An Open Letter to ANet

Dear A-Net,

First, I would like to clarify that this isn't a flame, or a rant, but rather a collection of warranted complaints and questions that need real answers. Instead of attempting to email this to you (or deliver it in some other fashion) where I assume I would get an unfriendly automated response, I am posting this here where all of the community can also share in whatever answers you may have for me. I certainly hope the discussion in the thread doesn't get too heated, but it's hard to believe that that's avoidable.

I have played Guild Wars for over two years now, and in general I have enjoyed the game for the duration of my stay. I have always followed a philosophy that states that any mistake can be made under almost any circumstances, as long as the mistake is fixed, learned from and not repeated. Unfortunately, the mistakes you make are simply repeated. Until now, I have turned a blind eye, but after three chapters and an expansion, I feel I need to get a straight answer as to what you're even doing anymore.

The original Guild Wars was almost an experiment to see if it was possible to have a successful online game that required no monthly fee. In that aspect you succeeded, to a serious degree. Was it this sales figure success that lulled you into the impression that you could just continue to experiment with your game without taking into account the player base that you were affecting? Truly, the primary problem with your game design, in my opinion, is that you have no real way of judging how happy or upset the community is; they buy the game, then it stops mattering what you do it. The money is in your pocket. You can delete all the skills in the game and your subscriptions won't go away because there aren't any; if everyone stopped playing right now, today, you could look at the sales figures and claim the whole thing was a huge success, and completely ignore the millions of enraged players who would be wondering just how badly they've been duped (no pun intended).

The entire duration of each game so far has been more about making sure everyone stays just happy enough that they'll buy the next chapter/expansion than it has been about making sure that the community is having fun and staying pumped about playing just in general. Unfortunately, this stems from your mis-estimation regarding what the community's primary focus would be at high levels of game play; it was your original plan to have PvP be the only part of the game that really mattered. Much to your surprise, I'm sure, it turned out that more sales were coming from players who wanted to go on presearing e-dates and raid FoW than from HoH/GvG style players. I'm sure you really, really wanted to focus all of the skill balancing and game play improvements on PvP, but with Chapter 2 in mind you knew that abandoning PvE as an important format would mean a catastrophic loss of revenue in the long run.

Unable to abandon one format entirely, you were left with two choices: split PvE and PvP into two entirely separate games with different rules and balancing structures for each, or keep them together in one big completely imbalancable environment in which the goal was to try and keep two entirely separate player groups interested in the same content at the same time. You chose #2. Oops.

Chapters 2 and 3 were wrong for a lot of reasons, but I won't bother going into that much. You must have realized the error, since you... you know... abandoned that format of release altogether. I would explain how it should have been done, but happily you figured it out yourself and went as far as to release it in the form of the game's first expansion: Guild Wars: Eye of the North. I was extremely excited to see that you had finally figured out how to completely separate PvE from PvP, through a combination of normal skills and PvE only ones. The normal skills that are released in this way are easy to keep balanced since you only need to really consider them in the PvP context, because PvE players will always have access to their own set of skills which are balanced separately for their own environment. You also forgot all of the shit you made up about Cantha and Elona that basically no one cared at all about in the first place and rezoned in your focus on what all the PvE players had cared about from the beginning: Charr, Dwarves, the Jungle, the original continent. And then, to top it off, you were going to add in dungeons! Lots of dungeons! A PvE'rs wet dream. Success!

... Or so I had thought. Upon the release of GW:EN, I was greeted by disappointment after disappointment rather than the challenges and content I had not only been expecting, but had been promised. According to all the advertising and information you released about the expansion, it was going to be a high end area, designed for only the better players, where the risks would be made worth it by the rewards.

You lied.

I beat the campaign portion of the game with two friends and 5 heroes eleven hours after the game's release. Here come my first questions...

1. Why don't Destroyer type creatures even have Monks? Rits? Anything that heals them?
Yeah, they hit for a lot. Yeah, you can't really block anything they do. Yeah, they're immune to Burning. Who cares? 2 Necro heroes and 2 Mesmer heroes running hexes, and you don't even take damage. They just die. You can survive an unlimited amount of them, and it's not even a challenge because they have no Condition removal, and their only Hex removal is Hex Eater Vortex and Shatter Hex. I'm supposed to believe that the ultimate hardcore badass foe in the whole world of Tyria, the ones that are going to consume EVERYTHING, don't even have heals? Not even Heal Sig?

