Guild Wars 2

Grimthagen.6019:

Regarding poll location – I’d put it in the launcher. It’s the one part of the game that every active player sees and interacts with on a regular basis. If it’s in the UI somewhere people will miss it, or they’ll get in game and get occupied with everything and forget to fill it out.

If the poll is put on the launcher, it should override the Launch function but give the player the option of declining to answer (which is a stat that should also be reported) or putting off answering until next time they launch. Leave it run for a week or so and you should have a pretty powerful sample of the population.

I’d also suggest publishing the results to the playerbase rather than keeping it hidden.

I’d finally suggest not being too overconfident in your in-house ability to design polls properly, it’s actually tougher than it appears if it is to be done correctly.

That is a third option for polls, besides opt-in and opt-out, a mandatory approach like this could be taken. The important thing to remember is that people like options, mandatory feedback kind of takes away the option of not providing feedback. I think it’s important to be careful what kind of message is sent. On the one hand currently there are people who feel not enough effort is put into feedback, something like this shows that ANet is serious about feedback, but it might be viewed as the other extreme of getting too much? Thoughts?

Erick Alastor.3917:

No one will be forced to respond, and invasiveness will be minimal.

My main concern with this would be the fact that if no one is forced to respond, then you will get self-selection bias incorporated into the poll and the whole thing becomes questionable.

For a poll to be of value, it has to take a relatively unbiased cross-section of a population. In this case, MMO developers have the opportunity to actually capture the opinion of every single one of their active players. There are marketing agencies and departments that would give body parts to have that kind of access to their target markets.

I’ve never really understood why MMO developers past and present haven’t taken greater advantage of this unique capability they’ve been given.

A general thread for topic then a specific thread for each major topic sounds like a good idea. These threads should all be stickied. Additionally a road map which could be voted upon as Sony do for Planetside 2 do is something you should look at.

Topics which I would like to see discussed are:

1. The current pillars of the GW2 game design
2. Ascended weapons/items and ways of obtaining them
3. RNG in all its forms.
4. Precursor crafting
5. The Trading Post/BLTC
6. Character bound world XP for WvW and WvW masteries
7. the bloodlust buff for WvW
8. Ways of reducing the WvW zerg
9. Player grouping specifically about larger groups than 5
10. WvW population disparity and the match up systems
11. Ascended backpieces
12. Skill lag
13. Guild v Guild
14. Class and item balance
15. fortnightly updates and living world
16. Guild management tools

Go home Chris or you’ll be here all night… we’re a demanding bunch remember.

I still dont understand how you would frame a poll to get useful information out of players. A. To make it worthwhile for the player doing it and B. To get useful info for the devs.

Example: Twilight Assault just released.
Do you like it? Y/N
Rate the difficulty 1-5
Did you enjoy the storyline and characters? ‘What story?’ ‘Didnt care’ ‘yes excellent!’

I dont see how a poll can ask ‘why’. Unless you overload it with every possible option there can be. Maybe im lacking imagination here can somebody help me out?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Erick Alastor.3917:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

minbariguy.7504:

I want to echo the people who have recently been requesting in-game polls. Since currently there has been no real acknowledgement or response to player dissatisfaction with the pace of Living Story releases, I have chosen to simply not log in at all to avoid being counted as a “satisfied customer” in your concurrency metrics.

An in-game poll where I would have the chance to have my opinions actually be counted would be something worth logging in for.

I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Chris

Simple enough, let the pigeons do the dirty work.
You can advertise a new function via an e-mail and dedicate it a separate section.
The new icon may change color once a new survey is available.
No one will be forced to respond, and invasiveness will be minimal.

The iconography is cool to!

Seriously afk now

LoL, thanks.

Noobix.3958:

I still dont understand how you would frame a poll to get useful information out of players. A. To make it worthwhile for the player doing it and B. To get useful info for the devs.

Example: Twilight Assault just released.
Do you like it? Y/N
Rate the difficulty 1-5
Did you enjoy the storyline and characters? ‘What story?’ ‘Didnt care’ ‘yes excellent!’

I dont see how a poll can ask ‘why’. Unless you overload it with every possible option there can be. Maybe im lacking imagination here can somebody help me out?

It is better than assuming what we like and dislike.
The poll can have if/then/else statements.

Did you enjoy XYZ content? Y/N
If Yes, then “What would you like to see in the future?”
else “Was the content difficult enough?” Yes/No
else “Was the content engaging enough?” Yes/No
etc etc.
<Comment field>

Im not going to go into detail but the survey can get really ‘boss’ with the branches of else statements.

I’m with you, Noobix. Polls always leave me feeling like the one bit of information I’d really like the poller to know hasn’t been asked. It makes the feedback dependent on the people who want the feedback, rather than those giving it.

Which is one of the good things about forum feedback. Whether it’s representative of the player base or not, it’s the place where players can initiate the dialogue. ANet may have no idea that there is a particular aspect of the game that even needs polling until someone brings it up on the forums.

