Guild Wars 2

I feel that a lot of the community is invested in GW2 and wants to see it grow. At times, it’s disheartening to see game balance not changing or even going in the “wrong” direction and it feels like Anet isn’t in touch with the game or community.

I think we also have to look at it from Anet’s perspective when they read posts on the forums. There are many good ideas made and discussed but members will never unanimously agree on any topic. Eventually all that happens is there is good discussion and it falls off the first page. No progress has been made and the idea is lost.

If we had the ability to poll, Anet could at least gauge how strongly the community feels about topics and how much support there is for ideas. Forums would be able to organize and prioritize their ideas so it’s easier for Anet to make “community informed” decisions or at least be aware of them.

Worst case scenario is people have a new tool to be engaged in forum discussions and are aware of what the overall community’s stance was on where the biggest problems were when balance changes occur.

As I understand it, the forum software will not be updated/fixed. Note the broken Search function. So good luck.

There are a bunch of poll tools/sites out there that could be used though. Although, player-created polls (IMO) are often flawed – “choose the answer I want or choose this cruddy answer” kinda stuff.

Oh boo. Well that was short lived.

Outside poll sites are inconvenient and it’s doubtful Anet would look outside their own forums. And yes player created polls may be flawed but it’s up to us to use the tool wisely and Anet to decide if it’s a biased poll or not when they read it.

But again, boo… and sigh. Worth a shot.

ArenaNet looks outside its own forums all the time, and state that very fact often.

Not only that, but ArenaNet polls the playerbase either here on the forums (see the Sound thread), or using another site page at times (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/polling-all-world-vs-world-players/ – there’s a link to the site on that page).

Good luck.

Polls are a great way to choose between a limited number of clearly-stated options. They are a terrible tool for getting a sense of what interests the population generally.

There are two primary reasons:

• Only a fraction of people participate and that fraction isn’t representative of the majority.
• Even professionals have trouble writing poll questions in such a way that the answers give a ‘true’ picture of what people are thinking/feeling. Typically, the wording leads to ambiguity.

As a silly example, take online ratings. Seems simple enough to rate 1-5 stars. Turns out, some people are never willing to give a ‘1’, some reserve “5” for “exceeds expectations beyond my ability to describe”, and so on. It’s clear that a “4.2” average is always going to be better than “1.2”, but it’s not clear that “4.2” is meaningfully different from “3.8” (or sometimes even “3.3”)

Plus, people usually have nuanced feelings about topics. It’s usually more complicated than the simplicity of a poll can uncover.

Finally, ideas aren’t lost because we stop discussing them on the front page — ANet still keeps a list of suggestions that interest us and tries to see if they can fit them into their day-to-day workflow and/or long-term strategic planning.

As an example, Linsey Murdock has been championing the cause of moderninizing material storage (including more things, reorganizing it, making it more consistent) — that’s an idea that has mostly stayed off the front page (we get bored discussing it, don’t we?), but never fell off ANet’s radar.

tl;dr polls probably wouldn’t help, in part because they are messy tools and in part because the problem is a bit different than described in the OP.

It’s not like the Devs don’t ask for our feedback about the game. I’m sure they get a better idea of what players think about content/changes/etc. when the playerbase can express their thoughts with more than just a checkmark….whether in-game, here, or any other venue.

Again, something the Devs have expressed many times.

If Anet were to do polls again, I would not want it here on the forums, or elsewhere. Do in-game polling like during the betas, so everyone that currently logs on can access it and fill it out.

It gets feedback from players still playing the game (or at least logging into it) and people don’t have to visit the forums or another site to do so.

Toss in feedback boxes with character limits so feedback must be concise, while reducing walls-of-text responses.

Oh dear. While I understand that forum software will not be fixed and it’s a lost cause, I think it’s silly to argue against getting an information gathering tool. Obviously polls have their limitations as people have already described but at the same time we (and Anet) are all smart individuals and are aware of those limitations when applying them to decision making.

There are lots of benefits to being able to poll and few harmful effects. Don’t like or believe in polls? Then don’t participate. Think a poll is completely stupid or biased? Then write a comment in the post saying so. We are not in danger of Anet misinterpreting or over extrapolating poll results either.

