Really disappointed with Arena Net - PR

[Deleted]

that's weird cause i believe some guildmates of mine have been farming quite some karma these last days in some lvl 10-20ish zones where they've found some DE chains with decent "reset" speed. while they may not get much xp, they still get some lvl 80 loots here and there and lots of mats they put on TP.

sure each of those DE don't reward as much as 80s but as they clear many of them with each DE chain, they actually add up to pretty nice amounts from what i heard.

Unfortunately, these DE chains are limited to certain zones that have the large DE chains - this kind of defeats the object because now instead of being funneled into one zone - Orr - you're now being funneled into one other zone, which is the one with the large DE chains.

Honestly, I don't find it efficient to farm karma in lower level zones. I think the downlevelling should bust you down harder so you have far more of a challenge trying to do the content, then they can raise the rewards to near-equal Orr levels.

Currently it doesn't actually seem worth it unless you like the zone or have a chain event / rotation farm organised plan going.

[draykorinee]

Unfortunately, these DE chains are limited to certain zones that have the large DE chains - this kind of defeats the object because now instead of being funneled into one zone - Orr - you're now being funneled into one other zone, which is the one with the large DE chains.

Honestly, I don't find it efficient to farm karma in lower level zones. I think the downlevelling should bust you down harder so you have far more of a challenge trying to do the content, then they can raise the rewards to near-equal Orr levels.

Currently it doesn't actually seem worth it unless you like the zone or have a chain event / rotation farm organised plan going.

Well thats what I said but as it comes from me, my post history gets brought up by jtgizmo and personal attack instead of actually addressing the post, id happily take more of a hit if it meant content was relevant and rewards were proportionate.

[Karizee]

honestly? I haven't seen a decent "bear army" all week, never seen a bot in sPvP or WvW, or in a dungeon or anywhere else except a couple of known places (sparkfly fen, cursed shore) And even when did used to see them they didn't even effect my game directly in fact they help with champion mobs if you are clever enough, sure indirectly the games economy gets screwed a bit but that is an issue with all MMO's, GW2 isn't the only one with bots. Which areas are you seeing them?

You should try playing battlegrounds in WoW if you want to see a decent bot problem where it actually effected my enjoyment of the game.

I saw a group of 5 last week in Frostgorge Sound. Their program had broken in the most delightful way, they would rez at a waypoint, run allllll the way around this mountain and up a slope directly into the loving arms of a Veteran Arctodus and her host of younguns. They were coming up one at a time, nekkid of course, dragging even more Young Arctodus' behind them to join in the slap down party - insta death and do it all over again.

Was quite amusing ;-)

I just click reported each one as it came up, haven't seen them since.

[Deleted]

Well thats what I said but as it comes from me, my post history gets brought up by jtgizmo and personal attack instead of actually addressing the post, id happily take more of a hit if it meant content was relevant and rewards were proportionate.

I think, as you said with your post history, the problem is you're famously critical of the game in this subforum so people have adapted to taking things you say with a pinch of salt, just how things the other drake says (coincidentally) are the adverse - also to be taken with a pinch of salt.

But yeah, I believe the heart of the problem around the 'You can go to lower level zones because of downlevelling' / 'No because the rewards suck' is the difficulty and subsequently the levelling curve.

If they made low level enemies tougher then it would flatten the levelling curve. It would take longer for you to level up at lower levels but that means that when you get to higher levels it will no longer feel like a grind, clawing your way up that mountain to level 80 with every grasp getting steeper. It will also allow for decent downlevelled content. Things are harder to kill, they're less farmable. Things are less farmable, you can afford to give a proportionate reward etc.

I think downlevelling is a good idea but I think it's not quite implemented well enough, mainly due to the relative difficulty curve of enemies (An enemy at level 1 is far easier to kill than an enemy at level 80; you'd expect this, but when it gets to level 20 and they're still easy to kill, it becomes a problem)

[theredviola]

About the bots -- due to how GW2 works thing, bots don't bug me in this game. We all share kills, nodes, and loot. The more the merrier I say.

[Valeron]

Bots just bug me on principal.

[theredviola]

Bots just bug me on principal.

I struggled with this for a bit when the notion hit me a month ago or so. But, then I realized that in this game, in this specific situation, bots don't bug me. Its not worth it.

Bots bug me on other games because we DON'T share nodes, mobs, and loot. A machine is stealing my nodes, mobs and loot. In GW2, its not harming me (or anyone else), so on principal, it doesn't bother me as much.

[Kelesti]

Oh they still harm you. Their entire presence is given so they can have a continued income whether the player has the time to be at the machine or not. A single instance is very small in the big scheme of things, but there's never "just one" bot, and they do have a very real effect on the economy of any game.

