Online Sit-Down Dev Chat - more thoughts

While that was a nice thoughtful letter, I think A-net is doing a fine job. As with any game, there will always be problems and there will always be people who can't see beyond those problems, or the effort behind the curtains to fix such problems, but I think A-net is doing REALLY well. Considering that there is no monthly fee for this game, I see no room to complain. However, there is nothing wrong with sharing your opinion, and in that sense, I think you did so very well. If there is a voice speaking to A-net, I would feel comfortable having it as yours, since you have displayed well thought out comments, understanding and maturity.

I don't think a conversation with the devs will solve much. I believe it when Anet says they read fan sites. I'm sure they're aware of the common complaints. The fact is, they can't and won't do everything we ask for. In any type of sit-down, I doubt they'd commit to anything, and that's understandable. They're a business--suggestions have to be weighed and prioritized with everything else on their plate. They can't say 'yes' or 'no' in a second. A sit-down discussion will lead to more frustration and anger--people will expect the devs to listen to their reasonable points of view, nod and smile, and say 'yes, we'll get on that right away'. It won't and can't work that way.

As far as dealing with a company goes, the best way to vote is with your wallet. If you're disappointed with Factions, voice reasons for your disappointment on forums like these and don't preorder chapter three. See what the reviews are like before buying. There are plenty of games out there, folks. GW is one among many. If it meets your needs, great, if not, find a better match and spend your money there.

Lets get this straight, buying a game does not entitle you to 'know' anything and furthermore it comes across as a rather arrogant position you take here as if the designers/devs owe you an explanation for every action they take.

Anet communicates more than any game company I've ever seen but ofcourse, you'd rather see the devs spending their time hanging around in chat it seems...uh...hello? Devs are paid to code, not to chat to players, Gaile Gray is paid to talk to players, not the devs.

Thats why Anet hired her, to be a buffer/translator (if you've ever worked with developers you'd know how important translation is) between devs/designers and gamers.

As I said before, IRC chats with devs on MMOG's are not an uncommon thing. This is not a radical or new idea you guys They happen frequently. And while we have a line of communication because of Gaile Gray in game and on the forums and with Alex Weekes on the forums I also think this would be a nice idea to get to know the other devs and hear them answer some questions.

Gaile Gray is the mouthpiece for ArenaNet and just seeing some other devs in a chat room, and hearing their own words would be a great thing for the community I believe.

Going a little off-topic... (sorry)

Alliance Battles; Wouldn't it be possible for them to split Alliance Battles into both 12 player RA and 12 player TA? Winning 10 RA-Alliance Battles unlocks the next 'level' of Alliance Battles. The TA-Alliance Battles could have a higher faction reward to discourage 'farming' of the newer/un-organized players. I'm not sure what to do about the party screen... Perhaps if the other 8 players came under their own tab(s), like pets do, you'll still see their HP bars but they'll not be effected by party-targetting spells such as Heal Party or Aegis.

As long as everyone's expectations are realistic. People may expect too much from the conversation.

So argue against them.

No one said anything about, "gee, I wish Anet would implement every suggestion and idea we come up with."

Hun here is what might be the problem with this: Winning or losing from either side moves the line - with two arena going it may never move, or one might cause it drastically move one way or the other. I think if they implemented it for a week away from the line as a seperate arena and viewed both from the sidelines they would see the difference and how, yes people did come together, strategies were used and so forth. I think we weren't given enough time to prove that it did work, it wasn't all halfa$$ed and during the what.. 30sec countdown timer? That was enough to tell the party what to do and how to do it. I rarely saw anyone bicker over who had control of the team - if that person proved to be a bad leader a new one would step up to lead the ranks.



For those of you who are going on about how this is such a bad idea think about this:

-It will not be fanboys and gals shouting out I LOVE YOU GAILE! WILL YOU HAVE MY BABY!
-It will be a sit in where select people are allowed to speak to keep down the stupid stuff (we can't even have that on the boards!)
-It will be a way of getting our ideas and questions out there without a bunch or rants and people calling everyone an idiot!
-The questions will be collected ahead of time.

