Arena Net - Don't Listen To Us.

ANET should only listen to people who find bugs , game exploits etc. They shouldn't listen when it comes to game design. Skill balance to some extent , but only from players with experience without agendas , not the "OMG I've spent xyz hours and want this skill nerfed cuz it owns me/ruins economy/game" without evidence and strong arguments.
I have seen very few people who base their arguments on objective statements rather than subjective.

@pumpkin pie: this is much more urgent than some PvE skills

@strcpy: I would quote you for truth , but the text is to long

This time period never existed, and I'm not sure why you think that it did. I suppose the rose-colored glasses store had a big sale.

The forum community is just a small minority of the larger guild wars community, every games forum community is full of moans and groans in an attempt to get the game changes to their likeing but when it comes down to it theres a lot more people enjoying the game the way it is then the few that come here or any games forums and complain for changes. Its almost disturbing how much credit the devs give their forum communities because 99% of it is crap and the 1% of legitimate concern get drowned out. The majority of people who play the game dont come on the forums or even know about them. What 250 viewers on this board out of 5 million copies sold? This forum is nothing compared to the real community, which are busy playing the game.

Concurred. We, the community, are not a single entity.

And just because a lot of people are supporting an idea doesn't mean that it's smart. It's the reasoning behind wanting the idea that matters, not a number if '/signed' posts.

With any major change to the game, player input is always essential, as seen with the complete reversal of gameplay in PvE.

Problem is that any suggestion can be turned into look "subjective".

Not sure why I was quoted on three seperate occasions in this thread. I was simply stating the truth.

Change one thing, group A complains.
Change it back, group B complains.
Change nothing, everyone complains.

The whining and complaining will never stop, because the community as a whole does not know what it really wants.

Until you can prove that wrong, I stick with it. Also, I don't care WHY the community is split. I don't CARE about WHY things are like that...I don't need a Psychology lesson. Bottom line is that's how things are, and will remain. So for the most part, I agree with the OP.

And "it" will never know what "it" wants. The community will always disagree with each other, because no one person has the same desires as the other.

Does this mean you should never listen to the community? No.

So then how do they determine which "suggestions" to take and which not to? (look back on previous large updates, as well as the split debates on current issues...Ursan, for instance). So if they should, indeed, take the community's advice, what would be the "right" choice about Ursan/Shadow Form? Nerf them, group A complains. Don't nerf them, group B complains. Say nothing about it ever again and let them go...everyone complains.

Sure, they should look at what the community is saying....but take it with a grain of salt. Not base entire changes around what half of the community wants, based on who can whine and QQ more, or who can rack up more "/signed".

You listen to and take heed to the ones that make the most sense. You base changes around the logic that each person provides for their ideas.

It's not about getting everyone to agree with each other (mainly because it'll never happen), but to converse/think about or implement changes that are in league with the game and that are beneficial to its health.

If ANet has a clear idea of what they're doing with the game, and the CR's are experienced at the game and have an understanding of both the design goals and the mechanics of the game, then they can filter out suggestions that are bad from suggestions that would work in the game to achieve design goals.

It's the responsibility of Community Relations to determine the quality and validity of suggestions. That is their job.

Well, as a closing I will just say that I still stick with my original post.

Change one thing, group A complains.
Change it back, group B complains.
Change nothing, everyone complains.

That's a fact, there's no need to debate or deny it, as there's is no need to go into detail about the reasoning behind it. It is how things are, period.


Yes, I agree that the CRs should read over the suggestions and posts, and I understand about them being able to weed out the nonsense. However, going through the debates about current issues, finding good hard logic amongst the whining, trolling, and "change it because this is how I want it" posts isn't exactly easy. Yes, Anet should read the forums to know what is going on. But they should not base entire decisions on it. Jeff Strain said it himself...most players will never even view a fansite. Just because an idea has more /signed replies on guru, does not mean it is for the best.

No you're right...not always. But usually. "Change nothing" is in fact, the choice I want them to make with the Shadow Form farm issue. However, how many people want the opposite, and want to see it nerfed to oblivion? This is exactly the point I was trying to make from the start, but people can't seem to accept. That the community is divided in half. And although people seem to realize this, they find it necessary to go into detail about WHY it is. That doesn't matter, and I do not care. The fact of the matter, is that it IS divided, and again...as a whole, does not know what it wants.

Not always!

I can generally sum up most of the views on Guru, and I'm a volunteer staff member. It's CR's paying job to be on top of events - they do not have an excuse for not frequenting forums. If it was easy, they wouldn't have to pay people to do it.

