Anet back in Silent Mode

[Kodokuna Akuma.9570]

I dont see why people clamour about what comes after S5 considering a seasons runs over a period of about a year. Thats a fair while ahead for us players to be looking instead we look to episode 1 of season 5. Which we will see in what maybe 2-3 months ?Im sure the suspence is killing us and we are likely to get more closer to release time but until then Anet so far has been doing us solid by providing an almost constant flow of events to do in the mean time.

So lets sit back enjoy what they throw at us in the mean time while brimming with suspence until we burst ;p

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@"Kodokuna Akuma.9570" said:I dont see why people clamour about what comes after S5 considering a seasons runs over a period of about a year. Thats a fair while ahead for us players to be looking instead we look to episode 1 of season 5. Which we will see in what maybe 2-3 months ?Im sure the suspence is killing us and we are likely to get more closer to release time but until then Anet so far has been doing us solid by providing an almost constant flow of events to do in the mean time.

So lets sit back enjoy what they throw at us in the mean time while brimming with suspence until we burst ;p

Its not just about Season 5, it isn't even about the far flung future of what comes after Season 5 in terms of that similar content. Its not just about the events. Its about much more than that, and also I'd argue "constant flow of events" is inaccurate. Its definitely more frequent than in the past thats for sure and I can give them credit for that, but "constant flow" eehhh stretching that a bit.

See its posts like these that seem to miss the point that don't help. I apologize but it just feels like you haven't read this thread fully or you have missed the point attempting to be made.

[TwiceCookedPorkins.8940]

I've been playing MMOs for 20 years now. This communication issue comes up again and again. The MMOs that succeed? They have Dev teams that have good communication with their players. The ones that don't do this find their playerbases getting restless and unhappy. Restless and unhappy players stop playing.

[Kodokuna Akuma.9570]

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@"Kodokuna Akuma.9570" said:I dont see why people clamour about what comes after S5 considering a seasons runs over a period of about a year. Thats a fair while ahead for us players to be looking instead we look to episode 1 of season 5. Which we will see in what maybe 2-3 months ?Im sure the suspence is killing us and we are likely to get more closer to release time but until then Anet so far has been doing us solid by providing an almost constant flow of events to do in the mean time.

So lets sit back enjoy what they throw at us in the mean time while brimming with suspence until we burst ;p

Its not just about Season 5, it isn't even about the far flung future of what comes after Season 5 in terms of that similar content. Its not just about the events. Its about much more than that, and also I'd argue "constant flow of events" is inaccurate. Its definitely more frequent than in the past thats for sure and I can give them credit for that, but "constant flow" eehhh stretching that a bit.

See its posts like these that seem to miss the point that don't help. I apologize but it just feels like you haven't read this thread fully or you have missed the point attempting to be made.

True my post isnt the most helpful and I have not read the entire thread chain.The thing is though, this thread isnt helpfull either. Anet hasnt gone silent, they still perform regular streams like for wvw and do communicate with the community. Developers do not have to tell players what is being worked on behind the scenes and sometimes that can be detrimental.

Also I did say ALMOST constant, not constant. There is a difference and it does mean somthing ;p

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@Kodokuna Akuma.9570 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@Kodokuna Akuma.9570 said:I dont see why people clamour about what comes after S5 considering a seasons runs over a period of about a year. Thats a fair while ahead for us players to be looking instead we look to episode 1 of season 5. Which we will see in what maybe 2-3 months ?Im sure the suspence is killing us and we are likely to get more closer to release time but until then Anet so far has been doing us solid by providing an almost constant flow of events to do in the mean time.

So lets sit back enjoy what they throw at us in the mean time while brimming with suspence until we burst ;p

Its not just about Season 5, it isn't even about the far flung future of what comes after Season 5 in terms of that similar content. Its not just about the events. Its about much more than that, and also I'd argue "constant flow of events" is inaccurate. Its definitely more frequent than in the past thats for sure and I can give them credit for that, but "constant flow" eehhh stretching that a bit.

See its posts like these that seem to miss the point that don't help. I apologize but it just feels like you haven't read this thread fully or you have missed the point attempting to be made.

True my post isnt the most helpful and I have not read the entire thread chain.The thing is though, this thread isnt helpfull either. Anet hasnt gone silent, they still perform regular streams like for wvw and do communicate with the community. Developers do not have to tell players what is being worked on behind the scenes and sometimes that can be detrimental.

Also I did say ALMOST constant, not constant. There is a difference and it does mean somthing ;p

Granted the wording of the thread title might not be semantically accurate, they aren't "silent" but rather "uncommunicative". Also those regular streams are just...them playing. Sure they get involved in some of the gameplay with the community, thats not what is being talked about though. We're not being informed and I believe I've already gone over, multiple times mind you in this very thread, that if they do it properly then it isn't detrimental.

Read the rest of this thread, I know it might be a lot but it will help give better context as to what I'm referring to and what is actually being discussed here. Give yourself better context as to the discussion so that things don't need to be repeated over and over again and so the discussion can move forward rather than continuously cycle back because some individuals don't want to take a few more moments to read a bit.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

In other words, agree what some have repeatedly said, or be deemed uninformed.

[Obtena.7952]

@Poormany.4507 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Poormany.4507 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@"ProtoGunner.4953" said:At anet it seems they just don't want to see themselves as 'oh this is cool, let's do it' no they try to shape and change and make it gimmicky etc etc and in the end it's just more annoying and wasted manpower.

This doesn't make sense ... if Anet wasn't doing things that people didn't like, the game wouldn't exist in the first place.

Anyways, the thread is misguided; the idea that Anet doesn't communicate with players is absurd.

How frequently do we hear about actual updates to the state of the game?

Often ... I mean, what do you think is reasonable and what is Anet doing?

