Guild Wars 2 - Mike O'Brien responds to the incident |
- Mike O'Brien responds to the incident
- When the dust of this incident settles, I hope devs aren't discouraged from interacting positively with the community
- Can we expect a PR response from Anet?
- The "I Block Often" open world core Guardian build!
- [Ten Ton Hammer] Guild Wars 2 Lurches To Yet Another PR Nightmare
- The Dev Story is Spawning Discussions in Many other Communities and it's Driving off Potential Players
- Today was a huge win for players -- doing what I can
- I refuse to spend money and time on this game until latest drama resolves
- Remember - we as the playerbase is the game's most important advertising asset!
- New mounts announced!
- Meanwhile, on the GW2 forum...
- Rallying the GW2 community: BL Skins Giveaway
- A thought on Social Justice in gaming, and in GW2 specifically.
- To ArenaNet: Weren't Hearts supposed to be filler content?
- At what point does the "It's too much work" excuse fail?
- If you expressed your outrage about the recent Dev incident, after Anet's decisive&swift response, it's time to also give some positive feedback now that it's been dealt with.
- Really hoping we'll get a map with a whole lot more of this forest so I can fly though it with my griffon
- Can we now discuss the actual problem? Our Commander has no personality and is dull
- Lore wise, why is the commander so fucking strong?
- It sucks to see Peter Fries go.
- Why are arenanet so bad at implementing rewards?
- If you pause the cutscene at the right time
- A New Emote?
| Mike O'Brien responds to the incident Posted: 05 Jul 2018 02:55 PM PDT
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| Posted: 05 Jul 2018 03:58 PM PDT So we've established that calling people sexist and telling them to fuck off for polite criticism generally isn't going to fly here. That said, after all of this I'm a little worried that the devs aren't exactly going to be eager to jump back into it after two of their coworkers were just fired. The events of the last two days.. they're over. The person who sparked it and the other who fanned the flames are no longer in the picture. Can we as a community move past it? Let's continue to welcome future dev interaction with friendliness and positive constructive feedback as we (generally) always have, and leave the ugliness of the last 2 days behind us. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Can we expect a PR response from Anet? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 07:21 AM PDT FINAL EDIT: Anet Response: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/586426#Comment_586426 I will say that anything we think is pure speculation, for all we know both employees could have voluntarily left the company over disputes on community standards. Brb buying $100 worth of gems The problem with the JP situation right now, is that a lot of the discussion is about if Deroir was in the wrong to comment at all. The thing is even if he was in the wrong her response was massively inappropriate. That coupled with other employees defending her behavior makes it seem like Anet is okay with their employees being disrespectful to partners like INKs and Deroir who arguably have contributed more to the game than JP. How are you calling someone who has an NPC in game a random asshat and talking about sexism while using phrases like "hurt manfeels", At the very least Anet should release a statement saying the views of their employees do not reflect their own. Or something to that effect. EDIT: Hey guys I know this is a hot topic, but I just want to say I'm not saying either should be fired or even necessarily punished over this. Just that Anet should address the community. Considering the situation involved two of the most popular content creators and partners, I think Anet should at least let the community know they aren't going to hold it against Deroir and Inks. EDIT 2: since leaving pathfinder JP has been with Anet less than a year. So I think in terms of health of the game, promotion, and improving community, the two Anet partners who have been with us for years have had a more positive impact. [link] [comments]  | ||
| The "I Block Often" open world core Guardian build! Posted: 05 Jul 2018 09:10 AM PDT Hey reddit, I want to present you my open world (works great e.g. in new living story) core guardian build, that I made to block often. I run M/Sh and Sc/F as weapons (with Zealot stats so I can heal more, live longer and block even more often) and a Marauder's armor and trinkets (more HP = live longer to block more, offensive stats = my The scepter doesn't really add anything to the block theme, but it let's me throw I use Might on Dodge food so I can dodge My traits synergize with Aegis and give a lot of sustain, which let's me block even more. For my skills I use either skills that give me blocks, aegis or defensive fields to block Thx for reading! [link] [comments]  | ||
| [Ten Ton Hammer] Guild Wars 2 Lurches To Yet Another PR Nightmare Posted: 05 Jul 2018 10:19 AM PDT | ||
