Guild Wars 2

Gibson.4036:

I’m not sure about your emphasis on completion.

Shouldn’t someone who refines mats to 425, spends gold to craft to 450, does ascended mat refinement to 475, but quits because they decide the last 25 levels take an extreme amount of resources to level get a chance to give feedback on Weaponsmithing?

Shouldn’t someone who plays through the Gauntlet but can’t down Liadri be a part of the discussion on the Gauntlet?

They could differentiate between regular crafting (to 400) and ascended crafting.
As for the Gauntlet example, they would have a poll after each tier since the’res a difficulty jump between each. And the poll for Liandri could pop out after 10 tries or something similar.

The idea was : if you don’t participate you’re opinion on the quality is null. “But I know that I won’t like it” or “I gave it a try for 2 minutes” doens’t cut it. Let’s take ascended weapons : the would be poll would be on ascended crafting, not on ascended weapons. “I don’t need to get to 500 to know that I hate it. Getting to 450 was enough of a pain”…I’m not the one handling the polls, I just gave the idea, stop asking questions :p

This thread needs to be closed. It has derailed from it’s original post, and it’s so confusing atm (Game balance feedback, Suggestions, Ascended, Answering OP, Polls, etc…).

Let’s wait for the team to open threads on these specific things!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I agree, please do understand though that part of the problem really has been a lack of time. We work at a break neck pace and as i have said we need to carve out more time to do that. So the speed at which i am posting now is extremely difficult for most and will be difficult for me to but what i am hoping is we can work to build a communication process that is great for all involved.

There have been many many times i have wanted to post and i would imagine this is the case for the devs to but finding the time to give it the attention it deserves and also getting the courage to do so has been difficult.

This is something i want us to get back to and in answer to the question of why did the communication cadence lower in the first place, it is simply down to how busy everyone has been. You can take it or leave it in terms of believing this but i am telling you it is the truth (-:

I am really excited about rebuilding the communications bridge and this conversation in general.

Chris

Hi Chris,

First part of this answer really made me scared for you.

I really hope that you are not going to be burn out some day. It sounds that you have a really deadly and hectic speed with your work. And I bet you are not only one, who have to work that speed. Everybody in there are doing more work than any of you can handle. In long term nobody can have that kind of super powers that manage work like that.

You sounded like me ten years ago, and couple years after that I got burn out. That was worst time in my life, and I really don’t want that you will share my destiny.

Chris, and every employee in Arena Net, please, please, please, don’t hurt yourselves, don’t got burn out. You all should remember that your health is more important thing in your life. You all should try to relax time to time. Take a huge break, and then you can continue again with a fresh start.

I know, this is not answer to your first post, but I start to be worried about you guys, each and everyone in there. I only can imagine what kind of hectic speed you have to work in there, and then we, players, demand from you more attention.

You all have done really good work, and I bet you all will continue doing so.

Did it just became the time to love Guild Wars 2 or leave Guild Wars 2?

I believe in Love. Always Love.

Panic mode activated devs finally starts to communicate to save the game.

LHound.8964:

This thread needs to be closed. It has derailed from it’s original post, and it’s so confusing atm (Game balance feedback, Suggestions, Ascended, Answering OP, Polls, etc…).

Let’s wait for the team to open threads on these specific things!

Unlikely to happen and you know why.

First of all, I do appreciate dev interaction on the forums. I really do. But the opening post, it’s again too much like written by a bot to take to heart. Truly unique, the most exciting, we build worlds together, yes yes so do you and every other company who ever released a press release. I probably sound quite cynical here but I would much rather have the devs give it to us black and white, sharply, honestly – like the OP mentioned!

Secondly, the closing paragraphs of the OP did sound to me like it was the GW2 devs saying to GW1 veterans that the dream is over, manifesto is buried and this is the game we have now – play it if you want, but stop your whining – it’s not gonna be GW1 reborn.

And that’s fine. But define the terms here, be honest if you really mean to say so. I’ve waited GW2 for years and I still play, but it’s not what I expected. I will still have hope, though, that someday it’ll get better, and that’s why I’m here, at least, to share my concerns over a game that I waited for years and wanted to be great. It’s just unfortunate that my and GW2 dev team’s ideas of greatness sometimes don’t mix.

Alright, since it’s already been stated that the idea seems to be to start topics and touch on them individually, here are some topics I’d like to see discussed (to add the growing list.. perhaps a real list should be compiled and stickied somewhere with links to the discussions?)

1) Raids or the GW2 equivalent (I’m not talking about adding a gear treadmill, just instanced content for large groups of people.. In fact I’d much prefer this content scale from 5 – ? number of people so no one has to be excluded, if you have 6 people great! 47 people, awesome! Everyone can go.)

2) More weapon skills per weapon so there can be some choice

3) Capturing skills, elite or utility.. add some collecting in the game that matters like pets for rangers, but for everyone.

