Guild Wars 2

Dear Anet,

You have said your policy is not to discuss the future plans you have with Guild Wars 2.
This is your choice and yours alone to make.

But I would strongly recommend being a bit more open about future plans and shed some light on things you are working on.

Why?

Well you’ve probably noticed the current resistance going on among your playerbase. People expecting you are working on big important things and when you finally break your silence and announce what you have planned for us, it turns out to be the exact opposite of what the majority of the players seem to want.

That is the danger and the risk you take when you enforce the current policy you have now. You see, had you been more open about your plans early on, the players would have given your feedback and you would not have made the mistakes you’ve made now with the feature pack of September.

So yes just a thought… maybe a change of policy is in order?

Thanks!

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

Where is your numerical evidence about minority and majority nonsense?

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

I think with GW2 its different.
The playerbase is devoted to this game, so the forums are more active than on usual MMOs.

So the changes for new players are not important? Nor major changes? Only in a few select circumstances does the player base agree on what it wants. Now there are some that dont like them, but there are also just as many if not more who either dont care, or like them. My wife, as a new player, actually likes them. I as a veteran player, think they are a great idea. Its a well known fact that the majority of the player base isnt represented on the forums. It would be more accurate to say that a majority of a small percentage of players wanted something else. But I dont even think thats the case.

I would imagine they don’t want to reveal any early stage features in case they cause expectations, and then fail to deliver (ie, delays, scraped plans, etc) the less people know about long term plans, the less they expect, and the less things they have to become indignant about

rapthorne.7345:

I would imagine they don’t want to reveal any early stage features in case they cause expectations, and then fail to deliver (ie, delays, scraped plans, etc) the less people know about long term plans, the less they expect, and the less things they have to become indignant about

Thats the other side of extreme though.
I’m suggesting a middle way.

A way where Anet informs their players whats on their working table and also a time when they gather feedback from players, to even better their already awesome product.
It is a win-win.

Novalitus.7382:

rapthorne.7345:

I would imagine they don’t want to reveal any early stage features in case they cause expectations, and then fail to deliver (ie, delays, scraped plans, etc) the less people know about long term plans, the less they expect, and the less things they have to become indignant about

Thats the other side of extreme though.
I’m suggesting a middle way.

A way where Anet informs their players whats on their working table and also a time when they gather feedback from players, to even better their already awesome product.
It is a win-win.

So like a CDI where players and dev work together on a specific area? Like the one thats going to be starting soon with Chris Whiteside?

Phoenixlin.8624:

Where is your numerical evidence about minority and majority nonsense?

Sorry but you don’t need the specific numbers to know this is the case. It’s been shown for every MMO that typically the forums account for less the 15% of the players, and I would guess on average it is much lower, especially considering that all the racket we’re seeing is being made by fewer than 100 people on the English forums.

rapthorne.7345:

I would imagine they don’t want to reveal any early stage features in case they cause expectations, and then fail to deliver (ie, delays, scraped plans, etc) the less people know about long term plans, the less they expect, and the less things they have to become indignant about

This. Everytime the Devs talk about their plans, many players take it as a promise and when they can’t deliver their plans, due to changes or delays, players are crying about how Anet broke their promises.

Some posters have a habit of taking something that the devs say they would like to do and twisting it into something the devs have promised to do and then follow up with a load of spam threads chastising the devs for not keeping their supposed “promises”.

When you’re dealing with this kind of mentality, it’s usually best not to say anything at all.

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

Trouble is that you make a massive assumption in that the people not voicing disagree with the people voicing their opinion. You don’t know this. No one does. So trivializing the issue is rather disrespectful. To be honest it borderlines hypocrisy.

Conner.4702:

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

Trouble is that you make a massive assumption in that the people not voicing disagree with the people voicing their opinion. You don’t know this. No one does. So trivializing the issue is rather disrespectful. To be honest it borderlines hypocrisy.

I make no assumptions at all, nor is there a trivialising of any issue. You’ve chosen to extend a simple statement into something completely unrelated. My statement was simple.
1. There are a small number of ppl, relative to the total player population, who regularly come to the forums to speak up about issues they’re unhappy with
2. People who don’t come here regularly generally don’t hear about changes until they’re implemented.

It’s very presumptuous of you to attempt to put words into my mouth. In fact I challenge anyone to see anything in my statement that says otherwise. To be honest your presumption is offensive

So let me get this straight…
The people on the forums are the small population and therefore its OKAY for Anet to ignore them? Every single one of us on these forums actually also bought the game and maybe spend money on the cash shop too.

