Some Info about Community Relations

[Silly Lily]

Originally Posted by Moa Bird Cultist
And nobody's actually answered my question either, it's just been skipped around. Ok, so Gaile and Andrew are lacking in PvP knowledge according to 99% of the PvP community. Examples? Aside from isolated examples of AoE definition and whatnot, where is the hard proof? Exactly. Neither you nor I actually know exactly how they play the game, so lets not make assumptions based purely on one or two verbal blunders from a year ago.

Originally Posted by Silly Lily

I would like to know if Andrew Patrick has ever been on a top guild's vent?
Has he played with these guilds that have been around from the start?
Does he play with those who are just starting out?
Does he know who in the community is really knowledgeable about this game?
Does he know the basics to forming a build for gvg?
Does he know how gvg works?
Does he know that pvp isnt limited to RA and TA and that every single pvp arena is different from one another?
Does he even UNDERSTAND why soul reaping needed a fix?
Was Andrew present during Jade map testing?
Was he present during test AT's?
Does he gvg, HA, TA, and RA daily?
Has he done all this from the start?
Does he know what the metagame is without having to read about it?

The CR I want for pvp should know those basics. If you dont play this game like the more dedicated pvp-ers in this community then how do you expect to gain some credibility?

Please dont just read the latest page in a thread, there are TONS of posts in here that are very specific. I am leaving Gaile out of PvP since supposedly shes PvE CR, i wouldnt know how she handles that. I assume she is at least very knowledablge about the pve world.

[Voltar]

i posted a thread in the sanitarium and have yet to get much response from those unhappy with anet

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10169921

suggesting volunteer player correspondents. the idea being that those who legitimately have issues would have a "HA correspondent" or "GvG correspondent" who primarily plays the game.

Those with real issues can post other suggestions there, modify that one, or whatever. Those that just want to complain can stick their fingers back up their noses now.

[Narcism]

Originally Posted by Silly Lily

Please dont just read the latest page in a thread, there are TONS of posts in here that are very specific. I am leaving Gaile out of PvP since supposedly shes PvE CR, i wouldnt know how she handles that. I assume she is at least very knowledablge about the pve world.

If you're saying she's a PvE CR, there's something clearly out of whack in the CR department. Because as far as I know, her and andrew are supposed to address both communities.

[Turbobusa]

why not include a link to the debates on skill changes, polls on party size in ha... on the login screen? I know there is link to different polls on the login screen of Dofus (< funny little mmo... talking about balance, LOL), this way people are aware that changes are being discussed.

Also someone suggested that the infos we get from the devs were more "we are discussing changes on that - this is 80% done".
I think its a very, very good idea.
This way there is no more "why did they change this? why in this way?"
Inform us on why one proposed change is better than another. this way we can learn how you think and stop thinking our way, which obviously isn't good

[DreamWind]

Originally Posted by lyra_song

ZoS' position on the ladder is irrelevant to Andrew's own PvP experience.

Actually it isn't. I know that guild is mostly an PvE oriented guild. Thats besides the point though. What we are talking about is a representative that has HIGH TOP LEVEL knowledge of what needs to be balanced, why it needs to be balanced, and when it needs to be balanced. If you aren't playing against these OP builds regularly, how can you know they need to be changed? I think most of the pvp community is tired of having to flood forums to get the message across.

Thankfully some of the recent issues have been heard, but not all of them.

Spearmen are barely in the top 1000, would you say they are a sucky in PvP as well?

Yes. My guild hasn't gvged in about 5 months and is still T1000.

[stevedallas]

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

MistressYichi, I understand your thoughts, and I do see what you are suggesting. You say, "While it is not your job to hold our hand and inform us everytime your team decided to pick up a pencil and write down an idea, it IS your job however to inform us about the status and development of said ideas that are knowingly going to be inplimented into the game," but allow me to comment:

We are the messengers, but we do not create the messages. We cannot provide more information than we are given, and we cannot say more than we are permitted to say. It's not for lack of trying – I ask often "Can I tell players this information?" But the answer may range from "Sure" to "No" (which is not common) to "It's premature to talk about it because we are not sure if or when [this change] [that balance update] [those features] will be implemented."

We've found over time that saying "We are definitely working on that feature," can come back to bite us when the feature takes longer than the players think that it should. (Or, sometimes longer than we said it would. ) A case in point, if you were around long last year, was reconnects. Reconnects was on the boards before release. We made it clear we were planning it, and that we acknowledged that it would be a very vital part of the game. But by talking about it, it became a focus, and players began the "You promised…" comments. Another example is the PvE-only skills, which as you just saw in the Update Notes included more than Sunspear skills after all. They were promised, but the time that they took caused distress, and they became a focal point for frustration. Maybe—and I imagine this won't be a popular idea—we give too much information. What if we'd worked on those without mentioning it—like we did the storage update—and surprised everyone? It's an interesting idea, don't you think?

