Some Info about Community Relations

@ Gaile, Thank you for that as it was one of the first honest straight forward answers given in a long time. I can understand where your job can be very stressful and limited by the information that you are given and I dont fault you for doing the best that you can with the information given to you. I just tried to put into perspective the best way I could from the information i had from the community

I think that we can both agree that communication is key among the community and the developers and hopefully this thread will help to better serve both sides.

Have different skill rules for PVP and PVE that will solve all the skill imbalances

I cant help but feel somewhat disturbed by this statement. Surely then you would have realised that the removal of 6v6 and re establishment of 8v8 should have been made straight after you saw the slumping number of players in HA. Why is it then you then went on to make kill count. I simply dont get it especialy when all people asked for was 8v8. How does that improve the game may i ask.

Yes things are not as simple as they are on paper. But i dont understand how reverting HA back to its former state cannont be simple especially when people liked it and it was popular. Also it seems like the logical alternative if look at all angles of it. It would do more good than harm. Even then why not do a week event of HA with alter capping. That would give you a rough indication on how it will fair out. Can someone please tell me what is so hard about this.

I just want to point something out here. I wasnt aware of a vote on 6v6, my friends where not aware on a vote for 6v6. I asked loads of hard core HAers and non of them where aware there was a vote for 6v6. So who in the world actually took place in this vote. If your going to make such a big descion i simply dont understand why it wouldnt say be posted on the main website or log on screen, oh there is a vote for pvpers so make sure you vote and so on. To be honest it doesnt seem so difficult and this is where you start the problem for yourself.

The majority of Hardcore HAers enjoyed the 6v6 weekend but by the end of it they were board. It was nice for a tempory change just a bit of fun. Now the pvers how (the casual players in most circumstances). Say ohhhh its much easyer to get into a group and so on, *when your forgetting it was double fame weekend also, and as they rarely play HA they vote based on that (it wont really effect them much).* Therefore this means HA shouldnt have been changed in the first place so realising your mistake why wasnt it changed back pronto if you say it was made at the request of the loudest members of the comunity. Obviously this says somethings wrong.

So whos fault is it then that we got this fiasco with tombs now? Certainly wasnt the majority of the pvp communitys fault. The people who asked for 6v6 where the casual players and i believe some pvers being from observation alot of the HA community didnt use the forums at the time. Like me they just enjoyed playing (also to the pvers, HA just becomes another random arenas to them. Somewhere to relax for a bit sometimes). The majority of hard core players prefered 8v8. Thats why HA slumped so much, because thats what these people who wanted it were. Casual. This is why the amount of HA guilds has dwindled embarassingly. Many top HA guilds even went to gvg, this clearly says these changes are wrong, also with the fact it just doesnt work. I also want to point something out, you saw HA was suffering under 6v6. So what happened to pleasing the majority? If the minority who liked 6v6 where complaining but it could be seen the majority prefered 8v8 as more where playing. Why did it take 9 months to come to the conclusion HA should be taken back to its original state which everyone was fine with as thats the way its always been.

Yes of course people will always have conflicting ideas. But when the majority, by far the majority want something shouldnt they then get it (this is in terms of HA). Kill count is a prime example, that statement of yours will probly explain why its still there. Go into HA and ask around, what do you think of kill count. Everyone agrees its no good. Check a poll done on the HA section of the forums. 75 percent almost want Kill count compleatly removed and remember theres 4 options. Remember sample, now clearly i would look at this and say. One common denominator is comming up when asking people why they dont like HA. And that is because of kill count, if you dont believe the proof given to you on GWguru then ask around in HA. Do a poll on your website or something.

But the 75 percent clearly shows this can be a potential problem. Therefore it clearly is an easy answer if you were to just take HA back to the original state of Alter holding being you knew this system worked. Its not like your testing it am i wrong? If you even clearly look at the arguments concerning kill count you would see there all logical, go have a look for your self and you will find there true such as it eliminating the chance of heavy hex builds for going far hence why no one runs it. How it promotes spike ect.

Well i can probly give some insight as to why people have behaving as they are from the HA perspective. Ok anet make a change, thats HA to 6v6. Loads of people are like bah whats this. They hear anet say if you have comments put them on the forums. They come on the forums initialy and write long long long pieces of information to help anet understand what the problem is. If you look at the posts you find although they may be on say different threads they all come up with the same problems. Now people realise this isnt a personal oppinion but basically universal and represents the views of many of the HA community (the majority). So they expect anet to take some action on this. 9 months later anet answer there request. So yes people have to wait for 9 months before Anet do a simple change which the whole community wanted.

Ok, now we find however anet have kept kill count which is a 6v6 mechanic and obviously does not work with 8v8. This therefore leaves the waiting time for the majority of the HA community almost over a year now. People lose pacitents. People get angry, people feel like they have been mistreated. Its like when trade unions ask for increased pay, the company refuses so they strike. With this people lose faith and trust in anet espeicaly when you got Galie who claims she reads the forums saying *i think kill count is succesful* and then saying HAs now further down our list because we have done lots of work on it.

Now this is what drives players over the edge, there seems to be a conception it wouldnt take you very long to reverse the changes and you basically walked along the footpath to get to your destination rather than using it. People get wound up, lose pacitents, start hating anet and wam, thats where the disrespect comes in. Its because people have lost respect for anet. If you want the majority of players can just do what many have done. Bottle there anger and quit.

But how long would it take to get rid of kill count and say reverse halls back to a state which has been tested and works *aka alter capping*.

So what do you think of a waiting almost a year? Is that impatienct, exactly when are we meant to start losing patience then. 2 years, 3, 4 or maybe 70?

You say less than 1/4 of the players post online for games gernerally. This seems like a contradiction to what you did regarding changing HA to 6v6. If this statement is true, why was HA delt with via 100 percent influence from the forums. Before me and other HAers started to voice our concerns *which might i add only the change to 8v8 has been done over a 12 month period.* We considered the possibility it was only us feeling this way.

However when talking to friends and people in teams we joined and other HAers on the forums we found it was a widespread belief hence why we posted them in the first place. Its not because its an indiviual belief but a universal one.

Stated this above

Its almost hilarious how "statistics" is being employed in this OP's address to the community.

