Guild Wars 2

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Ah! Now I get it. (Sokath his eyes uncovered!)

I’m at a disadvantage with PvP so I’ll not even attempt to list anything there, as for WvW I only knew a part of it just for map completion.

WvW:
1. Interaction with PvE, or “Why should PvE’ers care?”

PvE:
1. Living Story (and the Lore implementation as suggested by GussJr.1643)
2. Class balance
3. Personal Story (The Orders within if I need to be specific)
4. Soulbound versus Accountbound
5. Open world raid, such as Tec and the invasions
6. Home Instances
7. Dungeons
8. Guild Halls

Those were the top 8 I could think of for PVE. If you needed a smaller list, such as top 5, I’ve organized them by how important I would like to discuss them.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Atlas.9704:

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.

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

Hm, now that is a bugger of a question. Lets see. I know it seems to be that we are just starting more and more threads, but one way I think is post a stickied thread that says “post collab topics here” and people should post just one liner replies (Ex, I want to talk about ascended), in which case, if someone sees a post they like, they upvote it instead of reposting the same idea, or post something different ("I want to talk about world bosses).

edit: and of course, have this just run a day or two

I would add one thing to Atlas’ list, and that would be Lore Implementation in regards to the Living Story

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

Those are a great choice for PvE topics. I’d strongly add class balance in there as well but you see it as a global issue. When the discussion on balance does come up, though, it should include seperate discussions on class balance for each game mode as many classes (such as rangers) have an entirely seperate meta in each mode, making balance discussions highly difficult.

Interesting to see the community struggle (not in a bad way) to collaboratively prioritize the issues. It may be occurring to you that this is exactly what ArenaNet has to do every day and it ain’t the easiest thing in the world.

It’s wonderful to see the dialogue and respect shown increase by an order of magnitude here over how the forums normally have been in the past. This is a most welcome change.

Chris, can someone explain (and maybe sticky) the intent behind these living story updates that have content disappearing so rapidly? When is the next content update like Nov 2012 happening that introduces a new area, map, dungeon, etc.? I hope some of this content is being re-used (it seems to be 99% festivals so I don’t see why it couldn’t be tweaked and re-used annually, in which case a timeline could be posted in advance!)

Sorry, not really the spot, but I’m just trying to get back into the game (haven’t had much time lately due to a new baby) and this has been frustrating me today.

Thanks,

Alright, so looking at it from that perspective, I think we could further address it as which issues in PvE affect all PvE players?

1) Living Story — multiple posts are out there, not only concerning the frequency with the updates, but the contents of the updates, ranging from thoughts on the quality of the story/lore, the actual mechanics of the various instances/missions included, to the number of achievements that must be completed in a finite amount of time to obtain the shinies.
2) Ascended Gear — while personally its inclusion in the game doesn’t phase me one way or the other, given the number of threads on this topic, it is definitely controversial and bears further discussion/review. With the cat out of the bag, so to speak, I don’t believe it could be removed from the game completely, nor do I think that’s necessary, but further discourse on how it could be obtained would assuredly be welcomed.
3) RNG — with each LS update, holiday, festival, etc., has come the quest for new shinies, whether they be backpacks, weapon skins, minis, helmets … but the backlash over those items being locked completely behind RNG chests has, at times, reached near deafening levels on the forums. Coupled with many of the items being account bound has left many folks without an option to obtain them at all, since they’re luck is either atrocious or they refuse to spend gold/gems on getting the chests in the first place. How the new shinies that become available in-game is definitely something that could be looked at, as well the drop rates for different mats, rares, exos, percursors, etc.

Those would be my suggestions for now, since they do all affect a significant degree of the PvE playerbase … obviously those aren’t all the issues, and may not even be ones that anyone else feels are all that important, but from wandering through the various threads on the forums, they definitely do seem to weigh rather heavily on more than a few players’ minds.

Thanks again!

I’ve debated with myself for some time whether or not I wanted to write a post on this forum about the current method of living story updates. This thread seems to be asking for community feedback, thus it would be silly to waste a golden opportunity.

