Time for ANet to make what they promised?

A few of us still remember that assurance. Sadly it seems most of the community seems to have let go of that dream. A.net hasn't even said a word about it since then.

Information would be welcome!

To be fair, there was a ridiculous number of people whining about how the lips didn't move in cutscenes. Yes, more have probably asked about trade, but still, the number of people who are bothered by simple voiceovers is mindboggling.

Also it probably was just a junior programmer and an animator who were working on the lip sync deal. There's only so many people you can throw at a single problem before they begin to clog up the pipeline and gunk up the gears.

I agree with you that it doesn't affect the gameplay at all. It's okay.

Hellgate London will be out later this year, other games there will be eventually, etc.

Right back at you. In any business model, with almost any product the plan is to get people back to buy their next product. They'll add incentives or create a want or need so that people will buy. Does that really mean it's an ongoing payment model? Not really.

If I bought Half Life and then bought Half Life 2, does that mean there was some sort of ongoing payment model? It's not a ongoing payment model if buying the next Chapter is OPTIONAL and not MANDATORY, no matter how attractive the next Chapter is.

You might have a leg to stand on with PVP and staying competitive, but even that is something that you have control over whether to spend more or not. This is not like rent where either you pay or you get kicked out, GW is more like paying the deposit on an apartment and getting to live there forever and only paying if you want additions to the house.

Did you catch that thread (don't remember), where I brought this up, and Gaile responded? She basically said, that while this weekend's free access isn't THE change, it is A change.

I wanted to e-slap her

Yeah, anyone who's been around for a while and really kept up with the dev communications via Gaile would not be surprised about that. That's how communication has been for a while.

1. Question A.
2. Promise A.
3. Deliver "B" with the label of "A".
4. Blame reader comprehension for not knowing better. (that whole content vs. feature garbage? lol)

This brings to light another gripe I have. It's unfair of me to want to 'e-slap' her (hehe), because she's caught in an impossible position: the disconnect between the devs and the customers is at an all-time high, and she's stuck in the position where she has to make the two ends meet. She can't force the devs to address an issue many of us have serious concerns about -- instead she acknowledges a the problem and promises its fix. Meanwhile, the devs are spending their time with what they think is most important, that being the Paragons 'needing' to be nerfed six feet under, and what everyone has been hollaring for: lip-synching /sarcasm

and in the midst of all this, when there are gaping problems with the game, the devs send gaile back to us with, hey don't look at that stinky old problem, there's a shiny new event to distract you!

in this i see a great irony

Ah, my post you quoted probably makes it sound like I find Gaile to fault for that disconnect, so I should clarify here:

I don't (except for that time she blamed the readers, but that was defensive on her part, but still). I blame the developers. Or whoever is in charge of the developers giving information to Gaile, so Gaile can give that same information to us. Not her interpretation, not her guess, not the result of her lucky coin flip. But the actual information. Seeing the last 2 weeks, it's almost as if the developers play an entirely different game or live in a bubble. They may not even speak the same language as Gaile or the customers*, at this point. I think this paragon nerf is evidence of that.

Ultimately, something should start changing in this matter, I think.

Tell that to the mass of people that complained about the lack of lip synching.

Trolls are always unahppy with something - that's why they are trolls! Anything you can do they can do better...they can do anything better than you!

I chaulk it up to Anet using bandaid to cover a flesh wound type of thing.

who the hell complained about lack of lip synching? Everyone just skips the scene anyway (except PvPers who don't even care)

colossal waste of time considering the very fundamental broken aspects of this game

I quite enjoy the cutscenes. I'm a huge fan of a solid storyline, and how it progresses, so I always watch the cutscenes instead of just skipping ahead so that I can get to the end quicker. What was that hundreds of people have said throughout history? It's a cliche, yes, but the journey is the worthier part.