No matter how small, every costumer should count. Otherwise what is the point of having a forum at all?

Azrael.4960:

Conner.4702:

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

Trouble is that you make a massive assumption in that the people not voicing disagree with the people voicing their opinion. You don’t know this. No one does. So trivializing the issue is rather disrespectful. To be honest it borderlines hypocrisy.

I make no assumptions at all, nor is there a trivialising of any issue. You’ve chosen to extend a simple statement into something completely unrelated. My statement was simple.
1. There are a small number of ppl, relative to the total player population, who regularly come to the forums to speak up about issues they’re unhappy with
2. People who don’t come here regularly generally don’t hear about changes until they’re implemented.

It’s very presumptuous of you to attempt to put words into my mouth. In fact I challenge anyone to see anything in my statement that says otherwise. To be honest your presumption is offensive

Challenge accepted.

Your initial comment began by saying “trouble is”, which indicates that you’re offering up your statement as a challenge to the OP’s contention that players are dissatisfied with the lack of communication/content. It seems amply clear that your initial comment was intended to dismiss and minimize the amassing player concerns and complaints on the forums. Connor’s response is spot on.

Looks like there’s a cultural difference here or at the least a personal usage difference.
I always use “trouble is” to imply, “the trouble or difficulty you are facing” not “the trouble with your statement”.

My statement offers no challenge to the OP but is in fact the opposite, it’s a statement of sympathy which is entirely qualitative in nature.

/grumble

Pointing out reasons why ANet is not the devil is not the same as blindly white knighting. If one thinks any support or praise for the devs is misguided brown-nosing, maybe they should go play a game where they think the devs are doing things right? Because nothing will ever make them happy about this game.

I will criticize where necessary. I have had my share of discontent in the town clothes issue, in the heavy weighting towards cash-paid RNG to get interesting new skins, and in the unblockable emotes by griefers, among other matters.

If I thought they could do nothing right and this game were utterly ruined, however, I’d move on. Not call those still supporting and enjoying the good parts of it (which is most of it in my personal opinion) idiots or worse. I’ve never demanded anyone stay in a game they no longer enjoy, even if I had deep RP story ties to their characters, nor will I demand they join in my pitchfork and torch dislike of games they happen to adore.

Am I dissatisfied with the lack of real teasers about upcoming plans? Yes. Do I believe the forums are a good statistical sample of all players? No. Heck, I’m the only one in my whole guild that regularly posts here, and some of my guild have left the game due to their personal displeasure with its direction. But please, stop with the drawing of tribal lines between critics and proponents. We’re all human beings who share an interest in socially interactive gaming.

Novalitus.7382:

Well you’ve probably noticed the current resistance going on among your playerbase. People expecting you are working on big important things and when you finally break your silence and announce what you have planned for us, it turns out to be the exact opposite of what the majority of the players seem to want.

- You’re nuts if you think community is the one who’s calling shots here. This is Anet’s game. Go start your own company if you want things made differently.

Zenith.6403:

Novalitus.7382:

Well you’ve probably noticed the current resistance going on among your playerbase. People expecting you are working on big important things and when you finally break your silence and announce what you have planned for us, it turns out to be the exact opposite of what the majority of the players seem to want.

- You’re nuts if you think community is the one who’s calling shots here. This is Anet’s game. Go start your own company if you want things made differently.

That did make me laugh a little. Just a little

Without players there is no game. Without a ’’community’’ Anet couldn’t make money off the game and many people working for them would lose their jobs.

So threating the community with respect (and vice versa!) is important.

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

Do you have any evidence that only a small minority visit the forum?

More importantly, do you have any evidence that the people on the forums do not make up a representative sample of the population?

When official polls are conducted they phone 1000 people, not all 300,000,000 people and that is accepted as very accurate of the population. Same idea applies here.

Preemptive response: Yes the forums are biased since the people who come here care enough about the game to post, but the same applies to any other poll. They can only poll people who care enough to respond, yet those are still considered accurate.

Additional evidence: Anet clearly thinks the forum population is some sort of representative sample since a 300 reponse thread here got them to change the commander tag cost within a week of the unveiling.

Novalitus.7382:

Without players there is no game. Without a ’’community’’ Anet couldn’t make money off the game and many people working for them would lose their jobs.

So threating the community with respect (and vice versa!) is important.

- No, I’m serious. You vote with your wallet what kind of games interest you. You vote with your time if you play this game or do something else. I’ve seen people write posts the size of essays in this forum every day. Apparently they seem to think that if you bring up your issues they’ll get fixed in patch. That’s not how this works, not at all.

