GW 2 Devs/Playerbase Twitter Discussion

[Tolmos.8395]

> @"Harper.4173" said:

> It's extremely upsetting to see how willing people are to make new accounts and post only to push an agenda. Still - I will respond to you.

 

Sweet, so we're now comparing forum ages and post histories to see who is most worthy of posting? You talk big for someone whose help upvote count is only in the mid-200s, greenhorn!

 

This is the forum equivalent to "lol noob isn't even max level. Her opinion is moot". I have a better idea: how about we not try to be the elitist little pricks the world thinks all gamers are, and just have a civilized discussion WITHOUT the e-peen comparing. :)

[morrolan.9608]

> @"Harper.4173" said:

> It is true that there were a lot of ways this could have ended without them getting fired - but a lot of them could have cost Anet far more than just letting them go. Would you take that risk? Should you? Changing her views wouldn't have mattered. Once out in the open the damage is done.

 

I've already argued that the consequences of sacking them and so publicly have now actually been revealed to be even worse than the alternative.

 

> @"Dengar.1785" said:

> Why do people insist on bringing up dead movements from years ago? Or for that matter, why do people insist on lying this much?

 

Its not lying, look on reddit to see where this was posted, look at what people are saying in those places eg. kotaku in action or the drama subreddit. GG may not be an organised movement any more but most of those with those beliefs are still around and still in the same sub reddits and still willing to harass.

 

> @"Harper.4173" said:

> Of course it looks more divisive. People have been making new accounts in full-alert mode for quite some time now trying to amplify their point of view. It's really quite amusing seeing these 1 star members and accounts with no other posts and no avatars telling us what's what.

 

Well I'm not new.

 

> @"Deihnyx.6318" said:

> The current problem has to do with extreme left. So of course we're talking about that. There's still a majority of people "between" extreme left and extreme right in the society and they can't just be tagged as alt right whenever convenient. If there's any trace of extreme right in this forum I would love to see it. I'm sure reddit have some, but again conveniently extracting them and quoting them in an article is dishonest at best, it absolutely doesn't reflect this community by any mean, just like a radical feminist doesn't reflect the feminist movement (thankfully...)

 

Its not dishonest, those on reddit are part of the GW2 community, many many of those do not post here due to the moderation policies here. If you read the feedback on reddit its clear that this has become a problem of both the extreme left and the extreme right, mainly due to MOBs response.

[Walhalla.5473]

Still going on? *sigh*

 

Ok first, to the people who completely critizise the firings. No dev here was fired because of an unpopular opinion. We always discuss points the devs make and some of the points are quite unpopular but we still do it quite civilized. We can accept unpopular opinions. What happened there was that one of the Devs responded to a respectful and kind attempt for a discussion, completely wrong and tried to frame him as a sexist. In the political charged times we live today THIS can be very dangerous. But things could still have been salvaged if that specific dev would have apologized and then tried to answer respectfully or said " sry but right now I'm not in the mood to discuss this any further". But no she doubled down, insulted him further and then threw shade at the community. Also being completely freaking unprofessional and rude ( while also throwing the gender card ) to another Content Creator who also was respectful. All of this while doing it on her twitter account, after talking about her work with Anet in her description.

 

This thing came hard at Anet thanks to them not being able to respond due to this stuff happening on a national holiday. If it would have been on a normal day where people work then Anet would have intervened fast to cull the storm. Another Dev tried to help her coworker but did it quite clumsly and instead of defusing the situation the poured oil into fire. Not only that but that Dev was loved by the community and him doing that made the impression that Anet would tolerate the vitriol and toxicity from JP.

 

Anet reacted, very fast and harsher than the community expected. We didn't want any firings and we aren't celebrating them, it would have been enough for the vast majority of us if both would have been reprimanded and also wrote a public apology. Most of us can understand why both were fired, but we know that no one really won here.

 

And please for the love of God, Odin, Dhuum or the allmighty Pocket Raptor. Don't make this political. This firing has nothing to do with poltics. No JP didn't get the boot for trying to defend herself against sexism and she didn't fell victim to an Alt-Right mob. And to the people who claim Victory in the campaign against SJW's ( the people who are described by 3 letters, not cats ), pls also stop, this here isn't a war of agendas. It was 2 devs fired, one being completely insulting and the other just choosing the wrong time to stand to her side and nothing political from the side of Anet, just business. And there is no victory here. Anet just lost 2 devs with one being obviously very missed by many here. There was no right decision possible here, only the least bad one. It was a bad week for us all, Anet, the devs involved and us the community.