I would think at least a "We are/aren't [planning to] working on NEW (not random filler content like Cooking 500 and festivals) content past LWS5" for PVE and a "We are working to improve x,y, and z in WvW/PVP" for WvW and PVP would satisfy a lot, if not most, players without spoiling much, if anything, even generate hype that the game needs right now. Currently all we get for future content is a short trailer a week or two before releases, which just isn't enough for players right now, especially after the layoffs and decision to do LWS5 instead of an expac.

I don't see the problem here ... why do I need to know what Anet is working on that I won't see for a year or more?

Because there's no point investing in a game that might go into maintenance mode after a year or two, which many players currently are worried about (as can be seen from the numerous "GW2 is doomed" posts recently). If I was a new potential player and saw that many frequent "this game is dying posts" with no dev responses, I wouldn't even bother installing and move on to the next mmo. While I don't necessarily agree with these posts' urgency, I do think more substantial and more frequent communication is necessary to address this issue and keep/gain players in the game and buying/spending gems.

But Anet communicating to you has nothing to do with that happening.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:In other words, agree what some have repeatedly said, or be deemed uninformed.

No...thats a vastly wrong interpretation of whats being said.

In that post specifically the individual was making a comment without having read through the rest of the responses in this thread to get better context as to the discussion. Which basically means their reply isn't accurate as per the context of the discussion as it stands in the present.

You realize we are discussing this because of the current circumstances we are looking at here, and I have seen no one actually provide any strong enough reasoning for opposing the standpoint I and many others have on the subject. In fact most of what I've seen from the opposite side is especially flimsy with little to nothing to actually back it up.

It has consisted of things like, and I'm paraphrasing;

• "They don't need to tell us every fine detail" Not what we're talking about
• "Isn't it better that they don't rush content?" Not what we're talking about
• "I think they communicate with us often" Often implies short intervals between "communications" and that isn't something they've done
• "They don't want to make promises they can't keep" Not what we're talking about
• "They already do communicate through some streams" Not really, no.

It has nothing to do with "agree [with] what some have repeatedly said, or be deemed uninformed" and more to do with "If you disagree then provide a better opposition than whats been said" as the entire point of a discussion is to discuss the subject, and the point of a debate is to put forward your differing points of view on said subject. Just because there has yet been an instance of a strong enough reason that can't yet be argued against doesn't mean "agree with me or [insert random negativity here]". I am entirely open to admitting I'd be wrong, you've seen that for yourself already Inculpatus. I understand your desire to have faith in the developers, I understand you enjoy the game quite a bit, I understand it can get tiring seeing all of these "negativity" threads popping up much more frequently these recent months. While most of them are probably...a bit too emotionally charged with incoherent driveling that doesn't mean all of them are, it also doesn't mean they don't have a point; they just might not be able to articulate it properly at that moment. In fact that should probably serve as a bit of an idea as to how many view the state of the game. Granted the forums doesn't make up the largest percentage of the playerbase but these complaints, this criticism, isn't limited to just here or to just reddit or just ingame. It kind of spans across them all.

The fact of the matter is that we are left pretty much in the dark until something is like two weeks from release, one week from release in the case of upcoming balance patches, and for other things like Build Templates and important game affecting changes, like WvW Alliances and sPvP Swiss Style Tournaments, we know next to nothing about them until they launch and they might not even be the change thats needed as it will either make the problem worse or not resolve it at all. Or they might be woefully disappointing. Imagine the good that community feedback could do for such things if the community were made more aware of these changes and their development during the length of time they are being developed, rather than having ANet "surprise" us and release something that's not good.

You have to understand that we criticize because we want things to improve, not because of hate or malice or spite, its because this game is important to us. Guild Wars has been a part of my life for 14 years, I grew up on it through my teenage years, I care quite a bit and I'm sure many others who support, and offer, criticism do as well.

[fixit.7189]

ya, i wish anet was more open like warframe devs are: both are similar in size but one engages the community while the other straight up ignores them. it's one of the main reasons why i still play WF to date: DE is open/honest with it's player base which has been a very successful strat. anet should take notes imo.

[Kodokuna Akuma.9570]

@"KryTiKaL.3125"In short I agree with you.While what anet is doing is neither good nor bad persay, better communicatation would benefit us more in some areas. Though they have started in making an effort in this department for balance changes. I can see the reasoning behind withholding information to provide players with a suprise, like what they did with dragon bash.

Honestly Its of my opinion that anet currently does not have anything major to announce as of this moment. Either they have things in the works but development is not at a point where its worth mentioning or it would be the matter of "we are working on this, you know we are but we dont have a release date yet". Both of which are not really informative to discuss.

On the note of community feedback. To be honest, while it may be informative and useful to take in community feedback. Alot of players either "dont know what they want" or do not see the bigger picture. Generally speaking the developers have access to such information in the form of partly player feedback but mainly gathered statstics and infographics. At the end of the day how much could players actually provided in the form of meaningful feedback from the balance changes being provided lets say 2-3 weeks earlier instead? Not alot really, a forum post with a list of planned changes will generate the same kind of results 1 week in advance or 3 weeks in advance. The only difference is that the content of such changes are more likely to be redundant.

I mean we know what anet has in the works and we will get more information when a release date has been reasonably decided on.

TLDR; Anet cant always be talking to us, otherwise it would mostly be just reiteration of the same few things.

Just my thoughts at least.

[Knighthonor.4061]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Burnfall.9573 said:

@Donari.5237 said:Remember that Colin was an exciting spokesman for the game, he had infectious enthusiasm and he happily proclaimed many things that, sadly, did not work out in the end yet had everyone very hyped. But also remember that the dungeons actually

were

hard for people at the very beginning, before GW2's techniques got ingrained and gear got so easy to collect and professions got elites. I was in a guild in WoW that raided pretty successfully. Not world firsts, but we chewed the glass and got through current raid content fairly well. I'd been WoW raiding for years, both as DPS and heals. And then my guild, including several of those raiders, hit Caudecus Manor Explorable for the first time, at level, and we wiped for over two hours on Butler path. We had a ton of fun doing it, too, it felt so fantastic when we finally beat it.