Simple math for you guys to figure out. If only 1/4 of the players post of which were discontent w/ the over-inflation in the economy why did you decide to lootscale without even consulting us? Then w/ the HUGE uproar in the community that were "happy" w/ the original scaling which was wait....3/4 posting back on the forums asking, demanding, and even begging you guys to reconsider, you completely ignored us and drove more bullshit statistics down our throats. So how does 1/4 of a community decide whats "best" for the 3/4 then? The logic seems flawed, and even if you were to employ 1/4 statistics of posters that were angry at the update, then whats 1/4 of 3/4 of upset players? 3/16. So only 3/16 discontented players complained, but you still allowed the 1/4 of "statistically speaking" deciding "majority" to make the rules for the rest? Thats a pretty slim margin to just TURN the INSIDE-OUT for. Good numbers you used there buddy. Next time why not use statistics to prove why statistics is Bullshit.

I enjoyed playing prior to and during 6v6 HA, and many players who weren't comfortable with the set in it's ways rhip (that's Rank Hath It's Priveledges) existence were glad for the shakeup if only to get a few good plays in. New players were are and always will be good for everyone in HA, and 6v6 was the Dev teams honest attempt to bring in new blood. Yeah the old guard didn't like it because they had to actually try to win. Think about builds...
Change is good, because it brings in fresh ideas and new ways of looking at things. While I hardly ever even go to HA anymore I still enjoy me some occaisional fond memories of the chaos that whole thing was
I didn't stop playing Ha over kill counts, just moved on to other things, perhaps if you all just found something you enjoyed doing instead of being angry

There'll always be malcontents, my message to the Dev Team, and you guys in CR, keep up doing what you're doing. They wouldn't be so angry if they didn't love the game at some point.

personally i opt for an in-game poll system or dev team kinda update shpeel in the log in screen or in the new help menu. no more of this...only a fraction of players post on the forums (which is true) and this and that. let everyone have their own opinion in certain updates and future ideas and whatnot. thats just me though.

all in all i can feel for a-net, the dev team, and the messengers as gaile so eliquently put it. i work at las vegas motor speedway and receive numorous calls daily about how our company sucks and what we're doing wrong.....when all i do is ticket sales and representation. its not up to me to change the way we do our buisness...in fact its not my direct supervisors or their supervisors responsibility either. attacking gaile or anyone else for that matter who really is the ones on the front line between the community and the dev teams is rather un-called for and just flat out rediculous. but i digress. it is true that.....making an update can make one side of GW absolutely giddy and piss the others off to no end. you cant always make 100% of a game of this magnitude happy it just doesnt happen that way. it must be kept in mind that updates and skill balances and new content is all done with the best intentions and with the players in mind whether it seems that way or not.....GW is a-nets child in a market which itself is in its infancy. every update and change they make is basically setting the curve in the MMO market, with which the forums and community feedback tells them what works and what doesnt....and i dont mean in specifics like nerfing such and such blah blah, just in general. i dont have any experience in coding or game design or anything of that sort (as if its not obvious enough already) so feel free to flame away about my ideas im used to it anyways. anyrate patience must be considered before utterly bashing people who really have no control over what gets implemented and when.

as for constructive ideas i still stick with my original idea of an in game poll. also a cross campaign outpost like the battle isles for trade instead of an AH or anything of that nature. and (something that may even be fun for dev team) weekends of going to bot hot spots (ha that rhymed) and doing hands on bot bans. i had a few more ideas but i forgot them halfway through typing this. =D overall i think yall are doing a great job for maintaining a game with free gameplay (sans the initial free to actually buy the game) and ive already got GW:EN pre-ordered.

I think a good majority of these posts are only proving Andrew's points

Personally I don't always like the changes, in fact I hate quite a few of the more recent ones. But the game is still playable, and I understand that there is often a bigger picture that I might not see.

The thing I really don't get, is if people really hate it so much why do they continue to play it? I'm not saying anyone should leave, I just don't get it. I get bored with GW sometimes and take a month or two off from playing it, not come on the forums and ream the CR team for not making my ideas come to life.

With that said though it does seem that communication is bad. It even seems to be one way communication at times (us to you). You say you send the devs a 4-8 page report weekly. So why not post a copy of that report somewhere? Or at least parts of it so we can see that our suggestions and complaints, and whatever other merda we manage to pull is actually being listened to.

I don't think anyone expects all of our suggests to be made real, they just expect to be listened to and considered. The real issue seems to be they don't feel like they are receiving that from you. Thats not to say you aren't listening, its that you aren't always listening visibly. There is no reason for you to do more work, just a simple summary (probably easily copy and pasted right out of your weekly report) of which suggestions/complaints they received.

Quite honestly I don't care either way, maybe I see things the way they are or maybe I'm way off. I've never been one to complain about the state of the game on these forums (at least not much and usually having to do with artwork changes i.e. attribute panel) and when things get to the point I think the game is "ruined" or "broke" I just won't play anymore simple as that.

There is no stronger message that we can send to the devs than simply not playing. Sure they may not miss me, but if they make enough people quit they might re-look at the state of the game. But for me the game is still fine and I'll continue to play nerf or no nerf

Anything I say can and will be used against me in a forum thread such as this one So I won't say anything bad



I think the team is busy. Leave them be for a month please. Before they snap and ruin the good times.

No Wait... scratch all that.....

I love GW. I love Andrew and Gaile for even being here. I hate posters who talk shit to them.

I never take the opportunity to say nice things to them. So now I am.

Thank you.

Actually, let me address some of the positive things I've seen them do for us all in past 14 months I've been playing.

When I first started playing GW, there was this community feel to it, something that I really longed for in games before. Everyone was nice, people went out and did quests, missions and it was easy to make friends. The first time I saw an update on the website, I was floored by the amount of things that actually made sense in a update in the first place. It was like Anet strived to keep the game fair and fun for everyone, no matter what time of year. Wether it be events or any game improvements, fixes that were related to making sure everyone that plays had an enjoyable experience.

As time went on, the release of Nightfall was just amazing addition for my style of play. I was like WOW.. this is amazing that they would allow me to play by myself and not have to group up with any one of "THE REST OF YOU" for anything other than a few missions or Elite Areas. So I avoided all those things and I got very far into the game on my own. Having the most fun I've ever had in a game before. And thanks to all the nice Updates that ensued.

But lately, it's become clear that most of that fun was exploitable by greedy cheaters. And now Anet has decided that if they want the rest of the player base to stay, they need to do something about that. So this year their focus is on making sure that everyone is happy, NOT including the greedy exploiters and other cheaters out there.

I am 100% sure that at LEAST 20% of people posting lately are the ones I would dare not associate with in game, EVER. Because they lost the ability to exploit minor oversights. Now Anet is stuck in the middle of this, and they are starting to lose their cool because it's hard to determine who to listen to anymore.

They made everyone happy once I'm sure they can do it again. So please do continue on with your fine work, Andrew and Gaile, because without you, there would be no community. I am still buying GW:EN and GW2 no matter what. And multiple copies at that. Because I believe in Anet.

