Update - Thursday, June 11

Big trees catch a lot of wind if you know what I mean.

The problem is that NCSoft is not watering this tree anymore and few fruits grow on the branches now while people are hungry. Instead they nurture a seed they planted aka GW2. Big trees take a long time to grow though.

Not charge money for a service (character customization) that they stated was impossible for 4 years?

First of all they can stop playing with words such as "Quarterly" and getting peoples hope up with "We are looking into it" even though we have seen no such results.

Secondly, they can make updates and XTH distributions at regular intervals, instead of delay, delay, delay.

Thirdly, they can fix bugs and bug abuse immediately, rather then having everyone abuse it and be angry when its gone. (Keg farming)

Balance/fix the game?

@so-called "quarterly" updates
sheesh... technically "quarterly" can be derived from your official statement, but it wouldn't be 100% accurate because it can be either quarterly or three times a year. the only reason i used the word, is because its easier to say "quarterly updates" rather than "updates every 3 to 4 months". however, i think you should know your own statement and know what i'm referring to when i use loose wording. to me, you it sounded like you thought i was just randomly making up false facts--and this is far from true.


next content update: july/august 2009
(please confirm)


@community
no, guru isn't the whole community but that does not mean you should take us so lightly. we are a community who likes to discuss issues, and bring them out in the public for awareness and debate. we are a part of the community that promotes knowledge and change. use this to your advantage. we are able to provide insight and help. other fansites do just the same (i am not biased towards guru specifically).

however, there are parts of the community that are not active and do not participate. yes, they are just as important to the gw playerbase, however their means to help you are greatly reduced.

what i'm trying to say is that a fansite community member can provide thoughtful intelligent feedback to important issues, while a non-fansite community member can only provide a simple statistic, a mere number.

It's easy is to feel riled when Martin makes a point of saying this is not the community, but it's a point that does need stressing to some.

Whilst Guru is the largest fansite around it certainly does not equal the sum of the remaining parts, not even close. Then there is a large portion of the community on non-English speaking forums. That's not even it though; The signal to noise ratio on this forum is often abysmal, and the attitudes rather unpleasant.

You want to feel like you are listened to? Try posting in a way conducive to a discussion, instead of building every post around an accusation. Work on the attitude if you want to change the situation, rather than keeping the attitude because the situation isn't changing.

Awww nuts I had only just started playing with kegging at the last event and learning how to do it.
It's a challenge to actually get there and make the run i had so much fun with trial and error
it brought new life and fun in a tiering game for me and I in no way earned lots of money either from the drops
but it helped some titles.
A pitty i didn't find it sooner but oh well back to slow snowman cave fr me.
Please put it back to what it was and maybe add a few more beast's on the run there to make it more difficult.

Owell, again Anet has made it's statement.
Actually, i didn't even need to read it. It's the same every time.

"We are monitoring your opinions which are very dear to us and hope on getting feedback. They will certainly influence or given a thought about in the next update."

Srsly, what a crap.

-Ursan got removed months after it was introduced and being complained over across alot of forums.
-Bloodspike, Iway (to a certain degree, don't make it being affected by pets -.-) Cry of Pain, Save Yourselves, Shadow Form have been broken since the very beginning. People have stated that. It's obvious and can't be ignored. Reaction? None!
-The poor balance on Ritualists, Necromancers (Soul Reaping says "Hai") and Paragons in PvE as well as in PvP has been obvious and stated for months. Even slight changes/fixes in those directions? None.
-Ingame Makeovers/Hair stylist was asked for for ages. Was said to be inpossible. Changes? Got added for cash, same with extra storage space. Being able to get those by playing the game? No. Got prioritized over dearly needed skill changes? Yes.
-Creation of obviously bugged or overpowered skills (Ray of Judgement, Visions of Regret, Rampage as One, etc.). Fix has been called for from the very start. Reaction? None.
-Consequent nerfing skills down to a degree where they fell from being "good, maybe too good" not down to "o.k., balanced, worth giving a thought about", but down to "crap, not even worth looking at, why bother make an icon for it". I blame lack of insight.
-Several character classes being consequently excluded from "high end PvP (mainly GvG)" due to poor character skills and attribute management.
-Hardly decent skill lines getting made absolutely rubbish by sueing the few skills worth thinking about (Tactics says "Hai"). Crappy skill lines getting a single overpowered skill in order to avoid a whole line remake (Ray of Judgement i.e. Smiting Prayers, Spawning Magic, Shadow Stepping (not a skill line but w/e) say "Hai")
- ...