I’m sure I’d like to talk about more than that but those 3 are at the top of my list (#1 the most important to me).

what’s up with all those off-topic suggestions and wants? The topic at the moment is about the rotating questions and the polls. Not some “I want… blah”

I’d like to hear what the Devs feel about taking this idea of Collaborative Development a giant leap further by introducing infrastructure to support Community-Created aesthetic content: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Community-Created-Aesthetic-Content

Community content has been proven to be a more than viable model to sustain the demand for skins in hugely successful horizontal progression based games like TF2 and Dota 2. I firmly believe it could do wonders for the aesthetic progression issues Guild Wars 2 is facing as well.

Vayne.8563:

My point is, without knowing how many people or the percentage of people, the entire post becomes 100% meaningless. If two people want it, why should Anet consider it? It’s only worth posting if “enough people” want it.

Do you know how many “people” want it? Do you know a “majority” of the GW2 community want it? Off course you don’t. You are just making assumptions just like everyone else.

Which is why ANet should decide not you. They are the only one with data behind things like this, not you or I. You are not the judge of this or the gate keeper.

I have a suggestion for the “polls”. I don’t think the forums would be a few good idea. My understanding is most players do not use the forums. I myself avoided them for the first 6 months I played the game. Therefore, I believe the polls need to be taken in game, however, I agree with some of the other posters. They shouldn’t be a check the box, or on a scale of 1-5, you need an explanation in a players own words of what they do and do not like.

My suggestion is open up a research lab within Rata Sum, not Lion’s Arch. Put the little Asura’s to work, have a PvP, PvE, and WvW divisions within the lab. They should take the surveys which can be emailed to you for reading. The ideas you’d like to follow up on, make a forum thread for posting the original idea, and what you can/can’t follow up on out of it and start a discussion about it here. Give credit to the guy with the idea so when something pops new comes out in game that person can feel a sense of pride and say, “I influenced this update.”

Another thing I would like to suggest about the living story is that you have a whole world and one person is creating a ruckus. Who says one storyline has to happen at a time? The biggest compliant I’ve seen about Scarlet is that she does not seem to have anything to do with the dragons. Personally, I’m waiting to reserve judgement of Scarlet until her storyline plays out. If Scarlet has nothing to do with the dragons, I would like to suggest you start putting out another storyline to progress the dragon one. I feel the world would be more alive and dynamic if you didn’t just have one villain moving at a time. To do this you would have to lengthen the amount of time “temporary” content is in game which would address another common complaint.

I’ve suggested on another thread making us care about the npcs. One of the things I really like in console RPGs is you can do side quests with npcs to find out more about their background and what makes them tick. Perhaps Braham is responsible for his father’s death and that’s why Eir doesn’t seem to like him much. Maybe Rox is actually working for Scarlet. I don’t know anything about these characters but right now they feel like they had no life before the Scarlet saga began.

Kaon.7192:

I’d like to hear what the Devs feel about taking this idea of Collaborative Development a giant leap further by introducing infrastructure to support Community-Created aesthetic content: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/User-Created-Skins/

Community content has been proven to be a more than viable model to sustain the demand for skins in hugely successful horizontal progression based games like TF2 and Dota 2. I firmly believe it could do wonders for the aesthetic progression issues Guild Wars 2 is facing as well.

Sorry for the double post but just saw this and this would be really neat, in the Sims you can go download better hair and whatnot for the game. None of my Sims use hair that EA created because the users create better hair. Not sure how we’d go about getting the skins in game though. Perhaps replacing heart vendors generic skins with the user created ones, I always thought heart vendors would be a cool way to get unique skins, gives more of a reason to do hearts too.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

what’s up with all those off-topic suggestions and wants? The topic at the moment is about the rotating questions and the polls. Not some “I want… blah”

This whole thread is a writhing monstrosity of confusion, out of sequence replies and random gripes. There are so many collaborative development “chefs” here that the final “broth” is probably going to resemble stale Skritt bath water.

Xcom.1926:

goldenwing.8473:

The loudest and most frequent posters on the forum do not necessarily represent a good cross-section of the playerbase as a whole.

And the loudest and most frequent posts on the forum can represent a good cross-section of the playerbase as a whole. We don’t have any evidence either way, so it is silly to make such arguments, and try to dismiss it as such.

I agree. It’s silly to argue over whether anyone’s input is more important than any other’s. Hence the use of the phrase “not necessarily”. Which is why collecting data from a poll that reaches all/most players rather than a smaller portion from the forum is a good idea.

Polls are a good idea for general satisfaction and getting answers from direct questions across a much larger group of players than just those on the forums. These should only be the simple 1 – 5 value responses and not include text responses, as that’s what the collaborative feedback is for. Having written responses from a majority of users would totally clog up the channel. Along that same idea is that it should be very easy to get to, like an icon on the top menu. The little red exclamtion point icon could appear over it showing there’s a new poll available whenever a new one is dropped in, and disappear when the poll has been looked at, regardless of the user filling it out or not.