Fast forward a bit and I'm leading newbie pugs on fast and easy butler path runs and yeah, it got very easy. Yet at the start, back when Colin was talking about the dungeons as hard content?

They were.

Now as to ANet's recent silence after a spurt of engagement, yes, that saddens me. It hasn't been complete silence, they have shown up on the forums, they have announced things like next week's Boss Rush part two, but it doesn't feel as open as just a month or two ago. On the other hand, they have a history of going mostly dark before a big surprise release, they really like to see us squee over the gifts as we get them rather than microanalyze them into the ground weeks in advance of actually seeing them. So I can hope this current dearth of the level of posting they reached before is because they are working very hard on the new stuff pending.

+1

@Burnfall.9573 said:

@Donari.5237 said:Remember that Colin was an exciting spokesman for the game, he had infectious enthusiasm and he happily proclaimed many things that, sadly, did not work out in the end yet had everyone very hyped. But also remember that the dungeons actually

were

hard for people at the very beginning, before GW2's techniques got ingrained and gear got so easy to collect and professions got elites. I was in a guild in WoW that raided pretty successfully. Not world firsts, but we chewed the glass and got through current raid content fairly well. I'd been WoW raiding for years, both as DPS and heals. And then my guild, including several of those raiders, hit Caudecus Manor Explorable for the first time, at level, and we wiped for over two hours on Butler path. We had a ton of fun doing it, too, it felt so fantastic when we finally beat it.

Fast forward a bit and I'm leading newbie pugs on fast and easy butler path runs and yeah, it got very easy. Yet at the start, back when Colin was talking about the dungeons as hard content?

They were.

Now as to ANet's recent silence after a spurt of engagement, yes, that saddens me. It hasn't been complete silence, they have shown up on the forums, they have announced things like next week's Boss Rush part two, but it doesn't feel as open as just a month or two ago. On the other hand, they have a history of going mostly dark before a big surprise release, they really like to see us squee over the gifts as we get them rather than microanalyze them into the ground weeks in advance of actually seeing them. So I can hope this current dearth of the level of posting they reached before is because they are working very hard on the new stuff pending.

+1

But in other games, dungeons are required for progression and here they weren't. This game didn't have a main story line like Rift that took you through every dungeon. The only dungeon you had to do at launch was the story mode of Arah and even that got complained about and eventually changed. Do you have any idea of how many people did dungeons or cared about dungeons, or ran dungeons regularly, because I'm guessing it was a very very small segment of the population. Not because they were hard...but because there was so much to do for casual people in the open world, more than any other game I've ever played.

Most games open worlds were for leveling pretty much excluivsely, and they added stuff like faction farming or dailies just to give people stuff to do. This game had downleveling. It wasn't just quest hubs, where you do the hub and move on. Events repeated and you could do them endlessly. For every person spamming dungeons to level, there were probably a bunch of them running the Queensdale champ train and never leaving the 1-15 zones.

Even before champ bags were a thing, people could level to 80 without ever leaving a 1-15 zone, which isn't that easy in most games, if it's possible at all. This game was designed, intentionally in my opinion, to appeal to casuals. And more on that, when the NPE came out, they made the open world even simpler.

Seems like the design goal of the game was to give everyone the ability to get all the way to the last zones and max level by hitting 1. You could do it faster by hitting more keys, but you didn't have to. This is again, why HoT was so vilified by the casual community. It was too hard, too complex, I have to learn my foes, I have to learn my class. I never had to do this before. If people can't see that this game was designed with a casual mindset, I'm not sure what to tell them. What in this game propelled someone to have to do dungeons?

Take Rift. One main quest line in the game and that quest line took you to every single dungeon and ended in a raid. If you wanted to get best in slot gear, at least when I played, you had to raid, period. That was how it worked. It was like that for a long time in WoW too, though I'm not sure that's still the case. In this game, BIS gear at launch was a matter of farming karma or gold, which wasn't that hard and didn't take that long. I don't think most people ran dungeons to gear up, even though you could.

Just because something exists in a game, doesn't make it the focus of the game.

Well honestly Dungeons were boring because of the stacking mechanics and also like you said gear from dungeons wasn't needed for Bis during vanilla.So I did other things. I now want to get into Dungeons but it's a dead feature.

[Knighthonor.4061]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Dami.5046 said:

@"Zexanima.7851" said:Their lack of communication is a detriment to the game and is a good chunk of the reason my friends and I no longer play. This isn't likely to change either which is sad because at it's base I do enjoy the game.

But you still post on the forums?Look at the demands people are throwing at them. Then think why they are keeping quiet.This forum is hardly the welcome wagon.The demands and reasons for these demands from the skill nerfs, to the skyscale to this saying that if things don't change people have/will quit is preposterous. Totally and utterly preposterous. And if you want a cool word,

lame

It is past trolling and flaming.

If he/she didnt post on the forums it would mean he or she has already quit the game and moved on.

The examples you bring arent unique to gw2 and are a loud minority, i dont think its acceptable for anyone to act like that but devs shouldn't base their entire communication policy around these pll when much more can be understanding and cooperative.

Most ppl that say "ill quit if x" dont quit, vayne saw the lack of raods as a selling point yet 7 wings in hes still here. If someone is gonna quit over someone they arent gonna be silly about it, they will just quit.

I hate this straw man argument. I don't hate you.But this same argument was said on every MMO that has died over the years.Its always a justification for developers to not listen to honest caring critics. Warhammer Online, Darkfall, Wildstar, etc would all still be here if many fans didn't run good critics away when they were trying to give good negative feedback on the game and just dismissing them as some kind of vocal minority trolls.