Some context: My husband and I are Canadian (both of us play the game). My husband recently accepted a job across the pond in the UK. I’m sure you can imagine the long, complicated process of moving from one country to another, with an ocean in between. Our moving process has been going on for almost two months now.

In terms of living story updates that’s four updates. Four. Two of them we missed completely due to lack of Internet connectivity. One of those updates happened to introduce the main antagonist.

Now here’s where I could complain about all the items and rewards we both missed an opportunity to earn, but I’m not going to. Because in the vast scheme of things, that bothers me less than missing the story.

At this point, I have no idea what’s going on in the living world story. I was sketchy on it at best (and I’ll go into that in a moment) but at this point I’m totally lost. I don’t know who Scarlet is. I have no idea what she’s up to or what she’s been doing, nor any concept of why. And one of the questions I’m beginning to ask myself is; should I even care? (And as a writer I can tell you, it’s never good when your audience starts to ask this question)

I understand that you want to create a living breathing world. What writer, what creator, doesn’t? BUT, you’re trying to create that world within a game, which people have to schedule time for around their real lives (not the opposite way). I hate to say it, but I feel punished for having to make a major life-changing move because there’s no way for me to catch up on the story I missed.

I could read a wiki, or a blog or a walk-through, I suppose. But I’m not going to. I play games, especially RPGs, to experience the story. I don’t want to read pages and pages of wiki background lore. I don’t even want to read the short stories on your website (though I’m sure someone put a lot of effort into them and they’re perfectly lovely).

I want to experience the story IN the game.

Arena net, you build such beautiful worlds. You create such fantastic lore. When it comes to setting the stage, you’re fantastic at it. But when it comes to utilizing those foundations, somehow you fall short. It seems so often players have to resort to outside sources to fill in the gaps they can’t find in the game. It’s my biggest complaint, overall, about GW2.

What gets me the most is I don’t understand how a game which has a system already built into it to allow private story telling (personal story instances), can’t seem to find a way to catch people up on living story when they miss it. I get that maybe you don’t want people playing past events because they’re ‘in the past.’ I get that. But in the real world there are lots of ways for me to ‘experience’ past events – people make movies, for example. And your game has lots of opportunities to fill in the blanks this way too. Break the fourth wall a tiny bit. Have the Asura make some kind of interactive holographic re-enactment of past story points. Go crazy. Bring back the old dungeons with holographic bosses. Do something to keep your story in the game, even if you want the events to be temporary.

And please, please don’t say this is coming in the form of fractals. As someone who is probably never going to be good enough at this game to play fractals with any regularity, I can honestly say that doesn’t feel good enough. Give me an instance I can do with my friends. Make it cheesy if you want, I don’t care. But please let me live your story.

i dont really have much to say about the current topic of pve atm, but in general about how you guys communicate with us on the forums:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. The initial post and other posts i have done have always come from the heart, i am very passionate and really believe in everything i say. I guess the difference between those posts and the ones i am doing now is that i would spend about 15 minutes working on them before posting, whereas on these i just post. To be honest i much prefer shooting from the hip and if this form of communication is acceptable then i am all for it.

Regarding verbiage like ‘Pioneering’ and ‘Building Worlds’ i really mean that. I am a huge cyberpunk fan and the ability to actually be in a space that is making many of that fiction become reality is just awesome. So please forgive me when i speak like that, because that’s why i do what i do and i love it (-:

Regarding Conditions i will get back to you on the thread if that’s ok?

Chris

im seriously cool with you guys shooting from the hip with your posts.

but yall silenced the only dev who actually seemed (to us) to give a kitten about what we thought (josh foreman). his blog about the situation was heartbreaking. like ok, youre talking to us now the same way josh did about SAB. when can we expect you to get silenced?

^ and my attitude and expectations about this are a big problem when it comes to how you guys communicate with us. i shouldnt be expecting you to just stop, and i go to an unrelated site a week later and read a blog post about how you got reprimanded. josh should never have been silenced for being “too real” on the forums, but he was. its not that i think you dont care about the game, im sure you do give a kitten … but it seems like as a company you treat this forum like you would a rabid dog — chain it up in the back yard, toss it table scraps to keep it alive, but never go near cuz u gon git bit.

