An Alternative Open Letter to ANet

Thought I'd put this out here..

First off - This is my opinion / not fact please don't quote me on anything, Flamers and Troll's stay in your little bedlam cube's and away from here!

I'll make this short and consice, as I am @ work earning the pounds for my family.

Dear ANet,

I have played 4000 hours or so since a startling assassin lady grabbed my attention from the local Morrison supermarket back in April 06. To me its been the best £25 i have spent gaming wise. Your game has done, and 'still' does everything it says it would. Marketing wise, your effort has to be commended; it made me go out and purchase two other chapters and an expansion without the need to even consider whether it's worth it.

Guild War's was designed to be a pick up and play game that can be left at any time, only to pick up again in a few months and carry on with it. I think your gaming model and approach has been excellent thoughout my experience with your product. I wouldn't expect anything more/new from you guys without paying over hard earned cash. How many games on the market offer this attraction?? Very few i suspect.

I don't expect updates week in/week out as I don't pay you a subscription fee. But what you do provide for us goes above and beyond what is expected (weekends, tournaments with real prizes, much more & of course.. Fun!)

If I was a developer/ community relations officer, i wouldn't take the other post too much to heart as what you stated you would do, you have provided and more!

GW is not meant to be a lifetime game.
After you've played for a while, you experience most of it's content, then when your done you move to another game. Sooner or later every person posting here and in opposite threads to this will stop playing GW and move on, or only play it occasionally. Once a game has reached saturation point then the only path is down.

I think many people have an emotional attachment to this game, so do I! And they maybe feel 'hard done by' because they love it so much. I think, the only thing that you have done wrong is give us, the game playing community, too much and people now expect the earth in return.

People saying they won't buy GW2 because of the current situation is a Non-entity. As someone posted in the other thread :

"GW2 devs know what they want to do.
Their success will depend on how good they are in programming videogames.
No one would have bet a dime about the success of their ideas for GW1.
After 3 years, they won over 99% of other games, selling far more than any forecast.

If GW2 is a great game, it will sell like GW1 or even more.
If it reveals itself to be crap like dozens and dozens of other games, it will have the same destiny as dozens and dozens of other crap games.

GW1 players are people, people grow up, maybe most of them will stop playing videogames because they start university, or job, or get married and so on.
So they won't buy GW2 in any case for several other reasons, whereas other people will buy it if good, and probably many younger people who never played or even heard about GW1". - Abnaxus

The Way Out also adds - " Anet is creating a new game to stay current and relevant in an ever-changing market. Releasing expansions or further campaigns for GW is going to detract and deter development for a new game that I am actually pumped about. As a fan of Guild Wars, I trust that the next game is going to be better than this one, with more content and features."

The above statment is as true as it gets for me.

My boss is calling so I wont write anymore for now, but please take everything that is thrown at you with a good sense of humour.

Regards

Spangly

People please feel free to add to this post, but do not slate me as i don't follow the same path as you.

Except that Anet completely reneged on skill > time?

I also wanted to add that I appreciate your unique approach to the game as I know it. I am still amazed at how great the service has been in light of the free play.

Your servers have had a 100% uptime. I have never logged on to see a server failure. I am a tech and I commend you for that. No other online game I have ever played has done that. I am still amazed that this was free for me every month.

I appreciate the weekly events, skills updates, attempts at balancing PvE and PvP, and introduction of new content. You have showed a dedication to me, your client, that has been unparalleled.

I am happy to know that you are moving onto a new game and look forward to playing GW2. I am actively promoting the upcoming game and encourage other people to play GW2.

Thank you very much for the years of free monthly enjoyment!

point of other thread wasn't that GW is bad game and should have major updates weekly, it just pointed out facts that pretty much "killed" game for dozens of players. That post wanted to collect all facts and all needed to be said in one post with added feelings of post writer. NOONE EVER IN THAT THREAD SAID THAT GW IS NATURALY BAD GAME AND WE SHOULD GET UPDATES WEEKLY! No idea why was this thread needed while you could share you "feelings" with us in other thread

now i have a game where eating cake + grinding titles+ retarded pve skills > skill.
its not what i paid for . the updates ruined the game instead of perfecting it.

at this point only thing that would be useful is to set up a poll and see what people really want. (instead of following this vocal minority)

i know very few people that are happy about the pve/pvp divide .even fewer that are happy about pve skills and consumables.

actually this idea about poll is a nice idea

I spit my coffee out on my keyboard when I read this.

Well done, good response to that emotional QQ letter (ableit very well written). It's about time people stopped being so whiny, remembered that Guild Wars IS A GAME and started appreciating the things Anet do for us, ALL OF WHICH IS FREE. So what if not every update pleases everyone? Nobody's perfect. So what if the game is constantly changing, it's their game and they have to right to do so if they wish. If it had stayed the same since launch people would have got bored a lot earlier.