Well, time is money and I got some GW to play. Take care guys

Yeah, next minute someone on the dev team explodes at the negativity this forum produces and deletes the entire database. You think that Anet ignore you guys? They ought to... but that's just not how they operate, not at all.

I'm just going to say in finality, that I like the recent changes that Anet have done, and I greatly respect them and their efforts in their superior relations to the fans who have continued to play and enjoy this game for so long, kudos!

As for the rest of the community... disappointed.

I've spent more time in this game that I really should have. With every change, we adapted. People left, people started playing, and the band played on. I wish some things would happen with the game and I wish some things that have happened wouldn't have, but so long as I am able to log in, I think I'll be content. Gaile, Andrew, anybody that has anything to do with delivering such a great game (most of the time), thanks. That is all.

Terra, that quote was meant to be things that other people say.. not what I say.

But I noted that you, along with many others would right away be the first to point out that i was being serious and that i meant that to be detrimental toward the devs.

I hope you get to read that I fixed it and what I added came from my heart. I'm sorry if the examples I gave were not specified as "examples" of general poster morale.

I tried to fix it by deleting that part, but when I finally posted my message, it was too late.

Unfortunatlely I think you're preaching to the choir on this one.

It's a customer service and community issue. If there isn't a problem then no one's going to complain about it, so naturally you're going to get unhappy people whining to you. Most of the immature/agressive posts seem to come from younger players and since a good number of players *are* younger, I'd think this would have been expected.

Nice write up, hope it helps with your efforts, but I wonder if you're taking some of the complaints too personally (yeah, I know its your game and company but you know what I mean) and not filtering out the feedback that's just there because someone had a bad day and wanted to take it out on someone else.

You have to remember that all these updates and new feature is FREE because we don't pay a monthy fee.

You have to remember that anything that do for FREE is considered "charitable giving" from a business prespective. However it's "used" to make your company look good (usually after a big screw-up against the enviroment). However Anet's features only reach people that have paided ALREADY. Which doesn't make sense business-wise.

So really Anet is the only company where I can safely say that they do all these things for FREE because they care about us. Anyone who accuses Anet of being greedy probably doesn't relieze what Anet does.

Anet may you know that the community appreciates what you do even in this Sea of Complaits!

*salute*

Skip the middle-man then?
If
shouldn't they - the one's that really know what is best for the game - be looking at the data instead of looking at the selection that was made - by your definition - by somebody that DOESN'T know what is best for the game?

The biggest problem here is quite simple - at least for me.
You are slacking off. Not compared to other companies - BUT compared to the high standard you guys set yourself. Seriously - Guild Wars IS one of the most godly games i have ever player - it really is up there with stuff like Mario and Tetris for me. But it seems to me that lately you are in it over your head and some changes MUST happen.
BUT then again - it IS your game and you had to make calculation on how many users you can piss off for the game to still stay successful!


The only question that arises from your post - is posting an "we deserve a little respect so you should just shut up"-themed post in THESE TIMES good PR?

Andrew, quite frankly, your post is meaningless. It may be what you perceive, but the realities of the situation are significantly different. There has been a significant failure of community relations and while it is an internal issue to deal with, I would be amazed if someone is not held accountable.

Your PVP community has fallen apart. I have no hard numbers, but all anecdotal evidence indicates that the PVP community has significantly declined in numbers over the last year, due to a clear misunderstanding on ANets part of needs and priorities of that community. Your little monologue about HA is pathetic and demonstrates further these misunderstandings. It is particularly telling, that every PVP player that I know chooses, instead of working through community relations to completely bypass them and go straight to the devs. You are irrelevant to the PVP community and until someone is brought into community rleations who understands and who has a clear job description of dealing with the PVP community, this will continue.

However, I understand this is something you cant admit. You can't go to your management and say we don't understand PVP, we haven't understood if for two years while all the time saying that we did. That would get you, get Gaile fired. So you're in a bind. You can't fix the problem with the PVP community without an adverse impact for you and you can't understand it.

It doesn't matter though. The PVP community is effectively dead - I don't know why you'd bother anymore. Other games are actively (and successfully) stealing your market. They're offering easy entries for your PVP community and we're lapping it up. They're offering jobs for your PVP community and we're lapping it up. That's because, the relationship between the PVP community and ANet is effectively dead. That to me, is an epic failure of community relations.

The day people stop crying, they haven given up GW at all.

Then it is all fine and dandy, pure harmony for those who did not get scared away.


Neither PvP people nor PvE people feel things are going the right way! Because they just want to bitch and cry? No, because they are desperate.

The design team can do whatever it wants, it does not even have to listen to the community. It has to make them happy with the game.

Some more updates with major extremely unpopular changes and unadressed issues and GW is going SWG. Maybe the whining will then stop, when people are simply gone. Bad rationale.

Nice post, though isn't SWG the one that pretty much died because they went with the motto of:

As for the rest of OP, I'll have to wait to respond directly when time permits. Should be fun.

It is lamentable the way we treat A-Net's Community Relations staff. I admit I have been rude my share of times, I admit I have only considered my side of the "game" while discussing some issues. Just like everyone does every now and then. I recognize it, but I also know that it is nothing personal. Andrew, you are right. Your job is a thankless job. You should have known that from the moment you were assigned to it.

It is like every customer support in every service. The poor guys who get assigned to the job are the ones who get the rants that those "high up there" should be getting. It has been done for ages, that's why it shouldn't be different here. It's common logic. If a customer is upset about something he spent money on, he automatically feels he has the right to complain to the one closest to the company he's paying too, although, if confronted personally, he would maybe realize he's complaining to the wrong person, even if it's the one he should be saying what is wrong with his purchase/service/whatever.


But what is even more lamentable, and what almost EVERY TIME sparks the rants, tension and irritation, is the way some players treat others, when they have different opinions.
EVERY SINGLE TIME someone is criticizing some aspect of the game, even if he's trying to be polite, not demanding, or just reporting something that should be looked at, there's always that 'player' who assumes he knows more of the game than him and starts the 'flames', just because he felt so.

Believe me, we have MANY of these in this forum.
Speaking for myself, if someone counters my views in that way, I simply can't ignore it.

And then, it all begins: everyone shooting from their side, everyone being hit, including Anet.


If everyone stopped being so smug about themselves, this problem was cut by half at least. It's that annoying kind of people that should be playing single player games. A good example of this was the discussion about 'spammers' .

Oh ban him!!!! BAN HIM TO DEATH!!!! AAARGH!! KILL HIM!!! SPAMMER!!

Please... if you live in a community, you have to expect these annoyances, so deal with it rationally.