If a member of ANet can't decide what a good idea is just by reading the idea itself, then there's some serious disconnect within the company and no amount of suggestions will solve it. I hope ideas aren't being taken for the reason you correctly declared invalid.

That's not what me and Avarre are talking about with you. We fully understand that the "community will never be happy". But we're saying that that doesn't mean you should *never* listen to the community.

Yes, it's hard digging through so much shit posts. But if you don't, you won't find any community direction.

With a game like GW, you *need* player input.

A-net should run Guild Wars how Blizzard runs World of Warcraft.

Don't listen to the players I think.

Well I am not saying they should never listen or read the forums, either. I said that I "somewhat" agree with the OP, and that yes, they SHOULD read the forums. But they should NOT take a suggestion as a "good" or "right" decision just because more people are whining for it, or how many /signed replies it has. Some of the player input might even make the decisions harder for them to make (ursan...). I don't really understand how I am giving the wrong impressions here...I am trying to be as clear as I can. >_>

In my original post I even said it is human nature to disagree. I just don't get why my post, which was true, was quoted three times as though I was making an incorrect statement.

Here's my original post, by the way

Fix'd. Ever been to the test realm forums?

You're thinking we disagree with you. We don't.

Umm, dunno about the test forums but try to take a look at the Hakkar realm or Ruin bg forums, check for how long the rants have been going on.

Just pointing out that Blizzard doesn't give a shit either about certain issues -- albeit important.

If it wasn't for the test realm and forum, Warlocks would've had all of their gear rendered useless. If it wasn't for the test realm and forum, T6 itemization would've lacked stamina.

Just some of the few things changed via player input. While there are still many things in debate, they *do* look to the players.

Anet needs to have stopped listening to the community a long time ago. It doesn't really matter at this point what they do.

It's not that they need to stop listening altogether, just that they need to stop listening to the wrong people.

They probably just wanted more people to get factions.

The problem with listening to the community is taht it requires thinking of it as a single entity. When that happens only the loudest voices seem to be heard, and generally the louder people are, the more irrelevant their words are. ANet has been fairly good at sifting through the stupidity, but sometimes a little slips by them.

And those same people will be having tons of "FUN!" living the rest of their lives alone and friendless, since no one can tolerate their obnoxious attitude. But I digress...

The notion that ANet should always listen to its players truly is idiotic. Look at the main argument against Ursan Blessing. It can be boiled down to "it makes it easy for people to do difficult missions." This is an elitist stance and not one I support. However, I do feel that Ursan needs to be seriously nerfed and/or retooled. Why? Not because I'm worried about "noobs gettin me lewt" but because it goes against the spirit of the game. One of the greatest things about Guild Wars is that every class has it's weaknesses. With Ursan, an ele (typically a soft target) can become a tank with incredibly high dmg output with 1 skill. This would be like a skill that made my warrior suddenly have a 50+ mana pool and a bunch of hardcore spells. It directly circumvents the weakness of my class and creates a serious balance issue. Yes, it allows classes that might have a hard time in certain areas to play them, but at what expense? Munchkinism ruins games. I could have told you that back in '91 when I was playing AD&D on Prodigy BBs.

I realize that some find Ursan to be a ton of fun. Yes, powergaming can be fun, but when the novelty of doing leet damage wears off and you find very little to be challenging anymore, the game ceases to be fun.

As for Ectos being so easy to farm with the SF buff, give the Mindblade Spectre's in Chaos Plains [Signet of Disenchantment]. Then watch people QQ over that for months on end.

As a homebrewer and lover of fine ales, I salute your avatar. One of my very first craft brews, and I never looked back after that.

Because "QFT" is boring and "This." (as in "Read this and understand it.") also gets the job done.

I just don't agree with your view that the community as a whole doesn't know what it wants.
We know what we want.
And that's - different things.

(Ohh and everything in my post was meant for the OP. I just quoted your post because you beat me to the punch. You clearly stated that there are multiple groups in the GW community - which was the whole point of my post.)

QFT. I think the game co.s have a better perspective at how things are working because they can observe, record & compare ALL the data. players see something from their singular perspective and think they know it all. Unless a game is made, specifically, to be tweaked/dictated/created based on the players input, it's never ending cycle of trying to please everyone as they want more & more. That's why when you let players do anything (like second life) it turns into a cluster of incongruous, inefficient, inconsistent crap, tempered only by "sectioning off" one pile of crap from another. (that's an extreme example though)

Which, from a developers point of view is confusing or creates the cycle of disappointment. You can't have it all. the "different things" people want are sometime directly opposed to one another. It creates a road map for a project that cannot exist, which is why sometime people feel the desire to throw up their hands and say "I give up". Games need a more singular vision just like movies, music & literature. By doing that, you need to throw out some of what people want.