[Knighthonor.4061]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

To be honest I am trying to use @vyncius.6105 notion of hard-core over casual in relation to how the game released and I am struggling to see anything that would appeal to the hard-core. I mean dungeon running is probably the closest, but can't even remember if we had all those dungeons/paths in game at the start either if I'm honest...So yeah it wasn't marketed as a hard-core friendly game imo and it wasn't until raid wings and fractal cm's were given life in the game that genuine hard-core gaming began.... if we again use the @vyncius.6105 idea of hard-core he presented in this thread backs that up :)

The dungeons were marketed as hard group content and iirc all except like some lw1 dungeons were in there at launch, now if dungeons were nerfed later on or didnt meet expectations is just another thing to put in the list of things anet talked about and then didnt really deliver afterwards.

Im just calling ou the notion that gw2 never marketed having hardcore content and that anet broke some "promise" of no hardcore content by introducing t4s, fractals cms and raids later on.

Wp made a vid specifically on this as well a while back.

Zealex is correct. In a Eurogamer article in 2011, Colin Johanson referred to explorable dungeons as...

"Eurogamer: The hardest content in the game, then, is the five-man dungeons?

Colin Johanson: Correct. There are two versions of every dungeon: a story mode that you do first... that's pick-up group friendly. It's much easier and fun content that has a lot of cinematics in and tells a fun story. And when you finish the story dungeon, you unlock an explorable dungeon. And the explorable dungeon tells the story of what happens after you completed the story dungeon.

That is the most difficult content in our game, our explorable dungeons. They're very, very hard. And they're actually really unique when you look at traditional MMO raids. In Guild Wars 2, every time you load into one of our explorable dungeons you actually get to vote on what path you want to take through the dungeon, and there is a minimum of three paths through the dungeon, and each path is completely different and unique. You can play a dungeon over and over and experience it in different ways."

and

"Eurogamer: How are you handling endgame loot - will we be farming bosses?

Colin Johanson: Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base. The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours. It's all about collecting the unique looking stuff and collecting all the other rare collectable items in the game: armour pieces, potentially different potions - a lot of that is still up in the air and we'll finalise a lot of those reward systems as we get closer to release. And those come off of things like the bosses at the end of dungeons -

the raids

." [emphasis mine]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-27-guild-wars-2-preview?page=3

I don't see any contradiction there though ... dungeons being the hardest content in the game doesn't mean that they were hardcore content. As a matter of fact, it didn't take long at all for highly capable MMO gamers to solo them. Considering the market this game targets (and still targets), dungeons were hard content at that time and Anet didn't ever sell the game under the premise that it was full of content for hardcore players or at all. Actually, if you exclude the people this game wasn't meant for, it all makes sense. It's all very congruent with how the game was sold to us and what we experienced in it.

Its clearly a case of anet overestimating the dificulty of the content, as they protrayed it as very hard and pug unfriendly yet it didnt really meet those expectations.

No it's not ... it's really dependent on the market they target. .... and yes, at the time it was released, dungeons were very PUG unfriendly. PUG's regularly failed dungeons. I don't see anything that would make someone think those expectations were not met.

As for the solo friendly aspect ... the game was primarily targeting OW for that, and it was the main content at the time; dungeons were side distractions; you didn't even need to complete them to progress your character.

Hard don't always mean fun. Yes they were hard at first but that's until everybody started to exploit the stacking tactic which was poorly designed. Dungeons need to be fun and creative combat. That doesn't mean hard.Vanilla GW2 had poor anti trinity group roles as well which pretty much mean everything was DPSfest which Anet very underestimated how bad that is compared to on paper. Some classes were better than others at DPS so many got shunned from Dungeons (Necro and Rangers?). It was so poorly done from top to bottom. That's what killed Dungeons

[Tiviana.2650]

I know one thing that would help retain new players, dont lock the games story behind a paywall. If they added the lw episodes to the game new players wouldnt be so frustrated and feel like they have to pay for what should be part of the game. Half the games content and story revolve around those episodes. Most people are going to be turned off after buying the expansions and finding out they now have to buy every single story. The gem shop does fine selling skins and cosmetics and account upgrades, i would bet they dont sell those episodes nearly as well. Its a big hunk of content locked behind the store, and i dont think you vets realize the cost to get those episodes esp for newer players.

[Obtena.7952]

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

To be honest I am trying to use @vyncius.6105 notion of hard-core over casual in relation to how the game released and I am struggling to see anything that would appeal to the hard-core. I mean dungeon running is probably the closest, but can't even remember if we had all those dungeons/paths in game at the start either if I'm honest...So yeah it wasn't marketed as a hard-core friendly game imo and it wasn't until raid wings and fractal cm's were given life in the game that genuine hard-core gaming began.... if we again use the @vyncius.6105 idea of hard-core he presented in this thread backs that up :)

The dungeons were marketed as hard group content and iirc all except like some lw1 dungeons were in there at launch, now if dungeons were nerfed later on or didnt meet expectations is just another thing to put in the list of things anet talked about and then didnt really deliver afterwards.

Im just calling ou the notion that gw2 never marketed having hardcore content and that anet broke some "promise" of no hardcore content by introducing t4s, fractals cms and raids later on.

Wp made a vid specifically on this as well a while back.

Zealex is correct. In a Eurogamer article in 2011, Colin Johanson referred to explorable dungeons as...

"Eurogamer: The hardest content in the game, then, is the five-man dungeons?

Colin Johanson: Correct. There are two versions of every dungeon: a story mode that you do first... that's pick-up group friendly. It's much easier and fun content that has a lot of cinematics in and tells a fun story. And when you finish the story dungeon, you unlock an explorable dungeon. And the explorable dungeon tells the story of what happens after you completed the story dungeon.