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums.

Most people are not satisfied with the government and/or politicians.
Most of the majority remain silent and keep the dissatisfaction to them selves instead of doing anything about it.
Only small minority actually care enough to be vocal.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

Do you have any evidence that only a small minority visit the forum?

More importantly, do you have any evidence that the people on the forums do not make up a representative sample of the population?

Well, simple numbers suggest that that the number of players who visit the forums are a significant minority of the playerbase. Even if you assume every view is a unique visitor (which would be an immense stretch), you’re still looking at an obscenely small number of people compared to the something like 4 million people who bought the game.

As for the second point, I would point to Cutthroat Politics as an example of how the forums don’t necessarily reflect overall player sentiment… because if the forums were necessarily an accurate gauge, we SHOULD have seen Captain Evon Gnashblade win by a fairly significant margin.

Now, none of that necessarily precludes the rest you’ve said (Arena.net SHOULD, and I think DOES, take forum sentiment into account), just that whenever you deal with a game’s online player presence, it nearly always is going to be a pretty small slice of the pie.

Zenith.6403:

Novalitus.7382:

Without players there is no game. Without a ’’community’’ Anet couldn’t make money off the game and many people working for them would lose their jobs.

So threating the community with respect (and vice versa!) is important.

- No, I’m serious. You vote with your wallet what kind of games interest you. You vote with your time if you play this game or do something else. I’ve seen people write posts the size of essays in this forum every day. Apparently they seem to think that if you bring up your issues they’ll get fixed in patch. That’s not how this works, not at all.

No, we should keep silent and hope Anet randomly stumbles upon bugs we are experiencing? That’s a brilliant idea, truly.

I believe in construtive feedback, my friend. This entails that the community is constantly providing Anet the publisher with helpful feedback about the things they plan to implement. That makes Anet happy, when we’re happy and spending money and playing their game. It makes us happy when important things get fixed and new content gets rolled out. In short, if you communciate, everyone can benefit from it and everyone is happy.

Staying silent won’t solve a thing.

Novalitus.7382:

No, we should keep silent and hope Anet randomly stumbles upon bugs we are experiencing? That’s a brilliant idea, truly.

I believe in construtive feedback, my friend. This entails that the community is constantly providing Anet the publisher with helpful feedback about the things they plan to implement. That makes Anet happy, when we’re happy and spending money and playing their game. It makes us happy when important things get fixed and new content gets rolled out. In short, if you communciate, everyone can benefit from it and everyone is happy.

Staying silent won’t solve a thing.

I think you’re both right, for what it’s worth. It’s important that you make your voice heard, but at the same time, if a company isn’t giving you what you want, at some point you need to invoke your power of your wallet.

I would say, when it comes to the “endgame” content people on these forums want, we’re definitely in the latter category, because Arena.net clearly doesn’t think you represent a large enough section of the player base to invest heavily in.

I think ANet is too forthcoming about some of their plans. The entire reason players went crazy was because some developer said too little about too much during a minor interview. Had he delivered the usual, “we’ll let you know when we’re ready” that everyone hates, people would have been calmer.

I think ANet also does a terrible job of hyping their own product. When they deliver solid changes, they act if they’ve invented teleportation (“changes galore” anyone?). When they deliver game-changing updates, they act as if it’s a minor addition to the existing system (“ascended gear”). They fix bugs that people have been complaining about for ages and don’t bother including a mention in the patch notes.

In regards to minority/majority and representative opinions: sorry, 300 people can never represent a million people, given the vast amount of content and types of opinion. Of the 3 people in my guild who frequent the forums, none of us represent the overall opinion of our guild about …nearly any topic. The reason the commander tag got changed isn’t so much a result of 300 people responding, it was because it was a bad decision in the first place and ANet, if they didn’t suspect it when they announced, quickly realized they (a) did a dumb thing and (b) handled the original announcement poorly.

Constructive criticism is welcome and useful. Self-indulgent kittening, issuing orders and ultimatums, trolling, flooding the forums with reposts of the 1001st “give us mounts” thread and threatening to quit are not welcome or useful.

The policy is in place because, as recently seen, whenever a “red” pokes his head into the forums and tries to talk about real issues, the stones, arrows, rotten tomatoes and dung starts flying. This has the potential to drown out any real constructive discussion about the issues, wasting the devs’ time and just confusing the issue.

The devs didn’t set the policy and they don’t have the authority to change it. If you want them to go to their bosses and say “we really should loosen the restrictions on what we can tell the players,” you need to show those bosses that there are good reasons for doing so. You can start by showing them that you’ve learned how to behave like reasonable human beings at some point in the last year or so.

