[GW2] Moving Forward from "When it's Ready"

Before the release ANet's philosophy was always "When it's ready". They would never even show us content until they were absolutely sure that it was ready to ship, that's why we didn't see the sylvari for ages, and we learned about each of the professions with, usually, a few months in between each reveal.

But, during the recent AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread hosted by Chris Whiteside (Studio Design Director at ANet) Chris has admitted that:

"Personally i feel that aspects of the game ARE too grindy and we are working through these areas to correct our overall direction moving forward as well as taking some of our current progression systems and rewiring them for want of a better term for example different methods of acquisition related to the way different players like to play their content. 

 To be frank the ascended gear was designed to be earn able outside of the FotM and unfortunately we were unable to deploy this prior to the update. This (i hope) will not happen again"
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What happened to "When it's ready"? If Ascended items were designed to be earned outside of the Fractals of the Mists then surely they should have been shipped to be earned outside of the Fractals of the Mists. Otherwise, you aren't going to please anyone: the horizontal progressioners will be angry you've gone back on your promise not to add a "gear grind", and the vertical progressioners will be disappointed that the progression is so flimsy and requires hours of grind over the same few instances.

Did ANet panic as the dreaded 3-month threshold loomed?

ps. Also, for the love of all that is holy - stop using the phrase "Moving forward": it absolutely smacks of business speak which I think you should always avoid when talking to plebs like us.

EDIT: Just going through the summary of last night on this page and came across this relevant piece of info:

Q: I am impressed you are participating in this for so long. I commend you.
Two questions: -If Ascended Gear and the Fractal of the Mist leveling system was not rolled out in the way you intended(being that theres only one way currently to obtain the gear, and the leveling system fragments the playerbase), why was it rolled out in the first place? I thought Arenanet was big on "When its ready", however this sounds like it was not ready but rushed out the door.
-Ive seen, and agree with, some posts concerning the aesthetic look of Medium gear compared to Light and ultimately Heavy(which looks the best hands down). Honestly, medium gear while leveling is terrible looking and there are only a small number of dungeon sets that you dont look like a pirate or something from MechWarrior. Are there plans to specifically overhaul the MEDIUM armor looks?

A: If you don't mind i will just answer the first question as the second is something that would be discussed at work. And thanks for taking the time to submit the questions.
So in regard to question 1: We had/have a plan to seed ascended through the game. It affects many many areas and systems and we wanted to essentially rewire aspects of reward progression. This is an ongoing priority. However this is a multi phase plan and during the creation of the FotM I wanted to roll out a subset of the plan to the community. The progression/reward system was not correctly deployed but the Dungeon was, at least in my opinion as i think the guys have done an amazing job. The reward system that was rolled out was also not 'as designed' due to some dependencies in other areas of the game. I made the decision to continue with the roll out and here we are today.
This is my responsibility, it was a bad call, but i have to say that whilst this could of been handled better i am still truly excited for what the future will bring and i wouldn't be doing this job if i didn't want to learn from extreme challenges and work with amazing people.
I very much appreciate the chance to connect with everyone not just in regard to this issue but the game as a whole. I am hoping to do this once a month with more team members and keep up more meaningful communication channels.
I hope this answers your question, going into anymore detail would take time away from answering other questions.

[GW2] Fractals as Mash-Ups in Play-Space

The beauty of the Fractal of the Mists dungeons is that they allow ArenaNet to push out wacky and off-the-wall ideas which they might not necessarily be able to knit together into a full dungeon - but are nonetheless fun enough to work as a 20-30 minute instance. Fractals support ArenaNet's half-baked ideas (and ANet are the kings of half-baked ideas - hello "personality system") and give them leave to do... well, pretty much whatever they like.

The current Fractals are a mash-up of lore-based historical events, trendy pop-culture references and funky new mechanics. The Cliffside Fractal (also known as the Colossus Fractal) obviously came from someone saying: "Wouldn't it be cool if we had a dungeon with a gigantic living statue?" - this idea was probably slammed together with "I've got this idea for a mechanic with a powerful weapon which hurts you the longer you carry it." and mixed with a bit of Dr Manhattan from Watchmen. And out of this mash-up of crazy and interesting ideas pops a really fun little vignette (one of which I've yet to find a single detractor). Some Fractals might have been inspired by something as simple as a piece of concept art which never got realised in-game.

Also, because the Fractals occur "in the Mists" rather than in the tangible world of Tyria, they aren't truly bound by lore, space or by time. Sure, they're often significantly influenced by these factors - such as the "Urban Battlegrounds" Fractal which seems to take place during the Searing of Ascalon. But others seem to have little basis in anything we've seen before - such as the "Aquatic Ruins" or "Snowblind" Fractals. There is no need for ANet to justify where or when these events are happening, because they're occurring in a vacuum - a totally separate universe to the rest of the game world. The Mists is a true "play space"; unbound by many of the rules which ANet would have to abide by if they tried to play these stories out in the wider world.

