired.

[Ashen.2907]

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

@Sylv.5324 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

What happen to "innocent until proven guilty"?

That's a legal term that not even the courts take seriously, so it doesn't have anything to do with anything.

The term is not just legal it's also a saying that you shouldn't assume too quickly and accuse someone without evidence or "receipts".

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

@DaShi.1368 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:I'm disgusted by this community's reaction to her tweet, calling for her to be fired and being genuinely happy about it afterwards. To me it's simply inconceivable how so many could overreact like that to blow this matter this massively out of proportion.

She obviously perceived herself as being treated in a sexist way and called it out. It doesn't matter whether this indeed was the case or not, because it is very understandable how she could arrive at that conclusion:She posts a long, well thought out comment explaining why it's state of the art in the MMORPG genre to present the player character the way they do. A hardcore fan chimes in to "politely" tell her he disagrees and suggests to implement branching story lines as if she was a complete amateur and never heard of it. That fan implied she as a dev on the narrative team was incompetent at her job to then kindly tell her how to do it better. He probably didn't mean to but this is what you'll take from his comment when you read on the relationship and appeal layer from her perspective instead of taking it purely as factual (if you're not familiar with the four-sides model of communication you probably won't be able to make sense of this). Given the fact it was posted on her personal twitter account and the outlined context, she wasn't wrong in taking the comment as a personal slight. She then reacted accordingly.Women wrongfully being regarded as less competent than they really are is a VERY common symptom of sexism in our society. This happens even despite them having years of professional expertise and for no other reason than their gender. It unmistakably is sexism, although in a more subtle way and therefore in many cases hard to detect.

Imo her reaction was perfectly understandable - although it was unprofessional. She shouldn't have replied to criticism on her own twitter account like a private person.

Thank you! A thousand times this! Many may not understand where she's coming from, but that doesn't make her wrong.

The definition of sexism:prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

Now please tell me, where did Deroir imply that his comment was influenced by her gender. Even as a woman, I can see that it was clear that if anything, she could have taken it as a personal slight workwise at most but there was never any indication that his comment was negative due to her gender anywhere. What Jessica Price did was verbally one of harshest thing you could to someone which was implying Deroir a sexist.Imagine if I was the one who wrote the piece, Deroir replied the same way and I called him racist. Pretty harsh right?! That's how harsh calling someone sexist is. It's literally one of the worst labels you could give someone, especially to someone like Deroir who was not only a gw2 player, he was a partner of Anet?! What happen to "innocent until proven guilty"?Whilst you have point about the current sexism in our society, this is clearly not the right battlefield for such debate rather the only reason we are having this conversation is due to JP's accusation and nothing else.I believe she was too quick to judge and was naive to believe that any tweets in her private twitter would gain attention and responses from GW2 players even though she was clearly talking about GW2 and her bio mentions arenanet.

I don't think so at all. Deroir did come across as a sexist. If he wasn't, he would have recognized how his comments could have been taken that way and apologized. It's really that simple.

His post was a clear case of mansplaining with a touch of negging, which is totally sexist.

Oh come on, it was clear for anyone to see not just deroir that she could have been uncomfortable of his feedback

workwise

, even deroir did ever so carefully to frame his feedback constructive and politely when he said "allow me to disagree

slighty

". Again, where is the indication that it was due to gender?

I stated it in the last sentence of my post. His post if unintentionally sexist, was still sexist do to ignorance in communicating with women.

Disagreeing with someone's opinions, ideas, etc is not sexist unless the reason for disagreement is the sex of that someone.

[DaShi.1368]

@Dreadshow.9320 said:

@DaShi.1368 said:All I'm seeing through searches about this is a bunch of white men defending other white men. Can someone please help me find some articles and comments from women on this topic?

So you don't know how to search or just read what you want?Not in this particular thread but one of the many others:

@"Dreamwolf.7423" said:I've seen posts defending her actions and I was to ask this:If it had been a man saying those things to a female player, would you be defending their actions then?