I don't agree we should be ignored, but it's difficult to impossible to look at our own requests from a proper perspective that evaluates the plausibility, priority & impact of those requests.
on top of that, Anet can see ALL the data and the data may be in conflict with what the forum elite think is the absolute truth. I may think ER may be too powerful but Anet may be looking at the the data and seen that with teams/solo builds containing ER the average # of mobs kills, mission time, # teammates required, average droprate etc.. have remained consistent before & after the change. I dunno.

It's very hard to tell what "data" they can look at. If they have so much at their fingertips, why are there so many districts and areas full of bots?

Not to mention that all ANet has are numbers. They don't know the thoughts or opinions of any of the players just by looking at a spreadsheet.

Im sorry but reading this I couldnt help myself,Anet are working very hard - yes

But if they think they are seriously making it better they should give up now! They are defintly NOT making it better,they are driving it to its early death IMO
I really think they try to do TOO much.

This is all IMO of course

Elitism 'R Us. nuts.

Sort of. The notion that a few select players are the only ones that deserve to be listened to is a rather troubling remark and is an extremely elitist stance. I think that many people on Guru don't truly realize how hard fine tuning something like Guild Wars really is. You need to cater to the hardcore crowd, but you still want to make it accessible and friendly to casual players (which I would be willing to bet is the larger of GW's client base). Unfortunately, the means to please both of those are completely diametrical in game focus. Hardcore players want a more drawn-out experience and with slower progression (thus the longer and more skilled, the more you are rewarded), casual players want to be able to get to thick of it quickly and get to the fun as soon as possible (be able to get moderate reward benefits without investing in a time sink). Obviously, you can't slant to one side or the other and not create a huge uproar. This isn't even bringing into account that you have at least 5 unique varieties of PvP and a large variety of PvE play styles that all must be catered to without screwing up one or the other play styles with the various skill nerfs/buffs, etc. And this isn't even accounting for shifts in monster difficulty.

If you think something is wrong with the game, state it in a constructive and concise manner. A 3 page rant to ANet is not anywhere near as helpful as you might think. A simple paragraph expressing your overall opinion followed by a bulleted list of specific changes or specific wrongs is much better. Why? It's not tl;dr, and the reduction of excessive verbiage allows for the specific points to speak loudly for themselves.

Furthermore, could people please stop with the "player Y left Guild Wars, thus proving GW sucks now" posts? Saying that the game sucks because of a few people leaving is hardly means for the immense panic that people are spreading. Okay, granted they were a long-time fans and noticeable members of the community. On the other side, to think that no one could or will ever fill their place is silly. People get tired of games and move on. If Ensign or anyone else gets tired of Guild Wars or is upset over current affairs, I'm sorry to hear that you playing experience was diminished. Fortunately, you can pick things up again in a few months if you want. Or not. It's your call.

One an end note: Although you may be upset with the current state of the game and may disagree with what the devs are doing, calling them idiots and saying they're ruining the game is not helpful in any sense. Who the hell wants to constantly hear, "you guys suck and can't do anything right! What are you, retards?" I can tell you from doing something as simple as building modules in Neverwinter Nights (1&2), game design and tinkering is not an easy task. ANet is NOT Blizzard. ANet has, for a company with a game as large as GW is, a rather small staff. Considering they have their forces split between continuing support and adding new features (ie: hacking their engine) to the currently supported GW while also working on GW2, you must understand that things are probably immensely hectic for them. Especially since, I'm sure, they are fervidly rushing to meet the proposed 2nd half 2008 beta release for GW2 (else the community crap all over ANet for that too). I'm not saying you simply suck up whatever they deliver with a smile even if you really dislike it. What I am saying is, show a little respect and understanding to the devs. They are human and make mistakes, but to say they don't listen or that they are trying to ruin the game is horrendously presumptuous, disingenuous and is merely a rouse to pose, "ANet's a bunch of 'tards cos they won't do what I want them to do for me to enjoy the game how I play it." I may not like Ursan Blessing, but if it is fitting the direction that ANet wants to take Guild Wars, then that is their prerogative. I don't have to agree with it, but it's not my game, it's not my money, and it's not my job. If someone enjoys using it, I'm not going to belittle them, but I will make it known that I do think the skill exploits a serious balance flaw that diminishes the challenge of the end-game content.