Traveller.7496:

First of all, I do appreciate dev interaction on the forums. I really do. But the opening post, it’s again too much like written by a bot to take to heart. Truly unique, the most exciting, we build worlds together, yes yes so do you and every other company who ever released a press release. I probably sound quite cynical here but I would much rather have the devs give it to us black and white, sharply, honestly – like the OP mentioned!

Secondly, the closing paragraphs of the OP did sound to me like it was the GW2 devs saying to GW1 veterans that the dream is over, manifesto is buried and this is the game we have now – play it if you want, but stop your whining – it’s not gonna be GW1 reborn.

And that’s fine. But define the terms here, be honest if you really mean to say so. I’ve waited GW2 for years and I still play, but it’s not what I expected. I will still have hope, though, that someday it’ll get better, and that’s why I’m here, at least, to share my concerns over a game that I waited for years and wanted to be great. It’s just unfortunate that my and GW2 dev team’s ideas of greatness sometimes don’t mix.

He didn’t mean to say something to GW1 players.
He said that un-constructive criticism counts zero in Anet’s HQ.
And that’s perfectly fine with me, because:
1. I don’t want the staff to run after the crybabies like Blizzard and end up screwing up everything. GW2 has a general direction and it must stick to it, if someone comes here demanding for total overhauls he can aswell go play another game.
2. If someone puts too much emotion and subjectivity into something it means he’s very biased on the subject and touched personally. People need to learn to take a long walk before they post on the forums, and start realizing Anet are not their nannies so that they cry and nanny comes giving you what you want.

Seriously, these months there has been such crying in this forum that even pushed Silent Guy Anet to post a wall of text.

Here is a rule that works for all business’; the more customers are collaborative, the more the sellers are willing to work out of passion, but the more customers are cynical and demanding, the more sellers are going to be cynical and money-targeting.

A good staff can only work good if backed by a good community.
Even the best worker will stop being passionate if their customers are unedicated and cynical.

They could announce forum posts in-game ahead of time to get more varied participants. There would still be selection bias, but more along the lines of the kind you get when you say “there’s free donuts in the break room.” Might break the forums though.

If the forums are a “vocal minority” not the whole community, than which players are you listening too?
The ones that never talk?

If you don’t listen to the players expressing their opinion through their passionate feelings because they are considered too rude instead of caring, then who are you listening to?
The ones who play 10 MMO in the same time and never exit the starter zones in any of them just because they are nice and polite?

If you really feel you are open enough with the answers to the community questions, then why don’t you make them clear like “yes” or “no” instead of using the so-well-known phrase “it is not out of the question but it is not in our current schedule either”?

Ronah.2869:

If you really feel you are open enough with the answers to the community questions, then why don’t you make them clear like “yes” or “no” instead of using the so-well-known phrase “it is not out of the question but it is not in our current schedule either”?

Companies, yes I’ll paint them all with one brush, tend to get allergic over crystal clear answers like “Yes” and “No”.
If they say No to something now then come back and do it, they’ll get backlash.
Corporate structures change, the guy in charge now who decreed No could drop off the face of the org chart and be replaced with a guy who says Yes now.

I’ve seen it with other games as well, they’ll go back on something and reply with “we’ve changed focus” or “re-evaluated” or “shift in goals” insert other phrasing.
Then they get backlash because apparently they “promised” something in a post or web article many years ago when the focus was different at that time.

Right now they may not be focused on tackling whatever problem someone asked them about, but they will get to it in the future. So that’s at least one reason why you might bet run-around answers as such.

Atlas.9704:

Ronah.2869:

If you really feel you are open enough with the answers to the community questions, then why don’t you make them clear like “yes” or “no” instead of using the so-well-known phrase “it is not out of the question but it is not in our current schedule either”?

Companies, yes I’ll paint them all with one brush, tend to get allergic over crystal clear answers like “Yes” and “No”.
If they say No to something now then come back and do it, they’ll get backlash.
Corporate structures change, the guy in charge now who decreed No could drop off the face of the org chart and be replaced with a guy who says Yes now.

You are right. No argue with that, but I would like A-Net to make a HUGE list from all the feedback they say they listen to and make people vote on it.
They should have the link to it the game launch window under a title “Give us your feedback”
They should put it after the account is logged in so he answers will be tied to the account and they can’t be voted again.
Every day there could be 5 ideas:
Please give a number from 1-5 to these ideas. you can only give each number once so choose carefully. These ideas will be randomized daily and if an idea comes again, you may vote o it but the computer will not re-count your vote because the account has already given the answer

Here is in example:
Please vote using the numbers 1-5 where 5 is the most wanted while 1 is the least favorite.
- weapon swap for elementalists []1, []2, []3, []4, [X]5
- un-bound item in BLTC []1, [X]2, []3, []4, []5
- air combat and spaceships []1, []2, [X]3, []4, []5
- fractals level cap raised [X]1, []2, []3, []4, []5
- option to disable the character’s voices[]1, []2, []3, [X]4, []5

In this way they show what they have collected from the feedback, they let players decide what is more important and everyone who is interested can vote and not be a specific site or forum.
Once a month we can receive and in-game mail from A-net reminding us to vote for the ideas

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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.

