Curse

Regina Buenaobra · Jun 12, 2009, 10:01 PM // 22:01

I think there is a misunderstanding about what "quarterly" actually means.

If you break the year up into four parts (quarters) this is what you have:

First Quarter of the year: January - March
Second Quarter of the year: April - June
Third Quarter of the year: July - September
Fourth Quarter of the year: October - December

Content updates every 3 - 4 months is not necessarily the same thing as quarterly.

The April content update actually arrived within the Second Quarter of the year. If we said we would do "quarterly" content updates, then we just missed the First Quarter.

matthew5276 · Jun 12, 2009, 10:02 PM // 22:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

Linsey's been in meetings with Izzy to discuss skill update.

I find it hard to believe that this takes up a months work, considering that Izzy basically gets spoon fed on how to skill balance (at least from the pvp side of things) from the high level pvp community through his forums. I'm not saying that this means that no work has to go into skill balances, but meetings between game mods should not take 1 month, with nothing being produced, or with what has been decided being delayed.

The amount of help that the GvG community gives to you is astounding, and I don't think its right that nothing should come out of that. If the skill update is delayed for 1 week because of whatever reason, fair enough. However, last skill update was delayed by one month, and this skill update has been delayed by at least 1 week. This suggests that it is not just misfortune that prevents updates being released on time, but it is something that is wrong with the way you go about it, or the time you put into parts of the update.

I can't speak for other aspects of game balance or content updates, but with skill balancing, I find it an insult to the gvg community that so few updates are released, and when they are, they are so often of so poor quality. When the community gives so much help and ideas, a decent monthly skill update is not too much to be expected.

I cannot, of course, speak for the 'community', and my opinion may not be held by the majority of players.

I do appreciate the more precise answers given in this thread by Regina and Martin, it is nice to have some idea of what to expect.

Meridon · Jun 12, 2009, 10:04 PM // 22:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Kerstein

Bottom line is:
Let me put one thing straight: Guru is not The Community. Guru is one aspect of the whole Guild Wars Community. Guild Wars Community exists in many different places, many of them not forums, and is a diverse entity. Again: Because you personally do not like it or the way it is done (and yes, by gathering feedback in many places we are aware that there are people out there who do not like it) it is a mistake to assume that you speak for the community.

Yes it is. I am the community. You are the community. My guild is the community. Guru is the community. We are all the community. Of course, Guru is not the entire community, and anyone who claims that Guru is the center of it or something and tries to speak for the community is out of line. Still, Guru is probably the largest and most active public Guild Wars community Fansite & Forum that gets developer feedback like this. It is quite possibly the place where 'Joe The Guild Wars Player' goes to read about community news, developer announcements, and to vent his own opinion. Therefore, disregarding Guru as a vital piece of the community and disregarding someone's opinion as something many others may share is a bad thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Kerstein

Agreed, it is a two way street: We provide you with information as soon as we are able to do so, and you provide us with constructive criticism and suggestions. Last time I looked up constructive criticism, personal insults and one liners saying that something "sucks" without actually giving context or an explanation why something sucks was not part of the definition.

People who flat out state their opinion on ArenaNET's ways of informing the community (if it makes you feel better, read: Guru), whether they are good or bad, seem to have been left out in your interpretation of the two way street. People should have the right to give their opinion on ArenaNET like that whether you like it or not, and it has nothing to do with constructive criticism. It has everything to do though with customer satisfaction levels, something a company ArenaNET like every other company should always consider in their business and marketing strategies. I think you'll probably understand why bad customer ratings are a great danger for a company and what can be done about them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Kerstein

And history has proven that a simple "we are thinking about it" will be turned into "you promised", and that players then feel "betrayed" when we made changes or came up with something different.

So you are protecting the players from themselves? Thank heavens for that, we would have almost killed ourselves. Seriously, I don't think something worse than this would have happened if ArenaNET had just announced the delay two or three days beforehand or something. It would have meant that people on guru would have at least believed that you wanted to keep us from a big disappointment on thursday. By announcing the notes, the worst that could have happened was maybe a few people going on a last keg farm spree, maybe dropping the price of mesmer tomes by 50g or so, big deal.

I think you also can't deny that the current way the community (or just guru) is being fed information is not a healthy situation. Not for the players reading it, and not for the employees replying to it. If ArenaNET is so secretive and ambiguous in their replies to the community, something has to be going wrong in the communication process. I'm not blaming anyone at this point, I'm just saying that the current way communications are made is very bad for all of us and should change.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

We are given information that we are cleared to release to the public. We ask the questions here about what can we say to the community. We discuss this, and sometimes we then decide as a group that certain things should either messaged publicly, or not. If we can share information for you, we do.

