Calling all Community Relations Staff

Hello all.

This is my first post but I have been an avid Guild Wars players for 3 years and visiting here for almost as long. I haven't joined here before because most of the points I would have made have been voiced by many members and I would just add more noise.

One thing that has finally inspired me to sign up now is the complete lack of any insight from our friendly neighbourhood Community Relations.

Do you hate us all that much?

The strength of feeling on these boards is evident; from the lack of PvP skill updates to refresh the meta, crazy DC and lag issues and, the biggest of all, Shadowform, yet nothing appears to come down to us from on high to placate these worries.

Is the community on here so low down on the priority list of the Community Relations that they don't even deserve a reaction? Is there some other community board that receives all the feedback and explanations? I do understand that it can get a bit heated on here but is it really beyond the scope of the job description to at least try? The wiki talkback pages appear to be as ignored as here, so it cannot be that one. If anyone has a better way to talk to them, please let me know because I would love to discuss with them what the plans are.

I realise that most questions are not that important and can swiftly be answered by current members but some of the biggest issues within the game are being pointedly ignored. I don't PvP much so I wont comment upon that but the PvE meta has been broken for so long and still not a word to explain what's going on.

My main bugbear revolves around Shadowform and the apparant lack of a coherant strategy to deal with it or an explanation as to why it remains. Thats all I want. If Anet loves the skill so much and cannot envisage the game without it, just say and I will suck it up, make a sin and give up any hope of attempting Elite areas with any other characters. If Anet is worried that if they remove it, the game will become too hard for a huge swathe of the playerbase then please say so. If Anet has missed the boat and it's too ingrained, then again, please just say so. I guess all I'm asking for is a reason as to why it still exists in its current form. We have had vague promises that it will be looked into but if the best you can come up with is to add, in game, some new monsters to make it even more difficult for a balanced team to complete the Underworld, then I truly despair.

Ignoring Shadowform for one second, there was a promise about a year ago to be more open with everyone about the direction of the game. How's that working out for you? Anyone else fully clued up on what's going to happen in the near future? If I was asked to fill in one of those forms where I would tick a box to describe my satisfaction, can you guess what box I would tick?

Going on past history, I'm sure that this will also not get any reply from the game-makers and their Community Relations but I thought I would at least try.

ArenaNet already has your money.

They do not care about you buying GW2 either since it will target the WoW fanbase (people who like WoW and the countless copies it spawned).

There was supposed to be a skill balance this month, but that didn't happen.

There many goods point's and atleast this wasnt a huge rant for the most part. but you need to put yourself in there shoes a littl ebit more, the gm's and cr's are doing a good job with what they have. you need to give it time. now dealing with sf and what should become of if its not like they have not tried in the past and with the new uw was another jump at it. i agree it didnt do anything other then slow uwsc down. which to me is a step. with time going by and the statements they have made. we do know they are looking into it and trying to come up with a solution to sf. to me the new uw chaneg was a reason for me to take a break from aion and play for a bit. with holidays coming around i have high hopes that somethign new will happen once agian, to draw us back in.

I completely agree with your assessment here. This Dhuum quest is yet another example of the ungodly efficiency of Shadow Form compared to all other options.

As someone else said in another thread, "why do something in 4 hours that you can do 4 times in 1 hour?" This sums up SF in a nutshell - and why those who seek some semblance of PvE balance continue to gripe about the skill. Just look at ToA now and how SF-Mobway is already the dominant meta to kill Dhuum. Shadow Form rules again once more!

At this point though I've learned to just suck it up and wtfpwn everything with my Sin too (which I only created because my Ele was shut out of UW after the essence nerf - you know, the one that afterwards only allowed Sins to maintain SF by using Deadly Paradox).

As I said in another thread, ANet should just revert the Essence nerf and allow all classes to Perma - at least this would allow all to share in the godmode fun...

No, this appears to be a qq about community relations in which the OP uses SF as a glaring example.