(and now they all say)

U JUST SAYING THAT CAUSE U A SPAMMER!!!11ONEONE


¬_¬

If you give something and than take it away, people get angry and upset. No matter if its right or wrong, for free or not, once you give something and than take it away it will cause frustration. Always! Players don't get angry because they hate the game. They had something they liked and it was taken away. Thats it.

Along with the obvious communication problems mentioned by Andrew, where players get the impression that by discussing the issues they can get back what was taken away, while the Dev team only picks up some details, following their own plan, it is clear that a solution cannot be expected by asking the playerbase to show more respect and to have confidence.

I would suggest:
Andrew and Gaile, make clear to the dev-team what impact game changes have on the community! Make clear to them what your own postion is in communicating between community suggestions and dev solutions. Make clear what your own feelings are and try to get them out of that ivory tower! Communicate with them just like you did with us in this thread.

I completely agree, that no one should be insulting you, Gaile or anyone else of Arenanet.
However, my biggest frustration with this game is that updates take so long and often seem to come out of nowhere, or not at all .

Lets have a look at anti-warrior hexes, I quote from the official wiki:
Why exactly are you leaving those alone, if you can clearly see with one look at the Gladiator's forums, that no one really seems to enjoy them, since they are so easy to apply and so difficult to remove when there are so many other hexes as well. Monitoring anti-warrior hexes isn't enough for me, I want to know why they aren't changed after such a long time of complaining, of a majority of the PvP-crowd on these forums.
Do you think they make games more exciting to play? Can't you think of a solution to them? You think they are very well balanced, and this is not going to change? Are there actually other places where people support hexes (for example on forums which use a different language), and you don't want to upset those people?

The last balance update we have seen was on the 13th of April to balance the conjure spells (water, lightning and earth). Why wasn't there a balance in between that gave defensive anthem a two second cast and blurred vision a two second cast? I don't really care about the buffs, I actually think you should consider them carefully, like you do now, just as you should consider nerfs carefully. But why is it that we need to wait untill you have changed 10 skills and done some other changes that we get the update? Why couldn't X-skill get a seperate update in the beginning of May for example? I have heard (I think on the QQ-forums) that Izzy had the soul reaping update ready for a few weeks already, but wasn't allowed to implement it yet (this wasn't told by an official Anet employee, so I could be wrong of course). Why, if he had it ready, wasn't he allowed to implement it? I also heard Jade Isle had been adjusted a long time ago (not sure if it has changed in the meanwhile), same question; why not implement it?

Then there are updates that seem to come out of nowhere. Why exactly was the ability added to clear a target? Why is it that we need to talk to the storage box now instead of talking to the Xunlai Agent? (I can't be bothered about who/what I need to talk to, but it just seems a waste of development time).

I understand the fact that not everything I ask for can be implemented. But is it so hard to give an explanation (if a large part of the forum-community requests it). Can't you simply tell us why you won't allow more letters in the party-search panel?
I love this game. I have played it for over 3000 hours. I don't complain just to complain, I complain because I actually care, because I think Arenanet can do things differently, in a better way.

I too ask the same questions,I mean,I look through the Sardalac Sanitarium and I see no threads about the ability to remove the target at the top of the screen.

Because there are far more pressing matters at hand to fix aside from giving something so...trivial.

Party Search(The ability to search across the continent you're currently on,and an increased Character Limit,This would also possibly help people find partys for Hardmode mission and for Vanquishing Areas.Actually,alot of things would become a hell of alot better with Party Search being improved.A better way to trade,giving the people the ability to trade on that continent no matter where they are,certainly outweighs simply spamming one district.)
The current state of HA/GvG.

I'm sure that someone very distinguished once said: "You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, or even some of the people some of the time, but even if you take on every well-thought-out community suggestion and impliment it, you still can't please all of the people all of the time."

If noone said it, then I just did.

Here's another one: "Don't shoot the messenger."

Another: "I like eating meat, a helluva lotta other people don't. We yell at each other across the room about random poopoo and then blame the people serving the food that we asked for in the first place."

Even more: "Scapegoats are a last resort for the desperate masses intent on ending a flame war. They're also commonly the lone voice of reason in the argument. The voice of reason that everyone hates."

No idea where half of them came from, but they sum up the situation pretty well. If they aren't quotes of famous people, they're quotes of me.

I agree totally

You are perfectly right. Reasons are good, that seems to be a general theme here too. However bad the update if we have solid reasons rather than "we are the professions" everyone is happier, whether they agree with the reasons or not.
I've worked in a major web design company and although games and websites are different I have a strong feeling many things are the same. A lot of time is planning and discussing and brainstorming rather than the acutual making. This has to be done and, although everyone deson't seem to realise it, the company would collapse without it. Builds would go live that weren't meant to, updates would be made and then taken off, mistakes made and time wasted.

However, all those meetings produce notes, sadly they are normally on paper but they might be on computer. If so just post them, a scan or the text. Anything. It doesn't matter how long it is, or what's happening or what's not or how many rumors it spreads. Even if you release 15 pages of scanned notes in handwriting there will always be people who read it all and produce a summery. It doens't have to be PR that does the hard work. Let the public see how the company thinks.

It's never been done before. But I think it might just work, especially with the rather volatile situation we've got here. If you can show people that there are hard facts (or not as the case may be) for 6v6 HA that outshine the 8v8 pros then show us. Even those who hate 6v6 HA will understand. Empathy is what's needed here, if both the devs and the public can see each other's thoughts (the devs have ingame stats and forums to see our thoughts) then the situation will improve.

You said, Giale, that you thought you'd have been giving too much information. I'm not sure, there can never be too much information in my mind. With the internet comes the ability to access all sorts of information, knowledge that most people are oblivious to or don't care about. But, it is there. Those who do take that information read it and simplify it for others to read. All together the circle of learning grows and people understand more.

With understanding comes acceptance, even if someone doesn't get their way.

This is a good example. Here we have a problem which you have said you cannot change. I'm happy to accept this, if it can't be done it can't be done. But please, tell us why. Tell us the bandwidth would be too much, that you don't have the resources, that it could cause crashes. Anything. Please.

Reasons are the key, let's use them.



Now, I don't think a full understanding between company and public has ever been achieved before. Can you do it? In this generation of right to access information, can you lead the way? I belive anet can, you've done a lot "right" in the communities eyes and that's becuase people understand that the change was needed. The things you've done "wrong" people cannot see the reason for. Tell us why and relieve the pressure.

You can do it Anet, I put my faith in you.

Mazey

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p.s. after that horribly heavy thread try this PRs: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Hatred is often directed at the first person seen apart of the service. This is nothing new in the service industry.