Yes. And please do have a running list of topics that are posted for us with a link updated next to each with a summary of finding/thoughts/something from each topic.

For example: A sticky thread in Announcements with a list like this
Discussion Topics for Feedback
1. The current pillars of the GW2 game design [link to statement with updated manifesto, and information from discussion thread]
2. Ascended items [link to FAQ on Ascended items based on discussion thread]
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. Groups larger than 5
8. Possible Dungeon Vanquishing
9. Skills (in each class subforum)
10. Class and item balance
11. Living world Storyline
12. Guild management tools

Chris Whiteside.6102:

2: Polls are generally a good idea. Discussion to continue about how they would work?

Places polls could appear
1. In-game popup – immersion breaking but reaches the most number of players
2. In-game icon (top left)- not immersion breaking but easily ignored
3. In-game mail – not necessarily immersion breaking but might just be ignored
4. To our login email address – reaches everyone but easily ignored
5. Login Screen – reaches everyone that plays regularly but unless it is prominent no one will notice it.
6. Forums – You’ll only get people who visit the forums and not a representative group

No matter where the polls go, you will never get a 100% return rate. Making it mandatory is a bad idea and you’ll have to realize the typical return rate on a survey/poll is about 20%. You will also need to hire a statistician or someone trained to sort through the data. Gathering answers is only one step, the results need to be sorted through and analyzed…this is especially important if there will be any free text boxes (rather than just multiple choice).

And finally, post the poll data (raw and analyzed) on the website for all to see.

I really hope that one of the first and foremost discussions regarding WvW will be the backwards way of working transfer costs. The community is pleading, and it seems to be falling on deaf ears Chris. If and when you guys have time please look into basing pricing off of ranks VS. over all population, the WvW population imbalance is getting worse by the day and many are getting to the point of “why bother” it seems.

Thanks for starting a great and productive thread. The downside is that it has grown way to large to read through all of it so please excuse if the ideas below have been given before.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We have, with your support, created a truly unique platform. One which is in its infancy, and one we build with the continued support, and collaboration of the community.

We do need to build out more time to be in dialog with you, specifically, following up on our own investigations of your suggestions and concerns.
We will work harder to achieves this.

Please allow me just give two small suggestions on improving the communication platform between players and developers.

Actually, I am an not part of the crowd that thinks that ANet is giving too few feedback to player concerns in the forums. Of course, more interaction is always nice, but from my perspective the dev presence is adequate. I do, however, have a major problem with the way feedback is given in the forums by many players. Most of the time, feedback is polluted by the very loudly voiced opinions of a few people who yet have to learn how to interact properly and constructively among adults. This makes it immensely painful for a user to look up information in the forums: Interesting threads vanish into oblivion as soon as they leave page one of a sub-forum, constructive posts get buried deep in piles of rather useless comments, and every thread has a quite large chance to derail at some point. (I understand you addressed this point in the opening post as well.)

However, I don’t think these are the result of an nonconstructive community (since I don’t think that the community — as a whole — is unreasonable; excluding maybe a misbehaving minority) . I rather do think this is an immanent flaw of forum systems that is as old as Internet newsgroups themselves. While I am not against the use of forum systems (they certainly have their advantages), I think It may be worthwhile to have a look at different technologies that allow for additional, constructive ways of providing user feedback. Two tools that have emerged recently and that can, in my opinion, provide very valuable feedback from a large group of users are the following tools:

a) Q&A websites — Those are websites that do not focus on discussions and the presentation of opinions, but on concrete questions and concrete answers. Answers are accepted by the questioner, and easily ranked by the whole community. Of course, the prime example of a very useful and established resource of this kind is stackoverflow.com . A GW2 Q&A website could be a very useful resource for technical support questions and any “players helping players” related content. They support that the same questions are not raised over and over again, and form an comprehensive, adaptive, and ever growing FAQ.

b) Community wishlists — The name may be misleading: I am talking about a version of a Suggestions forum, that does not focus on discussions and the presentation of opinions, but on the presentation of ideas and feature requests. Those ideas can be up-voted by the community to give an interesting insight in what is currently bothering the community as a whole. A very well working example of such a system is the community wishlist system at gog.com . Everybody in the gog community fully understands that this is not really a “wishlist”, and that most suggestions may never come to life. But they form a great way to submit suggestions in a visible way, as well as a great way for the dev team to signal when suggestions have been picked up, and they are far less prone to the noise provided by the vocal minorities.