2. Why are the rewards you can receive from the endgame Droknar's Key collectors so... bad?
Forget the stats, who cares what the stats are. Someone will like the stats. Let's instead look at the skins... every single one of the things you offer there are old skins dyed pale blue to look like stone. As Souske likes to ask: Are you kidding me? Even the Forgotten at the end of Nightfall had some cool skins (i.e. the Forgotten Blade). I mean, I might have thought the Dwarven Axe was cool if it wasn't, you know, available as an inscribable skin from a collector in the Central Transfer Chamber.

Those two questions plagued me at that point, but the hits kept coming. Immediately my two friends and I (hardly fatigued despite our 11 hours of play; we had been prepared for plenty more) decided to try out some dungeons. Picking one at near random, we carefully formed the team build (still 3 people and 5 heroes) and then set out, expecting our first real challenge of GW:EN. Devastatingly, it was instead only more disappointment that we found. That night, after a half dozen successful dungeons cleared, we all retired to bed, wondering why we had even bought the game. Though some dungeons offer clever challenges, nothing, not one, none of the dungeons are even close to the level of difficulty of The Deep, Urgoz, DoA, or even Underworld. Here are a few more questions...

3. Why do only some of the final dungeon bosses posses devastatingly overpowered monster skills?
The final boss of the Sepulchre of Dragrimmar, the Remnant of Antiquities, boasts the devastating skill Diamondshard Mist. Despite the relatively short actual dungeon, it is a satisfying challenge due to his impressive firepower, specifically his monster skill. This gave me hope that each dungeon would have such a challenge at the end, much in the way that Urgoz and Kanaxai can easily decimate an entire party even if the whole rest of the dungeon had not been much of a challenge. Sadly, I discovered that this was not the case. Many of the final bosses of dungeons are really no more capable of killing you than their underlings, i.e. Havok Soulwail, the final boss of the Darkrime Delves. Why is this?

4. Why is it completely impossible to fail a dungeon?
Your party wipes, you rez. Your party wipes at 60% DP, you rez. Your ally, who is required for your quest, dies... he rezes. I had though during the preview weekend that these were just ways of allowing everyone to get a good feel for how dungeons would work, however I was wrong, all of these things are still true. Why? Why are there rez shrines in dungeons when there is nothing of the kind in any previous game's high end area? Why do NPCs just stand back up when killed, after nearly two years of part of the challenge being keeping them alive?

The next morning, I woke up to find out that I just might have been wrong. Careful searching had revealed to the public the location of the only Elite Dungeon of the game. Two hours later, however, I was returned to my previous level of disappointment. Additional questions:

5. Why, in the hardcore expansion boasting specifically high end content, is there only one elite dungeon out of eighteen, and why is it not any harder than the other dungeons?
I called and got one of my friends out of bed to hop on and give it a try with me, and an hour and half and later we had beaten three out of the four bosses leading up to Duncan and had stopped caring, as people had reported that they had already completed the whole thing, and that there was nothing interesting out of the chest. Is this called an elite dungeon just because it's a bit longer than the others? And why is the quest marked not just Master's Level but Elite. It's not.

6. Why are Destroyer weapons so woefully easy to acquire?
Tormented weapons require either a huge amount of game play or a large amount of cash to purchase, and they were even more expensive before the price deflated to its current level. Why do Destroyer weapons cost a fraction of what Tormented weapons (or FoW armor for that matter...) do/did, when they are apparently the elite skin of GW:EN?

Saddened by all this, I formed an additional two questions in my next few days of hero/hench dungeon crawling. In this time I pushed my Deldrimor Reputation title track up far enough to be able to look at armor, but upon inspection of the tiny armor icons I decided that I would be better off looking online to see if anyone had already purchased the sets and gotten some pictures up. As the pictures dripped in, I formed this question...

7. Why are all the GW:EN armor sets just old armor sets with portions of the graphics changed?
Of all the things that I was sure of, I was most sure that there would be some cool new armor that would keep people both interested and grinding for a while to come. How could you possibly release a nearly 100% PvE expansion without a healthy dose of new armor skins? Sure you added in some cool individual things, i.e. Chaos Gloves, Blindfolds, etc., but those hardly sate that appetite that most PvE players have for armor. Having interesting armor is basically one of the primary objectives of your average GW PvE player, and I was pretty sure you knew that. Hell, the new hero armor is pretty awesome... why do they get cool new armor skins while we get old, reskinned garbage?