So, they have the freedom to mess about, play and mix up just about anything they like. Imagine a Fractal which is a mash-up of Hogwarts (moving staircases, hidden doors behind paintings, ghosts on horseback riding through the halls*) and the historical event of the Foefire! Or festival themed Fractals such as a Dwayna vs Grenth battle for Wintersday (the withdrawal of the Gods from Tyria wouldn't matter in this instance, it's a Fractal, after all!)! Or, even, imagine they took the swimming animations and just stripped away the water and then stuck you in some ethereal limbo world or even accompanying Snaff through Kralkatorrik's mind.

I dunno, I'm just throwing these out there (though if any of these ideas appear in the next patch, I'll be expecting some sort of recompense). My point is that if they're going to use Fractals to let their imaginations run wild, then I think we can expect some pretty freaking awesome experiences in the future.

*this always confused me. You've got the Necrotic Horsemen from GW1, but I never saw a single horse in the entire game.

[GW2] It's a Karka/It's Karka-lackin'

The Lost Shores release event has polarised... ok, not polarised - I'd say largely pissed off the community in a number of ways. I think people appreciated the concept, they liked the scenery and liked how the Karka were actually a challenge. But there were several elements of it's implementation that people felt were either inconvenient, frustrating or just downright wrong. I disagree with some peoples' gripes and agree with others.

The fact that it was a one-time event seems to be one of the biggest gripes. Before the game was released I stated that I actually like the idea of one-time events to create a feeling of epicness:

"Imagine instead a game where the developers accepted that if they were going to have a truly epic story, then it is going to have to have truly epic consequences and that means substantive changes to the landscape to reflect this. They would have to accept that with these changes to the world, player’s experiences would change and those who are tardy to the party are going to miss some elements."

That was my opinion then, and it is my opinion now. It sucks that the event was at an inconvenient time for some people - it really does, and I have sympathy for them - but if this was another event which was to be repeated a number of times throughout the day it would decrease its epicness: "I battled hard, and through sheer grit and determination I defeated the ancient karka and sent his heart burning into the depths of the earth! ...and then I did it again at 6, 9 and 12pm" . 

Making the event one-time means you can give out meaningful loot - loot which reflects the 3 or so hours effort, countless deaths and respawns, consumables, repair cost etc. I liked that they gave out significant exotic weapons as a reward for our efforts - I played hard for that loot and I don't think a cosmetic hat would quite have cut it. If the event was to repeat every 3 hours, you simply wouldn't be able to give this kind of loot - we'd have to go back to the (admittedly nice) festival cosmetic items and such (and ANet really don't want to give this stuff out for free - they want to sell it on the gem store, and rightly so). 

I've seen a few complaints that the players who were able to attend the event gained an advantage over those who weren't able to attend. 
I can't see how this is the case; people who attended the event and played through to the end received their rightful reward, but ultimately these rewards were no better in terms of stats than anything which is available to every other player in the game. Exotic items of exactly the same stats are obtainable through numerous methods - karma, gold, drops, chests, tokens, crafting, trading post. You aren't going to face an opponent in WvW and get beaten because he was able kill the ancient karka and you weren't. Just as ANet said - a hardcore player should not be able to get significantly better gear than a casual one.
Further, people who received a legendary precursor were no more or less advantaged than someone who spent those 3-4 hours grinding dungeon explorable modes - they got lucky on a chest roll. Myself, I got a unique exotic pistol (Master Blaster - not a precursor, which I put on the TP but hasn't sold yet) and an exotic shield (which I'm now using). I don't feel like I should have got a precursor, that's just the luck of the roll. Ultimately, what people got out of that chest should have no impact upon how other players play their game, apart from bringing the price of the items to a more manageable level in the trading post (which, for those looking to pick up a precursor - could only be a good thing!). 

Finally, we get to the gripes which I do agree with: the technical problems. There were those who played for 3 hours - got to the final chest, and then disconnected. Not cool man. Not. Cool. Thankfully, ANet are working on rewarding those players who missed out on their hard earned rewards:

It won't be an easy fix. It has to be handled delicately because you don't want to go rewarding those people who don't really deserve it (ie, at what point during the event do you say that the person has earned the right to access the chest? 5 minutes in? 1 hour in? etc - not easy). I think the fault for these problems has to fall equally on ANet and the player involved - if your connection/computer isn't quite up to scratch then yes, it is going to suffer in large events such as the other night's. But, equally, if ANet's login servers actually worked properly then those players might have been able to log in and claim their rewards on time. It's a difficult situation, and I think that ANet are good to try to address it, when they could have just said "tough cookie".

The only technical problem I encountered (other than continuously teleporting into the landscape and having to be portaled out (thanks Tasha and Elmo)) was the dreaded culling. We would be climbing the hive (for the first or second time) and suddenly great swathes of us would fall down dead - seemingly crushed by some invisible boulder. What had actually happened is that the game engine had prioritised loading the players around us, but not the gigantic veteran karka which had taken the chance to roll us up like marzipan on Wintersday. What this meant is that the event probably took about twice as long as it should because we were constantly having the respawn or spend half our time resurrecting our fellow players. 
ANet are, apparently, working on a fix for this. It will be some major changes to the fundamentals of the game, so I can't see if being within the next couple of weeks - but hopefully it won't be too long.  

ps. Oh, and I guess the "reinforcements" bit was a bit excessive.