Then who is giving you the information and who is deciding if it's clear information or not? If you're just the messenger, I'd like to know who I have to talk to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

This is not the only community that we get feedback from. This is just one of many places that we look for input.

I'd like to be linked and granted access to some of those other communities you are referring to, both to check on how their feedback differs from the feedback found here, and to verify if you do actually look for input there.

As a final note, to both Martin, Regina and any other Anet employee who reads this, I think you are doing a decent job at the moment, so don't feel personally insulted or anything. The fact that the "regular" monthly update has been delayed for the second time in a row doesn't bother me too much, as I am confident that it eventually will come. The fact that you don't give out the details of skill updates in advance, I do not like, but I can still understand it and live with it. I am not pleased at all however, with the way the delay has not been properly announced beforehand, and with the way ArenaNET staff members have been trying to avoid giving a clear and final answer to the questions raised in this thread. I see this as an insult against all the players that are devoted and caring enough to use this forum as a platform for giving their opinions, criticism, questions and suggestions to each other, and to ArenaNET.

Regards,

Meridon

Edit: Admin modded my post!

- The "Don't kill the messenger" reference seemed harmless to me though.

Arduin · Jun 12, 2009, 10:21 PM // 22:21

Good post there Meridon, I am support of your view

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

The April content update actually arrived within the Second Quarter of the year. If we said we would do "quarterly" content updates, then we just missed the First Quarter.

Okay, what you are describing is indeed one way to view the quarterly update model. I confess I was under the impression Quarterly meant 'every 3 months', but I won't be nitpicking about semantics.

I don't really recall when the message about an update every 3 months was posted. I was under the impression it was like a month (maybe 2) ahead of the April update, but I could be wrong. However, I started counting from that moment, so I thought the April update was just a 'late' update of the first quarterly cycle, meaning the next was due July.

Again, this is just my point of view (and I won't speak for the entire playerbase, that has been made clear to me). The only reason why I would potentially lash out to you guys at Anet, is because I simply love this game. If Guild Wars would have been a game I could just easily put away, I wouldn't have bothered posted on a forum about it.

And in this, I think a lot of players are with me. All I want the best for you people, for your game, and for it's successor. That's why I'm agitated when something unexpected pops up, when some issues that are seriously bugging me don't get resolved in a few months time (and I know a lot of people are with me, namely Shadow Form and Roy of Judgement...) And I know it's not as easy as pressing a button and 'tadaa', a new and improved build is live.

Just remember, sometimes the people that most vehemently express themselves, are sometimes the ones that care the most about you, and your game.

Ate of DK · Jun 12, 2009, 10:25 PM // 22:25

I think it's sad that a Community Relations employee doesn't know what newsletters on www.guildwars.com say.

---

How can you talk about PvP-love if it's been so damn unimportant to balance update a few skills in the last months.

I can open any forum and I see complaining about RoJ (Jesusbeam, Ion Cannon) and "npc AI".

---

Martin is right, Guru is not "The Whole Community".
That's why I post the same opinion on 3 different forums for over 3 years.

---

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

I think there is a misunderstanding about what "quarterly" actually means.

If you break the year up into four parts (quarters) this is what you have:

First Quarter of the year: January - March
Second Quarter of the year: April - June
Third Quarter of the year: July - September
Fourth Quarter of the year: October - December

Content updates every 3 - 4 months is not necessarily the same thing as quarterly.

The April content update actually arrived within the Second Quarter of the year. If we said we would do "quarterly" content updates, then we just missed the First Quarter.

So you're actualy telling us that we shouldn't be suprised when the next large content update is in september. Anyway, that's still 2 large content updates left for this year according to www.guildwars.com

Martin Kerstein · Jun 12, 2009, 10:31 PM // 22:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arduinna

Just remember, sometimes the people that most vehemently express themselves, are sometimes the ones that care the most about you, and your game.

We are fully aware of that - like I said, we are gamers as well, not just Community Managers (hell, I play games since Pong^^)

And I know it does not mean much right now, but I hope some of the things we can probably talk about next week will help to address some of the problems which are the basis for most of the anger and frustration.

Meridon:

Well written posting, but you misinterpreted me on two points:

Of course people can flat out state their disappointment, you are absolutely right - I actually think a state where everybody agrees with everything we say would be kinda worrying. My statement was more about giving actual feedback on specific issues.