Finally, bits and pieces of everything I've said so far could be at least partially fixed by one thing: Hard Mode. I have reached the biggest problem that I have with this expansion.

8. Why is Hard Mode not yet in the game?

You advertised Guild Wars: Eye of the North as the place that was supposed to be hard, yet the defining characteristic of all PvE since the release of Hard Mode has been how hard a place is in HM, not normal mode. I won't say that no one cares about normal mode, but for an area that is supposed to be designed for skilled players looking for a challenge, how can you not have HM in the game?

Of all the questions I've asked, I'm sad to say that it's #8, the one that bothers me the most, that I know the answer to. Despite your smart move of abandoning the Chapter system and instead releasing an expansion, you are still a slave to the marketing system that the Guild Wars franchise binds you to. With no subscriptions, your only source of revenue is to ensure that the next game in line is bought, not that people are happy the whole time they are playing the current release.

You are with-holding Hard Mode from us because you need to have something to put out between now and Guild Wars 2 to keep people playing long enough for you to finish making the next game.

It doesn't even bother me that you're doing this, because I understand that you have no other choice due to the system that you have put in place for yourselves as far as income. I would just appreciate it if you'd come out and tell us that this is what you're doing, and give us a realistic estimate of when we can expect to have Hard Mode in GW:EN.

Now if any ANet officials actually read this and consider it objectively, you may wonder to yourself, "Why would I answer these questions? Why would I post here and openly admit our company's strategy?" The answer is actually simple: People are not going to buy Guild Wars 2 otherwise. You fail to understand that the fact that GW2 is not on the same timeline GW1 means that players of GW1 are no longer obligated to pay for it just to stay competitive.

If you do not bridge the gap between company and player that has been so long neglected by sub-par PR, I feel you will not enjoy the same success with this game's sequel as you have enjoyed so far. Please, for everyone's sake, let's put the old animosities aside and have a laugh at the charade that we've endured for so long. Help us in the Guild Wars community feel like we're on the same team as you, all hoping for a good outcome game wise, rather than how it is now, as though we are the children and you are the parents, and we have no say in anything.

Sincerely,
A loyal and concerned player,
Sha Noran

This is a high quality post that should be read.

This is an excellent post, which asks the important questions that ALL of us have been considering since Eye of the North's release. I urge everyone to read all of the post, as there is no point making posts without understanding the whole thing. Hopefully this can result in some good discussion, as it involves a lot of issues that people have been having with EOTN.

Great post! You express many of things I have been feeling about Gw for the last little while. As much as I like EOTN I have felt that it has been insanely easy for "high level content".

Anyway, well written, lets hope someone from ANET will actually respond.

Bravo. Why can we rez in dungeons? It's beyond my understanding.

I too share many of the same concerns... But I would like to add that the game that I play isn't the game that was promised to me. I was told that Guild Wars was supposed to be about the skill level of the player rather than the willingness of that player to grind to get a skill to a certain norn/asura/whatever level.

I like GW:EN a lot but I don't think it's perfect, far from it to be honest. The OP pointed out all of the bad, ugly and damn right stupid stuff in the expansion. And I for one, would like to hear the answer for questions no.2-7.

Very well written, Noran.

No subscription fees means a lack of further investment investment. It's painful considering PvP tournaments suffered, and now it's painful because of the woefully poor characteristics of the PvE. What was GW advertised as? A game with little-no grind? A game where skill > time spent? I'm pretty sure I've been disappointed throughout, ever since the initial release of Prophecies, with how ArenaNet failed to stick to that principle that they highlighted so massively when GW was in production.

In interviews, they have stated pve was develeoped 1st, and pvp 2nd. Pvp was the 1st to be really demo to the public. That being said, the vision was to have 1 game offer both equally. Factions seem to try and help bridge the pvp/pve rift (with ab battles) but Nightfall and Eotn seem to be heavly focused on PvE.

I do see the split with GW2. PvE with a more (guessing AB/AVA pvp like) and a sepearte structred pvp system (TA, HoH,etc).

1. There seem like an insect mass producing race that bent on an instinct based goal - we see as destory, they see as convert.

2. Aggree to an extent - there not as hard as an "end game" part as I was thinking. I think the reason is they do want casual players to be able to do them.

3. Actually those boses were doable for me (hero/hench). I did have gwen set up for intrupt messmer but she was only able to stop that 50% of the time.