StarbornStriker.6493:

I’ve debated with myself for some time whether or not I wanted to write a post on this forum about the current method of living story updates. This thread seems to be asking for community feedback, thus it would be silly to waste a golden opportunity.

Some context: My husband and I are Canadian (both of us play the game). My husband recently accepted a job across the pond in the UK. I’m sure you can imagine the long, complicated process of moving from one country to another, with an ocean in between. Our moving process has been going on for almost two months now.

In terms of living story updates that’s four updates. Four. Two of them we missed completely due to lack of Internet connectivity. One of those updates happened to introduce the main antagonist.

Now here’s where I could complain about all the items and rewards we both missed an opportunity to earn, but I’m not going to. Because in the vast scheme of things, that bothers me less than missing the story.

At this point, I have no idea what’s going on in the living world story. I was sketchy on it at best (and I’ll go into that in a moment) but at this point I’m totally lost. I don’t know who Scarlet is. I have no idea what she’s up to or what she’s been doing, nor any concept of why. And one of the questions I’m beginning to ask myself is; should I even care? (And as a writer I can tell you, it’s never good when your audience starts to ask this question)

I understand that you want to create a living breathing world. What writer, what creator, doesn’t? BUT, you’re trying to create that world within a game, which people have to schedule time for around their real lives (not the opposite way). I hate to say it, but I feel punished for having to make a major life-changing move because there’s no way for me to catch up on the story I missed.

I could read a wiki, or a blog or a walk-through, I suppose. But I’m not going to. I play games, especially RPGs, to experience the story. I don’t want to read pages and pages of wiki background lore. I don’t even want to read the short stories on your website (though I’m sure someone put a lot of effort into them and they’re perfectly lovely).

I want to experience the story IN the game.

Arena net, you build such beautiful worlds. You create such fantastic lore. When it comes to setting the stage, you’re fantastic at it. But when it comes to utilizing those foundations, somehow you fall short. It seems so often players have to resort to outside sources to fill in the gaps they can’t find in the game. It’s my biggest complaint, overall, about GW2.

What gets me the most is I don’t understand how a game which has a system already built into it to allow private story telling (personal story instances), can’t seem to find a way to catch people up on living story when they miss it. I get that maybe you don’t want people playing past events because they’re ‘in the past.’ I get that. But in the real world there are lots of ways for me to ‘experience’ past events – people make movies, for example. And your game has lots of opportunities to fill in the blanks this way too. Break the fourth wall a tiny bit. Have the Asura make some kind of interactive holographic re-enactment of past story points. Go crazy. Bring back the old dungeons with holographic bosses. Do something to keep your story in the game, even if you want the events to be temporary.

And please, please don’t say this is coming in the form of fractals. As someone who is probably never going to be good enough at this game to play fractals with any regularity, I can honestly say that doesn’t feel good enough. Give me an instance I can do with my friends. Make it cheesy if you want, I don’t care. But please let me live your story.

You and your friends should be able to do fractals 1… The difficulty scales up with the number, but I’ve done it back when it was released and I wasn’t level 80 yet (they were guesting players up to level 80 for its release). Its really neat to see the different stories.

GussJr.1643:

I would add one thing to Atlas’ list, and that would be Lore Implementation in regards to the Living Story

Good catch, dunno if that should be a subset to it but I’ve added it all the same.