If you want to use a community to push your agenda, regardless if far left or far right, please do it somewhere else... or better don't do it at all. I think I can speak for the community when I say that we don't want to be involved with this agenda pushing and certainly not be used for it. We just want to enjoy the game and discuss parts of it, give our opinions and try to make it better with our feedback, without the toxic agenda pushing that happens ecverywhere else.

 

Sry for the last part but I'm really sad to see that this here devolves more and more into a political shitshow with agenda pushing instead of just seeing the facts on what happened and moving on.

[Zaklex.6308]

> @"Ceares.2519" said:

`snip`

>

> I have a question here, which bothers me alot.... Can a person, who is unable to handle humans correctly, create / develop and define rules how ingame charakters should be build, structured, configured in conjunction to the players = humans, who are playing those ingame charakters? After what is happened i would say definitively not! You should know first humans and how to handle them correctly, else the first component of your theory will be handled wrong. As a consequence of having the wrong picture about people and by that also about players, this person must fail with her project in the second part how to develop ingame charakters for those humans!

> Its the similarity to "a doctor who does not trust me and which i cant trust as the patient, cant heal me at all!"

`snip`

 

This statement here is 100% wrong, this one person did not create/develop and define rules on how ingame characters should be built...those rules were already in place, they have been in place since day 1, all she was doing was putting them out there for the community/players to understand how our characters are designed and the why of it...nothing more, nothing less.

 

[TheBravery.9615]

Mike did the right thing

[Deihnyx.6318]

> @"morrolan.9608" said:

> > @"Deihnyx.6318" said:

> > The current problem has to do with extreme left. So of course we're talking about that. There's still a majority of people "between" extreme left and extreme right in the society and they can't just be tagged as alt right whenever convenient. If there's any trace of extreme right in this forum I would love to see it. I'm sure reddit have some, but again conveniently extracting them and quoting them in an article is dishonest at best, it absolutely doesn't reflect this community by any mean, just like a radical feminist doesn't reflect the feminist movement (thankfully...)

>

> Its not dishonest, those on reddit are part of the GW2 community, many many of those do not post here due to the moderation policies here. If you read the feedback on reddit its clear that this has become a problem of both the extreme left and the extreme right, mainly due to MOBs response.

 

Sorry we're not reading the same reddit or that same forum here. I do think these quotes are taken from the extremes. Please, show me where anything here even come close to these quotes. Here this is also the community, right? Why isn't there A SINGLE message from the "moderates" but only from the extremes?

Maybe these articles should work less on trying to justify an unjustifiable action and rather try to understand why people get to such extremes in the first place. Extremes are dangerous, no matter which side, and defending an extreme and tagging everyone disagreeing an extreme as well is looking for confrontation more than peaceful resolve of an issue.

Plus yeah, it's painfully dishonest.

[Shoyoko.7309]

> @"TheBravery.9615" said:

> Mike did the right thing

 

As a player, I am happy that Mike took swift action, no doubt it must have been a very hard decision and firing may have been harsh however it doesn't seem like she was ready to apologise. Even now, with all the articles about the recent drama- it is very clear that she feels very unapologetic about this. I am so mad that there are actually bias articles making out Jessica as the victim and deroir as a "stuck up mansplainer".

 

It was so unsettling to see JP still did not think she was in the wrong, in fact, she double-down and still continued to play the sexist card. I feel real sympathy for Mike who had to make the hard decision to let her go and for her to put it down as an emotional response/decision... smh

Any boss would have looked at this incident as a PR crisis particularly as she and Peter effectively made the players’ faith in devs waver and quite frankly decimated the trust we had in half...and all within 2 days.

After everything, it has become really apparent that Jessica was a ticking time bomb so if it wasn’t now that she would have snapped it would be sometime in the future.

I don’t think Peter should have been let go, a warning and apology might have sufficed as it was clear he was trying to be the white knight, however, I can imagine if he wasn’t fired Jessica would’ve believed she would be entitled to a lawsuit where she can claim that the world is indeed sexist because she, a female dev was fired while her friend Peter, a male dev wasn’t.

 

Now imagine what those bias articles would have said about that.

 

P.S. before you tell me otherwise, woodenpotatoes did an in-depth analyse on the recent drama with additional tweets from peter fries that was not picked up earlier that may have contributed to his demise. Here is the link:

 

[Evon Skyfyre.9673]

As something to ponder, articles are popping up around the net about this, that are basically screen shots of twitter, and here showing comments fitting the tone of the article. At least one I have seen didn't even blur the player name. Just an FYI, so those concerned might temper their comments.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

> @"Zaklex.6308" said:

> > @"Ceares.2519" said:

> `snip`

> >

> > I have a question here, which bothers me alot.... Can a person, who is unable to handle humans correctly, create / develop and define rules how ingame charakters should be build, structured, configured in conjunction to the players = humans, who are playing those ingame charakters? After what is happened i would say definitively not! You should know first humans and how to handle them correctly, else the first component of your theory will be handled wrong. As a consequence of having the wrong picture about people and by that also about players, this person must fail with her project in the second part how to develop ingame charakters for those humans!