Since the Dev team hardly if EVER speaks to the community itself, Anger is directed at the Messengers so that they may carry that disgust back to the source.

Which means those employed by the source have to grow thick skin or be disturbed by everything that comes forward.

And then there is the CLAIM by CMs that they are "apart of the Dev Team" which makes it worse for CM associates. There are plenty of times Gaile used that phrase in a chat in ID1 Kamadan and previous places. If she would always say that I am only a CM and not a Dev would quell some of the tide that is often brought on by claiming to be something you're not.

And then there is this whine thread made by a CM associate that does nothing but reignite the hatred of the past, blaming the community for their problems. Of course there will be people that will agree and kiss up and what not. But it doesn't change the history between the bulk of the community and Community Relations. And it does not change the fact that its your job to communicate to the community, good or bad.

In order to make things better, you have to move forward and improve relations with the community your job was created for. Not make blame threads. CMs want things to improve, then you have to make a step in the right direction. This thread was a bad step. Or atleast the contents of the original post was a bad step.

JR, if this forum had signs, the link to your post would be mine.
Prepare to be shamelessly quoted for years to come.

Well as you can see you have about half the people being nasty and half are happy... You won't please us all and you will never please all of us all the time.

I am grateful that we have the ability to voice our concerns and that a-net listens to us. Look how quickly they corrected hard mode in the desolation...yet so many had to go on and spew about how it never should have been done. Thank you for listening, thank you for correcting.

You are correct...you have a thankless job! There are many of us though that appreciate the work you and Gaile do and that you take the time to communicate with us. Thank you to a-net for staying interested in the game and always evolving it. Thank you for reading the forums and listening. Thank you for being a part of the community even though it is not always pleasant. Keep up the good work and don't let the whiners get you down!

GMTA. I've outlined a possible method by which the CR team could provide responses to at least some of the many ideas put forth by the community. The more people we can get behind this, or a proposal similar to this, the more likely I think it is that it may get taken seriously.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10168644

I am at a loss here. The people praising JR's post... a vitriolic post it drips with condescension, is incredibly patronizing and has its share of insulting jibes.

Is that why a number of you are claiming it is the 'post of the year'? That shows sadly the standard that is being held here.

Unless i am mistaken, i would assume that neither Gail nor Andrew nor other ANet staff are contractually bound to post and read on this 3rd party forum.

Irregardless of whether you think you are right about issues mentioned here, speaking to someone the way that JR and others have been doing here, is not consilitary, neither is it positive nor diplomatic.

If you believe that relations could be better between staff and players.... how on earth is talking to them with that sort of attitude actually going anyway to improving relationships?

As i myself am learning on this forum, certain posts are better served as PM's.
JR's post was addressed to Andrew, as such it had no need to be in the public domain to simply gather 'admiration' or disgust from other players. That is not adding anything to debate or improving matters. It only makes things worse not healthier.

Amen Gawa

I don't agree with the direct attacks on members of Anet

If Anet didn't want feedback from the community, then why are they here?

JR's post was fine. He has several valid points and he did not call Andrew or Gaile offensive names or make personal remarks, he simple stated his personal opinion on how things have been going.

Anyone who works in a professional office, heck any professional workplace, should know that you can't take everything personally and some things just need to be said straight-out. Anet is a game company that makes money from us - they aren't infallible demi-gods. Yes, respect the people working on the GW projects but at the same time they are also businesswomen and men. And we are the consumers.

Nobody's praising insults or anything of the sort. JR merely posted why people feel alienated in a fairly well thought-out manner. You must be blind if you can't see the lack of communication between CR and the PvP community. Just go look in Gladiator's section, specifically the HA/GvG section. Plenty of good posts about what needs changing, none of which have been done or even mentioned by anyone from ANet. We don't even have any indication that they've even been seen, much less heard by the dev team. I've never even seen anyone from ANet post in the PvP section that I can recall.

As far as people saying we're not allowed to comment on the state of the game, or the lack of communication... If we don't, then who will? You'd rather we sit and twiddle our thumbs, blindly praising ANet like fanboys while PvP declines until it's dead? Sorry, we refuse. It's not ego, it's more like not wanting our part of the game to finish rotting until it's unplayable and dies off completely.

Well JR beat me to the perfect post. This is really long and probably unnecessarily so. Here it is anyways.


I stopped playing this game regularly, after several stints on and off during nearly a 2 year period. I wasn’t going to bother posting, but since I invested a couple thousand hours in the game and I failed to call Anet’s offices to voice these issues directly (like I was asked to by some people in #gwp – and yes, I am one of the mods/ops in #gwp on irc.gamesurge.net), I might as well post my 2 cents. And before I blabble on – let me say also, that I know I am one of a million users, I know I got more than my money’s worth out of this game. I don't pretend to have all the answers, assume I know better than the devs, o rthink I am better than anyone else.

I have dealt directly with Investor Relations (IR) and Public Relations (PR) people on a routine basis for about 8 years. I have friends who run IR and PR businesses. I don’t know if the mission of CR at Arenanet is dramatically different than the roles of IR/PR, but I can’t imagine it is too dissimilar. You are the relationship conduit for the constituents (the customers/community in this case) on behalf of Arenanet. Average/poor CR/IR/PR people think they are just a mouthpiece that relays information. The Anet CR seem to routinely hide behind this ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ statement, when in reality the messages going back to the developers clearly do not reflect the important problems in the game or the right issues in the community.

Truly great, valuable CR/IR/PR people are not just ‘messengers’. They are part of an ongoing dialogue and analysis process that builds a strong relationship with their counterparties over time. Good CR/IR/PR people are worth their weight in gold, because they know how to manage issues, translate problem, and build relationships. They draw respect and admiration from the people they interact by making sure those constituents know how their relationship is being dealt with by the company and where the company is addressing their concerns/issues. If CR’s only role is to be messengers and message gathers, then I would say to Anet that you are completely wasting money on CR. My vote (as only one of a million customers) is to fire the entire CR team and just have 1 person post the updates (the messages on Wiki) and outsource the message/information gathering to gwguru/gwonline people or pay the devs to read the forums a little bit in their part time (as they probably do already). You can probably pay gwguru/gwonline mods/owners a weekly fee for their thoughts on the top 10 community concerns, and probably get a better return on investment (or at least as good).

I shouldn’t have to spell this out for you but:

Part of your responsibility as a CR should be to:

1. Acknowledge the existence of an issue.
2. Inform people of where an issue stands and what alternatives are being considered by Anet.
3. Set reasonable expectations of when a resolution will occur to the issue will occur.



This isn’t message sending and collecting. This is part of fixing problems in the community in an active, intelligent way, helping the community and devs address problems.