Issues that need fixing…

Expansions
More indepth LFG system
Trading System (massively inflated prices on some, but LOADS of items on sell prices under vendor price)
International District (Bring the community back together)
PvP ranking system account bound
Craftable Precursors

There is more to the list on my desk, but they are personal things

Cantha and Elona are a must, but make them EXPANSIONS, not stand alone, even unhappy, most of us will still buy them for the areas and new places to see

GW1 Armour skins… Now c’mon Chris, you must admit having a female dervish armour in the armour vendors hut in WvW is a horrible tease…

Lonesamurai.4852:

Issues that need fixing…

Expansions
More indepth LFG system
Trading System (massively inflated prices on some, but LOADS of items on sell prices under vendor price)
International District (Bring the community back together)
PvP ranking system account bound
Craftable Precursors

There is more to the list on my desk, but they are personal things

Cantha and Elona are a must, but make them EXPANSIONS, not stand alone, even unhappy, most of us will still buy them for the areas and new places to see

GW1 Armour skins… Now c’mon Chris, you must admit having a female dervish armour in the armour vendors hut in WvW is a horrible tease…

If you really don’t want to charge us for them, just calling them expansions may appease a few people

Lonesamurai.4852:

Issues that need fixing…

Expansions
More indepth LFG system
Trading System (massively inflated prices on some, but LOADS of items on sell prices under vendor price)
International District (Bring the community back together)
PvP ranking system account bound
Craftable Precursors

There is more to the list on my desk, but they are personal things

Cantha and Elona are a must, but make them EXPANSIONS, not stand alone, even unhappy, most of us will still buy them for the areas and new places to see

GW1 Armour skins… Now c’mon Chris, you must admit having a female dervish armour in the armour vendors hut in WvW is a horrible tease…

Maybe we can look forward to seeing the Dervish in the future ? /pray

Nuzt.7894:

Lonesamurai.4852:

Issues that need fixing…

Expansions
More indepth LFG system
Trading System (massively inflated prices on some, but LOADS of items on sell prices under vendor price)
International District (Bring the community back together)
PvP ranking system account bound
Craftable Precursors

There is more to the list on my desk, but they are personal things

Cantha and Elona are a must, but make them EXPANSIONS, not stand alone, even unhappy, most of us will still buy them for the areas and new places to see

GW1 Armour skins… Now c’mon Chris, you must admit having a female dervish armour in the armour vendors hut in WvW is a horrible tease…

Maybe we can look forward to seeing the Dervish in the future ? /pray

Dervish coming back as an Elonan profession makes sense

Xcom.1926:

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.

I agree, but I feel that just counting on the living story + microtransation would make it part of the players less attractive for them.
Clearly devs need to take in high consideration paying players (or at least I think it would be logic to do so) and right now even if those players strongly contribute to the support of the game they are just a segment of the whole community.
Instead, (imo) through expansions the voice of each player would have the same importance.
But again you are right, it should be something that they need to decide internally :S

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

Such in games polls could be made optional. That way, players who do want to give feedback on features would be given the tools to do so.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

WvW:

1- Population imbalance / Server Transfer options / Matchup system
2- Ways to encourage open-field fighting and small group play
3- Power creep and stat equality
4- Rewards / Loot / Badge of Honor items
5- Map Design
6- Other core functionality (Commander system, upgrade system, etc)

My guild would like to add Living Story – Permanent Content – Expansion to any list of PvE discussion. Not as three distinct topics, but as a discussion about trade-offs, direction, desires.

I love the idea of collaborative development, however in order for it to work it needs some structure.

My suggestion is for the Devs to propose topics for discussion to get community feedback on how to tackle specific issues.

Here’s an example, lets say the development team is working out a plan of action on how to tackle dungeons. Create a thread with the specific issues that the development team is attempting to tackle, give us some examples of some of the ideas that are being considered by the team as well as the general scope of the project, and then let the community contribute feedback on how they would like to see that particular issue addressed.

With this form of structure, the dev team can get feedback on ideas that are more focused and relevant to areas of the game you are currently addressing. There are plenty of avenues open right now for the random suggestions that fall outside of this, and those should remain open, however I think more focused discussions like this will greatly help the tie in with the idea of ‘collaborative development’ and help the developers get far more valuable and relevant feedback.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

2: Chris to write the rules of engagement (-: Just laying out what we can and can’t talk about.