Your example of the ATS updates is a good one, because both things happened. We talked about it coming, but we also had to delay it. We definitely shouldn't have talked about that until later, and we should have given more information—and a more accurate timeline—whenever one became available. I think that it would have been better to say "We're going to delay this three months" instead of "We're delaying a few weeks" several times. (But in fact the "few weeks" was more accurate, because we really didn’t know that it would take as long as it did.) Anyway, I agree we didn't provide very good information or give a very accurate timeline, and I'll be sure to keep that particular incident in mind and share it in the future, because we can use that as an example of deciding how and when to give information.

The designers decide what changes will be made, when they will be made, and when they can be talked about. We (CT members) can make sure the designers are kept up to date on player concerns, can check back for more information later, and most of all can look forward to being able to provide more info or to give a firm release timeline when it's given to us, and when we're given clearance to share it.

Nytestalker: I understand what you're asking, as well, but posting takes time—more time than reading and assessing posts. Designers could spend time responding to forum posts while they develop the game, it's true. But doing one really does come at a cost to the other. And to which post, of thousands, should the designer respond in a "once a week" situation? And how to not offend the other posters who don't get a response?

Constructive comments welcome!

Gaile,

Please see my post at:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10170924

In addition, I'd like to offer one more comment and present one additional question:

The comment:
In regards to your second paragraph... I truly understand what you're saying and where you're coming from. The team I lead at my company is responsible for supporting the staff from over 8,000 advertisers as well as over 2,500 employees in my company in much the same way that aNets dev team AND PR team supports its customers. The systems my team manages and maintains gross over $500 million a year. I understand what it's like to be under the gun constantly and to have people who never seem satisfied brow beating you. I'm not going to say that you're right or wrong, I'm not in the room with you or your team, but I do seriously have to suggest that your team reassess it's commentary and create a new process for information provided to your customers. A lot of the issues and discontent that is expressed on this site and several others is due to the information aNet does provide and especially over the past 10 months, it's largely been counter- productive.

The question:
How do you think aNet's dev practices tie in to all these issues that have been discussed and, equally importantly, what does aNet feel would be a good solution?

[Winterclaw]

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

I can understand frustration, I can understand concern, I can understand irritation, but I cannot understand the disrespect.

IMO some of the disrespect towards CR is earned individually. I remember a post once in the SB forums where the CR was joining in a flame war. I remember the EVE incident where one of the team members was using his dev powers to help the guild he was in and give allied guilds info so they'd win an event for good ingame prizes and how the team first ignored it, then seemed not to do anything about it. Not sure what the outcome was cause the main source I had to that game quit playing because of the incident. I've also seen other CMs act very arrogent at the wrong times, when people were having legitimate complants the CMs were giving them a "shut up and like it" attitude. I've seen CMs (in general) when they could give players an honest answer like "I can't answer that" or "I don't know" dodge or divert the issue.

IMO that, for the industry anyways, is one of the biggest sources of disrespect I've seen. So I would ask that if you think that there is disrespect towards CMs, make sure none of it is earned. I'm not familiar enough with Anet CMs to know of all the happenings so I won't make accusitions but I will say that CMs are humans too and might occasionally make a mistake that earns them a little disrespect. Once you've safely eliminated that as a possiblity, then you can just checkmark irate people raging.


I also think part of Anet's problem is not being open with us early enough. The loot scaling thing is a perfect example. You guys originally had a system in place, if you bothered to mention all the details 3 days before going live, the players could have told you about the problem you eventually had to fix. A beta server the players can access or being more willing to tell us what is just about to happen instead of springing things on us might aliviate the problems a little.

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

Even at times when you have the apparent majority on you side on the forums, that is a skewed statistic since (A) Less than ¼ of players in online games generally post on forums and (B) the people with complaints are the ones posting while the people who are perfectly content are in the game, playing it and enjoying it.

A sounds better than the last voter turn out which raised our local taxes. A&B can be fixed if you put an ingame survey into the game so that once a month, when a person logs in, he has to complete a short survey before he can play.

[Sir Green Aluminum]

I can see the stress veins popping on this guy's head while reading his post, I can see some angry verbage in use here, "professionals" being used multiple times. Your pro's so what are we? Impatience, rudeness, disrespect.... immature... I don't know if you realized what you were saying because you were upset with the community but those were keywords and as you can see it got alot of response from the community. I and most people who use the net would know what people act like on the net. Maybe it was your "professional status" that kept your anger bottled up until it burst out in this post? Your job has thanks, people made a thank you post and you do get a pay check. And yeah you expect when working on the net to get flamed for doing almost anything. It's like a federal agent expecting to get shot at or a psychologist dealing with carzy people or mentally ills. Well at least you said thank you for reading this post. Thank you for reading my post alsos.

P.S please nerf gimmick builds....

Jk I know that's what GW2 is, I'm looking forward to that ANET release and Eye of the North.

[Plague]

Try actually explaining the problems behind some players' suggestions. If it is so complicated that players are speaking out of their butt and making dumb suggestions over and over, then just explain why the suggestion won't work, or why it would damage the game, and you'll find a dropoff in perceived stupidity.