1: Acknowledge the existence of major issues.

It is just common sense in CR/IR/PR to tell your constituents, we understand XYZ is a problem. Tell your customers you know that the problem exists. Be very actively involved in the process of play-testing new skills/areas. Get your hands dirty and deal with the game head-on, instead of passively lurking in message forums or ‘gathering’ links. Part of a CR/IR/PR’s responsibility is to intelligently determine what are the most pressing issues to relay to their internal company counterparts (in this case the devs). As JR mentioned above – ever since the introduction of the Ritualist (spirit spamming), it is very clear that Soul Reaping has been a problem that eventually grew into grotesque proportions. Everyone in the community who had any remote idea of how this game worked in PvP was totally aware of this, regardless of what the vocal minority of whiners in PVE state. If you are involved in your product and community, then you would obviously know this problem too.

As a CR, you also need to cognitively know the PVE (HM, DOA, etc.), PVP (HA, GVG, etc.) game at a sufficient level so that you can gather upon what is truly an important issue. The feedback to your devs needs to be of a very high quality, and you have to use your brains to shape the direction of the discussion that is ongoing between company and customers around what really matters. You have to actively be involved in your own product in a very rigorous way in order to keep the dialogue between customer/developer on track. I’m not saying the work the CRs do at Anet is always 100% wrong and off-track, but something is clearly amiss somewhere in the chain of discussion, and a major responsibility of the CR is to keep the discussion and issues on the right tracks – the major issues.

It was totally obvious to me, someone who quit playing HA a long time ago, that the 6v6 change was a terrible idea – becuz there was no fundamental improvement to the gameplay, just a change in party size. If you asked ANY PERSON playing during those early 6v6 test weekends WHY is HA better in 6v6? you would find very few good reasons, if any. And I know this, because I personally asked more than 10 people just out of personal curiosity. All the answers were garbage like, “I don’t know, but everyone is playing HA now, it’s fun!” or “RA/TA is 4v4, GvG is 8v8, we need a 6v6 area!” It wasn’t rooted in any area that demonstrated significantly better gameplay. Any CR should know what impacts the game and who to listen to – and have their own ability to decipher what is useless crap (whining/non-informed viewpoints) and what is valuable feedback. I read the forums about 6v6 HA, I spoke to players, and I found almost no good reasons why it is better (except the limitation of spike reason, which any intelligent player knows is nonsense).

No one expects you to have a mandate to dictate what is worked or developed, but I don’t see you or Gaile shaping the discussion or understanding what is truly wrong w/ this game so that anything is moving forward in the right direction. Too often the community is left festering until it explodes in rage, rather than the CRs identifying problems early on and cutting things off early on. Instead it is left to linger until it ultimately damages the playerbase because the wrong solution is delivered or the wrong information is being relayed somewhere.

The argument that happy players are playing, while complainers are posting is totally absurd, and I think it reflects a complete naïve viewpoint on what happens in these message forums. A lot of people actively post the same regardless of what the issue is being debated. Sure complainers and whiners are a loud, vocal group. That is the case in any population, anywhere. Welcome to the living, human world. The issue really boils down to an inability to decipher one group’s desires/wants compared to another’s. If you or Anet cannot weight the trade-offs of SR or HA in an intelligent way, rather than just blindly listening to 1 group or 1 stupid poll on a msg forum, then we are back to just message/message gathering and it’s a waste of time. Shut down the process entirely because it lacks an intelligent analysis of the issue.

2: Inform people where an open issue stands.

The comment by Blame the Monks that questions the response – “We are professionals,” (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...9&postcount=29) is totally accurate. This guy’s constructive criticism is dead on. It’s not fair to dismiss people with zero feedback and give them the, “We are professionals. Don’t worry about it,” line.

You need to tell people where issues stand. What are the possible resolutions? How do you think the game might change? Make a poll and let people vote on it. Some of this work is being done and I commend it. But realize that you have a large player base and you need to disseminate that information to huge group of players. I will address this later (see: Anet needs its own public forums).

Either way, I don’t and most others don’t find it acceptable if there is no follow-up on open issues. As Death_From_Above posted here (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...&postcount=43), people want to know where things are in terms of development and make sure their feedback is being listened to. Why can’t you have a list on your website of the top 10-20 issues and where they stand in terms of development? Why can’t you keep an open log of the top 10-20 issues facing the community and update people on where they stand? Example:

Top 10 issues in Guild Wars:

1. Jump command. Being worked on – 50% done.
2. Auction House. Being considered.
3. Jade Isle Map Fix. Being worked on – 80% done.
4. Skill Balance Update including Soul Reaping Nerf. Being worked on – 40% done. SR will likely only trigger 3x every 15 seconds blah blah.
5. HA 6v6 or 8v8? We will consider a change back to 8v8 on May 1st after the evaluation period of 6v6 is complete.
….Etc. etc etc.

Who cares about the damn scribe message on a weekly basis? Why not post a top 10 or top 20 list of what’s important to the community and being looked at by devs? It doesn’t have to be perfect, just something simple on your guildwars.com homepage, so the community knows what is going thru your minds, what is a priority to the CR and thus Anet.

I also understand some of your work has to be kept secret for competitive reasons, but most issues like skill balance can be openly divulged without effecting your competitive positioning.

3: Set reasonable expectations for when a resolution will occur, if ever.


In any relationship, there is an edict known as, “underpromise and overdeliver.” The role of any CR/IR/PR person is usually to make sure this philosophy is followed, because when you overpromise, when you underdeliver, that is when you lose your R – relationship. A child tells his parent he will do his homework, then fails to do it. Toyota tells a customer a new car will last 100,000 miles, and it breaks down. A friend promises another friend, they will help them with a mission in Hard Mode and then logs off the game. People lose credibility, because they fail to deliver on their promises. Anet has done this in several instances, and people feel burned.

It is completely acceptable to tell people that something is technically unfeasible, not a priority, or going to take 2+ years to develop. People understand there are a million other things going on, and do not expect Anet to deliver the impossible.

If you tell people you are going to deliver ATs in 1 month, do it. If you fail to deliver something on time, I don’t see why your attitude suddenly turns into – “Tell them nothing then, because we don’t want to set ourselves up to miss a date again.” That kind of attitude (if that is what you really implied in your message) is just silly. Everyone misses deadlines. I’m behind on my own deadline right now for completing a report as I type this stupid message. But, an honest response of why things are delayed and a new deadline is far superior to a shutdown of information.

