The Update Cycle

I think the reason of this is because there is a few of us who hate change and would rather there be additions instead of change. I think some of us have been down this road before with other games, where the game just changes and doesn't get better, it just gets different, to me a lot of it was wasted time spent of the behalf of the devs of those certain games. Some of us have seen games ruined because of constant over-changes and the game loses it fun appeal being a whirlwind roller coaster beta-testing event instead. Some of us have seen our characters, our time and our ability to be good at something, soloing, PVPing, farming or whatever just disappear with the changes. It also seems like a trend, with one great change, will come another, we feel as if there is no end and nothing is off-limits to change. So I can see a person being mad at the reading of something getting changed to the things mentioned above, especially myself.

I think some changes are good for the hardcore 24/7 Guild War fanatic at some point, who probably is or will be bored with the game. But as far as the casual gamer goes, it's not fun at all, trying to keep up with all the changes, that come in so fast, so soon. Go buy a 20 dollar strategy guide and see how much of it is correct, go online and see how many websites are behind on the changes. It is also hard for the casual gamer to adapt to change, because of gold or time and more painful to see an investment get ruined. So I hated this new update only in the simple fact of it changed something and will probably hate the next update that changes something right from the get-go, even if it boosts say my 8 skills on each character that I use to say great uberness.

It seems that most of the previous patches were in response to whiners, which created other whiners after the fact.

This patch seemed to come from "out of the blue" and has a greater impact on PvE play the previous patches, and the whiners responded.

(just my opinion)

On all the previous patches my attitude was to adapt and accept. This patch had me scrambling to adjust, and I still don't like the overall impact it has made on the PvE game. I will adjust in time, but for now I will step back and take a breath and rethink things.

Conspiracy theory: Now that Anet has our money they are free to say "Screw you ..... we are going to do whatever we please with this game."

Can't wait to see the next patch.

that is where the ground forces follow you instead of shooting at the wall you are hiding behind.

the screams the howls of anguish oh my

What I find amusing is that this process follows the 5 stages of grief.
Stage 1 Denial
"No, this can't be right." "Arenanet can't do this to us! "
Stage 2 Anger
"Arenanet is the the worst!" This update sux!!!!!"
Stage 3 Bargaining
"Sign my petition to take back the change" "They'll see that everyone hates the update and change it back" "Change it back or I'm leaving!"
Stage 4 Depression
"They'll never fix it" "It's terrible"
Stage 5 Acceptance
"It's not that bad, I like the chnage" "A couple of tweaks and I'm good to go again"

Read through the thread on the Nov 10/11 Update and see if it doesn't follow the pattern.

Personally, I think the game was still half-baked (read beta) when A-net pulled it out of the oven, and they are in the process of trying to get it right before releasing the expansion. Still a hell of a good game though. Hope people will give them a chance to get it right before walking away. Would hate to see GW and the no monthly fee concept die on the vine.

if you want behavioral aspects of players well that's easy.

make build, tweak build, finalize build, now i'm in my comfortable bubble. update comes, pops the bubble, fear and outrage.

people do not like to change that is simply human nature and can be applied to all aspects of life. doesn't matter how rediculous it is or how much it can be improved by change it will always be met with fear and anger at first.

for example. at my work we have changed some programming information and now people get more music channels. about 30 more channels and is not increasing their bills at all. people still call yelling and b*tching about it even though they have the exact same thing and more in a different way. it doesn't just happen in a game.

i was a beta tester when the game had an open enrollment in june-july 04. i pre-ordered the game and started playing. when i showed my brother what i was playing he loved it and said he wanted to buy it. i warned him then. this game is not completed. there will be major changes anet will have to do in the future so if you do decide to play it just know the game will change. anet could release the game incompleted b/c any changes they needed to be done could stream it to us in updates. that's the main reason i don't complain about the lag. if you read about their steaming system you are downloading the updates while you are playing. there are server problems of course but i think that is the hidden factor that people never even think to look at.

as long as anet keeps making updates i'll play this game. the updates are designed to get the game back on track after the derailing of the invinsimonk. the game we are playing today is a run away experiment that blew up in their faces. now they are trying to fix it. i'm not going to hate anet for trying to fix something that was never suppose to happen in the first place.