As a female player, I can say that I was ashamed of her interactions with the community. Her language toward them was insulting and rude, and completely uncalled for. If she didn't want to have a discussion about work stuff on her day off on her "personal" account, then she shouldn't have opened the floor by posting what she did. If it was addressed in the AMA that should have been the end of it. But it seems to me that she went out of her way to further discussion about a game related topic and then lost her mind when someone stepped up with opposing ideas and suggestions.And...@Shoyoko.7309 said:The definition of sexism:prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.Now please tell me, where did Deroir imply that his comment was influenced by her gender. Even as a woman, I can see that it was clear that if anything, she could have taken it as a personal slight workwise at most but there was never any indication that his comment was negative due to her gender anywhere. What Jessica Price did was verbally one of harshest thing you could to someone which was implying Deroir a sexist.

Or maybe I didn't read every post here and asked for help. Also, I've already stated where I disagree with Shoyoko, whose post is ridiculous.

[DaShi.1368]

@Ashen.2907 said:

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

@Sylv.5324 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

What happen to "innocent until proven guilty"?

That's a legal term that not even the courts take seriously, so it doesn't have anything to do with anything.

The term is not just legal it's also a saying that you shouldn't assume too quickly and accuse someone without evidence or "receipts".

@DaShi.1368 said:

@Shoyoko.7309 said:

@DaShi.1368 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:I'm disgusted by this community's reaction to her tweet, calling for her to be fired and being genuinely happy about it afterwards. To me it's simply inconceivable how so many could overreact like that to blow this matter this massively out of proportion.

She obviously perceived herself as being treated in a sexist way and called it out. It doesn't matter whether this indeed was the case or not, because it is very understandable how she could arrive at that conclusion:She posts a long, well thought out comment explaining why it's state of the art in the MMORPG genre to present the player character the way they do. A hardcore fan chimes in to "politely" tell her he disagrees and suggests to implement branching story lines as if she was a complete amateur and never heard of it. That fan implied she as a dev on the narrative team was incompetent at her job to then kindly tell her how to do it better. He probably didn't mean to but this is what you'll take from his comment when you read on the relationship and appeal layer from her perspective instead of taking it purely as factual (if you're not familiar with the four-sides model of communication you probably won't be able to make sense of this). Given the fact it was posted on her personal twitter account and the outlined context, she wasn't wrong in taking the comment as a personal slight. She then reacted accordingly.Women wrongfully being regarded as less competent than they really are is a VERY common symptom of sexism in our society. This happens even despite them having years of professional expertise and for no other reason than their gender. It unmistakably is sexism, although in a more subtle way and therefore in many cases hard to detect.

Imo her reaction was perfectly understandable - although it was unprofessional. She shouldn't have replied to criticism on her own twitter account like a private person.

Thank you! A thousand times this! Many may not understand where she's coming from, but that doesn't make her wrong.

The definition of sexism:prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

Now please tell me, where did Deroir imply that his comment was influenced by her gender. Even as a woman, I can see that it was clear that if anything, she could have taken it as a personal slight workwise at most but there was never any indication that his comment was negative due to her gender anywhere. What Jessica Price did was verbally one of harshest thing you could to someone which was implying Deroir a sexist.Imagine if I was the one who wrote the piece, Deroir replied the same way and I called him racist. Pretty harsh right?! That's how harsh calling someone sexist is. It's literally one of the worst labels you could give someone, especially to someone like Deroir who was not only a gw2 player, he was a partner of Anet?! What happen to "innocent until proven guilty"?Whilst you have point about the current sexism in our society, this is clearly not the right battlefield for such debate rather the only reason we are having this conversation is due to JP's accusation and nothing else.I believe she was too quick to judge and was naive to believe that any tweets in her private twitter would gain attention and responses from GW2 players even though she was clearly talking about GW2 and her bio mentions arenanet.

I don't think so at all. Deroir did come across as a sexist. If he wasn't, he would have recognized how his comments could have been taken that way and apologized. It's really that simple.

His post was a clear case of mansplaining with a touch of negging, which is totally sexist.

Oh come on, it was clear for anyone to see not just deroir that she could have been uncomfortable of his feedback

workwise

, even deroir did ever so carefully to frame his feedback constructive and politely when he said "allow me to disagree

slighty

". Again, where is the indication that it was due to gender?