That is the most difficult content in our game, our explorable dungeons. They're very, very hard. And they're actually really unique when you look at traditional MMO raids. In Guild Wars 2, every time you load into one of our explorable dungeons you actually get to vote on what path you want to take through the dungeon, and there is a minimum of three paths through the dungeon, and each path is completely different and unique. You can play a dungeon over and over and experience it in different ways."

and

"Eurogamer: How are you handling endgame loot - will we be farming bosses?

Colin Johanson: Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base. The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours. It's all about collecting the unique looking stuff and collecting all the other rare collectable items in the game: armour pieces, potentially different potions - a lot of that is still up in the air and we'll finalise a lot of those reward systems as we get closer to release. And those come off of things like the bosses at the end of dungeons -

the raids

." [emphasis mine]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-27-guild-wars-2-preview?page=3

I don't see any contradiction there though ... dungeons being the hardest content in the game doesn't mean that they were hardcore content. As a matter of fact, it didn't take long at all for highly capable MMO gamers to solo them. Considering the market this game targets (and still targets), dungeons were hard content at that time and Anet didn't ever sell the game under the premise that it was full of content for hardcore players or at all. Actually, if you exclude the people this game wasn't meant for, it all makes sense. It's all very congruent with how the game was sold to us and what we experienced in it.

Its clearly a case of anet overestimating the dificulty of the content, as they protrayed it as very hard and pug unfriendly yet it didnt really meet those expectations.

No it's not ... it's really dependent on the market they target. .... and yes, at the time it was released, dungeons were very PUG unfriendly. PUG's regularly failed dungeons. I don't see anything that would make someone think those expectations were not met.

As for the solo friendly aspect ... the game was primarily targeting OW for that, and it was the main content at the time; dungeons were side distractions; you didn't even need to complete them to progress your character.

Hard don't always mean fun. Yes they were hard at first but that's until everybody started to exploit the stacking tactic which was poorly designed. Dungeons need to be fun and creative combat. That doesn't mean hard.Vanilla GW2 had poor anti trinity group roles as well which pretty much mean everything was DPSfest which Anet very underestimated how bad that is compared to on paper. Some classes were better than others at DPS so many got shunned from Dungeons (Necro and Rangers?). It was so poorly done from top to bottom. That's what killed Dungeons

Well, to be fair, we weren't talking about fun which is subjective as well. We were talking about the fact that Anet didn't contradict themselves.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@Kodokuna Akuma.9570 said:@"KryTiKaL.3125"In short I agree with you.While what anet is doing is neither good nor bad persay, better communicatation would benefit us more in some areas. Though they have started in making an effort in this department for balance changes. I can see the reasoning behind withholding information to provide players with a suprise, like what they did with dragon bash.

Honestly Its of my opinion that anet currently does not have anything major to announce as of this moment. Either they have things in the works but development is not at a point where its worth mentioning or it would be the matter of "we are working on this, you know we are but we dont have a release date yet". Both of which are not really informative to discuss.

On the note of community feedback. To be honest, while it may be informative and useful to take in community feedback. Alot of players either "dont know what they want" or do not see the bigger picture. Generally speaking the developers have access to such information in the form of partly player feedback but mainly gathered statstics and infographics. At the end of the day how much could players actually provided in the form of meaningful feedback from the balance changes being provided lets say 2-3 weeks earlier instead? Not alot really, a forum post with a list of planned changes will generate the same kind of results 1 week in advance or 3 weeks in advance. The only difference is that the content of such changes are more likely to be redundant.

I mean we know what anet has in the works and we will get more information when a release date has been reasonably decided on.

TLDR; Anet cant always be talking to us, otherwise it would mostly be just reiteration of the same few things.

Just my thoughts at least.

Well the intent isn't to ask for them to reveal information on anything "major" but just keep the community consistently informed and not left entirely in the dark until such a time as the changes/content releases. Also not asking for release dates...said this multiple times as well. They'd be nice for some things, like WvW Alliances and sPvP swiss tournaments as people have been waiting a while for them, but I'd much prefer they at the very least have more frequent updates on their status to let people know they are being worked on.

They did start showing upcoming balance changes prior to implementing them but...they do this a week before and nothing changes in those patch notes between the initial preview post and the actual release. They'll maybe look at feedback after the patch releases to the live servers but in the past we don't see the issues with the balance patch actually addressed until months later and this is assuming the problems created in the previous balance update even get addressed in the newer one.

While I can easily agree that much of the community feedback can get silly as many might not know what they want or have silly or ridiculous ideas as to what to do with the game, that doesn't mean all suggestions fall into those categories. Its up to ANet to pick out which ones are feasible, but they would at the very least be showing they are listening. Also their use of metrics and such is really not serving them well...it looks like they make balance changes based around such things and it doesn't help anything. At all. Tends to make it worse or they ruin something else.

Many things they have announced for the future were announced months, and some years ago (like swiss style tournaments for sPvP), and we've heard nothing in the way of updates and honestly many are unsure ANet is even bothering to work on these things and they have just been cancelled and ANet hasn't said anything about it.

I did already lay out suggestions on what ANet could potentially communicate in weekly streams and I feel like it isn't such an implausible endeavor to do so. I highly doubt anything they are working on is in such a skeleton state that they can't share any information on it, even just previews of concepts and discussion of mechanics.

• Discuss upcoming long term updates (Alliances, Swiss style tournaments, etc) when pertinent
• Share some teasers to generate more hype for upcoming story elements in Living World such as early concept art or really anything that wouldn't spoil the story but would rather just heighten the discussion about whats next and the "mystery" of it
• Share concept art for new skins they are looking to release and get some early feedback and also generate hype for them
• Share ideas and thoughts on balance changes, why they do what they do and where they hope for the change to lead as well as get their actual take on the state of balance in the game right now in real discussion
• Discuss possible reworks for classes/elite specs that are not as favored as others in PvP, WvW and PvE and what could be done to make them more relevant or just to crate more diversity in their respective metas
• Talk about QoL and feature updates and their progress, such as Build Templates or possible UI updates they are looking into and get feedback from the community about it either from the stream chat or afterwards from the forums or elsewhere. As well as discuss accessibility options like colorblind settings because this game woefully lacks them.
• Discuss upcoming events or look for feedback on event ideas they have as well as possibly look for suggestions from the community, ones that are actually feasible and not silly of course.