I think the bigger part of the issue isn't that people are afraid of change, they don't like change that comes without warning. Some kind of a hint..a "hey you..by the way...prepare for this possibility in the near future."
It makes some people feel powerless in a sense, what they used to know and have some kind of "control" over has suddenly been taken away. The comfort zone has been removed, and for as much as change can be good, yes...in fact necessary to the "survival" or lasting ability of anything, people would still rather be forewarned. Life does not come with this luxury...and for as much as I cannot personally understand it (and I have no right to judge) a lot of people play games to not have to be reminded of real life. They like their comfortable, familiar little escape and feel betrayed when this is taken from them.

(Sure we can go on precedence, and can assume that wednesday means update, but we have no idea what changes will come with it.)

that's the point they did warn us just no one listend. go read the fansite fridays. they give hints and suggestions to things that will be changing. not to mention the visits from gaile and frog.

the signs are there but as normal people just don't listen.

I'm sorry, but who are you to accuse me of not listening? I listen just fine thank-you very much! Did they suggest in the fansite friday that they were going to completely change the way the AI behaves? Not that I could find. Mind you in my original post (which you obviously didn't read or are unwilling or unable to understand), I did not state that it was I who had a problem with change, in fact I love it...as monotony is the only real thing in life that can "get me down" so to speak (what I do not like however is making the game broken. Yes it was broken with the last patch..and still is currently broken now.). I personally have better things to do then follow Gaile around and wait and see if she chooses to grace us with her insight. I have been present for a few of her LA apparences, however I find that answers are so vague as to be bordering on the pointless.

Maybe next time before you tell someone they don't listen, you should READ and then make an effort to comprehend, before you speak (or in this case write)

as to you sir. i never said YOU do no listen, i said people do not. its a general term and very broad so if the shoe fits wear it. meaning if it applies to you then it does. if it doesn't then it doesn't. you know the answer to that not me.

the warnings was there that farming and solo was going to be changed. its been in black and white and has been hinted. i have never once met gaile or the frog yet i still know what they said, why? b/c people post thier converstions. there is no need to follow them around or waste your time trying. someone will post it. you have to learn the bs from the real stuff with them that's half the fun. the FFF give more direct answers.

if they give direct statements about what will change that can adverse affects.

1. will affect the econemy before it should

2. people will have already figured a way around the update before it even happens. what's the point of the update then?

they give us lots of hints and some direct information. i'm just thankfull they talk to us at all in any way, shape, or form. almost every game i've played never even spoke to its players. people take that for granted on this game and i don't understand why. they could just sever that connection completely. make any changes they want and say screw you if you don't like it. i'm glad they don't do that.

i've give some insight on my update cycle. update dropped a bomb on pve. i switch to pvp. bomb dropped on pvp. i switch to pve.

i adjust my gameplay to the updates. do i care i have to change, nope. would be boring if the game peaked in 2 weeks on new updated and stayed that way for XX months. updates refresh the game so i keep playing.

great post OP - dead on described the 10/11 patch to a tee and this thread was before it.

Anet depends on keeping GW fresh or they risk having sales fall. I was (still is) for the 10/11 update. The result, playing mesmer for the 1st time (was pure fire ele since game launch), I will go back to my ele but not yet.

Anet has a solid game that's in Flux, there is nothing set in this game. I can't wait to hear the screams when new jobs and how they effect the game in chapter 2 OMG (insert new job) just destroys (insert build X plays) I quit.

When the developers compared this game to Magic the Gathering, all these updates didn't really come as shock. MtG is always in flux, new rules, new cards, new special cards systems with the new expansions.

I think the dev's are doing a great job making the game they envisioned. The reason why they made this game is they know how to make games and GW was a game that did not exist that they wanted to play.

They could of made and Diablo II w/ rpg clone (Dungeon Seige) but decided to make something unique and untried. (Don't flame me for Dungeon Seige, I like the game but was missing something to keep me playing it, can't explain it).

Op your dead on and this is a great post.

totally agree. ravager nearly killed MtG so they banned the hell out of it. less and less people were showing up for major tournements. it was always the same. what are you playing? affinity ravager, how about you? anti ravager. every tournement was ALWAYS the same deck. 10 people and 8 of them had a affinity ravager deck. farming and solo was killing GW. more and more people leaving, no challenge (hardest areas on game soloable), easy money, inflation always on the rise causing more farming.

i've been playing for 10 years and am never surprised by the changes that happen in MtG. b/c there is literally millions of dollars at stake they do warn people in plain black and white what changes will be occuring. in something like GW i don't think that is nessecary. also gives the poor guys a chance to accually make money with predictions of market changes.