Polls feel like a decent follow up step in the process to gauge the player base at large. If passionate players come to the forum with a topic, a poll would be a great way to take the conversation that started there and demonstrate whether or not the same feedback is true of the general player base, or whether it is, in fact, just a vocal minority with a pet issue.

Be careful with polls. They may seem like a good solution to many people, but they can also be incredibly deceiving. Different people often answer from various contexts based their own interpretation of the question, but the results are still piled together in specific predetermined groups. Polls are inherently limited as well. Forums may take longer to sift through, but they allow thoughts to be expressed (in both directions). The game is also a very mutable experience and everyone is different; letting the majority decide is not necessarily a good thing, as there are many aspects of the game that appeal to different people. As someone touched upon above, having someone who doesn’t play an area much affect it to the same degree as someone who plays it a lot could be odd.

I don’t think you’ll ever reach an equilibrium where people enjoy everything, and at some point, as much as we players want to have influence and give feedback, some of us also want to be surprised and see new features that we didn’t expect. Influencing a game with feedback is a very good thing, but stifling the creativity of the development team is not in anyone’s best interest. I guess it really depends on what kind of feedback you collect. “Was that fun?” is way too nebulous a question to have meaning in such a complex machine.

If you ask questions certain ways you can almost be guaranteed certain answers, but they will not always be the correct answers that you can use to guide yourself to better ground.

I’m speaking as someone who’s shared several ideas and tried to start several discussions with other players. I like the prospect of better dialogue, but apart from the disruption of immersion, polls are just not useful to the extent that some people make them seem. Some of forum ideas expressed in the posts above me are better, such as covering certain topics over a period of time.

Imagi.4561:

Since the discussion has moved to UI and customer feedback, I’d like to bring up a related suggestion: reinstating the in-game bug report function, which we had during betas.

The current method of bug reporting—by going to either the various forum threads or through the official, separate support network—is rather circuitous, and reinstating the in-game function would give ArenaNet more qualitative and quantitative information on errors.

You can bug report ingame.

Go to the main menu, and go to Support. There’s an option for bug reporting there.

On the topic of polls, it will be obvious that many people would vote for “I hate Teq!”. But that would be a misunderstanding. People hate the overflow from Teq. People hate how hard Teq is. People hate a million other things about Teq. But they do not hate Teq.

The problem lies with the design of World Events, not the idea of World Event itself.

Grimthagen.6019:

Erick Alastor.3917:

No one will be forced to respond, and invasiveness will be minimal.

My main concern with this would be the fact that if no one is forced to respond, then you will get self-selection bias incorporated into the poll and the whole thing becomes questionable.

For a poll to be of value, it has to take a relatively unbiased cross-section of a population. In this case, MMO developers have the opportunity to actually capture the opinion of every single one of their active players. There are marketing agencies and departments that would give body parts to have that kind of access to their target markets.

I’ve never really understood why MMO developers past and present haven’t taken greater advantage of this unique capability they’ve been given.

Follow my reasoning.
If people are really interested in the game, they will want to express their opinion about it and everyone will have the opportunity to do so.
It’s a bit ‘like voting in democratic countries, you can also abstain, but then you can’t complain about the decisions taken by the winning party.
By the way if you see that things do not go your way then the next time, perhaps, you will spend those five minutes to complete the survey.

cesmode.4257:

Noobix.3958:

I still dont understand how you would frame a poll to get useful information out of players. A. To make it worthwhile for the player doing it and B. To get useful info for the devs.

Example: Twilight Assault just released.
Do you like it? Y/N
Rate the difficulty 1-5
Did you enjoy the storyline and characters? ‘What story?’ ‘Didnt care’ ‘yes excellent!’

I dont see how a poll can ask ‘why’. Unless you overload it with every possible option there can be. Maybe im lacking imagination here can somebody help me out?

It is better than assuming what we like and dislike.
The poll can have if/then/else statements.

Did you enjoy XYZ content? Y/N
If Yes, then “What would you like to see in the future?”
else “Was the content difficult enough?” Yes/No
else “Was the content engaging enough?” Yes/No
etc etc.
<Comment field>

Im not going to go into detail but the survey can get really ‘boss’ with the branches of else statements.

Yeah you could write up a really smart and amazing survey. And it could probably ask almost every question. But is it then getting too long? How much time is it going to take a dev to write up this survey? Will it be sure to ask ALL the right questions? How does a player voice an opinion not covered by the survey/poll? If i assume theres a text field to fire away any other suggestions, who reads and collates the thousands to be sent to the relevant teams? At this point arent we better off just having some sort of forum?

What im getting at here is that the forum is the best way to ask questions AND voice opinion.

Good job ANet on being progressive in game and asking us how we feel in terms of the game and contents. I am simply playing for the story of guild wars, and so far I am a bit disappointed on how all of these stories are put out. If it wasn’t for the people in forums/youtube I wouldn’t understand the chain of story between these new releases that you guys are doing bi-weekly.

So first for people like me who enjoys story telling, I think the Team needs a system similar to personal story log for Living World to connect them all together.