So, dear Anet CRMs, tell me this:
How can you read all this over several months across various Forums and responses ingame and NOT react appropriately?
How can you still give sloppy and totally useless responses like
"We will have a look into it", "After talking about it on our secret CRM meeting, we concluded it not to be changed", "We care about the playerbase".

To be perfectly honest, i have no explanation for that. And i seriously doubt you have except for poor management and short-run profit orientation instead of long-term planning. Period.

Again... how? What is the right way to balance/fix the game?

People on guru like the whine and complain, but they don't have any good real world solutions.

Really, I'm glad A.net doesn't listen to guru. We have zero credibility. When people complain about EVERYTHING, its impossible to tell what people are legitimately angry about or whether they are just complaining for the sake of complaining. Why should they listen to us?

On the balance game issue, it's everyone for themselves, there is no "Right Balancing", it all depends on which side you're on. To nerf or not to nerf, it's an opinion issue, there IS no right or wrong.

Some of Anet's balancing i hate, and some i like......all depends how i look at the issue.

I gotta say I wish we'd known about the delayed skill update earlier. I mean to say, I don't mind waiting if it makes the update better, or if Anet needs more time to work it out, but it would have been nice to know even a couple of hours beforehand.

There is a right or wrong side with alot of things. HOW to balance it is the major problem. But if you can honestly look at Permasins, Ray of Judgement and Cry of Pain, then compare the ability to a) solo farm b) tank c) speed clear d) launch massive AoE spikes to everything else in the game and you've got massive unbalance.

600/Smite is bad enough and needs a proper nerf, not that retarded 'nerf' they did to CoP the last time. Did they honestly think the change to RoD would make any difference? The teams didn't even slow down to change Blood Ritual for Healing Signet, and thats only 1 area. If you wanna slow it down GLOBALLY then stop it dealing 53+21 damage despite the fact my Shield of Absorption begs to differ. That way you'd have to take smaller mobs. Broken mechanics = broken builds.

Sure you can argue semantics with how to nerf Lingering Curse or Ether Prism runners in PvP, but the fact they need changing is right there. If your argueing against it when its clearly broken its because you don't care for balance or just haven't read enough into it to make a real decision.

You make it sound like Anet doesn't understand their own game.

Also, every post I read from you trashs Guru and it's members. Why do you post here? What exactly is your point? Do you want Anet to just leave us in total darkness, because people have clashing ideas on what is right and wrong? It's obvious what suggestions are decent and which ones are terrible, it's not hard to figure out what needs to be done in this game.

Why not post something constructive, why not give your idea on what should happen instead of just complaining about people complaining.

Hey Regina I'm just stopping by to ask about something an Arena.net employee said you guys were working on 4 years ago here.

Specifically this part:

Hows that coming along?

What I find most interesting is that we only see the CM's when it is damage control. I have to wonder if they know the difference between proactive and reactive?

The last time I saw them posting this much was when someone looked at the business report and figured out that GW2 was being pushed back to 2011, we got a letter from Mike then, and a bunch of post from the CM's, which all of it was damage control.

The fact that someone from A.NET is asking what about the game is "Borked" really shows that they do not read any of the game forums.

Again try to be Proactive and open with the community and you might find people are civil most of the time.

Free cookies?


Really, I'm surpirsed that Anet is still giving us stuff even after we paid 2 years ago. I'm shocked they are still adding more content and items.

What I am not surprised about is the neverending bitching of the community that cries whenever an update is live. I'm also not surprised that the community feels that they have a better understanding of how everything works at a company.

I work in customer support. Trust me, when they say that they cannot provide enough information, they MEAN they cannot provide enough information. Some stuff is better left untold. For instance, if they gave us an estimate on when GW2 is coming out, even if it was in the next year, someone on the forums would complain, and others would join them just for drama's sake.

If they cannot tell us when the next update is, then that's that. It's not their fault; only time's. Don't assume they don't know what they are doing; for all we know, they let RoJ be what it is for the sake of the nub and to provide what little fun this game has left. Hell, they probably left the Keg thing alone until they felt that people got all they could get out of it.