I sadly had to quite, I played it with friends, one took losing poorly and he had much more money then the rest of us so his decks where much more "expensive" then ours and our small circle broke up as we driftied. The set I had before quitting was Weatherlight / the Urza series? I think, I still have all my old cards a lot of cards. MtG is the only CCG that has weathered the test of time and is in a unique situation, there are so many cards there is no longer one style beats most others, play in open anything go games and you never know what to expect. I did start in unlimited / revised but never did serious torunment play. Played for fun.

I do hope GW comes to this point with the jobs / skills FOTW will be a think of the past due to sheer choices of options.

On a side note: I seriously hope anet packages Chapter 2 by itself cheaper then and Chapter 1&2 package that costs the same as the base game does now.

"as to you sir. i never said YOU do no listen, i said people do not. its a general term and very broad so if the shoe fits wear it. meaning if it applies to you then it does. if it doesn't then it doesn't. you know the answer to that not me."

So am I not considered people now? You should have said a lot of people, or most people, or some. You completely missed the point of my entire post.
As for the shoes thing. I have shoes..I like em a lot.
I am no longer going to continue to argue with you on this issue. As I know that you will just continue to post and post and post. As for you feelings on why the people at anet continue to talk to us lowly little peons...and that you don't really care what they say so long as they say something to you. Do you really think that would be a wise course of action in the long run to completely avoid contact with us and make any changes they want to make?....and have the "screw you if you don't like it, leave" mentality? It's a PR move...not because they have some profound respect for you or the community...it's about maintaining customer satisfaction..See the whole thing about not having to pay a monthly fee..ya there's an ace up their sleeve, right? HA HA we already have your money. That's right you do. But depending on how you go about things, I have the choice to not purchase the 2nd 3rd etc..chapter of the game...and now that ace is up my sleeve....

And yet once more, with more feeling and emphasis I will mention...my original post was an observation on human behavior, mostly.

as a CSR (customer service rep) for one of the biggest companies in the world i can tell that the i will quit and not buy the next one is an illusion. 1 person quits there are 10 more joining. 80% of the people i talk to are joining while 1-2 request disconnections everyday.

just b/c you quit you didn't really affect anything. not to mention they do already have your money and by you leaving cost less for them to maintain the game. do you notice there are no free trials for this game even though its free to play? that's b/c they want you to buy it. after that point it doesn't matter what happens to you they got paid.

if they wanted to maintain customer satisfaction they would have rolled back every update people had a problem with. GW devs had a plan. that plan was thrown out the window from creation of soloing and farming. they are trying to get back to that even if it does piss majority of the people off. for that i commend them. farming and soloing was never suppose to be in the game PERIOD. some one found a loophole and it spread like wildfire. how many times have we seen the econemy crash? how much of that was due to the devs? none of it. the skills the devs created yes but never with the intent to solo. econemy is player controlled with the merchants acting like trade moderators. merchants do not set prices people do.

I never said that I was quitting, nor that I had the intention to do so. I was merely stating a fact that if you piss people off enough, they will leave....and maintaining a happy customer base is a good thing. I'm sure to certain degree that you are correct, should I choose to leave they wouldn't care. They could assume that it changes nothing, and in a way be glad...because like you say...I wouldn't be costing them money to maintain. But, let's say for a moment that they decided to do something "nasty"..they have my money, right..they don't care. Ok, now I go and log on to ebay sell my account and all my valuables..recover the money I spent on the original purchase and maybe some extra. Can I laugh now? (I wouldn't do this...I'm just saying it's an option someone might choose) Not to mention the fact that regardless of what you may say, word of mouth still plays a huge role in a companies success or failure. No, I have not seen a free trial of this game. But mind you when I decided to order this game I hadn't really seen much in the way of advertising for it either. I bought this game because of word of mouth. If you think that you would be able to survive as a company with a "screw you " attitude, good luck, cuz eventually...you're gonna need it.

Also, as far as the belief that one unhappy customer can't make a difference, I'll suggest you read up on Tom Farmer's hotel experience...

http://www.businessproductreport.com...nts_011003.asp

Mods - if this is an unacceptable link, please delete it.

