Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen threads where accusers have clearly not read the official response on how systems like the gems:gold system works, even whe it is posted directly ahead of one of their responses in the thread.

Since reading appears to be a problem (on a forum!) I suggest that, for his own sanity, a certain staff member create a few of those “whiteboard” style auto generated animations which visually demonstrate that which he is trying to explain.

Sticky them, and put the simple “see this sticky thread” link reply post and be done with it.

We have “how to play” for the rest of the game in beautiful videos

It’ll be a wasted effort. The reason is not because people lack the knowledge but because they are unwilling to read and educate themselves about the topics they post about. You just can’t fix that.

With that said, this doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about creating some thread to be used as a sticky or a document where I can just copy and paste responses from. It’ll make things easier for us but it won’t fix the problem unfortunately.

People get fixated on a belief on how something works, no amount of education or evidence will change their minds.

Behellagh.1468:

People get fixated on a belief on how something works, no amount of education or evidence will change their minds.

Very true. However having a gem store 101 and TP 101 sticky might reduce the amount of threads started that claim the gem to gold exchange rate is broke, or TP flipping is OP, or the economy is ruined because I’m a casual player and can’t buy a precurser QQ, etc. As 10% of those threads are just the OP claiming whatever, and the other 90% are saying that it’s not broken and is working as intended until JS shows up, says “it’s not broken, learn to economics”, to which the OP responds JS doesn’t know anything, and the thread gets shut down for the 90% calling the OP a moron.

Having a sticky would allow such threads to be dramatically shorter, as each response from the 90% could just be a link to the sticky, or the section of the sticky. In essence, forcing the OP to either read the sticky or continue to rant by himself. In any event it will certainly free up much of JSs time so he can be doing other things, like his job.

Just saying….

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

I’ve seen threads where accusers have clearly not read the official response on how systems like the gems:gold system works, even whe it is posted directly ahead of one of their responses in the thread.

Since reading appears to be a problem (on a forum!) I suggest that, for his own sanity, a certain staff member create a few of those “whiteboard” style auto generated animations which visually demonstrate that which he is trying to explain.

Sticky them, and put the simple “see this sticky thread” link reply post and be done with it.

We have “how to play” for the rest of the game in beautiful videos

I think you are a bit biased, based on your word choices, (accusers) for example.
That said i think stickies that explain key features of the BLTC, especially the the gem/gold exchange would be a good idea. However, i doubt they would do that because, when i was looking for some old quotes, i saw some old dev posts about these thinks were deleted, or not easily accessed. I don’t think they want the level of accountability that would bring.

That said, aside from TP tax+tp fee, gem/gold exchange buy/sell order of transactions, and other mechanics, i dont think they have much that is mechanical, the rest is mostly design decsions, and not a matter of knowing how things work.

Behellagh.1468:

People get fixated on a belief on how something works, no amount of education or evidence will change their minds.

as a side-note, that one source that says vaccines cause autism was a researcher who later retracted his paper and admitted he falsified it to provide evidence in a lawsuit. currently there is no evidence to support her belief.

a stickie post would be nice to have. JS doesn’t even have to be the one to tell people about it. once it’s there, everyone else will direct people to it who need to read it.

pdavis.8031:

Behellagh.1468:

People get fixated on a belief on how something works, no amount of education or evidence will change their minds.

Very true. However having a gem store 101 and TP 101 sticky might reduce the amount of threads started that claim the gem to gold exchange rate is broke, or TP flipping is OP, or the economy is ruined because I’m a casual player and can’t buy a precurser QQ, etc. As 10% of those threads are just the OP claiming whatever, and the other 90% are saying that it’s not broken and is working as intended until JS shows up, says “it’s not broken, learn to economics”, to which the OP responds JS doesn’t know anything, and the thread gets shut down for the 90% calling the OP a moron.

Having a sticky would allow such threads to be dramatically shorter, as each response from the 90% could just be a link to the sticky, or the section of the sticky. In essence, forcing the OP to either read the sticky or continue to rant by himself. In any event it will certainly free up much of JSs time so he can be doing other things, like his job.

Just saying….

many of the things you are speaking of, are not fact based, and based on design descions, other than stating what the overall unchangeable design parameters are, i dont think you would find much in a sticky that would be considered the solution to most of the discussions on this forum.
It may be useful for certain mechanics, and immutable design descions, but to be honest i doubt JS has the time nor desire to create that. It would have to be very carefully considered, and 100% accurate. That is probably too time consuming for him. When you look at his posting history, you realize he says very little, and lets people come to their own conclusions, most times. I doubt he will write Cliff notes to the bltc.

but i could be wrong

Behellagh.1468:

People get fixated on a belief on how something works, no amount of education or evidence will change their minds.

this is something that cuts both ways. I guess one has to be honest with oneself

Do Devs even have Sticky’ing power?

\….that sounds kinda offcolor, plus there’s already a couple stickies

I don’t think anyone beside Anet really know how for example the gem-gold system works.