I think the Order’s of Tyria should be expanded more to have direct impact to our story. They died down to me after beating Zhaitan which is disappointing cause I thought after choosing an order would qualify me to do exclusive missions, be an errand boy, help citizens, and rank up! to get exclusive rewards! kind of like cultural weapons and armors, the more I do missions the higher my rank is! and the better the rewards! (e.g. Tier 1, 2, 3 weapons/armors)

I’d love to see some continuation from guild wars 1 story like the Tengu opening up their gates, something!!! elaborate on ANY stories from guild wars 1 please!!! This is my only reason for wanting to play the game, cause I thought the story continues in guild wars 2. So something along that would be nice to see from us coming from guild wars 1. This would push me to play every day again, rather than checking whats up in game at forums and deciding if I should log in or not.

In terms of these Living World content, its nice getting bi weekly content but I don’t really “feel” that it is changing when I walk around the world, its kind of more like in certain areas it changed but in terms of people around my character, I don’t feel that recognition.

Also I remember this one time when I was walking around for Demmi story line for Order of Whispers and this guy came out of nowhere! who is part of my personal story when I was walking around the world. I thought that was a nice surprise to see him there. I thought that was well put by the Team to have my story playing even out of instance.

I like the cut scene animation you guys did when Lord Faren tried to save Queen Jennah, I think there should be more of those its so nice seeing such quality art.

For pvp, a slight change I would like to see is stats allocation for gear. So far we only get to have an amulet. I think we need more diversity in terms of stats allocation for gears in pvp similar to pve with different types of trinkets.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Imagi.4561:

Since the discussion has moved to UI and customer feedback, I’d like to bring up a related suggestion: reinstating the in-game bug report function, which we had during betas.

The current method of bug reporting—by going to either the various forum threads or through the official, separate support network—is rather circuitous, and reinstating the in-game function would give ArenaNet more qualitative and quantitative information on errors.

You can bug report ingame.

Go to the main menu, and go to Support. There’s an option for bug reporting there.

Well I feel like an idiot, because I thought that feature had been removed. Thank you for the information.

Another suggestion on how to organize player input:

What about having guild representatives discuss specific topics with devs?

The way I imagine it working would be, someone from ANet starts a thread with the following: “Feedback/Discussion session regarding XXXX (e.g: Gear progression, SPvP game modes, ways to implement GvG, ways to balance WvW population, etc)”

Then you allow signups for of guilds related to the topic to bring out a leader/officer that would like to debate the subject, and bring his guild’s opinion on the subject. (No more than 1 player per guild, and you’d probably need some filtering system depending on how many signups you have).

So after getting the names of the people, you have an actual discussion that could be done either via a separate forum, a voice com session, or a chat (again, the way of communication would depend on how many representatives are in this. You could do a “progression”, first invite these guys to the separate forums, then those people that offer valuable feedback, call them for a voice chat session, where a better discussion can happen).

It would basically work like the alpha test team, but you can get a broader range of opinions, without having to worry about leaks and all that, and you will be able to get some valuable feedback without having to pick out the one good post in the middle of 10 that are just trying to troll it.

No need to implement anything, no immersion breaking, work is reduced to allocating time of devs willing to participate in these, and filtering out a bit on who’d be called to the discussions. (but that is something that with time will become a lot easier, since you’ll already have a list of the guys that provided useful feedback and the ones that just joined this for kittens and giggles, so you already know who to call for the next one)

cesmode.4257:

It is better than assuming what we like and dislike.
The poll can have if/then/else statements.

Did you enjoy XYZ content? Y/N
If Yes, then “What would you like to see in the future?”
else “Was the content difficult enough?” Yes/No
else “Was the content engaging enough?” Yes/No
etc etc.
<Comment field>

To an extent, but that comment field is going to take up a lot of the weight.

The BWE surveys were similar to what you’re giving here, and I had some issues with it. For example, I’ve just done the “stop the bandits from blowing up the water tower” DE for the fourth time on my third human character.

Was the content difficult enough? Well, it wasn’t hard, but this is the starter area, so things should be a little simpler. It was more difficult the first time through, because I wasn’t used to this whole dodging thing in an MMO, but I’ve done it so many times now I know exactly what to expect. How do I rate this from 1-5? Three, I guess?

Was it engaging? Sure, it was interesting the first time. I like how it chains with repairing the pipes if it fails. I’ve seen it through several times now, though, so it wasn’t terribly engaging this time.

It’s just that “on a scale of 1-5” has no nuance whatsoever, and all of meaningful feedback ends up going into “other comments”. So it might as well be a comment box that pops up.

Of course, I know most people are happy to click a number, and loathe to type a sentence explaining how they feel. But then, what kind of meaningful feedback are you really getting?

Grimthagen.6019:

Erick Alastor.3917:

No one will be forced to respond, and invasiveness will be minimal.

My main concern with this would be the fact that if no one is forced to respond, then you will get self-selection bias incorporated into the poll and the whole thing becomes questionable.