4. I like this feature, and it's balanced out by 60dp will have a hard time.

5. Can't comment - not been there yet

6. I think the reason is there Gwen unlocks and having to grind for 11 sets x8 slots (if you own all 3 games) was a big factor on how easy to get.

7. Agree, there ok but I thought they would turn out a lot better.

8. My guess it they weren't done with the EOTN when it released. I say this as the amount sheer amount of "see through soild walls" when changing camer angles compare to previous released as example. I would like to see a detailed interview with the lead dev saying why they chose what they did.

QFT

This whole armor for faction bit seriously concerns me, as well as PvE skills for an insane amount of grind. Nightfall PvE skills I was fine with because you could get level 9 on a skill just from simple playing the game. By the time your done with Nightfall your PvE skill would be rank 9 easy. In GWEN however your reputation does not have an equal playing area's for each faction. I mean come on 3 explorable area's for Ebon Vanguard reputation points?, compared to 18 multi level dungeons for Dwarf reputation points?

It used to be if you had the money and money is no easy task for an average player you can simply buy armor. You went insane on collector items (250 destroyer cores?) for simple armor items. You had all kinds of fun possibilities with CTF style PvP games that could have had monsters to ride in, etc. Even PvP polymock or random 1v1 arenas was possible but you simply missed that opportunity.

You need to re discover your roots again that made GW such a gem in the first place. Otherwise you are doomed to fail in GW2.

Great post dude well worded and worthy of responce. I do have one question i would like to attach. The hall of Monuments is supposed to be set up so in GW2 u can either view your past achievements or possible use the armor and weapons, now question is unless you actually link GW2 to GW1 like u link factions to prophesies how are you to actually use hall of monuments in GW2?

Hard mode, wiping due to bosses, crappy enemies, reskin armor, etc, are not loot related points, and since most of them aren't about loot, calling this thread a "loot whine" is a flame. Yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. Deleted Post. Don't re-post, either.

mm. While I agree on some things to a certain extent, I disagree in many others.

First of all is the way you state your opinions as the Divine Truth, ie. "Chapter 2 and 3 were wrong for a lot of reasons". Well, I find some things to fault about Factions, but I still like it, nonetheless. And Nightfall, it is my favorite campaign, as I found the new classes, the story's pacing and many of the environments to be much more pleasing and fun than any of the preceding chapters.

As for the part concerning difficulty, you must again keep in mind not everyone thinks and plays like you. Right now, there is another thread posted by a player who's puzzled by the difficulty of GWEN, and specifically the overpowered monster attacks. Me, I personally think the difficulty is fine, keeping in mind this is normal mode, and should thus be accessible to anyone who wants to play. So if you think what's out there is not a challenge worthy of your time, go play with a 6-player party, or something.

So basically, I'd agree partially with some of your opinions expressed in the first five paragraphs or so, but I disagree with the fact that the game, being an expansion, should be very difficult from the get-go and automatically filter out the more casual players. That is just wrong, unless they somehow marketed their game with huge warnings about only the most elite players ever being able to finish the game's quests (which they didn't, and wouldn't, since it would be terribly unwise, greatly diminishing the game's sales).

I am impressed by your abilities to breeze through the game. However I think that if EoN was as hard as you hoped then a majority of players would be hopelessly frustrated and ANet would be catering the game to players of your level in the same way you suggested that ANet caters the game to PvP players rather than PvE. I am happy I can enjoy EoN, obtain PvE skills, and basicly have fun without first investing 2 years in game. becoming very good at playing the game, and finding friends that can play at the same level.

1. ) To make sure that everyone can beat them, duh. In worst case screnario, 60dped party could chip on them and they wouldnt even have to kill one inbetween of reses.

People not able to best something get whiney, this is not early 90's when people admited they suck if they couldnt finish game and still had fun with it. this is 00's when not being bale to do something on seccond try in video game is end of world and requires torching developers for showing one that hes not smart.

2. ) Yes, good questions.

Why are spears, for example, just dyed collector skins (ffs!)

3. ) See no. 1 They must make sure that when someone picks three dungeons at random, he will be able to beat at least 2 of them withou much pain.

4. ) See no. 1 and 3 Again, they much make sure that casuall player can have fun, even thou it makes gameplay retarded.

5. ) To give people who beat this "elite" ego trip. "Oh, lookie, i did beat this elite dungeon, sweet, my mending DOES rock".