He's right that the CRs absolutely need to do a better job communicating with the playerbase. If Guru (and other fansite forums) are not an easy way to communicate then find another channel, perhaps the wiki talkback pages, or maybe just a page on the GW website.

The bottom line is that communication is not going well. Many had the idea that there would be a major content update every 3 months, but ANet was never clear on the schedule, and people complained when August passed with no major update. Many have the idea that there was supposed to be a major PvP update in November, but this was never explicitly confirmed or denied, causing dissatisfaction when an update comes out that does not include PvP. Anet has suggested that SF needs to be addressed, but with each passing update SF is ignored, and people who can't get into UW groups without an SF sin get upset.

Anet needs to learn that communication is not a bad thing. Players are not going to leave or refuse to buy GW2 because of info from the CR, even if it's bad news. Let us know when the PvP meta will be addressed. Let us know what is actually happening with Xunlai House. And for heaven's sake don't sugar coat it. If XH is FUBARed and must be abandoned, let us know. If there won't be another PvP skill balance for 2 more months because there's other stuff going on, tell us. Will people bitch and moan? Of course. But some people will complain about winning the lottery.

Most people will just be grateful for the information.

You know a company that has guaranteed sales of every game they make? BioWare. Aside from incredible reputation (seriously, most people agree that they're one of, if not the best developers currently in business) they also maintain extremely strong community presence - many of them post on the BioWare forums with about the same regularity as I post on Guru.

They know their community well and there is much communication. I sense a connection between that and how people always buy their games.

The ship has been sinking and the developers haven't cared about since after factions came out according tot he ignorant masses, it's always a move on to "oh the don't care because of this, they already have your money, this is broken, that is broken, boohoo"

If you really need someone around constantly to tell you things are getting done and that yeh will be helped, and that this or that will be added or changed, this isn't the game for you, especially due to the limited support staff as of late.

This not a thread about SF, but the CR has become nothing but PR. When was the last time the CR took an issue to the devs on someones behalf? There are a couple of twenty page threads on another forum about peoples accounts being hacked and not one post from the CR. Lag = no comment, account thief rampant = no comment, SF = no comment. PvP=no comment. In game appearances = non-existent. There seems to be a pattern here.......

Edit:
There was a comment on SF by CR after the OP posted. I stand corrected.

"(For example, the first Shadow Form group to beat Dhuum took 85 minutes rather than the 7 minutes it used to take similar groups to clear UW.)"

Really? That's your end result? The FIRST group to do it took 85 mins.....with 6 SF sins and 2 monks....and that's a Win for Anet? With their admission that they took it slow to make sure they worked it out? Thanks Regina. You and Anet succeeded and done good......
And balanced teams? How do they fair? 2+ hours? And no certainty of completion? When you build an area full of gimmicks, what do you expect? Abuse of a skill is still abuse: I, for one, don't like being taken from behind.

Moving on....

"Work on this next update is currently in progress, but it looks like it will not happen this month. We are aiming for not only “tweaking numbers” of certain skills, we are looking into making changes that will require extensive testing and implementation time. We intend to heavily involve the Test Krewe in testing and evaluating the changes before they go live."

I do appreciate the contact but does it have to be so forced and so, and I hate to say it but I will, spiteful. This is NOT a specific rant towards Regina or any Anet employee but a plea to all to try and relate to the community in such a way that we don't feel like 7 year olds that need to be put on the naughty step. I, for one, am old enough to take home truth without going insane as long as an explanation is forthcoming. I'm sure that the vast majority who post here are too.

This is just a game.....and a damn good one at that ....so we all appreciate everything that is done to make our enjoyment of it better but please don't hate us because we want it to be better.

Points for at least not having "An Open Letter" in your title, but...

If this is going to be a thread complaining on how ANet is handling the SF crisis, it can be closed, since we already have a couple of those running.