For a poll to be of value, it has to take a relatively unbiased cross-section of a population. In this case, MMO developers have the opportunity to actually capture the opinion of every single one of their active players. There are marketing agencies and departments that would give body parts to have that kind of access to their target markets.

I’ve never really understood why MMO developers past and present haven’t taken greater advantage of this unique capability they’ve been given.

Its as simple as voting, the option to use it is there for everyone, if some choose not to use it then they don’t reserve the right to complain about what they couldn’t be bothered to participate in,

Kosmo.5187:

Be careful with polls. They may seem like a good solution to many people, but they can also be incredibly deceiving. …snip…

This here would be why I would recommend bringing a specialist on-board. They’ve got an economist to run the economy in-game, if they want a polling system then they should be hiring someone who designs poll questions for a living.

For those that don’t like the fact that polls don’t give enough opportunity for feedback – that’s why we have these forums. Put a hotlink from the poll to a feedback discussion thread here and you’re done. For bonus points, have the login credentials from the launcher propagate to the forums so that anyone hitting the hotlink is automatically logged in and can post their feedback right away.

You know what really struck me that I like so far that was mentioned? The dev’s posting a question on the forums for the community to answer.

That sounds amazing. It was sorta done for the Oct 15th patch with that thread, and it surprised me. Its something that I don’t think Dev’s in many games are taking advantage of. While yes, Dev’s get the final say and can keep many things secret, asking for ideas from the community can’t hurt. Really. Dev’s technically have a massive pot of ideas sitting here that can get both them and the community thinking to better the game. Why would anyone want to bypass that?

Nuzt.7894:

Grimthagen.6019:

Erick Alastor.3917:

No one will be forced to respond, and invasiveness will be minimal.

My main concern with this would be the fact that if no one is forced to respond, then you will get self-selection bias incorporated into the poll and the whole thing becomes questionable.

For a poll to be of value, it has to take a relatively unbiased cross-section of a population. In this case, MMO developers have the opportunity to actually capture the opinion of every single one of their active players. There are marketing agencies and departments that would give body parts to have that kind of access to their target markets.

I’ve never really understood why MMO developers past and present haven’t taken greater advantage of this unique capability they’ve been given.

Its as simple as voting, the option to use it is there for everyone, if some choose not to use it then they don’t reserve the right to complain about what they couldn’t be bothered to participate in,

Opinion polls are not the same as voting. It is in the company’s best interests to have as many people answering as possible to ensure that they have an accurate idea of the desires in the market they are trying to please.

Democratic systems actually benefit from having lower participation, as the goal for each party is to ensure they win the election. It’s easier to win if a smaller number of people vote, thus giving greater proportional power to organized voting blocks.

However, that is delving into politics and the flaws of a democratic system, which isn’t really on topic.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

minbariguy.7504:

I want to echo the people who have recently been requesting in-game polls. Since currently there has been no real acknowledgement or response to player dissatisfaction with the pace of Living Story releases, I have chosen to simply not log in at all to avoid being counted as a “satisfied customer” in your concurrency metrics.

An in-game poll where I would have the chance to have my opinions actually be counted would be something worth logging in for.

I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Chris

You mean like how when you finish beating scarlet, or finish a dungeon, this magic UI window pops up to just hand you rewards instead of fishing them out of a chest? =p

Perhaps you could just add a button on said window that lets you give input/feedback, it becomes optional then.

Kosmo.5187:

Be careful with polls. They may seem like a good solution to many people, but they can also be incredibly deceiving. Different people often answer from various contexts based their own interpretation of the question, but the results are still piled together in specific predetermined groups. Polls are inherently limited as well. Forums may take longer to sift through, but they allow thoughts to be expressed (in both directions). The game is also a very mutable experience and everyone is different; letting the majority decide is not necessarily a good thing, as there are many aspects of the game that appeal to different people. As someone touched upon above, having someone who doesn’t play an area much affect it to the same degree as someone who plays it a lot could be odd.

I don’t think you’ll ever reach an equilibrium where people enjoy everything, and at some point, as much as we players want to have influence and give feedback, some of us also want to be surprised and see new features that we didn’t expect. Influencing a game with feedback is a very good thing, but stifling the creativity of the development team is not in anyone’s best interest. I guess it really depends on what kind of feedback you collect. “Was that fun?” is way too nebulous a question to have meaning in such a complex machine.

If you ask questions certain ways you can almost be guaranteed certain answers, but they will not always be the correct answers that you can use to guide yourself to better ground.

I’m speaking as someone who’s shared several ideas and tried to start several discussions with other players. I like the prospect of better dialogue, but apart from the disruption of immersion, polls are just not useful to the extent that some people make them seem. Some of forum ideas expressed in the posts above me are better, such as covering certain topics over a period of time.

I agree with you, ingame surveys should be ONE of the way to collect informations about what people think about the game.
However I think we really need them, because statistics of what people are doing today are not a good rapresentation as well, indeed I think they simply depict the present situation, on the contrary, surveys can be a way to forecast (clearly within certain limits) players’ behaviours/expectations.
The forum would complete the triad.
I hope this way we will able to craft together the Triforge of Communication.

p.s. even if Chris said that he will be not able to maintain today post frequency, I hope that all of them can find a way to distribute better their time and divide this task, because (imo) this type of communication is what is needed to build a more loyal and relaxed community.