| Posted: 05 Jul 2018 10:25 AM PDT I sub quite a few gaming subreddits and am in many active non-gw2 related gaming discords as well. Most of the discord disscussion yesterday were about BBQ and fireworks, and then BAM! they all turned to talks about this drama. You can see the top threads in r/MMORPG, r/kotakuinaction, and r/SubredditDrama with hundreds of comments being about this. I am reading many comments like "Well, I had just downloaded their game to try for the first time but I guess I am not going to give them any money now. They sound unprofessional"' or "I was considering buying guild wars, now I'll pass". What's happened here regardless of how it resolves will have ramification difficult to fix. I actually spent quite a bit of time promoting the game on different platforms and communities so it feel disheartening to see a Dev so out of touch with it's game's community. It also feels like all that time and effort I've spent promoting the game was wasted. Edit: Looks like MO's swift action gave a lot of credibility to Anet, and story of Anet's response is spreading faster and further than this initial drama. For example: https://www.pcgamer.com/guild-wars-2-writers-fired-following-heated-twitter-exchange-with-streamer/#comment-jump [link] [comments]  | ||
| Today was a huge win for players -- doing what I can Posted: 05 Jul 2018 03:54 PM PDT I wound up purchasing gems today to support ArenaNet. Not because someone got fired that I disagreed with (contrary: I actually thought her original post was well thought out), but because this is a win for the players. MO and ArenaNet stepped up today and said they stand with us -- the community. It can't go under stated how immediate and resolute this was. I have never seen a company stick up for their players like this. Straight up, it costs a lot of money to rehire not one but two employees. Finding and sourcing them, ramping them up, salary deltas etc. I would encourage everyone to vote with their wallet (if you can) -- ArenaNet took our side today. I want to make sure they can keep taking our side for a good long while. Edit: Thanks for the reddit gold! First time getting gilded. :) [link] [comments]  | ||
| I refuse to spend money and time on this game until latest drama resolves Posted: 05 Jul 2018 07:33 AM PDT UPDATE: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/8weir8/mike_obrien_responds_to_the_incident Hear me out, Tyria! Drama resolved! Arena.net team settled it in very professional manner! I think it's time to choke the fires. Hope anet Dev team will hear me out. I was thinking, that your team listen to community and have a good communication with it, but it feels like I was wrong. I won't spend any money on your game, knowing that your team may have a lot of such "nice" persons. This game have by far the greatest community, as a result, of release design desicions. Now, you just screwing it's potential by ignoring important issues and letting that behaviour. If anet will ignore all latest issues I'm leaving the game. P.s. My English is bad, so I couldn't talk about all issues as I could. Feel free to share your constructive criticism in the comments below. And if you want problems be solved faster, you can stop spending money on this game too. Yes, maybe it will slow down development cycle, but I think we have a lot of issues that must be resolved at first place. RIOT [link] [comments]  | ||
| Remember - we as the playerbase is the game's most important advertising asset! Posted: 05 Jul 2018 08:40 AM PDT So when we're getting no communication, no incentive for veterans to keep playing, and we get lashed out at for doing our best to participate in the little communication we get with ideas and feedback - why again should we advertise the game? Guild Wars 2 is absolutely the game I have spent the longest time with, and the game I've had the most fun with. It's honestly a masterpiece in many regards. But at this rate, already most my friends have stopped playing, and more and more show disinterest every day. How can I advertise my favorite game when there is no retention of veteran players. When the veteran player activities are exactly what I would want to advertise? Are we bound for a future where the only players left are the newcomers who log in twice every 3 months, and think getting their first piece of ascended is a daunting task not worth their time? Will the competitive PvP be left to rot as the players forget how to rotate and how to work together? Will the hope for WvW be forgotten as the borderlands empty in ancient anticipation of alliances? Will all the strategies and records of Raids and Fractals sit uncontended, with no hope of revival and resuscitation? Will all these communities of long-time players continue to be condemned in the face of a contentless and communicationless future? How can I advertise the game in this state, when it is only with dwindling hope we await content? When our attempts at keeping our communities alive leaves us in despair? It is with great love for this game, and with great love for our memories, that we wish to continue advertising Guild Wars 2 - but how can we do so when there is no hope or means for new memories to be created. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 05 Jul 2018 03:45 PM PDT