There is a lot they can do in these kinds of streams but sadly they have yet to do so. All we get these days is the infrequent answer to questions during their WvW streams where you'd have to sift through the whole stream to find, devs responding randomly to threads on the forums only to have their posts eventually just buried under everything else, and the occasional Guild Chat where they show something upcoming like they did with the Skyscale and Warclaw. No summary is posted on anything talked about or answered on any of those streams and so whatever little information we get is just so scattered it might as well not even be there save for any "big" mentions that get put onto the wiki.

Point being, their effort looks and feels extremely scarce and past experiences and observations of their methods don't exactly inspire much confidence in them actually doing anything about improving things. ANet has operated on limited acknowledgement of community feedback for a while now, they stepped it up a bit more recently since the layoffs. That much was clear with the Berserker rework, their changes to getting the Skyscale as well as changes they've made to the Warclaw with at least one still yet to come. I can give them credit there, for sure, but in regards to everything else we got nothing.

[Vayne.8563]

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Burnfall.9573 said:

@Donari.5237 said:Remember that Colin was an exciting spokesman for the game, he had infectious enthusiasm and he happily proclaimed many things that, sadly, did not work out in the end yet had everyone very hyped. But also remember that the dungeons actually

were

hard for people at the very beginning, before GW2's techniques got ingrained and gear got so easy to collect and professions got elites. I was in a guild in WoW that raided pretty successfully. Not world firsts, but we chewed the glass and got through current raid content fairly well. I'd been WoW raiding for years, both as DPS and heals. And then my guild, including several of those raiders, hit Caudecus Manor Explorable for the first time, at level, and we wiped for over two hours on Butler path. We had a ton of fun doing it, too, it felt so fantastic when we finally beat it.

Fast forward a bit and I'm leading newbie pugs on fast and easy butler path runs and yeah, it got very easy. Yet at the start, back when Colin was talking about the dungeons as hard content?

They were.

Now as to ANet's recent silence after a spurt of engagement, yes, that saddens me. It hasn't been complete silence, they have shown up on the forums, they have announced things like next week's Boss Rush part two, but it doesn't feel as open as just a month or two ago. On the other hand, they have a history of going mostly dark before a big surprise release, they really like to see us squee over the gifts as we get them rather than microanalyze them into the ground weeks in advance of actually seeing them. So I can hope this current dearth of the level of posting they reached before is because they are working very hard on the new stuff pending.

+1

@Burnfall.9573 said:

@Donari.5237 said:Remember that Colin was an exciting spokesman for the game, he had infectious enthusiasm and he happily proclaimed many things that, sadly, did not work out in the end yet had everyone very hyped. But also remember that the dungeons actually

were

hard for people at the very beginning, before GW2's techniques got ingrained and gear got so easy to collect and professions got elites. I was in a guild in WoW that raided pretty successfully. Not world firsts, but we chewed the glass and got through current raid content fairly well. I'd been WoW raiding for years, both as DPS and heals. And then my guild, including several of those raiders, hit Caudecus Manor Explorable for the first time, at level, and we wiped for over two hours on Butler path. We had a ton of fun doing it, too, it felt so fantastic when we finally beat it.

Fast forward a bit and I'm leading newbie pugs on fast and easy butler path runs and yeah, it got very easy. Yet at the start, back when Colin was talking about the dungeons as hard content?

They were.

Now as to ANet's recent silence after a spurt of engagement, yes, that saddens me. It hasn't been complete silence, they have shown up on the forums, they have announced things like next week's Boss Rush part two, but it doesn't feel as open as just a month or two ago. On the other hand, they have a history of going mostly dark before a big surprise release, they really like to see us squee over the gifts as we get them rather than microanalyze them into the ground weeks in advance of actually seeing them. So I can hope this current dearth of the level of posting they reached before is because they are working very hard on the new stuff pending.

+1

But in other games, dungeons are required for progression and here they weren't. This game didn't have a main story line like Rift that took you through every dungeon. The only dungeon you had to do at launch was the story mode of Arah and even that got complained about and eventually changed. Do you have any idea of how many people did dungeons or cared about dungeons, or ran dungeons regularly, because I'm guessing it was a very very small segment of the population. Not because they were hard...but because there was so much to do for casual people in the open world, more than any other game I've ever played.

Most games open worlds were for leveling pretty much excluivsely, and they added stuff like faction farming or dailies just to give people stuff to do. This game had downleveling. It wasn't just quest hubs, where you do the hub and move on. Events repeated and you could do them endlessly. For every person spamming dungeons to level, there were probably a bunch of them running the Queensdale champ train and never leaving the 1-15 zones.

Even before champ bags were a thing, people could level to 80 without ever leaving a 1-15 zone, which isn't that easy in most games, if it's possible at all. This game was designed, intentionally in my opinion, to appeal to casuals. And more on that, when the NPE came out, they made the open world even simpler.

Seems like the design goal of the game was to give everyone the ability to get all the way to the last zones and max level by hitting 1. You could do it faster by hitting more keys, but you didn't have to. This is again, why HoT was so vilified by the casual community. It was too hard, too complex, I have to learn my foes, I have to learn my class. I never had to do this before. If people can't see that this game was designed with a casual mindset, I'm not sure what to tell them. What in this game propelled someone to have to do dungeons?

Take Rift. One main quest line in the game and that quest line took you to every single dungeon and ended in a raid. If you wanted to get best in slot gear, at least when I played, you had to raid, period. That was how it worked. It was like that for a long time in WoW too, though I'm not sure that's still the case. In this game, BIS gear at launch was a matter of farming karma or gold, which wasn't that hard and didn't take that long. I don't think most people ran dungeons to gear up, even though you could.