On serious note, Elite areas usually were too hard and forced people to use ludicrous teambuilds or plain exploits to beat them. Easier areas allow more fun teambuilds, and are actually harder because people are not forced to find exploit to make it dead easy.

Okay, there is already exploit making Slavers boss a lot less threatening, but its not really necesary.

6. ) Experiment. tormented weapons were too hard to obtain without serious grinding or ebaying (or duping, heh), so they now made elite items easier. Besides, 100k per item is still not exactly cheap. It's not like you will have every casuall wielding them in week.

7. ) Design 40 armor sets, you have X months to do this. Devs just didnt have time to come up with proper armors.

I dont really mind, for me it means that i can be unconcerned about that reputation grind since all you really need is to get one character to r3 (to get access to perfect salvage kits).

Only Paragon norn armor is somewhat interesting, mostly because all other paragon armors sucks more.

8. ) Just give them few months.

---

I think that you need to realize that GW is not really designed to support "phat loot" collecting.

Because dungeons are too hard for most, adding failure would make them impossible for most.

This puts you in top 10% of PvE players. The other 90% are too busy dying on their SF eles and MMs.

You answered your own question. Tormented weapons have absurd costs for no real value.

There is exactly one elite dungeon. The rest are same as Sorrow's Furnace.

Let's not.

I, for one, only care about stats. I never understood why people chase Crystaline or whatever Skin-du-jour is.

Because it is. There are just no absurd environmental effects, or mobs that spike with 500 AoE damage or similar nonsense found in DoA. The dungeon is Elite, but balanced. Play smart, and it's easy.

So you're unhappy with the game for almost 2 years now, but feel the need to critique a chapter that recently came out?

There are other games which provide "challenging" expansions and "long term" gameplay, and "hard to obtain" items.

To the OP, did you read this?

Jeff Strain's speech


http://www.guildwars.com/events/trad...7/gcspeech.php

"...Finally, you can make everyone happy, but you can't make everyone happy all the time. It is risky to try to make decisions that appeal to all players equally. Don't fall into the trap of making decisions based on what causes the least amount of pain, because this can lead to a game that is just kind of "okay" and doesn't really excite anybody. When you have a large, active, and passionate player base, every decision you make, every change to the game, no matter how convinced you are that it makes the game strictly better, will piss someone off, and they'll post about it, blog about it, rant to the press about it, loudly and publicly predict that this is the "beginning of the end" of your game, and send hate mail to your community and support teams. MMO developers have to have thick skins, but always remember that if one of your players is angry with you, it is because he really cares about the game, and that's much healthier for you than apathy. Go with your instincts and make the right decision for your game..."

"..Pay close attention to complexity creep. Don't assume that most of your players are reading your website and consuming information about your game. Most of your players will never read your website, never visit fansites, and never participate in forum discussions. We are often immersed in the community forums and rants and raves posted to game fansites, and it is easy to lose perspective about the knowledge level of most of our players. Players who participate in fansites and send six-page emails to your community team are experts at your game – they probably know more about it than you do – so it's important to realize that they do not represent the average player. The vast majority of your players are not digging into every detail of every spell or creating lists of animations so that they can react when they see the basilisk twitch its nose. They want to play, not study, so take care to create a game that allows them to do so..."

"...Developing a new MMO requires a lot of money and a lot of time. If you are starting today and don't have at least three years and $30 million dollars, consider developing in another genre. Also be prepared to attract and manage a large development team. We have 140 full-time developers working on Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 at ArenaNet, and that number will probably have to grow throughout the Guild Wars 2 development cycle. It is much easier and less risky to make exciting, innovative games in other genres. Unfortunately, some of us just can't make that decision – we're intoxicated by the thought of building the ultimate MMO, and we feel compelled to dedicate our lives to that pursuit. If that describes you, then by all means jump in and let's keep pushing the boundaries of possibility together. But bring cash – lot's of it – and make sure that you are working with people on the business side who are willing to let you make the best game you can make, because there are no successful B-titles in the MMO industry.

I'll end by paraphrasing the famous Japanese game designer, Masaya Matsuura: Go forth, and do weird and difficult things! ..."

You are just another hardcore Roxxxxxor whiner stop admiring your navel, you are not alone & think about the hundred thousand...and many more players. You want a REAL game challenge ====> play chess at a high level....

GW isn't for hardcore PvE players, if you are really that unhappy, find another game.

great post, well thought out and well written.