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| Meanwhile, on the GW2 forum... Posted: 05 Jul 2018 09:30 AM PDT | ||
| Rallying the GW2 community: BL Skins Giveaway Posted: 05 Jul 2018 04:06 PM PDT EDIT: There are now 40 Desert King skins, 20 dyes up to 10G and 5 dyes up to 20G value up for giveaway thanks to u/xanterra, u/mv2345l and u/ihatetomatoes95. Please feel free to continue to chuck your names in even after 9am July 6 UTC as the other donors are doing their draws later. And of course thank you for the reddit gold :) EDIT #2: If this post reaches 600 upvotes there will be an additional 10 Desert King skins up for grabs thanks to u/xanterra. In light of recent events I'm giving away 20 Desert King weapon skins - because, you know, we the players make up our community, and controversial individuals who tarnish the game and its brand shouldn't get to define us. Leave your account name (including the 4 digit number at the end) and which weapon skin you want, and I will RNG your names. I will draw names and mail them out in approx. 10 hours from now (9am 6 July UTC). [link] [comments]  | ||
| A thought on Social Justice in gaming, and in GW2 specifically. Posted: 05 Jul 2018 10:31 AM PDT There is a common trend that we have seen video games, comics, and movie industries go through: the Social Justice. I will go through the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy social justice, as well has how this relates to our current situation with the Jessica Price incident. Now, let's start with some context. Arena Net is based out of Bellevue, Washington, an extremely progressive city in what is already one of the most progressive states in the country. At least for the making of GW2, since I cannot speak for GW1, they have always followed the progressive standards of equality and inclusion. Look at the equality of gender mandate: Destiny's Edge had a perfect 3-3 male to female split while the Commander's party has an even more impressive 2-4 male to female split. The human gods also follow a similar 3-3 ratio. The mandate for strong female characters is also followed to the letter. Look at the representation of race mandate: When there are multiple species around, the race of each species should not matter. However, we still find representation for Northern Europeans (Ascalonians), Southern Europeans (Krytans), the Middle East/Africa (Elonians), and Asians (Canthans). Finally, look at the LGBT representation mandate, present in the only relationship pair in the story: Marjory x Kasmeer. Now, none of the previous paragraph is a criticism of ArenaNet or their design or writing choices. It is simply a set of observations to show that ArenaNet follows social justice principals when making decisions. Now, onto the important part of the discussion. There are two ways of handling social justice within media. The first is to take an approach like a game like Overwatch, in which diversity is a critical part of character design, but does not impact the story or gameplay beyond providing depth. We do not see characters like Tracer running around using her lesbian powers for anything, nor do we see the social justice propaganda as a core story theme. In this sense, the creators wish to create the best gameplay for player experience, not the best game to push social justice ideology. I will term this process "healthy social justice". The second way to incorporate can be seen in the comic book industry. The cycle goes something like this: Social justice enters, claiming that whatever media is racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic and needs to change. Out of fear from the vocal minority, the media accepts them and begins producing new content for no reasons to than to appease the social justice mandates. This leads to a backlash from the community around the media, who recognize that they are being propagandized and the departure from form of the media, leading to a drop in sales. This is then seen as concrete proof of the bigotry of the fanbase by social justice advocates, providing the need for more social justice themed content. This continues for a while, until the media attacks the fanbase, claiming that their perceived bigotry is the problem. Finally, the media realizes that they have lost more than they gained from the inclusion of social justice, their overall drop in sales, bad reputation they have garnered in their community , and begins to walk back the incursion. This cycle has been played out many times and is currently in the process at different stages. I will term this cycle "unhealthy social justice". Now, where is Guild Wars 2 in all of this? Probably closer to healthy social justice if I am to be honest. However, it does have some aspects of unhealthy social justice, particularly with how they implemented character development as a central part of the story. Who can forget the Marjory vs Kaz fights in