AMA with Chris Whiteside on Reddit, November 26th

Let's hope they come up with a valid reason for the 180° turn in their design philosophy.

Waar Kijk Je Naar, on 22 November 2012 - 08:32 AM, said:

Sure, he'll say "we needed to bridge te gap between exotics and legendaries", but won't say why the stat increase was important.

Marketing and PR already researched, wrote, prepared and rehearsed the carefully worded and incredibly meaningless response he will give to the world's most predictable questions he will receive during this AMA. Don't expect any real answers or any honest communication or a long due reasonable response to this issue. ArenaNet have chosen to stick their heads in the sand and let years of MMO conditioning take over while the ones who resist slowly die out.

This is just going to be another rug sweep like the rest of ArenaNet communication.

Shiren, on 22 November 2012 - 05:28 PM, said:

I do think you may be right, however doing that will only make things worse. In this age of social media, all it takes is for one person so say a bad thing about about a customer and tens more know about it. Sure we might only be seeing the vocal minority, but I would like to bet the silent majority are hearing about this from friends, guildies, social media and other websites.

Staying quiet until it all blows over used to be a valid(but not great) tactic for crisis management. Now it just looks as though the company has something to hide and reduces trust even more. At this point in time facts don't matter. Perception and trust are now the only thing that does. Like new coke, Ratners or SWG NGE people's trust in Anet is what needs to be restored.

The very worst thing to do is give spin, and PR statements to people who are already annoyed. There are two ways left now to handle this.
1. Be open and transparent. Give facts and figures along with sound reasoning to why this decision was made.
2. Apologise and say "we listened to you and we're working on a way to fix things. Watch the space

Most players are mature enough to say "Fair enough" and move on. Spin and Silence will just add Gasoline at this moment in time.

They clearly marketed this game as something different, even revolutionary.  No grind they said, no carrot on the stick...  Easy to obtain highest stat gear...  Yet here we are, only a few months in and how things have changed.  Their communication on the subject causes even further concern.

This AMA is a good chance to see if they're going to be open and honest about these latest changes or just treat us like idiots and spew out more predetermined PR responses to the obvious questions we want answers for.

My biggest concern is whether or not they'll stop at Ascended. I highly doubt they'll change the stat increase, but will they add more tiers later on?  If Ascended gear was introduced because people got their Exotics so fast, then that's fine, I agree with that. I got a full set from dungeon running in just under 3 weeks after hitting 80. In GW1, it took me a couple months before I could afford a 15k set of armor. I guess my point is, is that the challenge certainly felt more realistic in GW1.

I haven't given up on Anet completely yet, nor have I quit the game, as I seen that they haven't dropped the ball yet, but damnit...they're starting to fumble. Anet: Stick to what you did in GW1 whenever you released a new set of armor:Same stats, different look!

I know there is frustration towards Arenanet, but let's stop all the talk that does nothing but cause flame wars. Do not needlessly insult/mock other people's response to the AMA announcement unless it's in some way constructive.

ZoeMayZing, on 23 November 2012 - 02:48 AM, said:

They will do something worse. Increase levelcap in there first expansion

Grulnork, on 23 November 2012 - 09:09 AM, said:

No. Just, no! You may jinx it, or give them ideas!

X__X

Grulnork, on 23 November 2012 - 09:09 AM, said:

this is something we know since october 2011 from an interview with colin. Nothing new and nothing that worries me at all.

http://www.guildwars...-in-expansions/

If the game is only 3 months old why do they decide to pander to the "hardcore endgame uber elite players qq im bored wtf" people. Changing your game design and philosophy is not the way to do. Stand firm on your principle and manifesto.

Linfang, on 23 November 2012 - 05:20 PM, said:

Because every publicly traded MMO publisher dreams of being the next WoW, so they seek to emulate it.  This is nothing new.

Grulnork, on 23 November 2012 - 09:09 AM, said:

Leveling is easy.... too easy.  I hit 80 on accident on my main just making some MF% food for a guildmate.

They could add 50 levels in every expansion and it wouldn't qualify as "adding more treadmill".   As I've said in previous posts, a Treadmill is one thing and one thing only:   A specfic "end game" Raid that gives the "best reandom l00t" for a specific period of time and the only reason it was added was to give the Dragon Chasers a self contained romping ground where Gear-Score trumps all and they can use it to exclude and feel better than "less dedicated players".  WHY?  b/c at some point in that Raid you encounter a mob that can only be defeated if you've already collected all of the gear there is to collect in that raid (or you're being carried by someone else who did it).

^This^ is absolute 100% purest essence form of the new "Infusion" system.  To continually add "hazards" to the game that require you to run this elite content and fail just to be able to run the elite content and eventually succeed.  And they promised to add it to WvWvW too. (huge red flag right there that a potential disaster could be in the works if the infusion slot provides protection against a major WvWvW hazard).  A lot of people keep using the small increase in Stats between the new Ascended items (which can't even be customized) along with the final destination of whatever stats the Legendaries will have ... as their example of treadmill.  I think they're wrong.


But it doesn't matter what I think b/c I can't even remember how many days it's been now since I stopped playing or caring.  I can't even be arsed to do any of this "Social media"--"Grr I'm gonna go bad mouth GW2 now!". I'm not even giving it a second thought. Maybe I'm too lazy?  I dunno.  I searched high and low for f***s to give but none were found. (and obviously I'm only posting here for the semantics battle). Maybe I'll check back again in another week but I'm not expecting any truth out of them anymore.

Coren, on 22 November 2012 - 09:01 AM, said:

Tomorrow they gonna get some nasty question and i hope they have good answers heh.

But most likely you are right, it is time to say a bunch of things that does not really answers any question cause well , most people are stupid anyway , if you can fool them , better than telling them the truth.

actually thought the chat was going to be earlier so i got on too early really interested in whats said. dont plan to ask questions myself but hope the community gets to ask the hard questions but should be a good read whatever happens

Anybody else find it strange the questions getting answered? Most of these posts have a 'We'll try to improve in the future' tone and not a lot of answering questions about how the game is actually moving forward.

Absintheminded, on 26 November 2012 - 08:55 PM, said:

Yes, IMHO it's more of we hear you but we are not listening to the player base!

In an effort to keep discussion in a single thread, if I could have you all post here from now on that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!