As Inde has said, this isn't unheard of and it might be the best way to get things across without Gaile and Alex having to sift through all the hate messages on this board.
And no this doesn't have to happen every night but heck I would be happy with every 2wks -4wks or when new info comes out. It can be schedualed so that people know when it will happen (instead of watching your buddy list waiting for Gaile to log on and then fighting with the people shouting at Gaile "here take this 1k as a token of my love!" - half the time valid points and questions go unseen, unheard, unanswered because of things like that.

We cannot ask Gaile to spend more time than she already does talking to us ingame, and it seems that posting our thoughts or ideas on this board just gets us flamed..... If it gets around the stupidity of ingame crazies, board politics, and those who not only don't want to be heard but don't want you to be heard either - and WITHOUT making a mess, then why not?


As for them saying no to things.... I have heard them say no and explain their reasoning which is "usually" valid. Sometimes it something so simple that can be gotten around, but I have seen with my own eyes that the Devs have no problem saying "NO!".

Edits: 1) Please, I know I'm really drawing from 12v12 to exemplify my point, but PLEASE do not turn this into a debate on 12v12 and how to fix it. We already have that forum.

2) Personally, I don't see how Gaile manages to catch ~anything~ with all that goes on around her, AND manages to reply to what she does. o_O Mad props to GGray for not drowning!

THAT is a very, very, very real danger--one that I will immediately acknowledge. Again, I just feel that the opportunities and benefits will outweigh the risks,

Tijger, please don't misunderstand me. I'm not looking for my own Dev In My Pocket... I can't imagine that a single chat every month, or quarter, or expansion--at least every so often--would put them too far behind. And honestly, I'd be willing to wait one more day for the Reconnect feature to be implemented, if it meant we could get the lowdown on what they're thinking and what their goals are.

Buying a game may not entitle me to know everything, but as a customer who will (hopefully!) be providing them further income for years to come... well, let's just say that even if they have ZERO obligation to keep the players happy and engaged, it's still plain good business sense to do so.

And trust me, I understand the huge disconnect between Dev and EndUser. Unfortunately, I get the impression that a similar disconnect exists between ANet's Dev team and their PR team. You said it yourself: "Gaile Gray is paid to talk to players, not the devs". If she doesn't have answers we're looking for, then to whom shall we turn?

that's a nice post Redly. I hope that they will agree with the public chat. I am interested in listening to the conversation.

Anet may communicate more in quantity but I believe what the op is mentioning is that the quality is sorely lacking. Gaile's last chat log is filled with very sarcastic, rude, and inappropriate comments. If a lot of players are questioning the wisdom of how alliance battles were changed than we need more of an answer than we are getting. If they don't plan on changing it then say so and give a little more info on their reasoning.

And as far as "devs are paid to code not to chat" this is the biggest mistake any programmer can ever make. I have more than 20 years of programming experience and I can tell you that using an intermediary to find out what the end user's problems are is a recipe for disaster. You can only truly understand what your users/players want or need if you spend the time to communicate with them. All it takes is one person inbetween and the communication gets distorted and watered down. And the one caveat to this is you need to make sure you don't do all your communicating with just a small sample of users/players (this leads to a jaded narrow view of what is needed/desired).

Redly & Eviance, you guys keep on posting! Well thought out ideas with just the right amount of humor in them. Now I have to go check out all your old posts to see what else you have been up to

Yet most software companies don't send out their developers to gather user requirements. There are people trained to do that. I've worked for small, medium, and large companies and I've never been sent out to gather requirements and bug reports from users. There's always a buffer, be it other people, or some type of automated request or bug system. It's certainly not a recipe for disaster. And keep in mind that developers often have little say in what features are implemented and how they're implemented. Often that's mandated from management or some other department, like marketing.

Yes. Statements are often vague and don't tell us anything. Look at the 6x100% fiasco. I'm not pointing the finger at Gaile, because she can only say what she's allowed to say. Also, all communications about upcoming features and changes should be posted at the official site. Not everyone hangs around forums.