Why i got the feeling that this will end in a boatload of “we are working on it”, “we want to do that” and “nothing is off the table”?

iniside.4736:

2. This is how poll should work:
http://www.planetside2.com/roadmap
https://www.everquestnext.com/round-table

Just move it to ingame, so more people will be willing to participate.
Polling each event, and each action in game is pointless, as people will quickly just start pressing random buttons just to get rid of that window.
But posting roadmap of features that are going to be added and polling which should have priority or how they should turn around, us good idea.

Yes, yes, people wil lcomplain if you don’t add features they see on roadmap. My advice ? Screw them. Noone that have at least quater of brain will treat the seriously.

I agree with this, this is how it should be done.

Valanga, I think we should all try and keep an open mind, at this point. This is a big step in the right direction. Let’s see how it unfolds over time.

I just want to add a few questions:

If there is a real dialog between the community and the developers, how do the other language forums get integrated into this process? Is that even possible?

I would as well ask you to take into consideration that there are people who don’t post on the forums, simply because what is a problem for someone does not necessarily have to be one for someone else. I usually don’t post in every thread when I think something is “ok” for example. Still a change could have an influence on them.

Instead of a poll I would rather suggest something like a monthly survey, which is longer but more detailed. Such a survey could also have a special topic for each month, such as class balance, living story etc..

Last but not least I would ask you to keep in mind that there are several different playstyles and different people. I’m saying this because this “who is the majority” – game seems to be quite popular in this forum, but I think that different people have different wishes and I think as well that the game looses alot of it’s variety if everything is just based on the wishes of “the” majority. There should be niches for several groups.

Thank you

Taking a few ideas mentioned here, and some of my own, I have mocked up an idea of how in-game surveys could work.

1. Login Screen

(See first and second image below)

- When players log in for the first time after the survey goes live, they are presented with a prompt that asks them to choose whether they would like to participate in the survey or not.

- If players choose not to participate, they are shown a prompt that explains that they can turn on the survey in settings.

2. In-game survey

(See last two images)

- Once a player has opted into the online survey a new icon shows up on the menu bar.

- When a player completes an event that has a survey attached to it, they will be prompted with an alert icon (similar to when new mail comes), so they can see they have a new survey to fill out.

This could also be accompanied by a carrier pigeon, or some other animal.

- When players have time, they can open the survey panel and fill out the surveys they’re interested in (or skip the ones they’re not).

- Surveys are only displayed once, and once they’ve been submitted they disappear from the list, unless they’re updated and require a new survey (Eg. Tequatl)

*See images below for more

No ingame pop ups, please.

I agree with others that bugs come first, in wvw, pvp and pve. Maybe give us a bug report with the game updates and include info on non resolved issues, just so we know they haven’t been forgotten. I know you guys are working on more than we hear about. Those things, since they are meant to be fixed, I don’t feel we need to collaborate on, as such…. but progress notes would be amazing.

Worst case just email the surveys to us, heaven knows I get emails about latest changes from GW2 already.

I like Crazylegsmurphey’s suggestion…to tag on to that, what if there was a single AP attached to filling out each survey? 1 AP per account, per survey, under the heading ‘Collaborator’ – this would be an endless achievement, similar to Agent of Entropy, but would help disuade many people from ignoring a survey that would gather valuable player input?

If the surveys were monthly, this could be part of the monthly achievement, or daily rotation, similar to visiting the Laurel Vendor?

I know many of the player base dislike in-game pop-ups, but we may have to make concessions if in the long run it helps to strengthen the game as a whole.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

~snip~

I think those are definitely along the lines of what a lot of the suggestions have been and applaud you for mocking those up … that way people have the option to participate or not as they so desire, but provide the tools there, in-game, for those to do wish to contribute their opinion on various aspects of the game.
+1

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Taking a few ideas mentioned here, and some of my own, I have mocked up an idea of how in-game surveys could work.

1. Login Screen

(See first and second image below)

- When players log in for the first time after the survey goes live, they are presented with a prompt that asks them to choose whether they would like to participate in the survey or not.

- If players choose not to participate, they are shown a prompt that explains that they can turn on the survey in settings.

2. In-game survey

(See last two images)

- Once a player has opted into the online survey a new icon shows up on the menu bar.