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

1 thread at a time in each main forum that runs for a few days. Then we move onto the next topic and rinse and repeat?

Not perfect but hey it’s a start! (-:

Chris

I personally think this would be a good start, but I am curious on how you would decide on the topics?
(Maybe we should make a poll regarding that lol).

That’s the next question we have to resolve is folks like the basic idea.

Chris

Just go back to your first idea of making a thread for ‘What top 3 do you think need to be worked on/looked into by the development team’.

This. Start simple. And build from there.

It’s a simple question.. but weighty.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

minbariguy.7504:

I want to echo the people who have recently been requesting in-game polls. Since currently there has been no real acknowledgement or response to player dissatisfaction with the pace of Living Story releases, I have chosen to simply not log in at all to avoid being counted as a “satisfied customer” in your concurrency metrics.

An in-game poll where I would have the chance to have my opinions actually be counted would be something worth logging in for.

I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Chris

I can only answer it with this:
Did the surveys for each event during beta affect the immersion?
Yes it might have for some, but others could see that they had the chance to voice their opinions at that time.

I see the idea of polls as no different.
Though I do give props to whoever thought pigeon mail as an idea, very good thinking!

Kosmo.5187:

Be careful with polls. They may seem like a good solution to many people, but they can also be incredibly deceiving. Different people often answer from various contexts based their own interpretation of the question, but the results are still piled together in specific predetermined groups.

This comment actually made me rethink my opinion on adding in-game pools. This guy hit the nail in the head. So let me add in with my perspective:

I’m a strict PvP/WvW player. I have over 1.5k hours played, and my highest world completion on a character is around 50%. I don’t know what happens on the living story, never been to SAB, and don’t know where Tequatl is.
I also understand that the majority of GW2 population is composed of PvE players, that casually/never play WvW.
So imagine you add a pool: “Do you think there should be gold/item rewards for the winning server of a WvW match?”
For someone that doesn’t really play WvW, this might seem like a very good and reasonable idea, this player might be thinking he’s helping the WvW players to get some rewards. Since these guys constitute a huge ammount of the player base, the result to this pool would probably be “yes, add gold rewards to winning WvW”
But then you have the people that play WvW everyday, for the fun and the fights, and know that adding something of the sort would end up causing a major exodus to the top servers, due to people looking for rewards (that would imbalance the population situation even further and break the experience for some servers). But these people’s point will never come across because they will be drowned in a simple yes/no question.

It also works the other way around, if I never do the Living Story, why should vote on whether the next hero will be the kitten Charr or the cute Asura?
So I think the form of feedback has to be more elaborate than simple pools, (read the suggestion I made a couple posts above)

goldenwing.8473:

Just go back to your first idea of making a thread for ‘What top 3 do you think need to be worked on/looked into by the development team’.

This. Start simple. And build from there.

It’s a simple question.. but weighty.

Still seems kinda redundant. You can just scan over the last few pages of each subforum to see what would make it onto the lists.

If the “top 3 list” thread does get made, it’ll need some very draconian handling to keep it in line. Something like “only your first post will be tallied” and “if you post more than three items your post will be ignored” or it will just degenerate into a spamfest of complaints and arguments.

I’d actually just prefer to have it be the top 1 thing you think needs to be looked at. Direct question… tell ANet your most pressing issue.

I do dungeons, fractals, and WvW. I have concerns about a particular profession.
I get to weigh which of those is most important to me.

While scanning the forums is a good indicator for the community at large, it’s not comprehensive and may not include my concerns.

If this is a “dialogue”, I would prefer to speak with my own voice.

goldenwing.8473:

While scanning the forums is a good indicator for the community at large, it’s not comprehensive and may not include my concerns.

True, but if that concern isn’t prevalent on the forum, it probably won’t be prevalent in the thread, either, and they can’t address everything.

Luiz Swordbreaker.6547:

snip

It is clearly necessary that the questions are asked in the clearest possible way and also in an objective way.
I hope there will be faced with questions such as:
You like a lot the taco tonic, right? Y / N (btw I’m waiting the taco tonic xD)

And about the example question about WvW rewards, it would be helpful to include “questions of control” (I don’t know how to call them in english :S) to see if those who complete the survey have any idea of what they are talking about.

Also including an entry like:
“I don’t know enogh about this subject” could come in handy.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just got home. If it’s ok with everyone i am going to relax a bit with the family and get back to chatting tomorrow morning?

Meanwhile this is what i think the current status of the discussion is:

1: Yes to a forum on each of our core pages (WvW, PVE and PvP). One topic at a time. Each topic stays up for two days and then cycles and rotates? Ordering of priority of topics to be discussed.
2: Polls are generally a good idea. Discussion to continue about how they would work?

Thanks for conversation i am really enjoying it. See you tomorrow,

Chris

Night, Chris. Yeah, like you said, you can’t be this active on the forums every day, but that’s completely understandable. Now relax. Have fun.