I didn't want to post in a thread where my totally different different viewpoint has no impact.

Your entitled to open up your own thread if you so wish, i did!

Am I a vocal minority? Did I ruin the game for you? I am not imposing my opinion on you, you chose to read it. Do I spam forums giving people wrong ideas? Please don't flame me.

People ruin the game for themselves by investing too many real life emotions into it.

/sigh

1st of all: we appreciate things Anet did for us, but we still dissagree with things they did in last year. What's wrong if we dissagree and express our feelings?

2nd: would kind of have to say that lately none update is really usefull, but that could be just me

3rd: it might be their game, but we're the ones who paid for game and who will eventually buy GW2, they+ll need our support aswell to get more money out of it so yeh, it's their game, but we're the ones who pay for it.

Anet has made some bad decisions, thats all I think most of us are saying.

Yes, i do appreciate the fact that anet supports the game still, but they neglect critical areas that should be adressed in favor of fixing a bug with signs in eotn. Doing this when classes and skill lines need fixing is a sad thing :*(

Yes your right matey.

I just think people look and comment on the situation through broken spectacles, seeing only the cracks and not the crux that has been put into place for us. Yeah skill's need to be fixed, it should just be at the Copyright owners whim and not the general moaning of us.

12 dozen = 144/600000 = .00024% Hardly a need for ANET to worry if they create a new great game. To the OP I agree with your opinion much more than the other post, but expect the flames to continue as it is a a no-no to praise ANET to many posters here.

P.S: Please implement a real help feature other than just the help sytem that allows you to look up stuff on the wiki. Please make an attempt to implement this into the game with the release of GW2. Thank you.
P.S.S: Your game rocks.

do you really think that guru is 100% of GW community? Really, don't be blind to not see that there are loads of ppl who think current Ursan era sux and it's too easy to play(yes, even without ursan you can H/H most of areas in game with ease).

Avarre does a good job in explaining the concerns of one part of the player base, and those are legitimate concerns, at least for the people involved, and I mostly agree with his conclusions if not necessarily with the style.

That said, Spangly, my own standing is very close to yours and I appreciate your effort in writing it out in a constructive and positive manner

That was and still is my biggest concern. They completely went against the thing that made their game unique and different from the crowd in the first place.

I'll say this first: I bought Guild Wars because it didn't have any monthly fee. That's the only reason why I did.

Nonetheless, I'm hoping GW2 is going to be good, but I'm still on edge what I've mentioned in many posts: They could at least say something about it besides what we "think" already could be in it. Keeping more than 95% of the community in the dark really brought my desire for getting GW2 even worth it.

The least they could tell us is will it be dungeons or missions...

Yes but look at the consequences of this, their sales figures have continually risen. I think they assumed that their original sales strategy hook had caught all the fish interested and now they change their bait to attract the other customers available.

Those that left already gave anet what they wanted - money. Anet does not need to support them anymore really. Even though there are those that may say "but that will affect their future sales in gw2". I say not really, since their target market for GW2 will be considerably different to their original.

If you had read the other letter to ANET you would know how wrong you are.

As I totally disagreed on Avarre's letter, I support 100% the letter of the OP.

I love guild wars.


no complaints.

Their sales figure has *always* been continually rising. Whether or not because of all of these PvE boosts is up in the air, but I'll have you know that "new powerful PvE skills" is not one of the things mentioned on any of the boxes.

lol, skill tweaks =/= new content. I don't expect updates to the game often since we don't pay to play, but damn.... The last thing they added that I could participate in was the bonus mission pack and I got that free with GWEN. The only reason I play GW1 anymore is to get the few more titles I am close to getting. Then it can rot when GW2 comes out.

I'd vote here for a thread merge here to be honest, we are covering the same ground with both. I thought i would share a different view and hopefully that has been digested by you. Its been graced with Community Manager involvement and thats what was needed.

At the end of the day, both threads are showing that the GW playing community adore this game and want the best from it.

Thanks for your time

Spangly

Hi, I'm old timer for GW, started in World Preview Event and have 4,000+ hrs in /age, I hardly go to the forums so I considered a lurker, I can only agree one or two of Avarre's points though, and generally agreed on Spangly's points with a few exceptions on his part.

What baffles me is that before this drama, people use to want PvE/PvP to be separated, but now it has come to wanting the merge back again, PvEonly skills was the answer to the separation, but Avarre's point on emphasis towards PvE skills to the point of pushing regular GW skills to the side does have some merit to it.

Consumables- This baffles me even more when people complain about this, I like the fact that they make life easier when you need some laid back gameplay and they are not free.

I don't see the game being easier to newbies with EotN, and from my observation, players went to other games to get new and different game experience, not because of the changes.

Relative to what? This (exactly opposite) thread which has 9 times fewer posts? It seems to me that in the entire forum community, a relatively large portion of the players feel represented by a non-tactful open complaint letter.