There's no reason for there to be an open and honest community involvement ONLY when the developer-community relationship is damaged.

I think most of the problem isn't that you're trying to make everyone happy. I think it's that when a question is raised, there's no feedback from development. Ideas and complaints are taken from the community, silently analyzed, and a decision is met. It gives the impression that the developers consider this THEIR game, while the community that plays the game considers it THEIRS. It leaves perceived arrogance on ANet's part, which in turn leads to perceived incompetence when those ideas don't pan out.

I personally find fault with development for that reason - not that my ideas or ideas I agree with are not being used, but that there seems to be the mindset of "I'm always right, the community is simply a bothersome child we must attend to as its mood shifts." Come to the forums with explanations of why things won't work, ask for feedback rather than injecting your own ideas in the game during weekends and subversively testing the reaction, and keep in mind that you're human and subsequently can make stupid design decisions, despite any degree of experience. Not that the community is more qualified to make a good one, but two heads are better than one, after all.

[DreamWind]

This thread is still going?

It has basically already been shown that there are no decent PvP reps for the community. The current team represents the PvE side of the game.

And the thought that fan forums only represent 1/4 of the population is a big part of the problem. The PvP community posts here because Anet people can't be reached anywhere else short of the few with contacts. Hell, they can't even be reached here most of the time. That is why it seems like there is very little exchange of information and updates take ages.

If the idea of the reps (I can't really call them reps because there are no PvP reps) is to serve the majority, which would be the PvE players, that is fine. But just recognize and acknowledge that PvP has had an extremely rapid and obvious decline because of it.

[Sparks Dawnbringer]

Andrew,
It seems you have had a bad day. Being old enough to be your grandmother, I get a bit tired with the let the professionals do their jobs angle. These forums are the only place we have to make sugestions and gripe. Having to post here is kind of like you asking for input but not really giving a hoot for it when we do post. Even posting here, I never feel anyone hears me. I wish you had some kind of personal feedback. I know it would cost a fortune and take forever. But even if someone just once in awhile personally addressed something it would help.

Guild Wars has a big design problem. PvE and PvP are 2 different games and I know you tried to intergrate them into one and did a moderately good job at it, but they still exist a bit like oil and water you need something better to stick them together.

I certainly understand you will never please all of the people all of the time, but so many of the improvements seem to have nothing to to with things posted on the forum. For instance please tell me who asked for loot scaling. I know that at one time you were afraid people were getting too rich, but now it is so hard to make money we cannot keep up with the game. I love the titles but it is so expensive to get them we need to be able to make money. And I would personally rather not spend my time in town trying to sell a max gold for a pittance. I would rather sell to the vender and go out and PLAY. Who decided hard mode was a good idea. Well maybe it was a good idea but it did not go far enough, I mean it is hard but the profit from it isn't any better than normal mode. It seems like you rushed it together to shut us up, but didn't think it through. You set the bar too high. In the beginning Guild Wars was awesome. Now, every time you add something it is expected to be as good as it was in he beginnig.

Yes, I agree we all should be a bit nicer to everyone. We know you work hard. You have created a very nice product that come with 4 million baby birds each crying for its next meal. Try not taking the posts so personally.

For me Guild Wars is a place to go when work is too nuts. I can take out my frustration on the undead, and as a Smiting Monk I can do some serious damage.

Well, thanks for a place to spend my weekends. Nights and every spare minute. Sparks, Raven and Myst Dawnbringer {that's right I have 3 accounts}

[Lorinda]

I dont see the point in changing a game that works.
Why do we always need to change things that work? Its not always change is good.. If your car runs, do you give it a better enging if you just use it to go to work and back?

Heres a list of odd changes *in my eyes*
(you will be anet in this case)
First stop, You changed Heroes Ascent to 6 man and got us Kill Count.
The people only asked for new MAPS, that you also promised.
Till this day we never saw a new map.
Then you changed it back to 8vs8, after losing many of the old players that felt left out.

Then the changes when Nightfall came. 2 powerfull charaters joined the game.
and one of them you can only shut down with 1 hex.
Also the gameplay changes. a lot. Every single title changes. or gets modded.
After a random amount of odd skill changes, finally a good one comes. This time you lissend to players.
Now continue doing so, and you might get a decent game again.

Maybe try a questionlist online in the game somewhere. Make a NPC for it or something i dont mind.This game has NPC's for nearly every thing. Give a small reward for giving your opinion of the game. It might help you getting a better game.

I know the job is hard for those that make the changes. But one mind cant think of all the things a whole world can think of.
And it also helps if most posts dont get deleted.
Maybe you, Andrew or Gaile has to start your own topics more offen to see what people want in this game now.

Thanks for reading. Dont mind the english, im wordblind or what they call it in english anyways

[CDittric77]

I enjoy the informatoin Gaile provides us and cheer ANet for their work. You have revolutionized the MMO and we are all better off for it! Hate the haters, not the game .