Nice job today. :-)

I think polls are important and a good idea. However, I worry about limiting polls to just the forum population. I think that might produce skewed results, due to the type of people that enjoy forums and the type of things those people enjoy.

I know from experience most people who read forums lurk and I know from experience most players never post on forums anyway.

The question is how do we get the most feedback from everyone, not just forum dwellers?

Don’t worry Exalibur, the forum can’t be the only metric.
No one will steal your shiny vertical sword
Relax and enjoy this new experiment.

Shakkara.2641:

Well thanks for reaching out to the community, but over the past year I have seen ArenaNet heading exactly opposite the direction that I (I’ll just speak for myself) would like the game to evolve in.

The reason I bought the game is for two reasons:

• The Manifesto
• Because I loved Guild Wars 1

Because of the above, I expected certain things from Guild Wars 2:

• Extreme horizontal progression where item stats do not matter and progression is aesthetics only, and you can get max stat items in less than an hour – NO GRIND, NO GEAR THREADMILL
• Extremely deep character customization, making me think what skills to bring and what gear to equip on my character
• Extremely fast to max level and max gear a character to max to make it easy to have alts (takes me 3 hours to get a GW1 char to 20 and have him kitted out)
• An enviornment permanently shaped by players, not devs
• Exciting, carefully balanced PVP

Thus in my eyes, the devs have done a few things wrong and are continuing to do things wrong:

• High level cap that takes ages to reach (in my opinion, having levels in the first place is a mistake)
• Restricting players to a single class and having very very few skills and traits per class – thus very few options to make interesting builds
• The boring stat system (power, vitality, etc) and the item system that came out of it that only offer simple +stats, instead of ‘cool’ situational bonusses such as +20% enchantment length or +10 armor when in a stance. In my opinion, stats can and should be completely removed from GW2 and such bonusses on items should be replaced by a whole boatloat of diverse situational bonusses that are a direct part of the characterbuilding/planning process.
• The legendary and ascended items. Exotics were just about right, maybe even a bit too hard to obtain in the first place. I don’t want a gear grind; this game shouldn’t be about obtaining items with stupid stats in my opinion. Again, items should be diverse in what they do and not have bigger numbers.
• PVP and WVW just isn’t interesting at the moment, but I think that is largely because of the above points, with the inability to make interesting and diverse character builds and the game focussing highly on the base stats.
• The dynamic events don’t care that I’m there, because next hour they just replay and reset themselves. Thus they lack meaning and epicness.

I personally don’t think that temporary content is the biggest issue, I have much more problems with the fundamental game mechanics (stats, skills, items, progression).

What I personally want to play this game for:

• Discovering new character builds that noone else found before (not possible)
• Equipping my character with fancy clothing, armor and weapons in combinations that almost noone else has (already possible)
• Influence the way the server evolves and make it different from other servers (not possible, outside the elections we had, which were not per-server unfortunately)
• Build a nice place for myself, such as a nice house, and haul loot and decorations in there (not possible, home instance is terrible because other players cannot easily see it, and it is not customizable)
• Compete with others based on creativity and skill (not really possible)
• Challenge myself playing multiple accounts and doing all of the above with them (not possible unless using outlawed programs. In GW1 it was possible because game had much easier controls. GW2 is the only MMO that I have only one account in, normally I have 3 accounts…)

Sry from bringing this from the past, but this guy took the words right out of my mouth!! I’m sure a lot of people are feeling the same way =/
I still have hope that GW2 will have more roleplay than it has, just like they sad in the “Manifesto”…

I’m with you (if you read my history you will see it), but let’s see if we can find a middle ground with this unexpected approach.

If someone feels strongly enough about a subject, they will make a post about it. If they couldn’t be bothered to, then they probably isn’t too concern about the subject.

I’m late to the feedback party as usual. Just reiterating. I want my cliche big winding, non-straight forward, tough as nails spiraling castle and courtyard to climb its treacherous decaying ascend to fight off a higher power that’ll take actual effort and time to complete collaborated with my friends/family/guild to complete. (Last time I felt this was in Dragons Dogma.)

i beg — :P do not implement ingame poll, unless there is a way to turn it off. I would prefer a web based which i will (promise i will cos i do care) log in and fill up the survery at my will at my own time.
imagine every new path completed i am asked to answer to a poll omg

some sort of ingame system that provide a link to external webamail survey for the particular content will be great. i will definately put my view and feeback forward

Why not have the poll be an option at the login? That way it’s before you even log into the game, doesn’t get in the way of anything, and people won’t need to worry about it as they’re running around?

Actually, the first (and easiest) thing to be done should be splitting the suggestions forum up. It’s really hard trying to make suggestions there when most of the good ones get instantly swept away by the millions of “Why don’t we have Mounts”, “Why can’t I use pajamas as town clothes”, “I want this weapon in red instead of blue”, “Change asura camera angles”, and all the other fluff/delusional suggestions.

I’m shocked, but impressed and glad to come back and see all the responses from you Chris.