And for every player who is happily oblivious actually playing the game (the reasoning typically given for more negativity expressed on forums), anecdotally I have to estimate that there is at least one player who quit the game already without looking back (being very generous here too).

Ah, that's where I disagree. Guru population << player population, and that's not even an opinion. No matter which group you get together here, it will always be a small minority of the entire community.

Edit: I don't believe for a second that the guru population is a representative sample of the entire population, either.

It's a known fact that unhappy customers/consumers are more vocal about it than happy ones.

If all those people quit the game without looking back there would be much much less complains in forums.

I could say the GW equivalent in rl is having bought a car - and 3 upgrades to it's engine - never having paid for fuel and service, and after 1000000 miles complain to the manufacturer that it doesn't work the way you want it...

Not the best analogy. It's more like you have the car, but every time you go in for free servicing, the mechanics break something. You can go up to them and say 'guys, I've gotten a lot of use out of this car, that's awesome, but you guys are really messing up your job as mechanics by making this thing not run', and they reply 'oh, we're making the car better for people who can't drive. By the way, have you heard we're bringing out a new car model?'

It would be a bit radical to say that everyone will be upset. But the customers who enjoyed driving the car are going to be a little concerned about what's coming out next.

Anyways, regarding this thread, it's good for other viewpoints to be expressed and discussed. That's why I put the letter on the forum rather than e-mailing. I just hope ANet has a better way of handling all the parts of the community in Guild Wars 2.

...because the manufacturer keeps making small changes here and there eventually changing it from a sports car to a family sedan with a broken muffler.

The analogy is fine ... have you seen how often car companies change their models? And we are talking about a toy that's in the $ thousands... do you expect a 40$ game to last forever?

And yes like every consumer product it's trying to be friendly to most people ... otherwise go buy an F1 car.

Analogy's are ace, and what you said above makes lots of sense Avarre.

I think the issue people have is that it originally was an F1, and yet maintenance is turning it into something else. ANet isn't obligated to keep the game the same, and have full right to make changes, but not everyone likes what is being done. One would think that the most devoted part of the playerbase, which received the most support at first, would be the valued part of the community (referring to competitive PvP), but that has not been the case.

Let me also mention that the hardcore fanbase is valuable to ANet. They provide the best in-game advice as to what to fix regarding balance. You can say 'oh, their viewpoint is limited', but the fact remains they understand the game better than most and thus their feedback is invaluable. The hardcore fanbase also serves to advertise the game - if you have people dedicated to your product, they're going to want their friends to join, and as, ideally, the turnover rate of hardcore players is low, that's a lot of continual influence. ANet hurting a group of people who want to help them as much as possible with their game seems a bit short-sighted.

There is definitely no mutual exclusiveness in catering to hardcore and casual gamers. This kind of thing just needs to be planned out well by ANet from the start with regards to how their game will develop.

Car analogies can only go so far because they miss the essential restriction that there is just one product that everybody is using.

An amusement park would be a much better case. There is one park which is quite unlike every other park out there because a single admission fee will grant you a lifetime access to everything in the park. After 3 years of freeloading some old-timers complain that the management is doing bad decisions by modifying the roller-coaster so that handicapped people can ride it too, or toning down the scares of the ghost train so that kids can ride it without getting nightmares.

You are claiming that since you are using the park more than its managers, you are more knowledgeable than them about what is fun and what is not. Might be true, might not be. However, what you ignore is that they have a business to run, and they must be pretty good at what they are doing if the park is still open three years down the road, with a business model that others though would never work.

They are most devoted because ... ? They spent more hours in-game? They spent more money for the game? Your assumption is subjective.
And because someone receives more attention at the beginning doesn't mean a company has to keep on doing that - that makes him sound like a pampered child.

Again you are subjectively defining who is "hardcore" and who isn't. And who brings in more people... And you are missing the fact that your opinions maybe biased towards what you think is good - ignoring what might be good for the "ignorant" mass of consumers. Of course you realize that if the game sold 15k "hardcore" copies it would be dead in 6 months...

Ideally I hope that can happen in GW2. As for GW - in life most times you have to be ready to compromise a bit.

Those who spent the most effort in understanding and playing the game. The Guild Wars community radio shows, parts of the upper tier PvP community (who have finished PvE as well), those who show the most familiarity and presence in the game. These are the players who actively comment on the game and how it can be improved. I know lots of others do too who don't fall into those categories, and I would count those as well.

To me, that shows more devotion than a guy who buys the game and farms for 5000 hours while getting 30 max titles.

http://eu.guildwars.com/press/article/jeffgc2007/


"...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..."

Yeah, so now we have 2 minority groups with 2 viewpoints.

Do I need to tell you which viewpoint has more supporters here?

Please don't be so Barumphing.
Does it really matter????? Its not a competition.

We are all being constructive in our own way, its not about supporters or numbers, everyone is rallying to the same conclusion and looking for the same outcomes.