User:Misery/Guide to making suggestions

In general, people are incredibly bad at making suggestions. This guide hope to improve on this situation by pointing out common mistakes, pointing out factors that need to be kept in mind and explaining why no one listens to you ever.

Guild Wars 2 is a sequel to Guild Wars
Yes, Arenanet have suggested some massive changes such as true 3-dimensional combat, the ability to take a companion with you and multiple races, but Guild Wars 2 will have to remain by and large, Guild Wars. If it doesn't no one will buy it, because it is essentially a new game, and Arenanet will have an entirely new game and have to start with balance and design from scratch, which is not what they want to do.

Suggestions that try to change what are the core mechanics of Guild Wars will always be ignored. Arenanet are making the sequel to Guild Wars. Suggestions are not your opportunity to get them to design what you consider to be the perfect MMORPG, they are your opportunity to talk about some additional features you think that you and other players would benefit and enjoy, while perhaps pointing out some flaws in the original game which could be avoided. Any suggestion that attempts to throw out any of the core mechanics of Guild Wars and swap them for a mechanic similar to that of another MMORPG will likely be ignored.

Examples of poor suggestions that will not even be read:
 * Having healers makes it too hard to kill people and the game not fun, nerf monks please.
 * The game shouldn't have any classes, you should just have to spend points to unlock skills for each character.
 * Weapons shouldn't have a maximum damage, if you farm for better equipment you should be able to use it.
 * I think centaurs are cool so we should be able to play as centaurs as a new race.

Here is a quick overview of what I consider to be the core ideas behind Guild Wars that you shouldn't suggest be thrown out in a suggestion. Please note, this doesn't exclude the possibility of suggesting adjustments to these features. It's possible that I will be proven incorrect on any of these points, but then unfortunately Arenanet is terrible:
 * Each player has a skill bar with a limited number of skills to take into any area.
 * PvP is standardised in such a way that a veteran player and a new player will be differentiated primarily by skill level, not equipment, health, etc.
 * PvP play is primarily team based, especially at higher levels (The existence of World PvP not-with-standing).
 * The game itself should be generally low grind, especially in PvP play.
 * Success will require a team with a selection of defensive characters, offensive characters and utility.
 * Keeping a party alive will be achieved via prot and dedicated healing characters as well as off-healer defence and utility.

Arenanet is a company and producing money is its primary goal
Arenanet are not trying to make the perfect, most fun, balanced competitive game in the world, they are trying to make money. Suggestions need to be tailored not only so that they please the competitive players at the mid to high level range, but also so they do not alienate casual gamers. Casual gamers are where all the money is in the gaming industry and the fact that Arenanet pays any attention to competitive gameplay is actually a credit to them.

Examples where this comes in to play:
 * Removing heroes from PvP: While this would help with many game balance issues, it could be suicidal for Arenanet. The reason why heroes and henchmen exist in PvP areas is so that more casual players who cannot rely on having a full 8 man team available whenever they want to play can still participate. Typically these players would be low level players who are not particularly skilled or perhaps mid-level players between guilds or reforming. The problems have arised because of heroes being good enough in PvP to warrant taking them in preference over human players, leading to abuse at all levels of play. Removal is not the correct way to address this issue that will make PvP less accessible reducing the desirability of the game to casual players.
 * Nerf overpowered PvE skills to make PvE more challenging: The majority of players are terrible. Even with overpowered skills some people have difficulty with end game areas in normal mode, to say nothing of elite areas. Not being able to access parts of a game you paid for due to lack of skill is extremely frustrating. Without these crutches for poor players, sales would be depressed.