[Ravenblade]

The devs or whatever in GW2 frustrate me to no end, ive actually given up trying to get answers out of ANet because its freaking pointless.

This is the image of ANet that I see in my mind whenever I try to discuss things or get answers, a little kid screaming with his fingers in his ears saying "im gona be better than all the mmo's" when in actual fact he's doing more harm than good.

Downed states is another thing that annoys me in pvp, it makes people extremely tanky and wastes your time when your trying to kill them. I can easily down 4-5 people as a necro solo, but Its impossible for me to finish them off because of the crappy way in which this game revolves around dying. Seriously.. who the hell thought that was a good idea, I can see its implications in PvE since they done away with the holy trilogy which keeps us all sane. But pvp does not need it, just make players more durable instead of giving us a bloody downed state.

I think they are just cautious at the moment. When Jon Peters actually gave a reply about FOV - which I disagreed with myself by the way - people went übermad.
It's not that ANet is actually unique here, I have seen it in other companies as well, I know first hand what it means to develop and give answers to people. Most people don't take no for an answer and see a developer response as opportunity to ask for more. In the end everyone feels entitled to get a developer response because their posting is (supposedly) more reasonable and important than that of the other guy. End of story? Some people will raise concerns about whether developers actually do their job instead of talking to people all day. It's really actually better to have a face talking for the company most of the time. But sometimes developers cannot give more details because they are:
- in the process of processing feedback and analyzing it
- analyzing a problem they have encountered internally
- they are in an intermediate state during development where they can't exactly talk about outcomes.
- their answers would be considered rather undiplomatic because it could stir more anger (see the FOV issue)

In 99% of cases I would agree with you here, but in GW2 every single material and item already has an overwhelming supply to begin with.

Disagree. While levelling my Mesmer's tailoring I have actually hit 0 supply on trading post for some. Can't remember which but it was fairly high-level materials.

[Karizee]

I think they are just cautious at the moment. When Jon Peters actually gave a reply about FOV - which I disagreed with myself by the way - people went übermad.

Did you see the discussion today on the AMAA about FOV?




Will you ever implement or even consider a FoV slider?

ArenaNetBraeden <----Braeden Shosa - Gameplay Programming Team Lead

We've heard players loud and clear on this one. But we're not prepared to answer yet because we just convened a team to investigate, on Monday in fact, and we want to give them time to investigate. For example, there may be a bug affecting FoV calculations in widescreen resolutions. We want to know what's a bug and what's by design before we change the design.

[Ravenblade]

[...]
ArenaNetBraeden <----Braeden Shosa - Gameplay Programming Team Lead

We've heard players loud and clear on this one. But we're not prepared to answer yet because we just convened a team to investigate, on Monday in fact, and we want to give them time to investigate. For example, there may be a bug affecting FoV calculations in widescreen resolutions. We want to know what's a bug and what's by design before we change the design.

I did just read that as I am browsing through the AMA which I may finish at work - yeah, I know bad attitude for a software developer - but it's nice they have acknowledged it. Although given the nature of the answer it may still take a while until they take action, their fix may also just be a bugfix.

[jtgizmo]

Attacking the person and not the issue is always an easy route out, im not objective at all, im far too opinionated and far to quick to jump on people for very little reason, I know my flaws, and I think everyone knows by now this game isnt for me. I know without a shadow of a doubt arena net made a game people will love, I dont, I dont even know why I post here Ive tried to stay out , but the post you quoted was hardly unconstructive criticism, nor was it anything to do with personal preference, unless of course you enjoy downlevelling to be pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

At least you admit it, props for that.

[Astrocanis]

Depends on how you define "well". Do you mean gc is vocal about his opinions? Then sure.

Now, being factual and rational on the other hand...

His "communication" (things like "I'm the smartest person in this room and I say...") is why I no longer play any Blizzard game and will not spend a nickel on whatever they produce. When his behind is on the street looking for a job, I'll consider buying one of their crappy games. D3 was a joke. MoP? Sure thing - after 8 years they can't balance severely homogenized classes. What's a good idea? POKEMON battles! I'm sure they'll be great.

Not that I'm tempted to find out.

[draykorinee]

His "communication" (things like "I'm the smartest person in this room and I say...") is why I no longer play any Blizzard game and will not spend a nickel on whatever they produce. When his behind is on the street looking for a job, I'll consider buying one of their crappy games. D3 was a joke. MoP? Sure thing - after 8 years they can't balance severely homogenized classes. What's a good idea? POKEMON battles! I'm sure they'll be great.

Not that I'm tempted to find out.

You'd consider buying a crappy game? The pet battles have been quite popular as a filler activity, I guess GC is one of those love or hate guys.