As an aside: Since both tools do require a fair amount of community interaction, I’d say a community reputation system for participating constructively in the forums/Q&A-site/wishlist would be really helpful (e.g., “Forum-XP” similar to stackoverflow.com reputation score, and as a mode of gamification).

Also, I do understand that the “Q/A mode” and the “+1” features of this forum aim to provide some features that the systems above naturally provide. However, my observation is that both features do not succeed in giving a non-negligible amount of insight in the “state of the community”, nor do they help the reader to find interesting reads, and I consider them more or less failed attempts to structure user feedback.

Just my 2 cents, thanks for reading.

~MRA

Even though i haven’t been online for a few days because of illness which is annoying and happens to often, chronic pain and kitten.

I want to say thank you for a great game, great beta over a year ago! (already, kitten ) and it’s nice to see more communication with the forum goers.

Keep up the good work and ofcourse remember to keep it up

Hey, Chris … first, as many have mentioned, I wished to express not only my astonishment, but my gratitude, for you taking the time to not only reply, but to do so as frequently and as candidly as you have been … it is refreshing indeed, not only in regards to GW2, but in general to feel like we are able to converse directly with the powers-that-be in the hopes of forging new paths together.

In regards to the two topics set on the table for discussion, I think what would be optimal is a multi-pronged approach, as has been suggested by several folks.

• On the launch screen, there are updates on forum polls that are kicking off and/or about to end, with links that enable you to go directly to the poll in question. The polls would ideally need to be specific (or, at least, more specific than “what would you like to see changed in PvE?”), run for 48 hours, and be structured so that posters would understand from the get-go that devs wouldn’t be responding to the poll until the conclusion of the 48 hours. This would allow for every single person who plays to come to know not only that the forums exist, but that their opinions on the forums is being actively sought.
• In game “pigeon-mail” (or raven if you want to go all Game of Thrones), to coin the term. Some people will just blow right past the launch screen and never even realize updates to current polls are on there. So they’re in game and they complete content, whether it be a LS update, a dungeon, etc., and they receive a “pigeon-mail”, similar to what was used during beta. But, as another poster suggested, it could from the Asuran Response Initiative, congratulating the player for completing the content (or sympathizing with the player for a failure), and then asking them a set of questions, and allowing them to provide open-ended feedback. It won’t pop up and distract, the little icon at the top would just flash, and players would have the option to check it out or not, as they wished (alternately, in the options menu, they could disable it altogether if they wanted to).
• Most importantly of all, though, is that some type of response to both is given. The exact results would not have to be disclosed, but updates to the effect of “surveys on the latest chapter of the LS have been received and we are eagerly going through the awesome suggestions that were made for how the next chapter can be even better!”, or devs responding to the forum polls, even if it’s just to address a couple of posts in particular that were well-written/thought-out and letting everyone know that all of the input was valued and being considered.

Anyone, just wanted to chime in with my “two-bits”, and again, thanks, Chris, for taking the time to not only get this rolling, but to take the time away from your family and your own gaming time to chat it up with all of us.

Many people here are voicing concerns over having in-game polls and while I personally may not have an issue with them could I offer a quick suggestion as an alternative to both in-game polls (which can be obtrusive/ immersion breaking) and web polls (which will go ignored by most players).

Perhaps a good compromise would be to put the polls as part of the launcher for the game. To those not familiar with the term; the launcher is the small window that appears before the game itself launches that allows you to log in and download any updates to the client.

Also as another suggestion for the time frame of new polls, perhaps having new polls coincide with living story releases could be a good idea? That way there’s enough time for the majority of players to see and it coincides with new content/concerns.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Sorry for not getting back sooner, i have been rather busy this morning. Also thanks for continuing the brainstorm, so really good ideas.

So here are the current actions:

1: Chris to chat with the team about creating 3 threads in each main part of the forums. We should be able to start this of on Monday.
2: Chris to write the rules of engagement (-: Just laying out what we can and can’t talk about.
3: Peeps on this thread to continue to discuss the best way to prioritize the topics for each main area that will run for 2 days each cycle and then rotate.
4: Polls: I am going to raise this as a separate thread early next week to continue discussion as it is a complex topic.

I will try to respond as much as i can today and will update on my actions later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile let’s discuss how best to prioritize topics?

Chris

1. Things that are actually broken and breaking the game for certain players.

2. Some of the most-talked-about issues since launch that have not been addressed. Things like Zerker > everything else in PvE, Condition Damage limits, Ascended Gear/Vertical Progression, power creep in WvW, and artificial difficulty (high health/high damage) PvE content.

3. Class balance. If you don’t have this, no other changes you make to PvE, PvP, or WvW will matter.

4. Living World. This is the current “big focus” of ANet, and a very controversial topic among the community. It’s essentially the elephant in the room after what was mentioned already.

5. WvW. Outside of PvE content, this is the second-highest-populated part of GW2. Also highly controversial and deserves attention.