Just because something exists in a game, doesn't make it the focus of the game.

Well honestly Dungeons were boring because of the stacking mechanics and also like you said gear from dungeons wasn't needed for Bis during vanilla.So I did other things. I now want to get into Dungeons but it's a dead feature.

People keep saying it's dead. I guess it's an illusion that I still do them...with full groups.

[zealex.9410]

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Dami.5046 said:

@"Zexanima.7851" said:Their lack of communication is a detriment to the game and is a good chunk of the reason my friends and I no longer play. This isn't likely to change either which is sad because at it's base I do enjoy the game.

But you still post on the forums?Look at the demands people are throwing at them. Then think why they are keeping quiet.This forum is hardly the welcome wagon.The demands and reasons for these demands from the skill nerfs, to the skyscale to this saying that if things don't change people have/will quit is preposterous. Totally and utterly preposterous. And if you want a cool word,

lame

It is past trolling and flaming.

If he/she didnt post on the forums it would mean he or she has already quit the game and moved on.

The examples you bring arent unique to gw2 and are a loud minority, i dont think its acceptable for anyone to act like that but devs shouldn't base their entire communication policy around these pll when much more can be understanding and cooperative.

Most ppl that say "ill quit if x" dont quit, vayne saw the lack of raods as a selling point yet 7 wings in hes still here. If someone is gonna quit over someone they arent gonna be silly about it, they will just quit.

I hate this straw man argument. I don't hate you.But this same argument was said on every MMO that has died over the years.Its always a justification for developers to not listen to honest caring critics. Warhammer Online, Darkfall, Wildstar, etc would all still be here if many fans didn't run good critics away when they were trying to give good negative feedback on the game and just dismissing them as some kind of vocal minority trolls.

W8 what arguement? That anet doesnt communicate because ppl were rude or that anet shouldnt base their communication around whether ppl can be rude or not?

I dont see a problem with good negative feedback but theres some very negwtive stuff for the sake of being negative with nothing meaningful to take from.

[zealex.9410]

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@Kodokuna Akuma.9570 said:@KryTiKaL.3125In short I agree with you.While what anet is doing is neither good nor bad persay, better communicatation would benefit us more in some areas. Though they have started in making an effort in this department for balance changes. I can see the reasoning behind withholding information to provide players with a suprise, like what they did with dragon bash.

Honestly Its of my opinion that anet currently does not have anything major to announce as of this moment. Either they have things in the works but development is not at a point where its worth mentioning or it would be the matter of "we are working on this, you know we are but we dont have a release date yet". Both of which are not really informative to discuss.

On the note of community feedback. To be honest, while it may be informative and useful to take in community feedback. Alot of players either "dont know what they want" or do not see the bigger picture. Generally speaking the developers have access to such information in the form of partly player feedback but mainly gathered statstics and infographics. At the end of the day how much could players actually provided in the form of meaningful feedback from the balance changes being provided lets say 2-3 weeks earlier instead? Not alot really, a forum post with a list of planned changes will generate the same kind of results 1 week in advance or 3 weeks in advance. The only difference is that the content of such changes are more likely to be redundant.

I mean we know what anet has in the works and we will get more information when a release date has been reasonably decided on.

TLDR; Anet cant always be talking to us, otherwise it would mostly be just reiteration of the same few things.

Just my thoughts at least.

Well the intent isn't to ask for them to reveal information on anything "major" but just keep the community consistently informed and not left entirely in the dark until such a time as the changes/content releases. Also not asking for release dates...said this multiple times as well. They'd be

nice

for some things, like WvW Alliances and sPvP swiss tournaments as people have been waiting a while for them, but I'd much prefer they at the very least have more frequent updates on their status to let people know they are being worked on.

They did start showing upcoming balance changes prior to implementing them but...they do this a week before and

nothing

changes in those patch notes between the initial preview post and the actual release. They'll

maybe

look at feedback

after

the patch releases to the live servers but in the past we don't see the issues with the balance patch actually addressed until

months

later and this is assuming the problems created in the previous balance update even get addressed in the newer one.

While I can easily agree that much of the community feedback can get silly as many might not know what they want or have silly or ridiculous ideas as to what to do with the game, that doesn't mean all suggestions fall into those categories. Its up to ANet to pick out which ones are feasible, but they would at the very least be showing they are listening. Also their use of metrics and such is really not serving them well...it looks like they make balance changes based around such things and it doesn't help anything. At all. Tends to make it worse or they ruin something else.

The balance notes thing is practically a waste of their and our time. They give us the patch notes for what? For us to see and tell them theybare good, so nothing happens or that they are bad which also leads to... nothing happening.

Id see the value in early patches if that means issues in them could be identified by the community and therefor reverted or pulled back from the patch but thats jot happening. So the early patch notes are in fact, useless.

The balancing through metrics is veey bad for gameplay since even if the class metrics wise is popular and viable that doesnt mean ppl engaging with it havw that much fun doing it. This is a noticable problem even with other games, like wow where systems are being interacted with alot by the community show up high in their metrics and that makes them feel like they were a success.

Many things they have announced for the future were announced months, and some years ago (like swiss style tournaments for sPvP), and we've heard nothing in the way of updates and honestly many are unsure ANet is even bothering to work on these things and they have just been cancelled and ANet hasn't said anything about it.

I did already lay out suggestions on what ANet could potentially communicate in weekly streams and I feel like it isn't such an implausible endeavor to do so. I highly doubt anything they are working on is in such a skeleton state that they can't share any information on it, even just previews of concepts and discussion of mechanics.