It is actually impossible to please everybody
You know what you want. Ever since monthly tonics have been implemented you have been holding your breath every month hoping and praying for the day when the Master Engineer Jakumba tonic will be announced. You know he is the coolest character in the game and can't understand why he hasn't been released in tonic form yet. Your outrage grows every single month as it becomes clear that your favourite character may have been overlooked. First they forget to make a miniature version, now this. The insult is too great, you simply must go rage on Gaile's talk page! What is this?! You get there and everyone is congratulating her on how great the new Asuran tonic is? People actually like that? It's a horrificly ugly form! They are nuts. Well actually, everyone has a different sense of aesthetics. Everyone has a difference sense of what is fun and everyone has a different sense of balance. It is physically impossible for Arenanet to please everyone. If they retroactively gave people faction from book rewards for completing missions in the past new players would complain that they have no chance of catching up with three years of others playing missions, older players would complain that they would have completed those missions if they knew there were extra rewards. When they didn't retroactively give rewards people complained that they weren't getting more free faction and gold than they were getting already. When they were awarded free faction they complained that half of the free faction they were awarded became void when they gave the rest to the other faction. People who already had their titles maxed complained that other people were getting for free what they had to spend countless hours farming for. I just pocketed my free faction and appreciated the title improvements despite the fact I have no intention of going and grinding out a title now that they have made grinding out a title easier. It's impossible to please everyone, someone will always feel slighted by every change. Just because something doesn't work for you doesn't mean it was a terrible change.

Nobody owes you anything
Type /age. Go on, see how many hours you have. Well over a thousand right? I mean you are an experienced player confident enough to make suggestions to improve the game. Now what did this game cost you? Well you have all the campaigns and extra character slots, so it cost you well over 200 dollars! Wow! You spent a lot on this game, Arenanet owes you quite a bit! Well, no, not really. If you have a thousand hours, that means you paid significantly less than 20 cents an hour. What can you do for 20 cents an hour? Sweet fuck all. You've gotten your moneys worth. They provided you with a product and you got enjoyment out of it. If you didn't get enjoyment out of it, why did it take you one thousand hours to work that out? Surely you would have stopped torturing yourself before then. You paid them, they provided a service. You've stopped paying them now, if you aren't getting enjoyment out of it any more that isn't actually their problem at all. If you have been playing for three years and are now bored, that's actually quite an achievement on their part, it's pretty rare to find a game that can capture your attention longer than the first play through. Check the self-righteousness at the door, Arenanet doesn't owe you squat.

A voice of reason in a sea of retards
Lots of people play Guild Wars. Lots of people use this wiki and fan forums. Lots of them have ideas and want to express them. I know that you are different, that you have seen the light and come up with the best idea ever that will make the game perfect. Unfortunately you are the lone voice of reason trying to shout out your idea that will save Guild Wars and make it the perfect game over the top of all these retards hollering their stupid ideas. The volume of fan suggestions is simply too great for Arenanet employees to read them all. You are no one special, if you were you would be talking to them directly instead of posting suggestions on this wiki. They claim to read through suggestion pages and talk pages on this wiki on occasion and I believe them. During a slow period in the office they might take five to flick through a few suggestions and see if any sparks fly, things people have suggested before have ended up in game, although admittedly it could be coincidence, but I can assure you Arenanet staff do not read every single suggestion from every source and give it the due consideration it deserves. To expect them to do so would be unreasonable and would require almost as much time as wiki users spend here, they have real jobs to do! Let them do them!

Your suggestions are retarded
Ok, maybe you are not the guy above. Maybe the reason no one listens to you is because your ideas just aren't actually any good. If your suggestion will affect 0.001% of the gaming population in a positive way there is absolutely no way Arenanet is going to spend time and resources implementing it. Yes, you think it's cool, yes, all your friends think it's cool, but guess what? You are still in the staggering minority. The fact that you are even on this wiki puts you in the minority. As mentioned earlier, money comes from casual players. If you are here reading this, I'm sorry, but you are no longer a casual player. You took time when you could be living your life or playing the game to come here and read about it instead. You no longer represent the majority view and as such every suggestion you make has to be regarded with caution. While good ideas can come from fansites at the end of the day a vast majority of suggestions from such a source will be retarded.