I stated it in the last sentence of my post. His post if unintentionally sexist, was still sexist do to ignorance in communicating with women.

Disagreeing with someone's opinions, ideas, etc is not sexist unless the reason for disagreement is the sex of that someone.

That's not what I said, Karl.

[Leo G.4501]

@Eternity Theory.5392 said:I am incredibly disappointed in ANet for this. While the Twitter comments were out of line, the only reason this blew up so much is because it involved a woman talking about sexism; if it had been a male dev mouthing off just because he was having a bad day or whatever, people would have been upset, but it wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention or vitriol, and this is incredibly obvious if you read any of the threads on the subject here or on the subreddit. ANet isn't stupid, they obviously know this. And they chose to feed it, to give in to the seething misogyny instead of taking a more measured approach, jumping straight to firing and shaming the employees instead of taking a more measured approach.

Well, if a male dev mouthed off, he probably wouldn't have drug identity politics into it and made it an altercation that was more mano y mano. Can a man use a victim card if no one cares about male victims? lol

The lesson to learn is, politics are a sensitive talking point even when used by a woman. And women have made sexism a political issue.

[yjin.7568]

@"mixxed.5862" said:I'm disgusted by this community's reaction to her tweet, calling for her to be fired and being genuinely happy about it afterwards. To me, it's simply inconceivable how so many could overreact like that to blow this matter this massively out of proportion.

She obviously perceived herself as being treated in a sexist way and called it out. It doesn't matter whether this indeed was the case or not because it is very understandable how she could arrive at that conclusion:She posts a long, well thought out comment explaining why it's state of the art in the MMORPG genre to present the player character the way they do. A hardcore fan chimes in to "politely" tell her he disagrees and suggests to implement branching storylines as if she was a complete amateur and never heard of it. That fan implied she as a dev on the narrative team was incompetent at her job to then kindly tell her how to do it better. He probably didn't mean to but this is what you'll take from his comment when you read on the relationship and appeal layer from her perspective instead of taking it purely as factual (if you're not familiar with the four-sides model of communication you probably won't be able to make sense of this). Given the fact it was posted on her personal twitter account and the outlined context, she wasn't wrong in taking the comment as a personal slight. She then reacted accordingly.Women wrongfully being regarded as less competent than they really are is a VERY common symptom of sexism in our society. This happens even despite them having years of professional expertise and for no other reason than their gender. It unmistakably is sexism, although in a more subtle way and therefore in many cases hard to detect.

Imo her reaction was perfectly understandable - although it was unprofessional. She shouldn't have replied to criticism on her own twitter account like a private person.

This is something you deal with on a daily basis as a professional interacting with customers. Dealing with customer feedback and criticism, even if unwanted, is part of being a professional. Also, nobody should be naive enough to think their public behaviour off hours doesn't impact the company they work for, let alone a direct interaction with a customer.

She publicly declares she's an ANet employee on her profile, and is publicly posting about the game itself. Twitter accounts can be private, yet this is not the case for Price. Why post publicly if you can't handle any type of civil discourse? She even writes that she doesn't know how the stagnant narrative can be changed for the better. Customer feedback is important in any field, let alone one as subjective as art where new perspectives (even amateur ones) can be instrumental in overcoming challenges. Any reasonable person might have even thought she was asking for opinions and suggestions... not to mention the response was from Deroir, an official partner of ANet and a community figure who's been creating GW2 content for years. In what world could a brief, polite feedback like that be construed as an attack on her sex? She lashes out at him, then proceeds to say the next "rando asshat" making suggestions will be blocked and that "there's a lot of hurt manfeels today". Irony much? That statement alone can be taken the wrong way by the whole community paying attention to this very public exchange. Fries and others defending her just added fuel to the fire by making the community think this behaviour is condoned by ANet's dev team. Let's not even talk about her toxic Twitter history or her further lashing out at another community figure.

It really doesn't matter what Price thought. Her interactions with ANet's customer/community base had a very tangible impact on their goodwill, and therefore ANet's bottom line. Business is business and employees are fired for way less.