6. People are going to be mad that sPvP is this far down, but the least amount of players play, but it does require attention.

After this I’d say the topics get more difficult to categorize, but that’s a good start.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Sorry for not getting back sooner, i have been rather busy this morning. Also thanks for continuing the brainstorm, so really good ideas.

So here are the current actions:

1: Chris to chat with the team about creating 3 threads in each main part of the forums. We should be able to start this of on Monday.
2: Chris to write the rules of engagement (-: Just laying out what we can and can’t talk about.
3: Peeps on this thread to continue to discuss the best way to prioritize the topics for each main area that will run for 2 days each cycle and then rotate.
4: Polls: I am going to raise this as a separate thread early next week to continue discussion as it is a complex topic.

I will try to respond as much as i can today and will update on my actions later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile let’s discuss how best to prioritize topics?

Chris

Chris, again, thank you for taking time from your work schedule/life to keep communication going.

Your action item list above sounds excellent, especially #2 (so important to set those boundaries.)

Two days seems a little light for feedback, but given the amount of responses here, and again, the need to set those boundaries, I can see that being reasonable. As an experiment, is that open to refinement if needed?

And looking forward to next weeks topic on polls.

Thank you again.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Sorry for not getting back sooner, i have been rather busy this morning. Also thanks for continuing the brainstorm, so really good ideas.

So here are the current actions:

1: Chris to chat with the team about creating 3 threads in each main part of the forums. We should be able to start this of on Monday.
2: Chris to write the rules of engagement (-: Just laying out what we can and can’t talk about.
3: Peeps on this thread to continue to discuss the best way to prioritize the topics for each main area that will run for 2 days each cycle and then rotate.
4: Polls: I am going to raise this as a separate thread early next week to continue discussion as it is a complex topic.

I will try to respond as much as i can today and will update on my actions later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile let’s discuss how best to prioritize topics?

Chris

For #2, are we going to see some of those rules? That way we can try to avoid somethings that won’t/can’t be answered?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I will try to respond as much as i can today and will update on my actions later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile let’s discuss how best to prioritize topics?

Topics should be broken down into levels of importance based on how they affect the game and the enjoyment of such game.

-Topics dealing with stuff that literally breaks the game should be top priority. Connection/Disconnects/Server discussions/constant bugs that haven’t been tackled yet.

-Topics dealing with the direction of the game such as Living Story and such. After all if the game is stable, the next question for some would be “where are we going?” in the near future.

-Topics dealing with current gameplay situations should be afterwards. Zerk versus everyone else, why no Carrion or Valk items for whatever situations the more knowledgeable forumites can illuminate. That sort of thing, because once the game is stable and we know a rough map of where to go we need to know how the vehicle is handling now.

-From there I’d suggest topics based on the far future. Hopes and dreams you (ANet) have but can’t necessarily confirm yet. Hopes that you have dealing with us the players. This group is separated from the Living Story and near future stuff because its all theory.

That’s how I would hope the priority would go.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Sorry for not getting back sooner, i have been rather busy this morning. Also thanks for continuing the brainstorm, so really good ideas.

So here are the current actions:

1: Chris to chat with the team about creating 3 threads in each main part of the forums. We should be able to start this of on Monday.
2: Chris to write the rules of engagement (-: Just laying out what we can and can’t talk about.
3: Peeps on this thread to continue to discuss the best way to prioritize the topics for each main area that will run for 2 days each cycle and then rotate.
4: Polls: I am going to raise this as a separate thread early next week to continue discussion as it is a complex topic.

I will try to respond as much as i can today and will update on my actions later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile let’s discuss how best to prioritize topics?

Chris

Hi Chris,

I have posted this earlier but I feel it could be lost in sea of posts immediately after it. As this is something I feel very strongly about, here it is again, just in case.

Would something like this fit in your vision for Collaborative Development:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Community-Created-Aesthetic-Content

TL;DR: Give the community the tools and infrastructure, and we’ll make better skins at a faster pace than any professional team of artists anyone can possibly assemble, as has been proven in other games like Dota 2 and TF2. Players will have an endless supply of great skins to choose from and progress towards. Content Creators get acclaim and income from popular skin creations. And ANet gets a majority share of the revenue from selling skins on the Gem store, and can turn their in-house artists’ focus to creating timed content-related skins and artwork, which is a much better use of their time.

Hey again, Chris!
As far as prioritization, I would recommend something along the lines of how the company I work for operates … issues are dealt with as far as whether they have a:

(1) Global impact, affecting all system users
(2) Regional impact, affecting all system users in a specific region
(3) Local impact, affecting all system users in a specific location

For GW2, this could be looked at as:

(1) issues that are affecting all players, regardless of class, race, playstyle preference, etc., that adversely impact their experience, which can be reviewed/responded to on a game-wide level. And these could be determined by asking the simple question, does this affect all players?
(2) issues that are affecting a particular playstyle (WvW, PvE, sPvP), which could be reviewed/responded to at a more “regional” level. Again, determinable by whether or not the issue mentioned affects only a certain “region” of players.
(3) issues that are affecting a specific class or race, game element, etc.