But, besides that, I was really really impressed that they did all the cutscenes for all of Prophecies and Factions. That would have taken a long time. But it's not like they had the entire team working on it. It's not like they only have one computer that everyone crowds around and takes their turn at making contributions. It's a software development company, and anyone who has studied software development, even briefly, the first thing they tell you is that it's a team job, and that it's more efficient to allocate people to different areas of the development. So stop complaining about "Instead of bringing me such and such a change, they brought lip synching! I feel gyped!" because they would have been completely different teams.

I read these posts and I think "God, why are you still playing the game if you feel you're being ripped off?" If you get ripped off at a restaurant, you don't keep going back to the same one. I, on the other hand, appreciate everything this restaurant is doing for me, and will keep coming back.

Everyone at Anet must be paragons

i actully quite liked the lip syncing...

Storage and trade improvements have been promised since before factions came out yet we're still waiting on those. I understand trade is a complex system to implement however storage seems to be more an issue of dollars which anet aren't willing to spend. After having waited so long I sincerely doubt anet will ever improve storage, they'll just keep stringing us along until we've all moved on to the next mmo.

Not everyone skips the scenes and you know that. Some of us enjoy the story and characters.

ok ok.........the first time, maybe 2nd time through I watch

but am I going back with my 5th character through Shing Jea just to watch Togo's mouth move? I think not.

this should have been done much much earlier, or they should have saved their time for what(if) Ch 4 brings and spend the Ch2/3 lip synch hours on whats broken

Yeah, not everyone, but in every pug I've been in 7 out of 8 people wanted to skip it (The 8th person was me most of the time). Of course there were occassional exceptions, but through my experience it seemed people could care less about the cutscenes.
So yes. I do feel that the lip-sync update, while a nice change, could've been perhaps lower on the priority list?

To be honest, people who say stuff like this are stupid. This is the business model Arena Net has chosen. They arn't not charging us out of the goodness of their heart, it is a calculated business move to try and get more sales for each release, which they release on a schedule to get something similar to a monthly fee. If Arena Net can't be assed to update their game and live up to their promises, I can't be assed to pay $50-75 every 6 months (which they've only met once in 3 subsequent releases)*.

Yes, I know the next hasn't released but it has already been announced it won't be on the 6 month schedule.

You know, I still don't get it.

:shakes head:

Anyone can sit here and rationalize the idea of a business model and turn it inside out and upside down to make it work for any argument they have. The community by large only takes this stance because Guildwars is Classed as an MMO, if that were not the case, it would be chalked up as simply the cost of an expansion on the next greatest release in a series of games one likes to play. That is simply a fact of the matter nothing more.

You are absolutely right it is a business model I just don't believe it is the one that many pretend it to be (Note the BIG I there). It seems to me that Arena net has taken on the burden of managing a Pay per Month MMO structure while maintaining oddly enough a normal development structure of a non-MMO game system.

I mean in all honesty though, the model of this business or that can be forever debated. Without really being a part of the development strategies and processes, it is all speculation based on previous experiences.

I will agree that this argument is as old as a worn rug that should be burned at the stake, I also will agree that Arena Net made a verbal commitment to maintain and establish an MMO structure and all of its accompanying parts. You of course as a consumer have a right to jump up and down and scream all you want. I would tend to believe however that all the jumping and screaming in the world will do little to move forward a development time-line, just like all the jumping and screaming in a food joint will do little to progress the speed at which your rare steak becomes well-done.

So they have the graphics team working on programming now? Interesting. The people who work on animations, models, texturing and the liking are not likely going to work on *changing* skills and adding features to titles and such. Those, I'm pretty sure, fall under the programmers category.

Programmers and Graphics Designers are very different... sure maybe they could've been making new models for DoA drops from Mallyx but I'm pleased with lip-syncing. Not to mention you have no idea when they started working on this, cause it sure as hell wasn't over-night. Ever think that they started this around c3 when they did syncing for that? (It is NO easy task.)

I liked the change though, the cut scenes are interesting in prophecies and it really bugged me to see no motion at all when they talked.

Blaming Gaile solves nothing. Although it has been said earlier, she is just the person in between the mess. She promises to run it by the devs, devs look into it and deem change unworthy, devs don't get back to Gaile or she forgets to reply, etc. etc..