Anyways, sorry for the tl;dr post , but I really don't think many of you realize how difficult the design decisions ANet must weigh really are. A lot of the problems stem from the system (engine) that GWs was built on and there isn't much to change that (though I do think the PvP/PvE skill split is a good shift in the right direction). The devs are trying, but this is a very, very hectic time for them. Before flying off the handle and getting all pissy about something, put yourself in their shoes first. Bring about problems, concerns, and issues you feel are important, but be reasonable about it and realize that you are merely one of a million differing opinions and that it's merely your opinion and not a fact.

Devs that know what they're doing dont need to be told by their community how to make a game. Infact the more the devs listen to a community the worse the game is in my experience.

Example; players cried about not having X, the devs give them X now they're crying about why they give them X and the devs are left scratching their heads trying to fix problems that dont exists, trying to please everybody and in the end pleasing nobody.

But by that point the game is finished anyway, when devs start asking those type of questions they obviousely dont know what they're doing anymore. So it doesnt really matter what they do or who they listen to at that point its already a failure. Thankfully GW hasnt seen this demise yet but it will, its already happening slowly but surely with each update, constantly tweaking this or that for reasons unknown to me that ive just stopped paying attention. Hopefully they're just testing things out for GW2 because really if a game is good why does it need to be "fixed" every couple of weeks?

It's not surprise that Anet ignore our thought here.
They even dont surf Guru now.

They cost 2 years to discover that IWAY really needed a nerf.

After NF released, no balance any more.
Lots of lame build created and put on PvX Wiki, even noobs kills people easily.

Lots of "balance update" as they said released after NF.
But there're still tons of gimmicky builds now.
They can't balance the game, and I dont think they really want to, either.

Even Wow more balance than GW now, at least their new players don't just copy a rated "Great" build on PvX Wiki and owns a lot.

What is Guild Wars?
Gimmicky Units Involved Lame Dirty Wars.

They ruined PVP and now begin destory PVE.
Pathetic.

Well, I believe a lot of the skill tweaks are to to introduce new ways of playing. I remember the large number of rage-quits when ANet nerfed [[Watch Yourself!], which really was way overpowered at the time (throw in [[mending refrain] and you got some serious powergaming). "WY!" is back to being viable in PvE, but is much more reasonable, IMO. Also, yes the game does need to be tweaked. There are a lot of skills out there and eventually someone is going to find some uber chain that can be easily exploited. A lot are also various improvements to overall gameplay (consumables, festival hat creator, etc).

I agree entirely with the first part of your post. It really reminds me of D&D:O and the excellent comic the Penny Arcade did on the dilemma.



Half the time, people are just complaining that they can't powergame enough to fulfill their inner munchkin desires of Napoleon-complex uber leetness.

Great points by Peter and a perfect example of the what this post is about displayed by Ceylon. While I will not quote another example of the, "me! me! me!" attitude about Ectoplasm, it still rears its head. And now that I've said it, there will be complaints either because of the date I joined the forum or simply accusations of me not understanding. Sadly I do though, I've just learned through work and life that not everything will go my way. And there really are people outside of my bubble that I have to consider.
If it makes you feel more accepting of me, I have two 31 month old characters and I was on a development team for another game. I might not have joined these forums earlier, but that does not mean I've never used a forum before, nor played any other MMORPGs.

I tend to be verbose so I appologize ahead of time for the length.

First off, whether you want to admit it or not, ArenaNet is a company. Companies exist to offer products or services in return for profit. While many companies will adjust their product or service to please the customer (and thus attract more customers) they are in their field of expertise to make money. It really is that simple.
All products have a life-cycle, and GuildWars is an aging product. It's still fun, I still love it, and people still buy it. It is not dead by any means, but as a company ArenaNet is going to be looking forward to selling something new (GW2) that will make them more money. It doesn't mean they don't love what they do, or are less involved than we are, it means their focus is making money. So they will be devoting less manpower to the original game, and no amount of complaining is going to fix that. A massive (add another 2 million players) influx of people would. Whining; no.

Balancing play occurs to avoid every player having no choice but to play a single method. There are a lot of complaints, both for and against skills like Ursan Blessing and Shadow Form. These are not the only way to play though and as players, you are free to choose your own character, appearance, profession, armor, skin tone, gender, weapons, etc. You don't have to use either of those skills, and not everyone has to be an assassin with FoW armor.
As far as someone copying a build from the internet, well that's why we can share builds. I am alluding to something I will build upon in a moment here, but even if we could not share a build, there is really nothing preventing a player from posting where they put attribute points and what skills they were using at the time in another format. Not allowing builds to be copied and pasted would not stop players from sharing them.