I think a lot of people just want Anet to do their job on time. As we can't expect any big content (campaigns/expansions) anymore, we're left with skill updates and the 'quarterly' 'features' updates as well as the maintenance updates. If only the maintenance update makes it on time, there is not much left to look forward to.

A second issue I see on these boards is the lack of communication on Anet's part. People wait for the update to download, only to find out there is no skill update afterall.

HawkofStorms, I start to wonder if you're on Anet's payroll as hidden CRM , because no matter what Anet does or does not, it's all ok for you.


What content? Like Sorrow's Furnace? 'cough'

It's Anet that put the expectations that high, because they're just good at what they do. They gave the impression they could deliver some 4 years ago, but they changed focus on GW2. This leaves us in a strange situation, we all know they can do better when it comes to GW1, but they can't because of GW2 it seems.

That was answered two years ago...

It can't happen as the game database and engine couldn't accommodate but we ARE getting one in GW2

Source and link please?

Im guessing that unless you are taking multiple inheritance to extremes either all of those things you mentioned are part of the one community or else they are all different communities all referred to as the community (aka I'm Spartacus). I'm not sure which you meant. It's kinda like me saying that I am the human race when I'm part of the human race. In other words, all of those things are part of the big overall community and they all have to be considered in the proper scope - which appears to be what they are telling everyone.

I imagine a lot of people would be pissed off if ArenaNet started believing that I, personally, was the Guild Wars community and balanced solely on my feedback.

one more

sorry, wanted to at least match the number of bolds in the quoted text..

Sorry, I don't have a link as I read it here on guru in one of the linked interviews

it was also mentioned breifly by Linsey on one of the b'day interviews, sorry those aren't up yet but I'm hoping soon

dang thats too bad that keg farming is dead... i loved that farm.. i got me 300k in 1 event weekend :P but i guess its time to go learn the raptor farm..ugh

I know what would be funny. By the time ArenaNet releases Guild Wars 2 they make the realization that the ongoing support required to maintain PvP in this game well into the future isn't worth the one-time fee they charge for the game and drop it entirely. I mean it won't happen, just brainstorming that it would be funny.

Far Future -> GW 3 pre-release
Exec: Why are we still billing so much time to GW and GW2?
Dev: Well, their PvP components require constant updating and balancing even past the lifetime of the game so it takes up development and community relations assets.
Exec: For how long?
Dev: Well, as long as the games keep running.
Exec: Is that what the majority of them like about the franchise?
Dev: Well, that's what a minority of them really like and a larger chunk enjoy sometimes.
Exec: Well screw that.. take em down and leave that part out next time.


:-) of course that's not really how many meetings like that go - at least from my experience in enterprise development, but it really does seem to apply to all the complaining and crowd control (CC tm) that community relations have to deal with concerning skill balances.. Does anyone know if Blizzard has to deal with this still from Starcraft players? I'm full aware of how much the WoW community can cry about everything, but Bizzard gets paid every month to deal with that nonsense and so it's very much worth it for them.

It's probably because most of the people complaining are way too full of themselves and KNOW that what they want is the only way things can possibly be "fixed." Look at the people getting bent out of shape when it was pointed out that Gurus isn't the end all be all of GW related discussion. Given the amount and length of debate that goes on in suggestion threads, especially balance-related ones, how exactly is A-net supposed to "listen to the players?" Sure, they can glean ideas, but that doesn't mean any particular idea is exactly what they're going to use. So yes, it still takes them time to decide on the final change. I suspect that whatever they don't change, they don't know HOW to fix and just postpone it. I'd like to see in the developer notes some of the things that were also being considered for change, but players would just jump all over this "official announcement of what is coming next month!"

That being said, it shouldn't be that hard to post something saying that there won't be XXX update this Thursday or that rewards would be delayed. Except...they did and people are complaining about it. The fact that there actually was an update, and it was kind of stupid/useless, only made it worse. Slightly off-topic: When was it officially decided that the first Thursday of every month was the skill update and XTH reward day? It's been that way for a while (just not recently), but was it ever officially stated that this would be the case?

It's frankly amazing to me how people can get so angry over something they no longer even pay for. Almost as amazing as still receiving any updates. If I were A-net, I'd want everyone to stop playing so I could save on server fees.

Patch: Starcraft: Brood War v1.161
Release date: 1/23/2009

Yes they do.