Flashpoint or Rox's complete infatuation with the Olmakahn in A Bug in the System? I can make some concessions here as well, since the main story is the primary method of character development, unlike Overwatch where character development happens in side stories. However, we haven't seen the overt unhealthy social justice tropes: shutting down people because of their identity, unnecessary Mary Sue's, anyone beginning a sentence with "As a (insert identity here)...". So, now where does that lead us with the Jessica Price situation? The Guild Wars 2 community appreciates, or at the very least accepts, healthy social justice by and large. Jessica Price seems to exemplify unhealthy social justice, with many community members voicing their concerns about this issue when her hiring was announced. Recent history has shown with that attacks on the fanbase go hand in hand with the preaching of social justice, almost as a religion. Attacking the community is a cardinal sin, right up there with requiring events to fail for collection pieces. Is the outrage expressed by the community justified? I believe so, as this is a significant change in the way that ArenaNet interacts with the community to unhealthy social justice. Fandoms like Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Magic the Gathering, Star Trek, and others have taken massive blows due to unhealthy social justice. Guild Wars 2 has one of the nicest communities I have ever seen in a game. Almost never do we need to discuss player toxicity and the prevalence of acts of kindness is overwhelming for players coming from other games. If the community expresses such a large problem with Long Live the Litch and the Jessica Price incident, then ArenaNet should listen. [link] [comments]  | ||
| To ArenaNet: Weren't Hearts supposed to be filler content? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 09:26 AM PDT Hello! A lot of people are now clearly dissatisfied with how the new episode turned out, and I wish to expand on something I have been very disappointed with ever since Season 3 started - changes to hearts. Originally hearts weren't even supposed to be in the game, but the devs noticed that people didn't know where to go and what to do between events - the main focus of the open world PvE content. Events were from the start the bread and butter of Guild Wars 2 that engaged players the most. Feeding cows and making frog juice is fun and all, but really you're just doing it to get map completion if you're a veteran or because there are no events around to engage with if you're new-ish to the game. They have taken the Events + Hearts system to it's logical conclusion in Orr - the "endgame" open world of Launch GW2 by removing the "guide" that hearts are supposed to be and counting on players knowing what to look for at that point in their leveling experience. Kept expanding on it with Season 1 to some extent (Marionette or Lion's Arch anyone?) and really hit the stride with Season 2 and Heart of Thorns. If hearts existed to draw new players towards events, there wasn't any need for them in high level areas and could instead be replaced with elaborate, big and most importantly FUN event chains - Which continue to be fun thanks to rewards and high repeatability... and ArenaNet knew this from the start, they wanted to make open world about events from the start of Guild Wars 2 when developing it. Then came Heart of Thorns and it's bombastic event chains. However there was a big content drought before and after the release of Heart of Thorns which I believe was a big reason behind negative feedback on HoT post-launch. Negative feedback about how HoT zones don't allow for solo player experiences such as exploration, or even completing Hero Challenges on your own. Ever since then, we haven't gotten a single map-wide meta. Ask most veterans and they will tell you they love that stuff. Yet the negative responses resulted in ArenaNet's knee-jerk reaction in introducing repeatable hearts and almost no big event chains, which quite frankly isn't justified as the only thing people were complaining when it came to meta events themselves was the time-locking of Dragon's Stand and the difficulty of some of them (That one isn't even a reasonable argument is it... you gotta know how to mash more than #1 to play max level content in my humble opinion). So yeah... hearts were always filler content, yet somehow now we have repeatable filler content and it doesn't seem to stop any time soon. You need to add more MEANINGFUL repeatable content, because hearts aren't it. Dry Top, Silverwastes and HoT maps are getting played out, yet despite being played out they are more engaging than any of the post-HoT maps. I spend a few weeks in every new zone, complete the achievements at a decent pace, no rushing... and then what? Then I go back to playing Fractals, Raids or Season 2 / Heart of Thorns if I want to play PvE content, because Path of Fire meta-events are either bothersome or not fun because there is a lack of rewards AND players and in general they aren't engaging (Despite