And the quote about how expectation can be go astray - this was aimed at "we want information on what you think, even if you cancel it/will not do it", not about this update.

Lagg · Jun 12, 2009, 10:42 PM // 22:42

I think it's time for everyone here to calm down, be patient, be thankful for what we've already gotten so far and remember something crucial about Guild Wars.

No monthly fees.

Heck, it's the single line their publisher uses to market the game.

http://us.ncsoft.com/en/guild-wars/

Please don't expect them to move heaven and earth every month either.

Renegade26 · Jun 12, 2009, 10:45 PM // 22:45

Here is some customer feedback:

Played this game for a couple of years, and stopped.
Came back with that april update to do a bunch of zaishen quests, and carried on with some HM stuff.
A month later i think, the last skill balance was released, and i found it disappointing, and simply lost interesting in playing again. atm, im running about these forums waiting for the next skill balance, but ultimately not really playing the game.
what would be a shame from my point of view is to have the skill balance released so early, and have it a disappointment again, rather than making me wait an extra week or two, and getting a higher quality update that was great for random pve, high level pvp and anything inbetween.

What i found most disappointing was the large amount of nerfs applied to "overpowered" skills, and some meaningless buffs to a small number of skills. What really got me was that basically for a pve mesmer like myself, my next month of fun could be based around everything i currently have available, but also Illusionary Weaponry as well...
1 month of playing seemed a bit daunting when the only new option available to me was some useless elite being made more accessable.

Just something to mill over if you want, whilst I wait around for another spark of interest into this game I have already spent so many hours on.

crazy diamond · Jun 12, 2009, 10:59 PM // 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

I think there is a misunderstanding about what "quarterly" actually means.

If you break the year up into four parts (quarters) this is what you have:

First Quarter of the year: January - March
Second Quarter of the year: April - June
Third Quarter of the year: July - September
Fourth Quarter of the year: October - December

Content updates every 3 - 4 months is not necessarily the same thing as quarterly.

The April content update actually arrived within the Second Quarter of the year. If we said we would do "quarterly" content updates, then we just missed the First Quarter.

Well I for one am impressed at your quick resolution of the mass confusion this was causing. Thank you so much for taking the time to clear this up for us. I'm sure we can all rest a little easier now that someone finally came forward and clarified one of the major concerns of Guru(not-the-communtiy) players minds. Thank you for making Guru your choice.

Scf Blacknight · Jun 12, 2009, 11:02 PM // 23:02

ITT: PR Nightmare.

I think what 99% of people are really wanting out of the community managers, is more interaction with said community. If there was more feedback to what constructive criticism takes place (not often, but it does happen), people might be a bit less hostile when you finally do come around.

I will agree however with a previous poster who said that making the community happy will take nothing less than GW2 coming out. After this long, the game has grown stale and boring. Unless you guys are packing a SF size update somewhere, I don't see people calming down.

All I can say is I hope you guys get the act together in GW2, which has the ability to be a great game, otherwise it will be a huge disappointment, which GW1 has become.

InfernalSuffering · Jun 12, 2009, 11:03 PM // 23:03

I can't decide which would be worse, the update coming a week before the mAT or having to play another month with this meta.

crazy diamond · Jun 12, 2009, 11:11 PM // 23:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scf Blacknight

I will agree however with a previous poster who said that making the community happy will take nothing less than GW2 coming out. After this long, the game has grown stale and boring. Unless you guys are packing a SF size update somewhere, I don't see people calming down.

All I can say is I hope you guys get the act together in GW2, which has the ability to be a great game, otherwise it will be a huge disappointment, which GW1 has become.

Whether they are willing to admit it or not, GW1 has essentially taken a back seat to GW2. Not just in terms of development, but in the public eye. And there's only two ways you can keep people happy in that situation. GW1 has to be good enough to hold peoples interest until GW2 comes out, and there should be enough of a trickle of GW2 info coming out to keep people enticed. Both of which I'm sure they intend to deliver in spades someday!

Not to mention that GW2 will have to be nothing short of spectacular after all this. If you think they're rabid now, just wait 'til the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be a train.

Daesu · Jun 12, 2009, 11:17 PM // 23:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scf Blacknight

.

I will agree however with a previous poster who said that making the community happy will take nothing less than GW2 coming out. After this long, the game has grown stale and boring. Unless you guys are packing a SF size update somewhere, I don't see people calming down.

All I can say is I hope you guys get the act together in GW2, which has the ability to be a great game, otherwise it will be a huge disappointment, which GW1 has become.