I think in-game polls could be good, but I think they would need more sophisticated choices than what you had in beta. I seem to remember answering how much I liked an event on a scale of 1-5, or something to that effect, which isn’t going to give you the depth of feedback that I think you need in most cases. I also don’t think they can replace actual interaction.

It’s really important for you to understand why players do or don’t like something. Plus, I think it’s important for us to be able to tell you “why” and feel that we’ve been heard. Your idea to have focused threads in appropriate forums is great. It bothers me when you (dev) start a feedback thread, only to lock or delete it without giving substantive feedback. You get pages and pages of responses and then, poof, it’s gone. Any response that shows you’re engaged, like asking questions or sharing your thought process is so much better. So, I’m really glad to see that you’re on board with more back-and-forth conversations.

Also, when you started “shooting from the hip,” I began to feel a lot better about what you have to say. The carefully-worded market-ese just sets off alarms. And, maybe it’s just me, but it seems that the cross-talk between players calmed down a lot when you started responding, which I think is really good. Your very presence seems to help the tone of the forums.

If you’re looking for suggestions for what to talk about, I’d like to see vertical/horizontal progression covered. The reason that I’m interested in that topic is because I liked playing alternate characters and the changes around progression really impacted that play style for me. I’ll explain more if that ever gets covered, but regardless of what happens, I’m looking forward to this new initiative and am hopeful it will work out. So, thanks!

Vayne.8563:

I think polls are important and a good idea. However, I worry about limiting polls to just the forum population. I think that might produce skewed results, due to the type of people that enjoy forums and the type of things those people enjoy.

I know from experience most people who read forums lurk and I know from experience most players never post on forums anyway.

The question is how do we get the most feedback from everyone, not just forum dwellers?

I said this earlier, but in long threads it’s easy for short posts to be overlooked. Any surveys by ANet should be sent to the login email of all accounts. This gives people who ignore the forums, even people who are gone but are potential returnees, the chance to offer their two cents.

Please forgive me for not believing in what you wrote. I have seen many a fantastic post go unnoticed and unheeded when it was a suggestion that could’ve improved the game immensely.

I have waited, waited, and waited for the suggestions, criticism, and helpful thoughts that other people give to you to be put into the game or fixed to a certain extent. I, myself, gave a few incredibly good solutions to issues that were never addressed, and it was never even looked at.

As such, I agree 100% with the first post. I will not believe it until I see it. I do hope I am proved wrong and that many suggestions are looked at thoroughly and given careful thought.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Enikuo.9205:

I’m shocked, but impressed and glad to come back and see all the responses from you Chris.

I think in-game polls could be good, but I think they would need more sophisticated choices than what you had in beta. I seem to remember answering how much I liked an event on a scale of 1-5, or something to that effect, which isn’t going to give you the depth of feedback that I think you need in most cases. I also don’t think they can replace actual interaction.

It’s really important for you to understand why players do or don’t like something. Plus, I think it’s important for us to be able to tell you “why” and feel that we’ve been heard. Your idea to have focused threads in appropriate forums is great. It bothers me when you (dev) start a feedback thread, only to lock or delete it without giving substantive feedback. You get pages and pages of responses and then, poof, it’s gone. Any response that shows you’re engaged, like asking questions or sharing your thought process is so much better. So, I’m really glad to see that you’re on board with more back-and-forth conversations.

Also, when you started “shooting from the hip,” I began to feel a lot better about what you have to say. The carefully-worded market-ese just sets off alarms. And, maybe it’s just me, but it seems that the cross-talk between players calmed down a lot when you started responding, which I think is really good. Your very presence seems to help the tone of the forums.

If you’re looking for suggestions for what to talk about, I’d like to see vertical/horizontal progression covered. The reason that I’m interested in that topic is because I liked playing alternate characters and the changes around progression really impacted that play style for me. I’ll explain more if that ever gets covered, but regardless of what happens, I’m looking forward to this new initiative and am hopeful it will work out. So, thanks!

Thanks to you all! Like i was saying it is a really enjoyable conversation and I hope it works out to.

And i am sure we will discuss horizontal/vertical progression (-:

Catch you all tomorrow.

Chris

Ok See Ya Tomorrow

ViRuE.3612:

There should be a name for the syndrome that Arenanet seem to be suffering (like Stockholm Syndrome for example) where a business dealing with the public begins to suffer resentment and anger towards its (paying) customer base. This syndrome is much more common in the gaming industry.

The relationship starts “all smiles” during the development process, begins to deteriorate at beta, further deteriorates at launch (mainly because some paying customers do not appreciate what was delivered, which is probably no-ones fault).

Then you have a major change in a largely settled game, e.g. ascended items, bloodlust buff, leagues or whatever which inflames a large section of the customer base. The customer has invested time and money in to the game (albeit less than the dev team has, but the customers time is their own and their money can be spent on whatever they like). During the initial period the customer develops a great deal of passion for the game and this change, well it feels like a betrayal.