> > Its the similarity to "a doctor who does not trust me and which i cant trust as the patient, cant heal me at all!"

> `snip`

>

> This statement here is 100% wrong, this one person did not create/develop and define rules on how ingame characters should be built...those rules were already in place, they have been in place since day 1, all she was doing was putting them out there for the community/players to understand how our characters are designed and the why of it...nothing more, nothing less.

>

 

Which make those post about being a female dev being even more ridiculous. It's a team effort, so any criticism would be aimed at the team as a whole. Not to mention that the usage of alternative dialogue options has been decided on years before she was a thing at Anet. Not to mention... there are some alternative dialogue options in the very release! And in PoF....

[Dashingsteel.3410]

It's okay for females to make suggestions to males but it is not okay for males to make suggestions to females...… This type of ideology is antithetical to a free and open society. It is followers of this ideology that are standing up for Jessica Price. She is a victim...… Males can't be victimized by females. There is no sexism towards men. This is why Deroir is guilty and Miss Price is innocent. There is no evidence needed when it is man vs woman.... Woman wins.

 

 

People who have been indoctrinated into pc culture will always follow its playbook. They will defend this ideology to the bitter end. This thread can go on for another 1000 pages and you are going to see the same comments that Deroir was terrible because he dared offer a suggestion to a woman.

 

 

 

[CaelestiaEmpyrea.2617]

None of us know the internal process by which the devs left ANet. ANet WILL NOT disclose this info. It's a Human Resources issue. So we don't know what exactly led to the devs leaving ANet. Consider these possible scenarios:

 

1. Maybe Devs are just fired for their posts, no warning. Kinda bad thing for ANet to do, but it may be justified depending on the company's internal policies.

2. Maybe Devs had already received warnings/reprimands, this was just the final straw.

3. Maybe Devs didn't get terminated, but instead decided to leave ANet for the good of the company. This is the LEAST likely, but it could have happened.

4. Maybe Devs were given a chance to make public apology, or face termination. They decided to lose their jobs rather than do the right thing.

5. Maybe Devs were called in to a meeting to discuss the issue, but assumed they were going to be fired and threw a huge kitten-storm before hearing bosses out. (I've actually seen this happen. The intention was to issue a stern warning and the employee went so ape-kitten over the mere suggestion he had done something wrong that boss had no choice but to fire him).

 

Plenty of other possibilities about what actually happened. None of us will ever get the whole story of what went on at ANet. Without that knowledge, I hesitate to condemn either ANet or the Devs in question for what happened. All I can say is it really kitten sucks that this whole thing happened at all.

[STIHL.2489]

> @"Dengar.1785" said:

> > @"STIHL.2489" said:

> > > @"Julischka Bean.7491" said:

> > > "She wasn't writing on A'Net's behalf, she was writing on her personal page"

> > >

> > > Not sure who I am quoting...but her name was on this personal page, therefore she represents Anet. If she was writing under a creative name such as "Foxy Asura 999" that would be a personal page...to me at least.

> > > Lisa-Confused

> >

> > Expect that to be the Future, that Devs will not expose themselves on Social Media.

>

> Why? Everything is absolutely *fine* as long as you're not a complete kitten.

 

Ehh never-mind.. you just keep telling yourself this. I'm done. What is, Is.. what will be.. will be.

 

I hope the dev team takes this as the cautionary tale it is.. on all levels.

[autoclub.8507]

Hello.

 

I have been playing Guildwars 2 since Beta, and I don't really follow much about the community outside of gameplay, but this issue was brought up in my guild. I have read through what happened, and I agree with ArenaNet's decision on this, both of those employees were very unprofessional. Outright toxic actually.

 

I did not even know who these people were or what they did until all of this "controversy" came out. Now they want to use the victimhood and sexism angle, which is so degrading to those of us who actually fight for true equality.

 

Miss Price's behavior was toxic, and would not have been tolerated at any company I've ever worked for. Nor should it be anywhere.

