Adapt A Dev: A Wasted Last Chance?

#1 - Oct. 12, 2014, 7:14 p.m.

Well I just hear that a commander on my server was off to talk to a dev.

Why them? Cos they led the EB Karma Trains most of the time at prime times?!

You are not going to get the information you need to improve WvW if that is all you are going to talk to!
Just look what happened when you made EOTM, you got players who dont even play WvW to test that and it became nothing more than a K-Tain map and leveling alt area!
You are just making the same old mistakes if you do this!

You need to talk to the smaller guilds and players who run smaller groups, the ones who actually use their skills and tactics and builds to defeat larger groups.

And did any dev actually go to Bronze league?

It seems that perhaps you have wasted an opportunity to get some real insight into how the non-zergers play WvW, how WvW should be; not how you want WvW to be i.e. full of zergs.

Mark Katzbach

#25 - Oct. 14, 2014, 12:50 p.m.

Gorani.7205:
@Grotesque

I think it is the first time I see/read that a Dev (Jessica Boettinger) really talked about WvW with guilds and I would like to see how she reacted to some questions.

I still consider the “Adopt a Dev” initiative (as it happened) as a failed opportunity to identify the problems of WvW at their roots:
The vast majority (as I could read in the adopt sticky) spend their time in big guilds, in the gold leagues, where coverage is not an issue and where big numbers of players are. They rarely visited silver or bronze league, ran with PUGs, went to off-times e.g. EU night time (which is great for the Devs based in PST time zone).
The goal of the initiative was to get a good picture of the state of the game in its entirety. With the approach that is documented so far, they chose to see the “puffy clouds and butterflies” side of WvW and not the dark sides and problems we so often talked about here on the forums.

You’re making the false assumption that the participating developers took nothing away from their time with their adoptive guilds. This is untrue, many of our developers came back with feedback from interactions with their respective guilds, and in fact, we have a meeting today to discuss feedback, lessons learned and other relevant discussion around the program.

Don’t set yourself up to see changes immediately. The tournament just ended and the team still needs time to parse the feedback, identify issues and prioritize solutions. If you expect immediate change just because the tournament is over, you will be disappointed. Change takes time and careful consideration.

Mark Katzbach

#31 - Oct. 14, 2014, 1:54 p.m.

Atherakhia.4086:
It sure would be nice to get some interaction and commentary from a dev.

You mean like these recent threads?
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/4437596
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/wuv/wuv/Scoring-Discussion/4472575
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/wuv/wuv/Siege-Troll-Discussion/4422954

Mark Katzbach

#85 - Oct. 21, 2014, 11:33 a.m.

Lord Kuru.3685:
Worse that a wasted chance: because all the devs adopted themselves to T1, we’re now going to have white swords removed. We would have been better off without the adopt-a-dev.

The bolded section is blatantly false. We had developers spread across all of the leagues. Don’t mistake your guild not getting a developer to mean there were no developers on your tier. If you want a developer in your guild, just apply again next time. The program was very positively received by our developers, so many of them are likely to participate again.

Mark Katzbach

#87 - Oct. 21, 2014, 12:08 p.m.

The Adopt-a-Dev program is a voluntary program. The developers who participate do so in their own free time and they choose from the guilds who apply to the program. If you want to see more developers participating in the lower tiers, then encourage more of the lower-tiered guilds to apply.

Mark Katzbach

#92 - Oct. 21, 2014, 12:46 p.m.

Blaeys.3102:
Mark Katzbach.9084:
The Adopt-a-Dev program is a voluntary program. The developers who participate do so in their own free time and they choose from the guilds who apply to the program. If you want to see more developers participating in the lower tiers, then encourage more of the lower-tiered guilds to apply.

The adopt a dev program seems like a good thing and its nice to see developers get out into the community.

The bigger issue, however, comes when you tout the program as a development tool or aid. If that is the intent, then effort should be made to make sure you’re getting a full and fair picture of WvW – not just the situations on the higher tier servers.

So, if the intent is just to get devs out into the community and mingling, that’s fine. If it is to help gather information about WvW, then I think you have to be mindful to ensure youre not focusing on one or two servers more than any others.

Hopefully, more devs will decide to look at the lower tiers next time (and I know that there are several lower tier server guilds that applied and weren’t chosen this past time around). That said, if the majority of developers are interested in playing on only the top tier servers, then that alone is indicative of the population issues we on the lower tiers are very much aware of.

I will make sure to stress the importance of spreading out among all the tiers when this comes around again. But, neither I nor John can force their decisions in a voluntary program.

I did, however, want to clear up the misconception that nobody was playing on the lower tiers during this past tournamnet, because I know for a fact that some were and brought back feedback that directly relates to the experiences on the lower end.

We understand and have seen the feedback regarding the proposed white swords change and the team is discussing that feedback.