This would allow for those concerns that affect every single player of the game to be addressed first, then those of particular regions of the game, and finally, those of specific aspects of the game. I’m not suggesting that concerns raised at a “local” level are any less important than those of “global” impact, but, by the same token, if it’s something that’s affecting every single player that logs in to play, I think that would bear a greater need to address/resolve.

Thanks again for keeping up the convo!

Kaon.7192:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Sorry for not getting back sooner, i have been rather busy this morning. Also thanks for continuing the brainstorm, so really good ideas.

So here are the current actions:

1: Chris to chat with the team about creating 3 threads in each main part of the forums. We should be able to start this of on Monday.
2: Chris to write the rules of engagement (-: Just laying out what we can and can’t talk about.
3: Peeps on this thread to continue to discuss the best way to prioritize the topics for each main area that will run for 2 days each cycle and then rotate.
4: Polls: I am going to raise this as a separate thread early next week to continue discussion as it is a complex topic.

I will try to respond as much as i can today and will update on my actions later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile let’s discuss how best to prioritize topics?

Chris

Hi Chris,

I have posted this earlier but I feel it could be lost in sea of posts immediately after it. As this is something I feel very strongly about, here it is again, just in case.

Would something like this fit in your vision for Collaborative Development:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Community-Created-Aesthetic-Content

TL;DR: Give the community the tools and infrastructure, and we’ll make better skins at a faster pace than any professional team of artists anyone can possibly assemble, as has been proven in other games like Dota 2 and TF2. Players will have an endless supply of great skins to choose from and progress towards. Content Creators get acclaim and income from popular skin creations. And ANet gets a majority share of the revenue from selling skins on the Gem store, and can turn their in-house artists’ focus to creating timed content-related skins and artwork, which is a much better use of their time.

OR even hold a skin contest that the winner gets to have their skin put in the game somehow

In no particular order:

1. Living World & Permanent Content
2. Character progression (vertical/horizontal/diagonal/whatever)
3. Revenue model (Microtransation vs Expansions)
4. Berserker gear vs Everything else
5. DE: Scaling Challenges & Rewards
6. Guild features
7. Personal Story (evolution/concerns)
8. Open World: reasons to replay the whole content.
9. RNG (I almost forgot this one xD)

Those are some of the suggestions that came to my mind for now.

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

No more than a Charr warrior with plushie quaggan backpack.

khani.4786:

Places polls could appear
1. In-game popup – immersion breaking but reaches the most number of players
2. In-game icon (top left)- not immersion breaking but easily ignored
3. In-game mail – not necessarily immersion breaking but might just be ignored
4. To our login email address – reaches everyone but easily ignored
5. Login Screen – reaches everyone that plays regularly but unless it is prominent no one will notice it.
6. Forums – You’ll only get people who visit the forums and not a representative group

Just give achievement points for answering the poll. Maximum participation guaranteed.

I just came across this post and I find this an interesting direction for ArenaNet to be taking. I hope they can find a way to work out this approach to communicating with the community. I’ve always been struck by the balance game developers need to manage between listening to the often contradictory community and presenting the game design envisioned by the company.

On the subject of prioritizing topics polls seem like a good way to determine which topics shoudl get the highest priority as well as finding the real topics of interest of the GW2 community rather than just the ones that occupy the attention of forum-posters.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

\
So to start with what i am suggesting we do is that we have a list of topics for each category, so for example:

PVE
1:Ascended Gear
2:Raiding
3: RNG
4: Roleplaying

For global issues such as bugs, balance etc we can open up more threads but lets just start with 3. Note my list above is just an example. So what i am asking you guys and gals to think about is how do you want to go about choosing the list for WvW, PVE, and PVP

Chris

Would a topic on the UI need a place? I was thinking about subjects like build-loading or ability bar schemes that might be of interest.

So I think someone from Anet should address the big problem that we all know exists in the current legendary system… precursors. Namely the fact that they are RNG based and and the supply among the servers is ridiculous.

First off I want to say that I do appreciate the hard work you guys put in and I really do enjoy the game. I know that changes take several sprints to implement, and you guys really work kitten constantly revamping content. But I think one gaping hole currently that I would like to see fixed in the near future is the precursor system.

To be honest I think everyone knows the current system has problems. For one the randomness of the drops. There is a guy in my guild who has gotten 3 precursor drops (including the elusive dusk) since he started playing the game (two of which happened within 4 weeks of one another). Meanwhile there are players in the guild that have been playing since beta that haven’t gotten even one precursor drop. While I congratulate the one player on getting three and becoming exceptionally wealthy and being able to craft two legendaries, this seems highly unfair.