- When a player completes an event that has a survey attached to it, they will be prompted with an alert icon (similar to when new mail comes), so they can see they have a new survey to fill out.

This could also be accompanied by a carrier pigeon, or some other animal.

- When players have time, they can open the survey panel and fill out the surveys they’re interested in (or skip the ones they’re not).

- Surveys are only displayed once, and once they’ve been submitted they disappear from the list, unless they’re updated and require a new survey (Eg. Tequatl)

*See images below for more

kitten , those images look great, I’d opt in if it looked like that

Also, a simple forum search would provide the devs with some common issues that are very frequently discussed, the fixing of/progress with ANY of which would make people very happy. Pull out the ten topics that seem to be driving people the craziest, volumewise, and use those to start with. It would be plenty to start with.

Living Story/Lore implementation is prob the only thing I’m personally fussed about, esp as it’s the main focus right now

Having worked as a survey programmer before I’m of mixed minds when it comes to awarding AP.
On the bright spot it is a way to reward and show the player that the surveys do have some meaning, thus a stimulus to actually do one.
On the other hand you could just as easily have people put down all 1s and 5s, happy to do satisficing just to get extra points. Even though the award might be minimal at best, it still is a reward for just spamming answers quickly.

diamondgirl.6315:

Also, a simple forum search would provide the devs with some common issues that are very frequently discussed, the fixing of/progress with ANY of which would make people very happy. Pull out the ten topics that seem to be driving people the craziest, volumewise, and use those to start with. It would be plenty to start with.

The forum search finally works now? Color me shocked.

Also: Crazylegsmurphy.6430, excellent mock ups. I applaud that effort!

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:

My priorities:

Overarching
1. The current pillars of the GW2 game design
2. Class and item balance
3. Skill lag
4. Guild management tools

PvE
1. RNG in all its forms.
2. Ascended weapons/items and ways of obtaining them
3. fortnightly updates and living world
4. The Trading Post/BLTC
5. Precursor crafting
6. Ascended backpieces

WvW
1. Character bound world XP for WvW and WvW masteries
2. Player grouping specifically about larger groups than 5
3. Ways of reducing the WvW zerg
4. Guild v Guild
5. WvW population disparity and the match up systems
6. the bloodlust buff for WvW

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

snip

This x1000. I love the mockups you did of this. Very well put together. Though I think there would be an issue if the survey had multiple pages and it used a ‘next’ or ‘skip’ button like the proposed interface suggests.

That issue being that users could not go back and change an answer to more accurately reflect their thoughts on the subject. Since the surveys will likely not be extremely long or requiring multiple pages a scroll bar would probably work better in this scenario with visual dividers built into the list to help break up the questions by topic. Like so…

Question Group 1
Question 1: Question?
Question 2: Question?
Question 3: Question?
_________________

Question Group 2
Question 1: Question?
Question 2: Question?
Question 3: Question?

I think the OP is very indicative of how rudderless Arenanet has become. It’s a confused stream of consciousness exercise that doesn’t do anything but make them seem extremely defensive, while defending their unwillingness to address the things the community feels most strongly about.

It’s just a really, really weird communication to make to your playerbase.

Living story has not been an opportunity, it has been a failure, one that has squandered almost completely a year’s worth of content related development. While many of us pray for some sign of that realization from ANet and a much needed mea culpa addressing that failure, we continue to get deflection.

Living Story has not advanced a sense of a Living World. It just hasn’t. Dynamic Events are the core content of the game and if you want a Living World, that content has to continually change, evolve and expand.

A year ago, Colin talked about doing just that, with the possibility of doubling or tripling the number of DEs in the world, across all zones. Now that would have been a valid use of resources and would have been a very successful enterprise, even if you had fallen short on the projected quantity of events.

It’s really impossible to carry out any other dialogue with you guys if you continue to deflect away from this core issue. Feature build out and other incremental game improvements are pretty much pointless in context with the greater failure of the studio to acknowledge the Living Story mistake and present a strategy for getting world content creation and expansion back on track.