It’s not like Anet have been completely open about it.

phys.7689:

Behellagh.1468:

People get fixated on a belief on how something works, no amount of education or evidence will change their minds.

this is something that cuts both ways. I guess one has to be honest with oneself

Quite honestly Behellagh, reading your post on gem-gold, I thought you have hypothesis instead of fact.

people seemed to be able to derived too much from some very ambiguous official response. And Anet’s typical response is they dont’ want cough cough gold sellers to get too much information.

If people actually made threads structured in a way that wasn’t just a bunch of QQ, then the forums would fix themselves.

Perhaps the real fix is for Anet to provide a template people need to follow if they want to provide ‘feedback’. If they don’t use it or abuse it, it’s dealt with swiftly. Perhaps limited access (read-only, limited posts per thread) is also a tool they should use.

Bias doesn’t necessarily negate the value of an argument if it is factual. the amount of discussion which follows what seems like every thread regarding gold exchange or flipping places weight on the suggestion that explanations of fundamental economics in easy to follow videos will save a lot of time. Mr. Smith does, as far as I see, make many efforts to help direct the discourse.. He is already investing time into this,

I also pose that he can probably call on other members of the staff who may even be in the same department, to produce the video.

As much as it may sound like a smart alec idea, if you spend time in entrepreneurial circles and visiting new product sites (ex Oculus, Leap Motion) they are quite common. Actually in the above two examples, they are far enough along in their funding cycle to afford real videos.. But that’s beside the point.

If you read through all of his posts, you may see that he has revealed a lot more about the system than the average complaint poster seems to be aware of.

Finally, this thread is not in any way about the debate as to whether there is a problem, or not. That is completely irrelevant to the scope of the suggest, if you think there is a problem, you are one of the people who the videos are intended to educate.

A sticky thread won’t change anything. Most people don’t even bother to read those.

Quite honestly, there is nothing you can do to make people acquire information that they do not think they need. You could force them to view a video when first entering the subforum, but most people would just mute their audio and alt-tab if they don’t want to view it.

And from what I have seen, replying to people with a stock response, such as “read the sticky” is far more likely to make them angry than read said post. That’s because the stock response, even if it’s the right choice, is still a stock response: it ignores the individuality of the poster, which kittenes them off.

I live in Taiwan, the government want to open the trade agreement. The big picture is it is better to sign the trade agreement, for the economy. But many people are oppose of it. So the government tried to educate people why signing trade agreement is better for the economy.

The reality is if you are one of those people who’s earning is substantially decreased(because your a farmer or small cooperation), all you see is your livelihood being impacted, you won’t care about the economy.

Now, I understand many people’s opinion is wanting people to look at the big picture called economy. But there is an even bigger picture to consider called society. So when people keep discussing mmorpg economy, they shouldn’t forget the bigger picture called game design.

Obviously, much of the game design revolves around the gem-exchange and cash shop. Because that is how Anet get their earnings. If Anet get their earning mostly from subscription, premium, or actually “buy to play(expansion and DLC)”. We might be seeing completely different game.

Olba.5376:

A sticky thread won’t change anything. Most people don’t even bother to read those.

Quite honestly, there is nothing you can do to make people acquire information that they do not think they need. You could force them to view a video when first entering the subforum, but most people would just mute their audio and alt-tab if they don’t want to view it.

And from what I have seen, replying to people with a stock response, such as “read the sticky” is far more likely to make them angry than read said post. That’s because the stock response, even if it’s the right choice, is still a stock response: it ignores the individuality of the poster, which kittenes them off.

Because they never care about the economy. All they see is they don’t have a good game play experience so they come to the forum and complain.

John Smith must walk on tip-toes in this forum. Unfortunately for John Smith, anything he says can and will have an impact on the Tyrian economic ecosystem and the Arenanet et al economic ecosystem. Consider the broad spectrum of the player base; player one could use information posted by John Smith accurately and in their best interest, while player two could be confused right off an economic cliff. John Smith is provided with considerable incentive to keep both player one and player two participating.

I think the root cause of player animosity towards the Tyrian economy has nothing to do with understanding economic theory. A real world Tyrian equivalent doesn’t exist.

I think the root cause is the cognitive dissonance built into Tyrian role-playing. Tyria, as a world, a place telling a story, needs Wonder Woman and Captain America, while the Tyrian economy trains Ayn Randian mercenaries.

laokoko.7403:

I live in Taiwan, the government want to open the trade agreement. The big picture is it is better to sign the trade agreement, for the economy. But many people are oppose of it. So the government tried to educate people why signing trade agreement is better for the economy.

The reality is if you are one of those people who’s earning is substantially decreased(because your a farmer or small cooperation), all you see is your livelihood being impacted, you won’t care about the economy.

Now, I understand many people’s opinion is wanting people to look at the big picture called economy. But there is an even bigger picture to consider called society. So when people keep discussing mmorpg economy, they shouldn’t forget the bigger picture called game design.

Obviously, much of the game design revolves around the gem-exchange and cash shop. Because that is how Anet get their earnings. If Anet get their earning mostly from subscription, premium, or actually “buy to play(expansion and DLC)”. We might be seeing completely different game.

Good post.