Xeph's last words

#1 - Sept. 2, 2013, 6:30 a.m.
Blizzard Post

As mods keep deleting Xeph’s threads about him leaving the game:

Since my previous thread due to it apparently being a “I quit” thread, well at least according to mods. Thanks for the infraction by the way, just wondering how many of those you guys had to give out today ?

I got a lot of request of a more in-depth explanation as to why it was that I had taken the decision to leave the game, so I decided to make another forum post to try and elaborate further.

This game has officially been released for a year now, and a lot of the problems that have plagued the game back than still continue to do so.

Incentive, there is no real reason to play the game, the rewards are subpar, the glory rank curve is unrealistic, there is no unique rewards that are really sought after, the leader boards still make no sense to me to this day, there is no way to establish how many points you loose or gain.
There are no real unique titles to be had, apart from the previous qualifier points system, and even than there was no real mention that they would be giving away titles for it.
If you aren’t playing to be competitive in the game, than there is no real incentive, there is no real way of showing off those 500 hours you had spent playing spvp.

The Bridge, by this I mean the connection that is meant to be formed between spvp and pve; because to the best of my knowledge the reason that the developers refuse to split pve and spvp balance, is so that a player coming from pve will not be surprised between the vast difference of his character in pve and pvp, but in order to that you need to be attracting the pve side of the game to come to spvp. In that regard ArenaNet failed, there has never been a reason for a pve player to come over to pvp, there were no rewards, titles, pets….there was nothing a pve player could gain from coming to pvp, infact it was a waste of their time.
Creating a symbiotic relationship between pve and pvp was paramount, if pvp players had a lot to gain from going to pve, than things should be true for pve players coming to pvp.

Balance, now I understand that this is a difficult one, and I don’t blame the developers for making mistakes, the only thing was how long it took to react to the mistakes that had been made; you need only look at your forums to see how your player base is reacting to those problems.
I do believe that balancing will always be an issue; but talk to your community take their idea’s, try to fix the problems at the fastest rate possible, balancing should not stop for anything.

PTR, make one available, that will greatly assist in the previous problem.

Community, talk to your player base, assist people that are trying to promote your game, create excitement I assure you nothing makes a player happier than knowing that they have taken a step to assist the game they enjoy playing so much.
If I was you ArenaNet I would be down on my knee’s because you have the most disgustingly amazing community; a community that rose to the occasion more so than the company that owns the game.
Dear lord if there is something that angers me; its the fact that the community promoted your game, setup streams, leagues, some even invested their own personal money to make things better, they provide loads of constructive feedback day by day; in all honesty if not for them I would have been out of this game ages ago.
I really want to stress, this community is awesome, you guys are the best, I have never been in such a friendly community, that are willing to band together for a game they all enjoy, even if this game fails you guys succeeded.

Those above are the reasons I am leaving the game. (without having to mention any personal or team related reasons, but just a general overview)

ArenaNet I wish you the best of luck.

Friend and community, I love you all thank you for the great experience and memories.

Mod, I am hoping you have run out of those infractions!

Goodbye, just ganna be out there chasing cars and broken dreams.

#1 - Sept. 2, 2013, 6:38 a.m.
Blizzard Post

I think its only fair for us still left in this community to keep showing this post as Anet decides to keep modding one of the guy who helped them the most with sPvP over all, its quite saddening but i’m nearly doing the same, just logging in once in a while myself.

#10 - Sept. 2, 2013, 7:12 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Not sure who is deleting this post as I don’t really see anything wrong with it. I can’t and won’t respond to everything, but my guess is thakittens being deleted because of the discussion it is generating. The crux of the problem here is communication. You all want us to tell you exactly what we are working on, but we can’t do that without getting the opposite set of complaints which is that it takes too long or we promise something and then can’t deliver on it.

At the end of the day Xeph post is so easy to make (nothing against him, I understand where it comes from) because it takes the obvious common sense deficiencies with the game and just enumerates them. What it lacks are the two important aspects.

1) details. It is easy to say to fix all this stuff but the devil is in the details. There are lots of problems with how these details need to be addressed so saying “solve difficult situation X” is essentially like saying, “solve long distance manned space flight” to NASA.
2) implementation. Once we figure out how to solve a problem we have to allocate resources into how to solve it. GW2 is a huge game with a ton of systems that I don’t expect you to understand. Please just don’t dismiss the complexity and you will find yourself a lot less frustrated and/or burnt out when our a answer is that these things take time.

Early on after release we had to work to combat the issues that rose up from shipping an online game to millions of players. As those have settled down, you have seen us in PvE, WvW and PvP as well increase the pace of improvements. In the last 8 months we have seen Leaderboards, Matchmaking, Custom Arenas, Spectator mode, Solo Arena, and permanent finishers added to just to PvP.

I can’t promise what we will improve next other than to say that the people with the foresight to make this game that you do all love to some extent are doing everything they can to continue to improve it.

Thanks for reading and considering my words,

Jon