Ecto prices again? I've said it before, I'll say it once again: "You made a bad investment." There it is, tough. Yes, prices have fallen since their peak, but no, ArenaNet does not have to do anything about it.

Twice before I've hinted at this and now I'll get down to the core of all of this. It does not matter how hard a development team works to remove bugs and exploits because players will always find a way to slant things in their favor. If you don't believe that's true then try to recall the rash of duplicated items. Do you remember, by any chance, Bobafet's Trainer for Diablo? If players were so inclined to have things perfectly balanced and never have an upper hand this would be Guild Stalemate, not Guildwars. So yes, players will find skill combinations that work exceptionally well together and use them to win. That's the idea.
Before you try to use my statement against me regarding overpowered skills, remember my original remark: ArenaNet is a company trying to make a profit. They want more customers, more money. They're not inhuman, but that's why they go to work. To make money. So I want to have ShadowForm so I can farm the Underworld. I want to see what Ursan Blessing is all about (yeah, I'm getting toward EotN).
Why?
Because unlike what seems to be the majority of people who make complaints, I'm not a professional gamer. I can't invest the time to have to grind at every single inch of map. And neither can the other 99.5% of Guild Wars players. Why aren't they here complaining? Because in their free time, they are still playing Guild Wars. If this game was as impossible as the "elite" players would have Arenanet make it, then that 99.5% playerbase would be on WoW.
The beautiful thing is, you don't have to play with people you don't like. Get some heroes and henchmen and do it yourself. Chat when you get to town. And heck, if you don't like "that" guy on your team because he has an assassin as a character, don't team up with him. But don't write a post on a forum saying you will quit and expect ArenaNet to stay up late worrying about it.

And really, for the love of the 5 Gods, give up on ecto. If you have the time to get enough money to regularly make 100K+50e trades, then you have more than enough time to go find that item. I've lost money on stocks, but I don't run around lighting churches or company headquarters on fire.

This thread is total BS.
ANet does either not listen, listen to the wrong people, or understands things the wrong way. Their own ideas of making GW a better game are not better.
For GW1, everything is lost. Let's see how GW2 will turn out.

They ruined GW1, if they are too dumb to recognize feedback and make decisions based on their very own evaulation of it, they are to blame, too.


ANet does not listen to us in the way that they do everything we want. This was never the case. They get input from us, and take it in account or not. See Ursan Blessing, they prefer to do nothing against it. See Ether Renewal, they think it is OK in PvE. I tend to agree, it did not have the negative impact that the OP of that thread feared.


They make their own decisions, they evaluate our feedback and make up their own mind about it. So the "ANet, do not listen to us, people do not know what they want!" thread you just started is totally... superfluous.

Joe Schmoe owes me 1 dollar.

QFT

The people in the community that whine and complain are spoilt and need to accept that they can't get everything they want, or exactly how they want it. E.g Zaishen Emote.

Nor should they. They never did anything about Amber and Jade (which used to be 1k each), or rubies and sapphires, or onyx and diamonds, why would they do anything to preserve the "value" of ecto?

A lot of what you say holds quite a bit of truth. Back in the day, there was no *running* to places, it was pugging a mission and giving it your best. Everything has become very simplified...

And no things probably won't change, people like things to be easy.

Go to the Anet pages in the official Wiki.

You are listened best there.

For those of us that were never really all that concerned with money, because we just wanted to get decent weapons (skins don't matter) and max armor w/runes, gold is NOT easier to obtain nowadays without perma SF/UB.

Personally, I think the SF farm is bad for the game and don't want to do it. Same goes for UB. But, because of my morals, I am being penalized, because I am getting less cash overall from doing PvE, and I cannot do DoA/UW/FoW anymore because my build doesn't "measure up" (maybe in this case, measure down).

55ing has been around since Prophecies beta and nothing has been done about it. UB's been around for about a year now and no change. Anyone remember when Jade/Amber was 1k ea? How about when Diamonds/Rubies/Saphs were 7-9k ea? All of those rare mats have since plummeted, and nothing was done about them. Don't expect anything to be done about SF currently ruining the game.

We don't what data they have, but the # are a good way to know if what people complain about here reflects what is an actuality. People have a tendency to see things in a bubble. Their experience becomes the whole of the world and their perception is warped.

There are still bots because there are still people making them and when they mess up the result is a direct ban of an innocent user which has lots of negative feedback. When using data for balance, it ADDs to their decision making process, it doesn't create the entire argument (as it does with bots). They could have perfect bot spotting software that gives them a list every night (that's being generous) and we'd still have bots. Bots also require time because, as they've said, watched by a DM. That takes time. Bots are a very different issue.