• Discuss upcoming long term updates (Alliances, Swiss style tournaments, etc) when pertinent
• Share some teasers to generate more hype for upcoming story elements in Living World such as early concept art or really anything that wouldn't spoil the story but would rather just heighten the discussion about whats next and the "mystery" of it
• Share concept art for new skins they are looking to release and get some early feedback and also generate hype for them
• Share ideas and thoughts on balance changes, why they do what they do and where they hope for the change to lead as well as get their actual take on the state of balance in the game right now in real discussion
• Discuss possible reworks for classes/elite specs that are not as favored as others in PvP, WvW and PvE and what could be done to make them more relevant or just to crate more diversity in their respective metas
• Talk about QoL and feature updates and their progress, such as Build Templates or possible UI updates they are looking into and get feedback from the community about it either from the stream chat or afterwards from the forums or elsewhere. As well as discuss accessibility options like colorblind settings because this game woefully lacks them.
• Discuss upcoming events or look for feedback on event ideas they have as well as possibly look for suggestions from the community, ones that are actually feasible and not silly of course.

There is a lot they can do in these kinds of streams but sadly they have yet to do so. All we get these days is the infrequent answer to questions during their WvW streams where you'd have to sift through the whole stream to find, devs responding randomly to threads on the forums only to have their posts eventually just buried under everything else, and the occasional Guild Chat where they show something upcoming like they did with the Skyscale and Warclaw. No summary is posted on anything talked about or answered on any of those streams and so whatever little information we get is just so scattered it might as well not even be there save for any "big" mentions that get put onto the wiki.

Point being, their effort looks and feels extremely scarce and past experiences and observations of their methods don't exactly inspire much confidence in them actually doing anything about improving things. ANet has operated on limited acknowledgement of community feedback for a while now, they stepped it up a bit more recently since the layoffs. That much was clear with the Berserker rework, their changes to getting the Skyscale as well as changes they've made to the Warclaw with at least one still yet to come. I can give them credit there, for sure, but in regards to everything else we got nothing.

And on top of that with lost the Ama's which were a great piece of dialogue between players and devs. The fact that it was a 1 person innnitiative and since that person left its somehow understandable that the amas stopped is laughable.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I don't think the AMAs were a one-person initiative, or if they were, the person(s) responsible haven't left (Mike O'Brien and current Game Director). You may be thinking of the AFCs.
It would seem that AMAs stopped due to forum/playerbase request.

Also, it's not true that we've heard nothing about things, such as Swiss Tournaments. There was an update about Swiss Tournaments less than a month ago: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/964554/#Comment_964554

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:I don't think the AMAs were a one-person initiative, or if they were, the person(s) responsible haven't left (Mike O'Brien and current Game Director). You may be thinking of the AFCs.

It would seem that AMAs stopped due to forum/playerbase request.

Also, it's not true that we've heard nothing about things, such as Swiss Tournaments. There was an update about Swiss Tournaments less than a month ago: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/964554/#Comment_964554

So I stand corrected, they did give an update.

Except the "update" is buried under a bunch of posts and threads on the forums and not consolidated into a singular post by ANet themselves. Did you go and plug in a bunch of things into the search bar or only search by posts from specific ANet employees on the forums and then sift through it?

Does that look like competent or appropriate communication with the community to you? How is that not a mess in your eyes? I even said thats what happens when the devs make random posts and give similar "updates" and then, again, it ends up getting buried. People have to dig for it, they shouldn't have to dig for it.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

OMG, we have a Dev post Carousel. Easy to see Dev posts each and every day.Also, how hard can typing 'Swiss Tournament' into the Search Bar be?Where should these posts be other than the sub-forum in which they belong?Maybe a place where all Dev posts are kept together? We actually have that, though I admit here on the Vanilla forums, it sucks compared to the old forums: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussions/tagged/arenanet (aka Dev Tracker).

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:OMG, we have a Dev post Carousel. Easy to see Dev posts each and every day.Also, how hard can typing 'Swiss Tournament' into the Search Bar be?Where should these posts be other than the sub-forum in which they belong?Maybe a place where all Dev posts are kept together? We actually have that, though I admit here on the Vanilla forums, it sucks compared to the old forums: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussions/tagged/arenanet (aka Dev Tracker).

Thats still digging for those posts rather than them being dropped into a pinned thread either in News and Announcements or elsewhere. Thats the easiest place to view them as it is the most obvious place someone would believe things like that to be posted.

"I want to see if ANet has said anything recent about X update."checks News and Announcements"Ah, there it is."reads

As opposed to...

"I want to see if ANet has said anything recent about X update."Goes to the Dev Trackerscroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scrollGoes to the next pagescroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll"Hm, no thread titles about it, I guess there isn't anything."(And even after looking and scrolling they would still need to click on the ArenaNet tag on the thread and check them just to see if it happened to be anywhere)

Not everyone checks the forums every day, not everyone uses the forums, not everyone is there the very moment a dev posts this information so it could very likely get cycled out before many people even see it. I hadn't seen that post and I'm fairly active on these forums. Never saw it.

I can concede that I was wrong in that there have been no updates, but my point still stands that they don't do a good job at managing information or presenting it; which translates into not so great communication with their community. I don't understand what you were trying to accomplish with this...proving my point for me?

Like I said, I had already pointed this exact thing out...

Whats the point you're trying to make here that is counter to my own? Whats your intention? I honestly can't get a grasp on it as you are kind of all over the place except for the very obvious fact that you seem almost religiously against any form of criticism sent ANets way.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Merely stating some facts. I don't think I've posted any opinion about ArenaNet's communication, other than, possibly, it doesn't bother me either way.
It's ok to be wrong, sometimes. :)

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:Merely stating some facts. I don't think I've posted any opinion about ArenaNet's communication, other than, possibly, it doesn't bother me either way.

It's ok to be wrong, sometimes. :)

Yeah and I'm fine with being wrong, I'm not exactly the smartest of individuals so it can happen a lot.

However it just seems like you're doing this purely to be right about something and its kind of off putting.