Everyone misses deadlines and fails to deliver something on time at some point – but keeping people updated on progress (even if it is delayed) is the right way to build respect with your customers rather than lack of information. Work is complicated. Development is complicated. No one expects unreasonable timeframes. And on the next project/deadline – hopefully the CRs and devs will do a better job of underpromising when a new feature is available and overdeliver. At some point, if you cannot manage your timelines at all… then there is a much bigger problem, obviously.

Final Closing Thoughts:

I think ArenaNet should open its own public msg forums. WoW has its own forums. It’s time ArenaNet take control of their community and directly deal with polls, questions, and feedback in an active manner. The passive data collecting/link documenting, the off-handed polls @ TGH or anywhere that ignores the rest of the players, is just insufficient and half-ass. It’s just proven itself to be a shoddy process over time. I could be totally wrong here, but it seems to me like ArenaNet needs 1 central location – its own public forums – to disseminate information about:

1. Existence of major issues
2. Informing people of what is being done to deal with these issues
3. Timelines/thoughts of when these resolutions will occur

A randomly timed chat with Gaile in Lion’s Arch or some random posts in different msg forums that are not owned by Anet, is not a productive way of keeping everything neatly organized and explained to your customers what is going on. Maybe this issue will be fixed with your own Wiki, but I doubt that was its intent.

You may claim that your information gathering to the developers is a perfectly working process in a weekly email. I am personally skeptical. I would say for certain though, your information back to the community in terms of feedback, has been messy and incoherent at best. I suggest you take control of it and organize it in a more intelligent fashion.


And one final rant on PVP – because I think this player base was pretty much ignored by CRs for years…

ATs are a prime example of people at ArenaNet not understanding what the problems of the PvP customer base. ATs will unfortunately and most likely turn out to be a complete waste of development resources and were never needed by the company or its customers. Let me emphasize this further:

When I privately discussed ATs with some people at Anet, a month or two before they came out, they gave me a cursory understanding of what they were, how they worked and what the ATs would be able to do. And it all sounded very interesting, but my first question to them was:

Are you going to release a 3-in-1 game pack for PvP customers or some kind of PvP-only pack to create easier access to the PvP game? And of course, they said it was under discussion. But this is the issue that really matters – EASE OF ACCESS TO PVP CONTENT.

I would think the CR people should have spent the last 2 years jumping up and down all over this constant community problem. Here are the major issues that have stunted your customer base, hampered your revenue growth as a company, and reduced returns on investment in your developer/payroll:

1. UAX - A major issue which prevented access to the game at the outset. I’m not going to go into this, because it’s been debated for years. But as Jim1 and others recently pointed out on TGH, it was a big, big mistake (http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/show...84#post560984).

2. Character/Game Complexity. The need for 50-100 pre-made characters upon PvP login. - The game is overly complex with thousand+ skills, rules, attribute specs, equipment etc. In any normal video game, there are premade characters, equipment/actions (like RTS that default units to do something) and no one new to the game knows what to do – so make 50-100 premades and simplify accessibly to the entertainment.

3. 3-in-1 PvP Pack or free starter edition. The new PvP packs were great. But it’s only common sense that when you release a Nightfall chapter, to offer some kind of marketing special to try to get a NEW PLAYERS to pick-up all your old pvp packs. Were these specials offered? How do you expect to grow your PvP player base without some kind of ongoing deal? Why haven’t you made the core/prophecies pvp edition free and tried to upsell people on chapter 2 and 3 skills? Is the razor/razor blade model not readily apparent to people?

4. Skill Balance. I generally think skill balance has been excellent, but there have been times when it is a mess. I will leave it to Ensign and others who want to micro-analyze every skill in the game to critique Izzy’s work. I have generally found it to be pretty damn good, better than any game I’ve played, but at some points it was too infrequent.

5. Tournaments. For the life of me, I’ve never understood the desire to waste money on $250K tournaments in Taiwan and Leipzig, while never building the player-base for the long-term. The tournament strategy at the outset was all over the place and rewarded a small minority of elite players, while never building a casual player base. Only the Celestial Tournament seems to have made really made much sense to me.

6. Pick-Up GvG Play It shouldn’t take more than 10-15 mins to find a group in GvG or in ANY PART of this game. A casual player should be able to roll a character and enter battle in a short period of time. You need a district which supports this function. Pick-Up pvp play would be easier in all parts of this game, if you included those premades discussed above.

It should be blatantly obvious to any person involved in CR for PvP in Guild Wars that issue #2, #3, and #6 above are far more important to the growth of the player base of Guild Wars, rather than the introduction of ATs. Is that the viewpoint of the CRs and Anet? Do they feel those are the more pressing issues rather than ATs? Did the CR team spend the last 2 years walking into work every Monday and saying… we need UAX, we need 50-100 premades for PVP, we need a free prophecies/core PvP game… we need a pick-up gvg area in the game ?

If so, why do the business managers at Anet choose to spend time on the ATs rather than these other issues? Why not just grow the community and then let some 3rd party organization run their own tournament? It’s truly a mystery to me.

I spent nearly 72 hrs straight playing Domain of Anguish when it was first released. I found a lot of bugs, design problems, and general issues with it. Why am I playing Domain of Anguish with Lulu/Johann and demonstrating these bugs to him and not Gaile/Andrew from CR? Were the CR people in these newly opened areas, play-testing and interfacing with the players who were there early on? Or do they just sit and wait until the message boards explode into a fury and then say, “We are the messengers and we are listening.” I wonder.

While I understand ArenaNet has gone above and beyond the CR that many other gaming companies offer, it isn’t appropriate to say, “Well we are giving you SOME CR support, while other companies give you absolutely none. Be happy with what you have!” If it the process isn’t being executed properly, why bother doing it at all? If the process isn’t going to deliver great returns for both customers and Anet. Why bother having it at all? It’s just a waste of everyone’s time and money, because things are not getting done and we all just end up bitching at one another. Alpha for PvP was killed for a reason, because it wasn’t delivering returns. The logic explained made 100% sense to me when Izzy and others from Anet explained it. My counterpoint would be that, after 2 years, I cannot see in any way shape or form how CR has benefited the PVP community in a real fundamental way. If this is the same kind of CR we are to expect for GW2, then my view (again as only 1 of millions) is that we are gonna have problems. Because you might get UAX, pick-up GVG and premades right in GW2. But there will be other problems that creep up, and those will get missed like the others did.

I understand PVP is only 1 part of this game, but I think the CR team has a lot of work cut out for it to earn credibility and respect across the player base and that includes PVE. I also think myself and others need to be realistic. As much as I agree with JR, it would be foolish for any of us to harbor animosities or hold grudges. If the CR people are really going to step up and change how they operate, then I would applaud them and wish them tons of success.