Finally, to finish up here, people complain way to much. I'm guessing 10% of the game population enjoys the game anymore. It's rediculous and sad... you go on for months whining about no changes yet your still playing? Meh, just mind-boggling I guess. :/

My 0.02 for the day...

Well I didnt read all 4 pages, but I just wanted to add that maybe these things take time, because they care about doing it well/correctly. Also, what if they never did anything at all? They already have our money, and they don't really have any obligation to continue to update/fix things in the game. I think if we all stepped back a second, and realized that we as GW players have it really good compared to other F2P games maybe we would actually have time to enjoy the game instead of complaining about it all day.

Funny you say that, just making up stats doesn't make them true you know, I seriously doubt that only 10% of the population enjoys the game anymore. You also have to think of what enjoy means, fully? well then you might be right, not very many people seem to enjoy pve + pvp. If you mean they enjoy aspects of it, well I think most people playing do.

People who bash ANet constantly must either have nothing better to do or have never played a game by a company that handles matters worse.

Let me give you 3 examples.

SOE, COMPLETLY changed how the class system, combat system and advancment system for Star Wars Galaxies, just about 2 weeks after releasing an expansion that included content for a profession that they knew was being phased out. They did all this WITHOUT telling the community that they'd been working on this for the past 4-6 months, we were told about a week before it went on the testing server (public testing server, not internal). It changed the game from having 32 Professions, to 10. From being an advanced system where you skilled up and could pick and mix what you did, to being forced into one of 10 "star-warsy" professions. So complaining about waiting for some minor features, and I'm sorry but a couple of title changes IS minor. Seems to be petty to me

Blizzard. Yeah, "the gods of gaming". ANY Diablo 2 fan can tell you how messed up their "support" was for it in the nearly (or maybe it was) 2 year wait for a single patch (1.09 to 1.10). You see Blizzard has this problem they have tunnel vision when they work on a project, they don't remember they have other games out there.

SEGA. Phantasy Star Universe. $10 monthly fee, and when the game came out you had to pay for the first month, the single player game had loads of content that was locked on the "mmo" side of things. The content was there but Sega literally just wanted to siphon it out a little at a time. Pretty shady to charge $10/month for about 5 missions.


I shouldn't be comparing it to an MMO anyway, Diablo 2 is a closer comparison tho that is still off as GW is somewhere in between the two. Comparing content levels and all this BS from MMOs to Guild Wars is just plain stupid. The devs don't label Guild Wars as an MMO, so why should the players? Quite frankly the free updates we get are much better than alot of other PC games "patches" (battlefield 2 anyone?) and the devs from Anet are alot more frank and community-friendly than other companies.

First off, Guild Wars is supposed to be an alternative to the average mmo, Level 20 Cap, easily accessible (my wife plays it and picked it up easier than WoW or SWG), PvP system that is pretty unique and you can just make a pvp character leveled to 20 automatically.

Gaile is a great customer relations worker, it is sadly rare for someone in her posistion to play the game and also come in to answer questions, and visit so many fan site forums, though in part because GW doesn't have a centralized forum on their site a mistake in my opinon)

I don't bash ANet constantly, but I assure you I've played SWG. Pre-CU, Post-CU, but I quit just before the NGE or whatever the hell it's called was put in. And I can also assure you, that the similarities here are striking. SoE promised, and never delivered, and changed without warning. ANet is completely innocent of that?

Remember when they came up with the whole "aoe-AI" nerf thingy out of nowhere? (I was a fan of the update, but let's be fair, it came out of left field, ja?)
Remember the minion-limit thingy? (Again, another update I was a fan of, but still being fair, it came out of left field again, ja?)
Remember when they introduced that awesome trade system?

Oh right, you have no point. Thank you.