Second let’s take a look at some stats on the supply and demand of these precursors (taken from the tp):

*bold*Dusk*bold*:
Current Price: 833g 98s
Supply = 8
Demand = 4913 (And these are just active buy orders, not those people that haven’t posted money yet, or don’t have enough)

*bold*Zap*bold*:
Current Price: 699g 99s
Supply = 4
Demand = 1148

*bold*The Legend*bold*:
Current Price: 790g
Supply = 11
Demand 2532

*bold*Spark*bold*
Current Price: 688g 68s 68c
Supply = 18
Demand = 1580

Etc. etc.

My point is not mainly to point out the exorbitant prices but the supply and demand of the item. The supply for these weapons is in the teens at best. And the entire population of Guild Wars players has to compete monetarily to get those few in existence. That’s what 3.5 million people (games sold)? Competing for 10 weapons in existence?

I guess my point, and I’m sure others will agree, is that the current system makes you want to pull you hair out. The other things that you have to assemble for your legendary are hard enough, but they you give us the task of basically buying a legendary item (because it is so rare) as well. And those gifted few who have been given 3 in their playing time ride out above the rest thanks to the random number gods.

I know that you guys pointed out that you want to make these weapons craft-able, but I for one am scared that this is going to be even more difficult than accumulating 800g by mindlessly grinding dungeons over and over again every night. And when is this going to happen? I know you guys announced the intended change a few months ago, so more communication now might help alleviate the tension.

And the thing is… there is a very simple solution to this problem. Increase the probability in the drop rate tables. This will increase the supply, drop the price to a normal level (200g?), and make people not so angry over the way this is currently set up. We all know that you play with drop levels (such as the not so subtle changing of ecto salvage rates when the price dipped on them to 17s per), so it is time to do it to precursors in the opposite direction.

Can I get a +1 on this from any other player that is ready to see quick changes in this mechanic?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Absolutely! The rules will be published at the top of each thread and are open to discussion and explanation. But please don’t be understanding with me if i don’t budge on some of them.

Chris

Thanks for the reply.
Are you telling us to get angry with you with that last sentence?

Pariah.8506:

Just give achievement points for answering the poll. Maximum participation guaranteed.

That’s not the reason people should partecipate in something like this.
As someone else already pointed out doing so would be risky because many people would just fill it quickly without even reading anything.

Erick Alastor.3917:

In no particular order:

1. Living World & Permanent Content
2. Character progression (vertical/horizontal/diagonal/whatever)
3. Revenue model (Microtransation vs Expansions)
4. Berserker gear vs Everything else
5. DE: Scaling Challenges & Rewards
6. Guild features
7. Personal Story (evolution/concerns)
8. Open World: reasons to replay the whole content.
9. RNG (I almost forgot this one xD)

Those are some of the suggestions that came to my mind for now.

I like this list, but number 3 is not needed, probably best left to them internally. However, it would be nice to know if we will be getting an expansion.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Sorry for not getting back sooner, i have been rather busy this morning. Also thanks for continuing the brainstorm, so really good ideas.

So here are the current actions:

1: Chris to chat with the team about creating 3 threads in each main part of the forums. We should be able to start this of on Monday.
2: Chris to write the rules of engagement (-: Just laying out what we can and can’t talk about.
3: Peeps on this thread to continue to discuss the best way to prioritize the topics for each main area that will run for 2 days each cycle and then rotate.
4: Polls: I am going to raise this as a separate thread early next week to continue discussion as it is a complex topic.

I will try to respond as much as i can today and will update on my actions later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile let’s discuss how best to prioritize topics?

Chris

I hope we don’t see anything from the beta form or polls inside the game or any kind of immersion will be gone, which does not bode well with many players including me.

I appreciate that aNet is prepared to try something but please make sure it doesn’t break immersion whatsoever.

I’m here to play a game, not test a product.

Chris, I think you meant “do” not “don’t”

Chris Whiteside.6102:

(…)

PVE
1:Ascended Gear
2:Raiding
3: RNG
4: Roleplaying

For global issues such as bugs, balance etc we can open up more threads but lets just start with 3. Note my list above is just an example. So what i am asking you guys and gals to think about is how do you want to go about choosing the list for WvW, PVE, and PVP

Chris

Food for thought, why not start with something that ‘you’ are most comfortable talking about or think you might have the most to say about / most mutual beneficial and we take it from there? Could also be a weekly (or monthly) poll with three options what to talk about next.

[/quote]
So to start with what i am suggesting we do is that we have a list of topics for each category, so for example:

PVE
1:Ascended Gear
2:Raiding
3: RNG
4: Roleplaying

For global issues such as bugs, balance etc we can open up more threads but lets just start with 3. Note my list above is just an example. So what i am asking you guys and gals to think about is how do you want to go about choosing the list for WvW, PVE, and PVP

Chris
[/quote]

I agree. Those first 3 points are major things for discussions in my opinion :-)