As for the PvP thing, PvP will not be dropped because it is advertisement; if the cost of implementing pvp ever goes above the reward for that advertisement then publishers will drop it, nothing personal - just business. (Don’t you love it when suits get involved?)

Well Gun_Pierson, I run on the MST 3 K Mantra. "It's just a game, I really should relax."

the last Starcraft: Brood War patch that featured a balance update was.... 1.07. some 7(??) years ago. its been new features and bugfixes ever since.

unfortunately, GW does not possess the same self-balancing mechanisms that Starcraft have. builds are absolutely locked in for GW as you enter battle, and there's no way of knowing what your opponents will bring, so there's very little a guild can do if they face the perfect counter. Whereas in Starcraft, you'll always have plenty of leeway to scout and adapt to opponent builds.

as such, a "perfect" balance, given how GW is played, is impossible. the best anet can do is to get as close as possible, and make some changes purely to shake up the meta along the way. GW probably will never reach the point where the meta is free to reinvent itself over time, so the devs will have to do it.

And how long will it take for some member of the GWG community to distort these three statments into "promises?" If there's no skill update next week, then I'm guessing it won't take long! And THAT'S a major source of frustration - community members bringing it on themselves by skewing the words of the CR people into what they WANT those words to say, such as the "3 or 4 months" thing meaning "quarterly."

And again, how long will it take members of the GWG community to start speculationg on what "some other things" are, only to get their own expectations set way too high, dreaming pipe dreams and QQing when the reality of what those things actually are don't meet expectations?

I am one of the people who believes that Guild Wars Guru is a representative of the community. There, I said it.

My feathers were ruffled when Martin said otherwise. Sure we may not be the community, but we certainly do represent it. As one of the prime locations for players to discuss the game, it is really quite ignorant and insulting to simply dismiss us just another bunch of randoms. Telling your customers who are yelling at you that they are unimportant is BAD PR!

It is my opinion that at the very least, Guru is a barometer of player opinion. When the pressure builds, this is one of the places that people come to voice their concern. I come to this forum because I care about the game. It is here where I say what I think should be done to fix the game. While I may be just one player, I still have a voice, and with it, I want to inspire change in the game I love. Eventually, when enough people feel that they care about an issue, a really big thread like this one pops up. If you aren't going to take a thread like this as an indication of the community's feelings, then I don't know what more you want.

Yes, I do know that you cannot satisfy everyone, and yes I do know that we are not the whole community, but the fact remains that we are an indication. Yes, there are other forums, and yes there are casual players who don't bother with forums, but short of having a full-scale in game referendum (lol), or a consolidation of the forums, what else is there to indicate player opinions?


What I expect from ANet, and have been disappointed again and again with, is the lack of communication. Granted, I would like to know about everything that ever happens in relation to GW, but I know that is not going to happen. What I really would like, (and I don't think is too far-fetched) is advanced warning, and a sense of responsibility. Every now and then, about once a quarter, a little two line message by Regina will come up in Riverside saying that XYZ thing will be delayed. This is good. I like this. I think we all like this. While it may suck that it is being delayed, at least my hopes weren't up that in a week XYZ would be coming. We found out on Wednesday evening that Thursday's skill balance and Zaishen rewards would be delayed by at least a week. Come on... you honestly expect me to believe that you only figured out that you would need an extra 168 hours with only 20 hours to go? There needs to be some consistency in notifications, and moreover, sometimes there really needs to be an explanation. Why the hell do you need an extra week to give us the rewards? Is this the first time that we have ever gotten RP’s from the Tourney House? Or did something go wrong with the Tourney House? (Which obviously had something go wrong with so many people being locked out and not able to make their predictions…) And if something did go wrong, how about an apology? “Sorry guys, we blew that one” goes a long way to keeping the peace when the natives are restless.

As a customer of ANet’s, it is my right to voice my concerns, and when I am told that I am a minority and therefore my views are largely unimportant, that is when I get angry.
Okay.

I, Cale Roughstar, your customer and a Guild Wars player, think that you are doing a bad job at community management and public relations.