Don't hunt down to many of mine dear you might be disapointed =P I don't always show the same amount of class and eloquent wording as my husband. >_<


Yeah this is also one of the things we have been asking for! I mean jotting the times for the tengu event on their website would have given no one room to complain (even tho I am sure many still would have found reasons), but not knowing the times was the hardest for people to get because the last time of the event changed. Gaile said it was announced but like you said not everyone frequents the boards and unless you do (as I did) you wouldn't have known that the emporer was coming 20mins early -_-
Or the 12v12, they could have posted on the front page: It will be nothing like the FPE, we think it will better off this way with a split of 4+4+4 v 4+4+4 and no more random entering. We think you guys will like this much better, but we are still working out some bugs, so please be pateint.


I don't blame Gaile for not telling us everything, granted she can't usually. But at the same time I feel like I am speaking to some glorified oracle half the time who has fans crawling on her and she is too busy being kind and cryptic to give me any real inkling as to what the bloody heck she is talking about!

Someone mentioned that in her last chat she came off as rude and crass.... Heck she did that in the one before last too and it was a miscommunication, because we don't see all the fanboy yelling that goes on between her sentences.

I recall the last time I watched one of her chats (long while back) and I kept asking calmly about 1v1 and scrimages... some idiot kept yelling: Gaile do you want a Dr. Pepper! and then there were some going GAILE YOU SUCK - others yelling obscene things and it was stupid - for 10mins I repeated it whenever chat would start to slow down some (otherwise I knew she would miss it cause it wasn't in all caps)... Finally I got: ooooh 1v1 that would be cool! I will mention that to them!
But it took so long to get it out there (this was before I knew about GWG).

She comes to the people more as a morale boost than anything else. Months pass and I see people telling me that she mentioned guild storage (for the 30th time I am sure!) and usually its all old news to me, as she has mentioned it about 7times before.

We need better lines of communication. If they didn't care about their players they wouldn't respond or read the boards, they wouldn't come ingame to chat with us. It's obvious that they care at least to some degree and there are ways we could make it easier for them.
This thread isn't about wanting to talk more, it's wanting to clear the air of all the ranting and silly stuff and cryptic oracle talk -_-

I can usually understand Yoda better than I can Gaile's chat logs, and while that isn't her fault there are ways to make it better and this could possibly be one.

;_; But alas, I am sadly uninteresting and strange, lacking the fervor that my mate assaults her victims with.

Ok. So you think there's not any communication from Anet? Well, this all seems to be based around 2 things, and you mentioned them both. Elite Missions and 12v12 games.

Lets look at these then.

Elite Missions - Players have a problem with the fact that only the top alliances can have access or GRANT access (remember, anyone in an alliance can let anyone else into the missions area.) However, that's just what players think. Anet might think differently about it. They might decide that it's exactly the way they intended it, just like Favour for the other high level areas.

12v12 - (In particular refernce to the posted quotes) The FPE was a BETA and was subject to changes. The FPE was in no way a 100% accurate representation of what the game would be upon release. Secondly, I suspect the reasons for the changes were made for sensible reasons. 1) Forcing people to join a party of 4 means it is now harder for people to use scripts to autojoin the battles and leech faction. 2) in a team of 12 with team chat as the only communication, if a party member from one "team of 4" calls a target it shows up on every other players window. Including those not in their "team of 4". Having individual teams allows better communication under the current system.

Now, with regards to the above, I don't see Elite missions access changing. However, I do see changes to the alliance battles happening. There are some good suggestions around and something will most likely be done.

BUT, Factions has been out for what, 2 weeks? Think about what Anet have been doing in those 2 weeks. For a start, looking at and fixing bugs. Handling press. Running around trying to sort out CE problems. Mini pet for CE owners. etc. Do you think they've been on holiday on a tropical island somehwere? No. Currently, they are promoting Guild Wars at E3.