Continuing to push and brag about the Living Story debacle would be like a car company bragging about producing the only pedal powered automobile in a market where no one wants to peddle an automobile. Being a special snowflake doesn’t buy you anything when that snowflake is ugly, tarnished and toxic.

If your player base often seems passionate in their expression of frustration, it’s because it’s so hard to fathom how the studio that produced the incredible core game could have pulled such a 180 with year one development, while continuing to deny what is blatantly obvious to so many others.

Logic and passion have failed to move you, so now I’m wondering how hard the game will need to crash before you guys wake up to reality?

Sondergaard.8469:

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

snip

This x1000. I love the mockups you did of this. Very well put together. Though I think there would be an issue if the survey had multiple pages and it used a ‘next’ or ‘skip’ button like the proposed interface suggests.

That issue being that users could not go back and change an answer to more accurately reflect their thoughts on the subject. A scroll bar would probably work better in this scenario, with visual dividers built into the list to help break up the questions by topic. Like so…

Question Group 1
Question 1: Question?
Question 2: Question?
Question 3: Question?
_________________

Question Group 2
Question 1: Question?
Question 2: Question?
Question 3: Question?

Thanks.

I assumed there would be a scrollbar to quickly move up and down the survey. The skip would be to skip the survey, not the pages.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Taking a few ideas mentioned here, and some of my own, I have mocked up an idea of how in-game surveys could work.

1. Login Screen

(See first and second image below)

- When players log in for the first time after the survey goes live, they are presented with a prompt that asks them to choose whether they would like to participate in the survey or not.

- If players choose not to participate, they are shown a prompt that explains that they can turn on the survey in settings.

2. In-game survey

(See last two images)

- Once a player has opted into the online survey a new icon shows up on the menu bar.

- When a player completes an event that has a survey attached to it, they will be prompted with an alert icon (similar to when new mail comes), so they can see they have a new survey to fill out.

This could also be accompanied by a carrier pigeon, or some other animal.

- When players have time, they can open the survey panel and fill out the surveys they’re interested in (or skip the ones they’re not).

- Surveys are only displayed once, and once they’ve been submitted they disappear from the list, unless they’re updated and require a new survey (Eg. Tequatl)

*See images below for more

+1

morrolan.9608:

iniside.4736:

2. This is how poll should work:
http://www.planetside2.com/roadmap
https://www.everquestnext.com/round-table

Just move it to ingame, so more people will be willing to participate.
Polling each event, and each action in game is pointless, as people will quickly just start pressing random buttons just to get rid of that window.
But posting roadmap of features that are going to be added and polling which should have priority or how they should turn around, us good idea.

Yes, yes, people wil lcomplain if you don’t add features they see on roadmap. My advice ? Screw them. Noone that have at least quater of brain will treat the seriously.

I agree with this, this is how it should be done.

Round table of everquest next is actualy awesome thing. And the facts that you can also wright your opinion directly to them and that they are actualy responding in videos makes it even better.
Still i will be very pleased if we will have just place on forum where we will put our feedbacks and they will respond to it.

I think you could make a very immersieve in game poll if you just gave it a simple story like…

Grepp, just another asuran jealous of Moto’s succes is trying to create the Mega adventure box. The mega adventure box will focus on the history of the world of tyria, in particular the other four races, rather than teaching values and such like the super adventure box. The first chapter of the Mega adventure box will be about human history, like the guild wars. now Grepp is asking your help, for which you will be compensated, answering questions about how you think the mechanics of the mega adventur box should work.

then maybe after using this for a month or two to get information you could close it off by either actually implementing it or by letting it be a big flop.

it might ofcourse not be so easy to then have a propper survey in the game that feel like a part of it idk about that

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

So the first topics from this list will be on, on Monday? I guess an ingame poll is out of question then. Maybe a reddit thread would be a wise choice, people can explain and argue what is on their mind and you’ll see quite easily what’s on the top 5.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

minbariguy.7504:

[snip]
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 believe this response demonstrates – at a very fundamental level – where some of the issues lie.