[RoninaThorstone]

I guess GC is one of those love or hate guys.

I played a lot of classes in wow. All of them in fact.

The way GC handled Levidian's (I think it was levidian, might have been the other guy) well written critique of hunter arena in season 2/3 was inexcusable.

Levidian was the highest ranked hunter in the world at the time, and explained that with half the gear and a quarter of the effort he could reach the same rating with any class (and proved he could on his rogue I believe.) He then went on to explain, in detail, all the design decisions that were making hunters inadequate at the time.

So ghost crawler deleted everything levidian had ever written, including about 4 guides to maximizing marks, survival, bm dps and a pvp guide. As someone who regularly read the hunter forums I can say that he was a key remember of the boards and his 5:3 rotation macro allowed me to not only come close to topping the charts but maintain a perma +250 ap debuff on bosses for the raid.

Then, when shamans got their elemental dps halved (it was fixed shortly after) in the middle of tbc, the public outcry was followed up with several perma bans handed out by GC.

The way GC handles legitimate concerns is atrocious and the rest of the CMs have followed in his footsteps.

The way in which they handled peoples complaints about the new talent system was condescending, at best.

*really getting the feeling levidian got his stuff deleted for agreeing with the guy who wrote the arena thing. I think it was a dwarf hunter. Levidian was like... a tauren hunter I think. God, that was like almost 5 years ago.

[Caedhros]

I believe gc said he joined blizzard during sunwell, so blaming him for s2/3 seems a bit misplaced.

[RoninaThorstone]

then perhaps it was season 4.

As I said, it was almost 5 years ago.

*Yep, 2008.

[VibrantViolet]

My sister just had some of the worst customer service ever regarding her character in a popular MMO. Her character was unplayable for 6 days because of an issue on THEIR end. She opened a ticket, and got a generic response that didn't even have anything to do with her issue. She tried to call, had a 2 hour queue, but couldn't wait because she had to go to class. She opened another ticket in the meantime, really explaining what was wrong, and hoping for a fix. She called again after class, and that 2 hour queue was now a 3 hour queue (prime time). It was basically a naming issue. She transferred servers, and her name was "taken" (even though she looked it up, and nobody on that server had that name.) This was a well-known bug regarding transfers. So, she tried her name with alternate spelling, still couldn't get in, despite that name not showing up on any searches, either. She tried dozens of names, and none worked, she kept getting the same error. Oh, and I forgot to mention, it took them 4 days to response to her original ticket. Anyway, she waited until the weekend to call, because she didn't have classes. She finally got through after a bit over an hour on hold on Friday afternoon, and the GM had to backlog to before she realm transferred, then transfer her again, and rename her. This took all of 5 minutes, maybe.

Oh, the funniest part? She just received an email response to her second ticket yesterday, and it had nothing to do with her original issue, again. She didn't even get any sort of game-time reimbursement for the 6 days her character was unavailable to her. Yet, she still plays, despite bitching non-stop about this issue and the horrible GM service. I don't get it.

Anyway, moral of the story? People using the "you get what you pay for" to justify paying $15 a month are talking out of their asses. No, you don't get what you pay for in terms of customer service. I've had far better response times from GM's in GW2 then another paid MMO I once played. I just had an issue where I DCed in AC right when the Ghost Eater was about to die, and I didn't get my tokens. They responded to my ticket within a day. I really think the ANet GM's are doing a fantastic job.

[Fencers]

My personal story in GW2 bugged several times. I never got a response to any of the tickets I sent in. Never finished PS to this day.

My character as well as my sister's were locked out of the game for 2 days. Never got a response to our tickets. We played alts till our mains were unstuck. Which coincided with a patch.

In GW1, my hubby had several of his account stolen 3 or so times. IT always took weeks to get his accounts back.

When my character was stuck in Rift, a GM showed up to unstick me within 10 mins of sending the ticket. When I bought the wrong item, a GM refunded me and equipped the proper item for me while I was tanking a raid boss. He sent me a little note that said good luck and "didn't want to disturb you". This was within the hour of sending in a ticket.

I can call Trion and speak to developers at the Trion offices directly. I've done it. There is zero bullshit with these guys.

Not all companies are the same. Sometimes you do get what you pay for.

[Valeron]

I never had a problem in GW1 so didn't have to deal with their customer service but I have heard mixed reactions with them. My only encounter with NCSoft was in Aion and I was pleasantly surprised by their customer service considering all of the bad press I had heard prior to putting in a ticket there.

The worst company I have encountered in customer service? EA, by a long shot. Across several games there too so it wasn't just a freak one time occurrence. I find them so bad that I really hesitate buying a game that EA is involved in.