the fact that Serpent's Ire had the potential to be really good if taken further). The only exception is Istan, which isn't as much fun as it is profitable due to unintended behavior. And you know what? Fine... do your open world PvE like this, work 9 months on a map that will be played for a few weeks before it's left barren. But you need to deliver other engaging and repeatable content like Fractals or Raids... but so far you don't, and one Fractal every 6 months just isn't enough. I can't know what is being discussed internally... but scaling back Living World teams so that they produce less episodes (4?) per season with more replayability seems like better long-term solution than what we are currently experiencing. I'm not gonna lie, with every single Living World release I am less and less excited about the next aside from the story. And if the next expansion doesn't have any meaningful content I can repeat and still be engaged with it a year after release like Path of Fire did, I for one might finally give up on Guild Wars 2 for good and wait for a new IP or sequel you might decide to produce after that. EDIT: Didn't touch on the disappointment that is Raid and Fractals cadence. With my view considering the lack of new repeatable content in open world PvE on display, you can guess how I feel about the lack of new repeatable 5 man / 10 man content. [link] [comments]  | ||
| At what point does the "It's too much work" excuse fail? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 08:30 AM PDT Developing MMOs is hard, especially subscription-free ones where funding may not be as prevalent or consistent. I'm not arguing that here. However, given the very large list of things the devs have, either explicitly or implicitly, removed from future development plans (dungeons, branching storylines, core tyria rework, etc.) and the abysmal pace of new content delivery, I really wonder what we can actually expect in terms of content moving forward. Even things like new legendaries have slowed to a trickle, because collections are apparently too time consuming to implement. WvW is an eternal mess, PvP balance has been wonky more or less since launch. If the future of the game is a new fractal and raid every 4 months, then I can't see the game growing very much. There's a lot of content in the game, but much of it is neglected and not really worth doing e.g. silverwastes creature piece collections give rare, not exotic, armor, most world bosses give nothing of value. When the devs are asked about stuff like this, they either don't reply or talk about how much work it is to implement any of the suggestions of the playerbase and they are "looking in to adjusting our content pipeline to better address these concerns". It's been nearly six years, and at least the past 4 have had these issues. What can we expect them to do for this game that isn't "too much work/too hard to implement"? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 05 Jul 2018 06:03 PM PDT TL;DR: This is a call, to spread the word in your gaming-related subs, about how the issue was handled by ArenaNet. I'm not going to analyse what happened and the outcome here, at the time of posting there are a dozen posts in the sub that do this. Instead, I want to draw attention to the fact that during this crisis, we raised our concerns about how the matter was handled in a few communities, like /r/gaming, /r/mmorpg to name a few, also drawing the attention of content creators, and even had a relevenat article from TenTonHammer. The initial post about the issue was upvoted to the be the 2nd most upvoted post in the history of the sub ( since the 1st is a bit of joke, I would say that its the top-upvoted even). In short, the community managed to bring in the attention that was needed to underline the severity of the issue. This also had the unfortunate effect of pushing away potential new players, who were appalled by the treatment of the players by the former ArenaNet devs. However, ArenaNet took a stand and since then has decisively dealt with the issue. People are usually more likely to express their outrage, and are content when things are working fine, and so, while there's a lot of praise in the main "response" thread, I think its also important to make sure that we spread the news about how the issue was handled, to show potential players that while this game may not be perfect, the company running it does respect their players and doesn't condone the behaviour of their former employees. Thanks for reading. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 05 Jul 2018 03:39 PM PDT
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| Can we now discuss the actual problem? Our Commander has no personality and is dull Posted: 04 Jul 2018 11:48 PM PDT TLDR: Our Commander has no personallity because Anet thinks it should be that way. I disagree. Discuss. If we can put aside the reactions and hurt feelings all around, JP posted her work insight (in the public domain of twitter). It goes as follows:
Deroir pointed out some very good feedback, which is what I think we need to discuss here:
So I'm not going to disagree *slightly*, I'm going to disagree wholly and vehemently. It's wrong! I, as a gamer, want choices! The whole premise of GW2, the selling point, the Marketing of the game when it came out, was that this would be your story. You would feel what it's like to be a Charr in their ghost riddled homelands, you would be an all powerful, drunken sometimes, hunting down your legend Norn, you would feel like an acedemic know it all Asura, a naive Sylvari or just a plain human. Remember the personality traits of Charming, Ferocious, Dignified? Remember how that was never implemented correctly? The personal story, imho, starts our strong, because you have choices. Then it narrows down to the one story like of joining the pact, and with it, all your choices are meaningless backstory time filler. The rest of the personal story, is not good, to say the least. Right now, when playing on my main (a Charr Engineer) I don't feel it's my story at all. My character is bland, boring, dull and stupid. He doesn't feel like a Charr. In fact, I've stopped logging in on my other mains and replaying the story since it adds no value. There is no branching dialogue. There is nothing unique about playing a human who was blessed by Balthazar when they were born in the PoF story. If you are an Asura and you have to deal with Taimi, Blish and Gorrik, may the eternal alchemy help you! It's absolute torture. "So, how do we tell a TV-like season of story with a protagonist who can't really have a personality?" <-This. This is so wrong on so many levels it's hard to even begin to eloquently do justice to the problem. ArenaNet thinks like this. They want us to play a game like this. It's like they think the Gamer who plays an MMO is different from a player who plays an old style RPG. What in the world? I keep thinking about Kingdom Come: Deliverance and what a success it was, because of the story branching (also Humans of Detroit?) and the fact you, the gamer, choose the personality. You can play like a sneaky thief or a dashing noble hero. Where is our choice? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Lore wise, why is the commander so fucking strong? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 04:31 AM PDT Like you can start as a beggar who wanted to join the circus [link] [comments]  | ||
| It sucks to see Peter Fries go. Posted: 05 Jul 2018 06:52 PM PDT
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| Why are arenanet so bad at implementing rewards? Posted: 05 Jul 2018 07:09 AM PDT I don't get what goes on in arenanet. I know they save a lot of skins for the gem store and money but would it be that hard to just put aside a few mount skins and unique weapon skins Am I asking for too much maybe just a mount skin for each PoF map? How cool would it be to just complete a heart and go to the heart vendor and see a mount skin you could get? I'm talking high amount of karma like for eg 500k-1m and lots of the map currency to make them a bit prestigious. Or maybe just some sort of scimitar skin for a sword that is like 150k karma again plus high amounts of what ever map currency it is? Like 2 or 3 weapon skins dotted around each new map that you can buy from heart vendors (possible themes to do with the heart and thinking back this was done once in living world season 3 with a sick looking staff skin and it went down a fucking treat from what I can remember). tbh I wouldn't want sets of weapons I think it would be a good idea to have just unique ones that have no relation in looks to each other. instead of buying a crafting recipe for like 10k karma and paying like 3 gold to craft one (I'm talking about the weapon set you can buy in the PoF maps from basically every heart vendor). Just keep it simple you. Just keep high karma and high map currency and they will instantly have prestige to them even if they don't look good. They basically do this for raids which is why I think the raid weapons skins, even if they don't look good are so cool because there is a little bit of prestige and work gone in to them rather just base gold. Could even implement a rare mount skin into raids, why not...just one? I don't even raid but it would still be cool to see. It just seems silly as gw2 is such a cosmetically driven place. Not only would it make the open world maps more rewarding I genuinely think it would keep maps alive and make people want to do metas and all of the events around the maps. I absolutely love the PoF maps but I have literally not a single reason to even go back to them once. Even to farm, there are just such better places to farm and these places just become the meta. Nothing from the heart vendors is even remotely interesting to me and if it is I've got it and probably bought with 10k karma. Please give me a reason to play these beautiful maps. We just want a few skins. [link] [comments]  | ||
| If you pause the cutscene at the right time Posted: 05 Jul 2018 05:20 PM PDT | ||
| Posted: 05 Jul 2018 07:09 PM PDT
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