If this is going to be a thread on how ANet sucks at xyz, it can be closed, because we don't care for rants or QQ threads.

I take it from your response, Shayne, that you are delighted with the Community Relations and wouldn't want a word more from them? They have done everything to satisfy your every whim and cleared up any issue that may be pressing? Awesome....where do I get the link to find this utopia? Cheers for the +1 but please try to read what I have tried to ask of them

Oh, and by the way, as I'm new to the board, please forgive me for not knowing how to paste comments from other users but I would like to thank oscarmac for getting where I am coming from

"Anet needs to learn that communication is not a bad thing. Players are not going to leave or refuse to buy GW2 because of info from the CR, even if it's bad news. Let us know when the PvP meta will be addressed. Let us know what is actually happening with Xunlai House. And for heaven's sake don't sugar coat it. If XH is FUBARed and must be abandoned, let us know. If there won't be another PvP skill balance for 2 more months because there's other stuff going on, tell us. "

Precisely what I'm trying to get across.

I would say the Test Krewe is a good step towards helping to correct many of the outstanding issues.

However, I digress, you are citing issues that are not able to be fixed/patched, such as true skill balance. Due to the sheer number of skills available (a blunder by ANET for releasing so many, admittedly), it would be next to impossible to have all the skills external synergy balanced.

As for information from CR regarding bad news... I have bad news for you; shareholders don't like it when a company publicly admits an issue, especially a bad one. ANET is here to make a great game, but their goal ahead of all others is to turn a profit and generate more stock purchasing power. This is a simple fact of all major businesses.

Stop trolling.

Regina and Martin both read Guru and are well aware of these comments. They know some players want more communication but I guess that it's not always possible, or even desirable (from their business/professional viewpoint ofc). As Gaile explained before she left the CM post, interacting with the community in the way she did took a lot of her time and also mental energy, she said "to be honest, after several years, 70-hour weeks catch up with anyone, no matter how much she loves her job". No later that yesterday night (Seattle-time) Regina and Martin said how tired they were. We only see the very thin tip of the iceberg of their work.

If I may, and at the risk of getting banned, I'd like to say that the word "community" can be abused in this kind of thread. And I don't only mean Guru in general, but people claiming that they're "the voice of the community", and then expressing the viewpoint that they know is shared by a few people here or in-game. At one point, I wondered whether Guru was no longer "in phase" with the community of players actually playing the game. Ofc it's not entirely true if you look at Farming or Ventari subforums. But what if the actual situation on the servers was rather the opposite of what people claim here? What if many people are actually happy with the state of the game and Anet's communication? Pushing this point to the extreme, why should Anet catter to the few (in the hypothetical case where Guru is indeed a minority of active players).

This doesn't mean your point is not valid, but it puts it in perspective and may provide an element to answer some of your questions. I'm not trying to steer this thread away from the controversy or the "core of the issue", although I think it's very easy for us, players, to ask these 2 people to talk for the whole company and almost, implicitly, blame them for the problems. As I interestingly found in this article:

both the live team and the cr manager answer to most of "our" questions. just look at the latest lagg/dc thread. people reported issues of not being able to connect, regina answered with "thanks for your feedback, we are looking into it" or something like that. before, the live team told us they knew about the whole sf issue (see youtube videos) and are working on a fix. however, they won't alienate a fragment of their players fanbase by destroying all farm skills.

also balancing-wise i gvg on a regular schedule and i find the meta not horrible. it's ok, so why release another half-baked balance update to shift the meta around.

please, don't continually disregard anet for anything they do or do not.

OP: Not to say you don't have a point but you might want to take a look at the following articles. They offer an interesting insight into handling MMOs from a CRM perspective. Hopefully after reading them you'll have a better understanding of the reasons why our CRMs work the way they do:

http://www.eldergame.com/2009/11/two...per-relations/
http://www.eldergame.com/2008/06/tam...e-forum-tiger/