You seem to think Anet work 24/7 with nothing else to do but bend to the requests of players. Give a thought for what they have been up to over the last 2 weeks and you might realize that the reason for a lack of info on the two main issues you are concerned about is because they are quite busy at the moment! Come on, they've just released a major title, what do you expect them to do?

I think all your expectations are far too high and totally unfounded.

I think Anet's communication is great. If you think 2 weeks (2 busy weeks for Anet) without mention on two issues YOU feel are important is enough to say Anet do not communicate with the community, then perhaps you need to rethink your expectations.

Perhaps people should relax, enjoy the game and wait for things to settle down a bit. Anet have always responded to issues in the past. It might not have been within the timescales you wanted (or the answer you wanted), but they have. And where possible they have delivered!

Guild Wars has many serious issues besides the two or three most commonly talked about ones.

They definitely should have a sit-down dev chat where hardball questions and uncommon yet important questions are thrown at the devs. Ie: Why is nothing ever done about the "sigils are worthless" issue that has been stagnating for many months, that makes winning on the HoH map pointless?

Or...there should be an announcement about which in-game district Gaile will be in at certain times so that those who wish to ask necessary hardball or uncommon questions have an opportunity to do so.

The bottom line for me is...

Yes, ANet communicate more than enough with the fans in terms of appearances made by Gaile in the forums/game. However, the issue is that REALLY, we get nothing of substance from her in terms of response to questions/future features etc. I'd rather have less quantity and more quality.

There's only so many times the "I'll let the devs decide that one" response can work before people start to get a bit itchy about it. Even a "no" from a dev is better than the apparent PR brush off.

Honestly? I expect to see this in Lion's Arch/Kaineng City:
or
... but instead, we get "The reason it is the way it is, now, is that coordinating 12 is VERY difficult. It was felt that coordinating a squad is easier and allow better strategy use." (link to this excerpt)

I was actually at this session, one of the 329,u48,390,1xx people who were trying to throw their questions into local chat. I did in fact ask something close to: "Gaile, does the dev team still feel that 4/4 squads were the way to go? Are they satisfied with the change, or are we still seeing as many problems as before?"

Of course, she moved on immediately to something else I missed, some potential exploit I think, and two lines later began giving her farewells. (link to the thread, read the bottom half of the last picture). So, do we wait? Do we hope? Is there any point in continuing to express our dissatisfaction--after all, people have been complaining about the favor system for some time now... but, whether you like it or not, it's apparently here to stay. I'd like to not waste time writing about 12v12 if there's no hope of changing it.

I expect answers, sir. A Yes, a No, or a Maybe. Half-hearted responses do not an answer create.

That will be the day. If they answered tough questions, and not give run-around answers, it will change my view of ANET for the better. It will obviously show that they are willing to extend their hand and ear beyond just updating the game here and there.

Q.E.D.

The point was, if Gaile is going to be a mouth piece then we would like a little something more than how cute pets are and talk of hair stylists and the same thing over and over. We want something where people do not have to compete with idiots to be heard....

His suggestion was very viable if you read Inde's post that it has been done before.
In this way people can submit questions and such, and they can take the most commonly stressed issues - take a few days to think up a better answer than "Oh sure it needs to be addressed" which tells us nothing (but is usually the round about answer we get) Time to respond with a simple straight forward answer is what is needed.

The PRs aren't the ones working on the game and if you ask around I am sure that a bunch of you will agree that there are many of the GW team INGAME playing or spying or whatever it is they are doing. I have heard a couple of times where GM will sneakily ask questions in local chat about something to get opinions...

So how is this any different? Because it is straight forward and we wouldn't feel like we were getting the run around? Do you like living in the dark on everything? I don't and no one is asking them to answer every little thing we just want to be kept up on changes that they are obviously going to make with or without our say. I hate having to sift my way through the Gaile chat logs and the siliness only to find out nothing was addressed at all -_-

Instead of surfing these forums to answer every little question or request - we could have ONE thread stickied that is full of questions and at the end of 2wks someone collect the important ones and submit them to Anet and 2wks later or however long they need, they could set a meeting time in IRC and address them in full or at least with a little more than cryptic answers.