I have spent a lot of time looking at NCSoft… stocks up 60-70% in the last half year, profitability projected on the upswing in ’08. Very nice. We’ll see if Tabula Rasa really hits those #s in 2008. I’m skeptical. Maybe Aion will fair better. But one thing that is unequivocally clear to me, is that Anet could have generated a far larger player base, it could have generated a significantly greater revenue stream if it had effectively listened to its customers and implemented several changes – many of which are very tiny and simple in nature.

Anyway, that is my 2 cents. I would close by saying I really appreciate all the hard efforts of the employees of Anet. I think some of the work they have done has been absolutely stupendous. Izzy and the devs there are rock stars in my book. I think everyone in the community wishes Anet the best of luck with the community and into GW2. I hope it is a smashing success.

I'm sorry but JR's post was spot on...he even said some stuff that I agreed with all along but never put into words like that. I agree with everything that was stated.

For me personally, I don't mind the CR team members for PvE. People seem to like Gaile (some people that is ). There definately needs to be a CR member who has strong PvP knowledge though. That is definately something Guild Wars has lacked. I play both PvE and PvP, and I can see it is painfully obvious that the PvP community has been heard less than the PvE community.

Whether or not this has to do with the CR team or the number of players involved (IE: $$$) or some other factor is up for debate. But one thing is for sure...PvP is definately heard less. There is a reason the community has dropped significantly over the past year+.

And I am beginning to wonder why so many posts have been deleted... opinions were wanted. Now they are being given only to be deleted when people disagree? If you are going to delete posts it should be from the apologists who curse out everybody for stating the blantantly obvious facts, and not the people who know what they are talking about through much experience.

EDIT: Black Mischief's post was pretty epic as well. Some seriously good material in here.

Incidentally, this thread is going into a direction that's really the source of the problems lately - discussion turning into meta-discussion and feedback/criticism turning into a never-ending flamefest. Maybe people should take a deep breath and think if this issue is really all that remarkable to start a brouhaha?

I haven't given any input yet, but I've been monitoring this thread. All I have to say at the moment is that you guys need to stop fighting and direct the thread back to the topic. Whether or not you agree with their methods of delivery, JR and BM bring up some valid points that need to be addressed by the Anet CR team. Both of these posters have fantastic credentials, but it's not important to question them at the time. As BM said, he's but one in a million to Anet, and regardless of his minuscule proportion in their customer base, he still means something. In this case especially, he is particularly paramount because he is voicing the shared viewpoints of a great chunk of the GW community. From personal experience, I wouldn't need to stretch to say that he represents a vast majority of the community, but that would be too subjective a statement to be entirely accurate.

To anyone finding fault with the approaches that some posters are taking in order to express their viewpoints instead of objecting to the material presented: Not now. Grown-ups are talking.

Completely agree with this. Because of deletion of posts, I will leave it here.


Oh, but as a note. Unlike so many on this forum that simply complain for the sake of complaining, I participate in the community. I hold in game events that attempt to bond a failing community. I do good, and I try and stay out of this fodder. But this has honestly gone too far. The insults being thrown at ANET and their team are becoming so zealous, you would think that we they were congress and we were the house arguing over a bill that would make murder legal... I mean please guys and girls, this is rather silly. It is a pity that so many people have to make these fansites such a foul place to visit with such a negative vibe. Experiencing how difficult it was to manage and balance the Ascalon Royal Family Masquerade Ball, I at least have some concept as to how difficult it is to satisfy the majority. I received many emails, PMs, and in game whispers after the event. Many were wonderful praises, friendly gestures, etc. Some were downright rude and horrible. You cannot satisfy everyone, not by a long shot. If you are posting a negative comment about the game mechanics or ANET, do so after thinking about ALL sides of the argument.

A ton of flame posts and off-topic/irrelevancy have been removed.

I'm giving this thread a last chance. I'm aware that this is a very controversial topic. I'm aware that some people feel that this is going too far. But I am willing to let this thread continue if people can be civilised, and actually contribute to the discussion in their posts. QFT's do not help anybody.

Keep it cool.

I thought it might be helpful to share process information with those who are interested. This was discussed and confirmed just yesterday with the lead of the entire design team. The primary way that developers get their information is from reading the forums. Yes, themselves! Yes, daily! The community summaries are a back-up, a broad assessment of situations within the community, or issues that players bring us, or concerns that they have. And the heads-up links that we might send over a few times a day to individual designers are also not the main way that designers get their information. Neither the reports nor the individual links take the place of developers/designers actively reading the forums themselves, which they are supposed to do, daily.

Our function is not to read 2,000-3,000 forum posts a day on every subject under the sun, assess, synopsize, transcribe, and circulate. We pass along many threads, but we are not asked to be the "first point of contact." By the time we pass something along, we’re passing it along for the benefit of the whole team. The dev in charge of that area should have already read that thread, multiple times. And if you think about it, you'll understand why: Each person involved with certain tasks-- sound engineering, art, music, animation, props, skill balances, whatever--knows his or her field best, and should be (and is asked to be) the one tracking those posts.

I'm sorry if you've misunderstood how the system works, or if you really felt that CR members were gatekeepers, deciding wha information the rest of the development team saw. If you thought that, obviously you'd wonder what was getting to them, and what was not. But in truth, a large number of devs read forums daily, as they are supposed to do. And we support them in being able to do that. Now, it's true that we write the forum responses that share their feedback, where there is some, and that's where we're the lead. But we're not the first way in which your input gets to the devs.

So let’s take an example: Changes to HA. We shared the many, changing concerns via a ton of forum links and reports. However, those forum threads were actively tracked by those directly involved in the changes. They made the assessment based on their greater knowledge of the mechanic and the design goals, and their professional opinions about that form of gameplay. So, as messengers, we did not fail. We relayed the information we were supposed to relay. Blaming the CRT for any particular game design decision is sort of like blaming the newspaper for the news.

So then whos to blame for the state HA is in may i ask Galie. It would obviously highlight some people have not been doing something correctly, are you implying it is therefore the people in that field dealing with HA we should be looking to in relation to wanting some answers regarding it?

Meh. Again, alot of confusion and frustration would be alleviated with a separation of reps for pvp and pve portions of the game. I'm sure Gaile's pretty pro and hunting down mursaat, but she doesn't have a clue about pvp mechanics. Alot of what makes pvpers pissed off at her is the fact that the only real official source of contact with anet for pvp is a pver that spends half her time talking to frogs. That's great for people who do pve, but when there is a separate community for pvp, there needs to be appropriate representatives to address and stay in touch with that community. Having Gaile bring me info about pvp is like my dentist telling me the results of my heart exam.