I'd say those are minor in comparison to what SoE did personally the NGE was pretty much a different game altogether rather than one aspect

Uhm, it's their game, just like SWG is Sony's and they are allowed to change it as they see fit. They don't need to consult with you or anyone else. I didn't play SWG, but I'm aware of what was changed and frankly, similarities really aren't that similar, about the only thing thats similar is that each company made some changes. Sony's changes completely changed how the game worked in completely fundamental ways. ANets changes, especially the ones you've noted, haven't changed how things work so much as put limits on things that were being abused / taken advantage of. Sony's changes were an attempt to draw in new players that have a 'gratify me now' complex. ANets changes (whether you agree with them or not) are an attempt to make the overall game better for everyone. Did Paragons get whacked with a mallet this last update? Yes, will people really care in a month or so once the brilliant build designers in our assorted GW communities have given the changes some thought and put out some new ideas? Probably not.

People are so impatient. Enjoy the game, when the updates come, they'll come.

LOL, when I first say the "things promised but weren't delivered" I thought it was about the storage thing again, or the auction house again. But no, imagine my amusement when it was all about some titles. Titles are worthwhile updates? And I don't think they made any concrete promises for those titles and the hard mode...

Can't believe a whiny thread like this got stretched 3 pages... and I'm contributing to it... oh well.

Guild Wars doesn't have a recurring monthly payment, no. Does that mean that everything ArenaNet does to Guild Wars after release is to be considered philanthropic? That we're lucky that they deliver post-release content?

Hardly.

Why? Because Guild Wars, both the core and the episodic content releases are buggy to the point where releasing them without continuing subsequent updates and fixes should be a crime. There are critical bugs in Guild Wars that have been allowed to exist for almost two years without having been addressed. No matter what you do in Guild Wars, you're very likely to run into, at the very least, one bug while doing it. I have played a lot of games in my time, and I can count on one hand the games I've played that have had more technical glitches than Guild Wars.

If ArenaNet is going to excuse this abhorrent lack of quality control and bug fixing with that they're working on new content and new features, I'd say the players have every right to complain when these things aren't implemented.

I would by far prefer getting my content and features with the chapters, if it would mean that ArenaNet would spend their time fixing the countless bugs in their game inbetween releases. When that isn't an option, however, I feel that I have every right to be frustrated with them when what they promise in place of these fixes turns out to be vapourware.

Love that Z-Axis.

Thats funny, because I only occasionally run into bugs and overall I'm happy with the quality control.

Now that's funny.

Meh. I just realized how pointless it is to explain how little money we pay for GW. It doesnt really matter. Even if ANET were to PAY us to play, people would STILL complain and think it's in their right to demand and demand. I can guarantee that it's not an exaggeration. People will complain about anything and everything no matter how good or bad they have it.

No offence but some of these guys have worked on the Blizzard Project Diablo II. I also remember that exact staff promising "New Runes Every Week!"
26 months later a patch came. A single patch. I know its decent marketing strategy to share info/hide info but the OP has a good point, they announced these things months ago.

We pay retail price, same as any other game. The difference is that we pay retail price for a game that's not even close to being ready for retail on the promise of continuous updates and fixes that only occur to a limited extent.

Not even close to being ready for retail? Why have people stayed for so long if that were true for each chapter? Why have people bought all 3 chapters? Why have sales for GW gone up then? What are these problems that you claim make this game not ready for retaill? Incomplete titles? What a joke. Auction house? Is that a game breaker? Hell no. What else?


I do not think GW is a perfect game though. Far from it. There are many issues that need fixing. But damn we get a LOT from what we are paying and some of you act like you're entitled and become rude children when you ask for stuff. That's my whole pet peeve about this.

Most people buy the chapters because they know the potential the game has, and that cutting and running isn't going to fix anything.

These problems I'm talking about that make the game not ready for retail are, as I said, the countless bugs, so listing those features is completely irrelevant.

Name just two of these so called countless bugs that make this game "not ready for retail" please.

Much as I'd like to see titles removed from the game altogether, don't forget their promise of making the Canthan elite missions always available for anyone.

i had a quest that failed to update once but they fixed it less than a day after i sent in a support ticket with the details.

so i guess that wasnt one of them

usually reviewers give a game that is not ready for release a bad rating rather than awards all over