[Jukhy.2431]

> @"Walhalla.5473" said:

> Still going on? *sigh*

>

> Ok first, to the people who completely critizise the firings. No dev here was fired because of an unpopular opinion. We always discuss points the devs make and some of the points are quite unpopular but we still do it quite civilized. We can accept unpopular opinions. What happened there was that one of the Devs responded to a respectful and kind attempt for a discussion, completely wrong and tried to frame him as a sexist. In the political charged times we live today THIS can be very dangerous. But things could still have been salvaged if that specific dev would have apologized and then tried to answer respectfully or said " sry but right now I'm not in the mood to discuss this any further". But no she doubled down, insulted him further and then threw shade at the community. Also being completely freaking unprofessional and rude ( while also throwing the gender card ) to another Content Creator who also was respectful. All of this while doing it on her twitter account, after talking about her work with Anet in her description.

>

> This thing came hard at Anet thanks to them not being able to respond due to this stuff happening on a national holiday. If it would have been on a normal day where people work then Anet would have intervened fast to cull the storm. Another Dev tried to help her coworker but did it quite clumsly and instead of defusing the situation the poured oil into fire. Not only that but that Dev was loved by the community and him doing that made the impression that Anet would tolerate the vitriol and toxicity from JP.

>

> Anet reacted, very fast and harsher than the community expected. We didn't want any firings and we aren't celebrating them, it would have been enough for the vast majority of us if both would have been reprimanded and also wrote a public apology. Most of us can understand why both were fired, but we know that no one really won here.

>

> And please for the love of God, Odin, Dhuum or the allmighty Pocket Raptor. Don't make this political. This firing has nothing to do with poltics. No JP didn't get the boot for trying to defend herself against sexism and she didn't fell victim to an Alt-Right mob. And to the people who claim Victory in the campaign against kitten's ( the people who are described by 3 letters, not cats ), pls also stop, this here isn't a war of agendas. It was 2 devs fired, one being completely insulting and the other just choosing the wrong time to stand to her side and nothing political from the side of Anet, just business. And there is no victory here. Anet just lost 2 devs with one being obviously very missed by many here. There was no right decision possible here, only the least bad one. It was a bad week for us all, Anet, the devs involved and us the community.

> If you want to use a community to push your agenda, regardless if far left or far right, please do it somewhere else... or better don't do it at all. I think I can speak for the community when I say that we don't want to be involved with this agenda pushing and certainly not be used for it. We just want to enjoy the game and discuss parts of it, give our opinions and try to make it better with our feedback, without the toxic agenda pushing that happens ecverywhere else.

>

> Sry for the last part but I'm really sad to see that this here devolves more and more into a political shitshow with agenda pushing instead of just seeing the facts on what happened and moving on.

 

Well said and I fully agree with this. Everything that needs to be said has been said and it's time to close this subject and move on.

[Loli Ruri.8307]

I'm looking up articles on this whole thing, and you literally have articles shilling for a sexist who was fired. And they are doing the usual donkey stuff, where they selectively choose snippets and quotes that match their narrative, because one can. And they think they are relevant? XDDDDD

[LetoII.3782]

> @"Ajaxx.3157" said:

> Anyone who is quitting GW2 can you please send your Mystic Coins, T3 T6 mats to Ajaxx.3157

>

> Thanks.

 

The patriarchy wins again

[Plague.6723]

I would not play ANY game that would talk to there community in such a way. I would not purchase any product from a company who would treat there customers in such a way. If she had not been fired I would consider that it's possible the entire company feels she is representing them in a proper manner. I do not condone the celebration of people dying from cancer, I find it disgusting. I do not condone bring sexism into a discussion without merit, to do so is sexist. If she was not fired I would not play GW2 again.

[Balsa.3951]

After getting more and more information. I agree she was full in the fault as well the other dev kind of didn't acted professional.

 

The decision to fire them ... I still can't really agree but that's maybe because I have a thick skin and words like she used would more surprise me and not affect me at all on a personal level since it's only web trash talk.

 

I hope both devs getting a new job. JP might be better being a writer for non puplic engaging companies like game companies.

 

She seems to have talent from what I saw in pof.

[Loli Ruri.8307]

> @"LetoII.3782" said:

> > @"Ajaxx.3157" said:

> > Anyone who is quitting GW2 can you please send your Mystic Coins, T3 T6 mats to Ajaxx.3157

> >

> > Thanks.

>

> The patriarchy wins again

I don't know how. What? XD

[lordhelmos.7623]

I took a 60 day haitus and came back to this. While I feel like I'm sifting through the ashes of an already passed catastophe, I do think this should be a lesson that ANET takes to heart on how to view their players.