Without knowing you personally, Mr. Whiteside, and only having your forum response to judge by, the reply above exemplifies a very rigid thought process. This may be completely opposite of the truth, but I can only go by what’s available to me.

What I mean by “rigid” is there’s an immediate assumption an in-game poll would break immersion with no attempt made to see any other alternative. Why would this be the case? Could a poll not be crafted in such a way that it could be made optional and/or non-immersion breaking? Perhaps a small button is added just below where we’re informed about the success or failure of an event in PvE or on the dungeon completion screen or any one of a number of other, unobtrusive places for the various game modes. It’s then up to the individual player to click the button if they wish to participate in the poll/feedback tool. Can the players not be trusted to decide for themselves what is and what isn’t immersion breaking?

The issue of an in-game poll aside, I want to use this as a launching point to discuss my real concern. I had considered different analogies such as sandboxes, over-protective parents, etc. I’ve settled on Legos. Yes, Legos; those multi-colored, plastic building blocks that come in all shapes and sizes.

Why are Legos one of the most wildly successful toy lines ever created? Because they are not a toy. Rather, they are the infrastructure that permit children to build their own toys. Legos facilitate and support a child’s creativity rather than dictate to that child what they can create (at least the older generation of Legos did; let’s leave aside for the moment all the themed, market-driven, movie-tie-in, rigid sets that have come out in recent years).

Granted, there are some restrictions on what you can make with Legos; rectilinear blocks can only be built into so many configurations. Regardless, they succeed where other toys fail. A child plays with a traditional toy and becomes bored with it in pretty short order. With Legos, however, the possibilities are endless. You’re bored with what you recently built? Tear it apart and build something new! When the emphasis is on the child’s creativity rather than on the physical toy itself, the only limit is the child’s imagination.

It’s the process of building that’s fun more so than the finished product. Oh, sure, the finished construct is admired and played with for awhile. It won’t be long, though, before it’s torn apart in order to build something new. It’s all about the act of creation; not the individual Lego pieces.

Now to GW2. If ArenaNet wants to maintain rigid control over their game, keeping it a static theme park with inflexible rules, that’s their perogative. However, if ArenaNet is sincere in their desire to build a collaborative development relationship with their community and a flexible, organic, changing, living world, then they will have to consider relaxing some of the rigid thought processes which appear to drive development decisions.

I’m not suggesting GW2 be turned into a sandbox game and only a sandbox game. However, there’s much that could be done to improve upon this far-from-Living-World. A concrete example is housing; giving players the option for that Lego-like creative outlet. That’s a very superficial example, though, and only scratches the surface to which I’m referring.

At the most fundamental level, it comes down to the actual philosophy of game design. Is this a game which will facilitate and support players’ desire for fun and creativity or will this be a game of very rigid rules, proscribed behavior, and set paths dictated by the developer? Yes, there must be some rules. But are the rules there for the benefit of the players or the need on the part of ArenaNet to maintain control?

Does ArenaNet want GW2 to be the injection-molded plastic toy that’s shiny while in its package but discarded and left to gather dust under the bed after a few months? Or do they want it to be the Legos that are infinitely built, broken down, and rebuilt into something new for years to come, driven by the community’s creativity and passion for the game? Have a little faith in your player base, ease up on the control a bit, give us the tools, be supportive of our efforts, and watch as your community puts the “Living” into your “Living World”.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

TL:DR – Turn Living World content into Sandbox content

This would be great.

And don’t just limit it to PvE; WvW would benefit greatly from sandbox features greatly, IMO.

Chris on the topic of PvE, what about Guilds? More than a year, and no guild management tools of any kind. Guild Missions were a step in the right direction, but after these many months, there was not another update.

By the way, it’s awesome that you are responding to the community, keep up the awesome work that you guys do!

World Immersion should be a topic at its own. The (lack of) mechanics to express world’s lore, the lack of lore behind some epic stuff like the legendaries, the huge amount of WPs versus the importance of travelling on foot, the cash shop’s “exotic” skins, and the lack of stuff to find in a map outside of jumping puzzles are all worthy of discussion.