I doubt Regina can do anything about that. GW2 would be ready when it is ready.

I am not upset because GW2 is coming in late, but I am a little annoyed that there is so much shouting about nerf this class and that class but please dont touch my favorite class "suggestions". Combined that with XTH rewards and skill update postponements, with the prospect of more PvE build breaking nerfs for PvP purposes coming soon.

Meridon · Jun 12, 2009, 11:26 PM // 23:26

Dear Martin,

Thank you for your reply.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Kerstein

Of course people can flat out state their disappointment, you are absolutely right - I actually think a state where everybody agrees with everything we say would be kinda worrying. My statement was more about giving actual feedback on specific issues.

I see, thanks for clearing that up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Kerstein

And the quote about how expectation can be go astray - this was aimed at "we want information on what you think, even if you cancel it/will not do it", not about this update.

I think my point on this still stands though, whether or not your comment was not specifically aimed at this update. Personally, I don't need to know what you think, but I do think the playerbase should be informed in advance if the general expectations can or can't be met. Explaining why is something I don't think you or any other Anet staff member should be responsible for, as I think everyone can guess those (financial crisis / resources on Gw2). It's also none of my business anyway.

In short, I think people shouldn't need to know why it was late, but they should need to know why the delay wasn't announced beforehand at all, which it should have been in my opinion. You and Regina have already explained in this thread why you think otherwise. Of course, you are entitled to your own opinion. I'm not expecting to debate this with you as there isn't much I can do about it, I hope you understand where I'm coming from though.

Regards,

Meridon

HawkofStorms · Jun 12, 2009, 11:26 PM // 23:26

Big thumbs up to Martin for putting some of the guru community in their place. Nice to see them actually go on the offensive against the "it changed and therefore it sucks" crowd.

Snow Bunny · Jun 12, 2009, 11:28 PM // 23:28

All I can say is, Anet's garbage has been called out.

We might not be the community, but we are a fansite. We are a fansite that pays very close attention to what you say and do - probably a bad thing sometimes, but scrutiny can also work in your favor.

Your community has up on its website "A". You state "B". Do not try and deflect. Do not try and say,"We did not know, or we cannot say, or it was inconvenient to do thus".

No.

Own up to the fact that you have screwed up. Own up to the fact that your team has not listened to its community. Acknowledge that you have a treasure trove of information on ways to streamline and improve your game, and have squandered it. PvPers and PvEers alike have given you information - THE BEST OF THE BEST have told you how to improve the high end for the best, and the low end for the casual.

Do not try to say,"There's only so much we can do." We have purchased your products for four years - you have had ample time to make informed decisions.

Your company releases information on such an inconsistent basis, with such massively inconsistent levels of accuracy, that it's staggering.

You guys screwed up big time, for far too long. That's really all there is to it.

HawkofStorms · Jun 12, 2009, 11:31 PM // 23:31

They can't listen to everybody. For every thread that says "no more titles" there are dozens of threads with people suggesting new titles. Some people want to game made easier. Some think the game should be harder. Some want PvE skills to be more powerful, some less.
The point is, there is no "community." We are by definition divided. A.net can't listen to us. We don't even know what we want. How can they?

Cab Tastic · Jun 12, 2009, 11:36 PM // 23:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

I think there is a misunderstanding about what "quarterly" actually means.

If you break the year up into four parts (quarters) this is what you have:

First Quarter of the year: January - March
Second Quarter of the year: April - June
Third Quarter of the year: July - September
Fourth Quarter of the year: October - December

Content updates every 3 - 4 months is not necessarily the same thing as quarterly.

The April content update actually arrived within the Second Quarter of the year. If we said we would do "quarterly" content updates, then we just missed the First Quarter.

Excellent news. We can expect big content updates in September and October!

sup bruh its sam · Jun 12, 2009, 11:39 PM // 23:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by HawkofStorms

They can't listen to everybody. For every thread that says "no more titles" there are dozens of threads with people suggesting new titles. Some people want to game made easier. Some think the game should be harder. Some want PvE skills to be more powerful, some less.
The point is, there is no "community." We are by definition divided. A.net can't listen to us. We don't even know what we want. How can they?

but we can all agree that there wouldnt be basically 16 pages of flaming if anet did their job right.

HawkofStorms · Jun 12, 2009, 11:51 PM // 23:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by sup bruh its sam

but we can all agree that there wouldnt be basically 16 pages of flaming if anet did their job right.

"Right?" Which is what exactly? What could a.net do that we would all agree on as a good thing?