 

A developer likening the playerbase to a bunch of laymen while reference himself to be an Astrophysicist and an extremely rude person who turned a cordial bit of CONSTRUCTIVE feedback into a socio-political argument that was out of context is just unacceptable. I cannot say if the terminations were the right call, I don't know the internal dynamics of what goes on behind closed doors to really know.

 

These two people could simply be a part of a much larger company environment that is hostile and needs to change. This would be sad because if this were the case then these two devs were sacrificed due to the unwanted publicity.

 

Alternatively, these two devs could have been human people with personal opinions that should have not been publicized in the manner that they were.

 

I have a feeling that the truth is likely somewhere between the two above points.

 

I will say that as a personal opinion, the ANET forms, Reddit, or any platform that Arenanet has given us has never felt like a place where player feedback mattered. Yes I know the president of the company came out and said "we value player feedback" but does anyone really feel like that has ever been the case?

 

We are on what? 7 years of Guildwars 2 and we have never gotten a Public Test Server where players can trial changes and provide feedback, balance has been problematic to the point of the game overall failing as an esport, and despite numerous attempts at constructive storytelling feedback (including the recent one that caused this explosion) the writing quality of living story has not really improved since Scarlet Briar (I know it is harsh but this was fan-fiction levels of work). I was there for the Scarlet days, I remember one very constructive and nice player actually creating a diagram of how to create a better story and humanize villians, yet it was pretty much completely ignored. There is also this place called **Reddit Writing Prompts** that every ANET writer should spend at least 1 hour a day looking at.

 

I think the "toxicity" that comes from the community (there is always toxicity) is partially created by an environment created by ANET in which player feedback has never really had impacts. Player feedback any outreach to the players has always felt like a PR show while on the backend ANET has always had their own agenda that never changes regardless of how many players voice up about it. Of course players are frustrated.

 

This should be a wakeup call. Value players more, make them FEEL important, lose them (like me, I was driven away by this event despite plans to come back and will no longer play but this was a dumpster fire so big I just had to login and comment), or face retaliation on public media platforms.

[thesilverdragoon.3078]

Does this mean we likely won't get the next living world episodes for a while? I don't know who else writes the story.

[Loli Ruri.8307]

> @"thesilverdragoon.3078" said:

> Does this mean we likely won't get the next living world episodes for a while? I don't know who else writes the story.

The game has been around longer than she has worked at Anet. I'm sure we will be fine.

[HoosierDaddy.8567]

I would like to say two points onto the subject. First being, the customer is not always right, and when it comes to the "general public" spouting off their unavoidably bias opinions as a fact, there is without a doubt going to be a consistent and growing stress that burdens the people whose artistic efforts are being critiqued. As the consumer, we are allowed to applaud the magical display presented to us, or conversely to share our disappointment if the magic seems dull. We still need to remember that we are merely the audience. We are not the ones performing the passionate creation. We hold no bond to the efforts that are complete. We must learn to respect that we are witnessing an art, and art shall always appeal to some more than others. Our opinion, as valid as it may be, is not critical, nor is it necessarily valued.

However, I am also quite humbled that Mike O' has taken such swift and concise action to protect the fanbase. I do think it was the proper thing to do, no matter how much I can understand the frustration that the developers must endure, especially from the cesspool of social media.

My thanks to ALL of those whose content I have played and enjoyed, I wish that I took more time to applaud you.

 

[Evon Skyfyre.9673]

I think it was said best when someone said "We should never meet our heroes". Many of us have this image in our minds of what a developer is, and want to be part of the process in any way we can, and forget to remember they are people doing a job, often a thankless one, and expect more than they are able to give. Imagine pouring your heart into something only to have it shredded on a daily basis. I don't know either of the devs in question, but I know what my creative process is like, and staring at a blank page and pulling out a coherent creation, on command is not a fun way to be inspired.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

> @"lordhelmos.7623" said:

>

> I will say that as a personal opinion, the ANET forms, Reddit, or any platform that Arenanet has given us has never felt like a place where player feedback mattered. Yes I know the president of the company came out and said "we value player feedback" but does anyone really feel like that has ever been the case?

>

> I think the "toxicity" that comes from the community (there is always toxicity) is partially created by an environment created by ANET in which player feedback has never really had impacts. Player feedback any outreach to the players has always felt like a PR show while on the backend ANET has always had their own agenda that never changes regardless of how many players voice up about it.

 

Virtually every change to the game has been in response to something some segment of the player-base requested. This started with Ascended gear shortly after launch and has not let up since. Sure, ANet has attempted to present those requested things in light of how they want the game to go, but I'm having a hard time naming _anything_ that has been added or changed that no one wanted or asked for.