The dev team, like the customers, are not perfect. They make mistakes, they pay too much attention to what the metrics tell them and largely ignore even the constructive posts on the forum. They fall back on the fact that the forum, reddit or whatever else is really just a small part of the community out there and most of that is full of jerks. Entirely missing the point that, by and large, happy gamers spend more time in game and unhappy gamers take to the forums to complain.

So when you see anger and disrespect it should tell you that you inflamed a great passion in these players but you let them down somehow. Those with the greatest investment (time, money, past games with Anet) will shout the loudest.

I’m a good example. I’m SO angry at the continuing WvWvW changes (siegewars, bloodlust, ill thought out leagues, ignoring GvG, giving PvE players everything on a plate, how long till we got ascended and when, if ever, can we get all ascended there etc). This is because I spent 3 – 4 hours playing WvWvW every day, bought three accounts and spent upwards of $1500 in the gem store.

I have no personal animosity to anyone at ArenaNet, even Devon Carver (I’m sure he is a reallly nice guy, I probably have more animosity to whoever decided he should be appointed to that job as it speaks volumes relating to the impotance Anet gives WvWvW in the grand scheme of things). But I reserve the right to speak my mind and get angry when so many of us have been beating our heads bloody against the Anet wall making constructive posts for over a year that are almost always ignored. Often there are good reasons, most of the time it comes across as it doesn’t suit “your vision” of WvWvW or you just don’t care enough.

So to all ArenaNet developers and staff – you really shouldn’t take it personally. Listen MUCH more to your paying customers, take metrics with a pinch of salt (hey check out Warhammer for how metrics went down for them?) and start putting real decision makers in the firing line instead of PR bots.

This community interaction thing is, after all, a two way street.

Best post in the thread.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

nethykins.7986:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

minbariguy.7504:

I want to echo the people who have recently been requesting in-game polls. Since currently there has been no real acknowledgement or response to player dissatisfaction with the pace of Living Story releases, I have chosen to simply not log in at all to avoid being counted as a “satisfied customer” in your concurrency metrics.

An in-game poll where I would have the chance to have my opinions actually be counted would be something worth logging in for.

I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Chris

But what constitutes as “Immersion”?

…you guys had said you didn’t want to do things like fight with town clothes because it “broke immersion”, but, like…can we say that the LFG tool breaks immersion? Not too sure we can if you were keen to add it

Good point. So for me immersion breaking would be a pop up appearing after an event completes or following beating a dungeon. But you raise an interesting point with LFG. Perhaps (and i am just brainstorming here) it could be a tab that you can open up to give feedback.

I will think about it some more. Keep the ideas coming.

Chris

Send a mail after a player has completed something that is under evaluation. The mail system is immersive itself, and the questions can even be phrased in an immersive way.

Example: Tequatl battle- You can either fail, or succeed during the event. Upon failure the player receives a mail, and upon success the player recieves a different mail.

Failure mail- Hello! This is the Asuran Statistics Task Force! Word of Tequotl’s success has reached us and we would like to ask you a few questions concerning it. Are you going to come back and try fighting him again? Do you feel that he is worth your time to fight? Do you hate teq because he’s an evil dragon, or because you know you’ll never beat him? Answers to these questions will help us build our task force, as well as give us more statistics. We always want more statistics here at the Statistics Task Force! With enough information, we will be able to do the complex math involved in deciding whether or not we might help you with future encounters.

Success Mail- Congratulations from the Asuran Statistics Task Force! News of your victory has already reached far and wide. We have a few questions concerning your encounter with Tequatl that will help us decide whether we want to help the community with more encounters in the future, or leave you to your own devices. Do you feel that Tequatl was worth your time? Will you fight him again? If you had to change one thing about the encounter, what would it be? Your answers will go into our complex algorithms, and that will help us decide if we will assist with future encounters, or leave you to your own devices. Thank you for your participation.

Granted I’m guessing ANet could come up with better names/questions/and style of writing, I just wanted to show that it is possible to ask for feedback without breaking immersion.

I would reference to my first post on this thread, Chris.

Galtrix.7369:

Please forgive me for not believing in what you wrote. I have seen many a fantastic post go unnoticed and unheeded when it was a suggestion that could’ve improved the game immensely.

I have waited, waited, and waited for the suggestions, criticism, and helpful thoughts that other people give to you to be put into the game or fixed to a certain extent. I, myself, gave a few incredibly good solutions to issues that were never addressed, and it was never even looked at.

As such, I agree 100% with the first post. I will not believe it until I see it. I do hope I am proved wrong and that many suggestions are looked at thoroughly and given careful thought.

And yet…I wonder how many of those posts you would have thought would improve the game that others might have thought would destroy the game.

That’s the problem with people in general. They think they know what will make the game good or make the game bad.

Do you remember how many people wanted better loot drops and more loot and champions to drop stuff? And now we have champion trains. Is that better? Does it make a better game.

Some people clearly thinks so…I’m not one of them.

Who is right…them or me?

You see posts that you think are great suggestions…but that doesn’t mean everyone will think they’re great suggestions or even the majority will.