If the link's gone, I'll suggest everybody takes a look at the PowerPoint (search for "Yours Is A Very Bad Hotel") and read the accompanying story. It does a very good job of illustrating just how important each and every customer is (or rather, should be) to a company aiming for success.

I've never been one to jump the gun in the forums, but it's an interesting poll, and I'd like to answer it.

I'm probably one of the few that actually didn't like the Sorrows Furnace update. I didn't loathe it, but I wasn't too pleased with it. At first I thought the whole idea of chests would just seriously drive prices down, but for some reason it had the opposite effect. Since the SF update pricing on things has been pretty screwy. Also there were many hidden things in the SF update meant to take stabs at solo farming which also effected actual group play like the addition of the nightmares to Underworld, and the addition of Heretics and mesmers basically everywhere. Why not just nerf the drops for solo farmers rather than make legit groups suffer through endless enchantment stripping and hexes? Again I say though that I didn't hate the update, I just wasn't one of it's huge supporters. Today though the update is pretty much old news. It doesn't affect my gameplay at all.

The only update I can say that I actually seriously loathe is probably the latest one with the "improved AI." Yes Anet wants to make the game more realistic, but it's just a personal preference of mine that I don't really like realistic games. For instance, years ago I was a huge Quake2 fan, and Unreal Tournament fan, but I always hated games like Battlefield 1942 and Call of Duty. I was always more a fan of the unrealistic games. I found them more fun and to the point. Guild Wars to me was more fun when it was unrealistic; when monsters would stand there and take the damage and I could go beat up another monster. I'm not going to quit the game over it or anything, but I used to love the game, and now I can say that I probably only 'like' the game.

I'm not much of a whiner, I usually just don't really care that much. As long as it is fun I don't care. But, I figure this is in response to the last update with the AoE AI changes of which I did whine. So, I'll answer based on that

The nov 10'th update, Hated it terribly

Actually I read the notes and thought "Yipee!". It wasn't until I played it that I hated it. It destroyed pretty much any AoE stuff.

The nov 11 patch. It made them workable again. Even the DOT AoE stuff is useful. The monsters are a bit more sane - they don't panic from a single AoE attack and don't run like chickens with their heads cut off. They do a fairly reasonable job.

The last two opinions were reached after a few hours of gameplay and trying things suggested on forums or things I though of. The changes from nov 10 to nov 11 made a HUGE difference. I would not have whined about it if nov 11 had been the first patch. I might not have been happy, I'm not so happy with it now, but it is now back to simply something that changed, not something broken (and my not happy is a personal issue and pretty weak). Thus no whining since then and a post actually retracting my past whine.

It seemed that they had tunnel vision. I've worked on (and managed) software projects where you get that - just as long as that single issue is fixed then great. Essentially the thought "Mobs gotta run from AoE damage", goes to QA "Check, mobs run from AoE, everything works according to specification". Notice that "Standard builds can still play game" and "Game is still fun" isn't in there or the main focus. In both the real world and in the university teaching project management it's one of the things you study and try to avoid, but it is hard sometimes.

So, depsised? Eh, not so much the way I would put it. Anymore than I despise any other bug. Point it out and it will most likely get fixed. I still suspect that some skill rebalancing on AoE's will occur sometime in the future because of this (some up, some down). And, of course, lots of whining

As I said, I'm not sure you mean what I felt. One difference with this last patch was that there were a lot of non-whiners (such as myself) that because it totally broke an entire build complained. In fact it broke some of thier official builds. While there were somewhat workarounds pretty quick (basically the same as now, just not very effective) calling it "working" was like holding your car together with twine. Yea, it oes and is together, sorta. Obviously Anet agreed somewhat with that assessment as they patched it *really* quick (obviously skipping regression testing and such).

Most patches are just different - neither good or bad, but that doesn't mean you can not have a bad decision or patch either. I would go so far as to say, once pointed out, I bet quite a few Anet employees saw right quick the AoE AI was bugged. Nor is all whining simply a case of "Who moved my cheese", sometimes it is legitimate.

Though, in general I agree that too many people whine. If you ever get to run a project that produces something many people use you will be VERY familiar with the wining. After a while you also tend to be able to weed out legitimate whines and just people who don't like change or think thier little world is all there is.

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if so, just stick to single player games and let us have fun.
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/clap

I just wish they (game developers in general) would stop changing things that nobody asked for.....