Semantics of 'quarterly' aside, I think what most of us are upset about is not that there wasn't a skill balance done this week, but that we weren't told there wouldn't be one. I know delays happen, and am not bothered much by them. But we have come to expect from past experience to see a update to change the monthy tonics, give XTH rewards, and change skills. As noted already, you knew about the delay on the skill balance update before the update was due. You could have easily made an announcement on your website, wiki, and even here on Guru that it would be delayed. Getting the update and expecting a change to skills (based on past time frames) and not seeing any, most of us were confused, and mad. Could have easily posted a note at the time the update went live to notify us of the delay, but we got nothing.

Communication is lacking.... and I'm not talking about telling us when the next skill balance will be, but a simple 'this one will be delayed' failed to arrive.

Once again, I direct you to this link. If this is true, it was known by Tuesday that there would not be a skill update this week.

Yes, in this day and age, communication is everything in successful business practice. This is the main reason why so many are complaining in this thread. The gap between Anet and its playerbase is growing ever wider, and the strained relationship between the two is very clearly shown here. If you guys think that this won't lead to the game's eventual downfall, then you are sadly mistaken. I've seen a few online gaming communities dissipate into nothing over time, all because the devs wouldn't say anything to its fanbase for months at a time. As a concerned player/fan/customer, please, please, please don't let this happen to Guild Wars.

I think the main group that GWG doesn't represent are the retarded scrubs.

Bear in mind that most scrubs, being mentally challenged, cannot find their way to Guru, or indeed, any internet forum.

So GWG doesn't represent the retarded scrubs very well, although it does represent the spiteful stop-having-fun-and-play-in-my-pug anti-hero people, and those groups overlap a LOT. So I guess it sort of DOES represent scrubs.

While in general, in life, and in every other case I would agree, in this particular case I am going to disagree.

Right now the only people that are getting responded to are the people making rather strong, near inflammatory posts. The people that are making well thought out posts that contribute for discussion are the ones that are getting lost.

For PR to read fan boards is expected. For PR to post on fan boards is okay. It is also okay for them to give general answers to confusion or issues that have been brought up by the community. Directly responding to an individual poster, however, should be avoided, especially in the case where the post to which was responded was rather inflammatory. This sets an atmosphere where it is the loudest and more sensational people are the ones that get heard; though in all fairness this has been the status quo for guild wars for the last four years.

strange, i've always thought forums turn otherwise normal, decent human beings into said retards. each to their own, i guess.

on the topic of guru "is the community" or not....

GWGuru is not the community. however, it is the part of the community that cares the most. what's said on guru should have a much bigger impact than random stuff on GToB all chat.

granted, the last time they had a delay in update, the added content was really good. hopefully they do the same for the balance update also... but given GW1's current staff, i'm probably expecting too much.

Guild Wars already achieves that, you know

Ever been in a PUG? Worst group of children and idiots you'll ever encounter.

And then people wonder why we want a full hero party for our singleplayer game.

hah, no update, no excuse....I always thought that no regular skill balance means dead GW PvP.

there's a difference between whining and objecting to the fact that there's been a change to a well-established schedule, and not bothering to tell us at least a few hours ahead of time. THEN, having the gall to basically dismiss the part of the community that cares the most about their product.

it's bad PR all around. it's good that Anet reads and responds to the community; but they need to keep in mind, that the only thing worse about no PR, is BAD PR.

Actually, the avoidance of "local maximums" in game balance is the job of the playerbase, and occurs in the absence of dev meddling. In situations where players know that there will not be any kind of dev bailout, the players will do what is necessary to try to beat imbalance. The job of the devs is to provide players with enough tools and flexibility to grow and improve, while at the same time providing global fail-safes to prevent the most egregious abuses (example: Guilty Gear). As such, GW balancing has always been somewhat interesting, because in many cases it is difficult to tell whether, given enough time, competitive players would have learned how to overcome imbalance on their own. It is dangerous and counter-productive to create the expectation in your community (particularly your competitive community) that any perceived imbalance will be addressed directly by the developers.

The trick, of course, is how one is able to determine that a local maximum is indeed a local maximum (believed to be overpowered), and not a global one (i.e., actually overpowered). Obviously, that's one of the primary complicating factors in balancing any competitive game.

Of course it wouldn't be dropped.. I hope nobody seriously thinks it would be..

thx for the link btw..

I looked a few posts after mine. I really hope nobody took that seriously. I'm guessing there will be people that just skim posts, leave important pieces out, or just don't realize when someone is musing in an amusing way (heh, play on words) related to the subject at hand..