Going against Anet giving us an extra tool to use is like shooting ourselves in the foot but it seems like I’m clearly in the minority in this case.

Consider using other tools and bring your poll to Reddit.

It is a vibrant extension of the GW2 forums and frequented by Anet.

Too many tools slows down the gathering process and makes things far more cumbersome for collating. Gaile recently addressed how the team collate based on what Mike said over a year ago – that is just because they don’t say anything, doesn’t mean they aren’t collating.
Unfortunately too many ppl jumped and stamped all over devs and comments and they pulled away from us, but the game is littered with ideas from the comunity if ppl look for them.

WVW has used polls and still players are up in arms about them – whether it is the results, the interpretation or whether something deserved to be polled. Or even down to the idea that polls provided players who barely WvW’ed could have the same value of feedback as long time vets.

Polls are not the way to gather forward thinking information for a game as varied as this. Beyond our normal channels of feedback, they also have in game metrics on how we all play, the result of which I bet would surprise many people.

Plastazote.7914:

Oh dear. While I understand that forum software will not be fixed and it’s a lost cause, I think it’s silly to argue against getting an information gathering tool. Obviously polls have their limitations as people have already described but at the same time we (and Anet) are all smart individuals and are aware of those limitations when applying them to decision making.

There are lots of benefits to being able to poll and few harmful effects. Don’t like or believe in polls? Then don’t participate. Think a poll is completely stupid or biased? Then write a comment in the post saying so. We are not in danger of Anet misinterpreting or over extrapolating poll results either.

Going against Anet giving us an extra tool to use is like shooting ourselves in the foot but it seems like I’m clearly in the minority in this case.

It’s not just about polls having limitations. You have to recognize that online polling results can be very inaccurate and misleading. Anet is not the only group that will be looking at the results, and expecting players to be experts in statistical analysis is too much (i.e. they won’t be able to notice how poor the data is, and are far more likely to believe the poor data is somehow correct).

Letting regular players create polls will more often lead to useless and harmful data than to something that’s worthwhile for Anet to look at. This is why, as others have pointed out, polls and their questions are created with great care and often with the help of polling experts. Even then, mistakes are made.

If you have a background in statistical analysis and polling, and you wish to create a rigorous survey/poll for the community, there are other viable places to do so, as suggested, and I’d love to participate.

As a follow-up to the above, as I shouldn’t have just said things were true sans examples, I’ve got a couple of problems you can consider:

• I recently won big when opening a Dab of Destabilized Ectoplasm from my weekly BL Key run. Should I add this win to the data collection page on the wiki? FYI, I go by Greener on the wiki as well.

Warning! Problem 2 contains spoilers to the Heart of Thorns story.

Polls only work when the people being polled are randomly selected.
An online poll would achieve no useful result as the people responding to the poll wouldnt be random.
Online forums have the same problem in that they only attract posts from people who have some problem to complain about, but people who have no complains are not seen at all, thus skewing the results.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

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Why should any member be killed off? Is Rytlock still part of DE? Why aren’t they alphabetical? Are we to assume someone will soon be killed? Is it Zojja, because she is listed first?

I love seeing perspectives I never considered .

Polls have no use here. They give a false statistic because they represent only a small portion of the community that plays GW2.

Obtena.7952:

Polls have no use here. They give a false statistic because they represent only a small portion of the community that plays GW2.

I for one would like to have polls. Polls, forums, or whatever form of information gathering system is always going to be limited by representative portions of the community that chooses to participate; just like the representation of people that actually post on the ANet forums compared to actual gamers.

uofaboy.4607:

Obtena.7952:

Polls have no use here. They give a false statistic because they represent only a small portion of the community that plays GW2.

I for one would like to have polls. Polls, forums, or whatever form of information gathering system is always going to be limited by representative portions of the community that chooses to participate; just like the representation of people that actually post on the ANet forums compared to actual gamers.

Everyone would like accurate data. The problem is getting it. You need to figure out how to handle the numerous inherent flaws in polling, only one of which is sampling.

Edit: Removed headache induced sarcasm.