Well, that’s not going to happen any time soon. Maybe by the third anniversary.

Novalitus.7382:

No, we should keep silent and hope Anet randomly stumbles upon bugs we are experiencing? That’s a brilliant idea, truly.

- If company policy is that they will only spend time fixing critical bugs for economic reasons, then you submitting bug reports and typing posts about lesser bugs is about as productive as praying for a miracle. Actually praying for a miracle probably takes less time and then you can move on with your life. I don’t know what’s wrong with the company. Poor management? Lack of long term vision? Financial troubles? Who knows? We are not in position to ask for them to do things. They don’t have a whole army of engineers just fiddling their thumbs and waiting your orders.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

Do you have any evidence that only a small minority visit the forum?

Yes, Colin mentioned it 2 days ago when he was discussing the revamps for new players.

“We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit..”

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35771

So the changes for new players are not important? Nor major changes?

They are important, but in the sense that they are negative changes which would have made me less likely to continue playing if I were starting out today. We could have talked them down sooner if they’d announced they were working on these changes months ago.

I would imagine they don’t want to reveal any early stage features in case they cause expectations, and then fail to deliver (ie, delays, scraped plans, etc) the less people know about long term plans, the less they expect, and the less things they have to become indignant about

Yes, but a lack of expectation is also damaging, if players don’t have any vision of where the game is heading, it gives them less to look forward to.

So like a CDI where players and dev work together on a specific area? Like the one thats going to be starting soon with Chris Whiteside?

Not really. Those are more about collecting feedback from the players, very little actually comes back to the players from ANet through those.

When you’re dealing with this kind of mentality, it’s usually best not to say anything at all.

No, no it isn’t.

More importantly, do you have any evidence that the people on the forums do not make up a representative sample of the population?

When official polls are conducted they phone 1000 people, not all 300,000,000 people and that is accepted as very accurate of the population. Same idea applies here.

Forums make a poor statistical sample for the general game population because they are self-selected, they are people who choose to get involved. That said, the forums ARE a good representative sample of those who care about the game and its future, so ignoring them is not a reasonable response.

Zenith.6403:

Novalitus.7382:

No, we should keep silent and hope Anet randomly stumbles upon bugs we are experiencing? That’s a brilliant idea, truly.

- If company policy is that they will only spend time fixing critical bugs for economic reasons, then you submitting bug reports and typing posts about lesser bugs is about as productive as praying for a miracle. Actually praying for a miracle probably takes less time and then you can move on with your life. I don’t know what’s wrong with the company. Poor management? Lack of long term vision? Financial troubles? Who knows? We are not in position to ask for them to do things. They don’t have a whole army of engineers just fiddling their thumbs and waiting your orders.

How nice to ignore the rest of my post and not respond to that

What Ohonis said makes a lot of sense. I applaud his post.

@Tolunart
When a ‘red’ pops in to look at the forums I’ve seen no such thing happening to him. No rotten eggs or tomatoes thrown, which is why i think the community we have active on these forums is an actual good one. Compare the community of GW2 to a community of any other F2P game and you’ll see how ugly an online community -can- get.

The GW2 community seems to be more mature and constructive. Of course you’ll always have some bad apples but the majority of these posters are responsible adults, knowing how to write a post that makes sense.

Karizee.8076:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

Do you have any evidence that only a small minority visit the forum?

Yes, Colin mentioned it 2 days ago when he was discussing the revamps for new players.

“We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit..”

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35771

You know what comes next, right? “Well how do we know he’s not misrepresenting figures to suit his own ends?”

Also, worth pointing out . . . to be fair . . . they can only track users based on account numbers and whether they log into the game on a given day. Technically they have “millions of registered accounts”, which may or may not be all individual users. And technically, there’s no proof each poster on Reddit is one person and also not one person with many many accounts.

Or that everyone who posts on the sub-reddit actually does play GW2 . . .

Novalitus.7382:

So let me get this straight…
The people on the forums are the small population and therefore its OKAY for Anet to ignore them? Every single one of us on these forums actually also bought the game and maybe spend money on the cash shop too.

No matter how small, every costumer should count. Otherwise what is the point of having a forum at all?

Actually this is completely impossible.

Every customer should count. And that means what? If I had a shop and 1000 people wanted meat and one person only wanted vegetable dishes, how many vegetable dishes should stock for that one person.

Anet isn’t obligated to listen to any one segment of the playerbase. They sold a game to some people and those people have received that game. Actually what they really sold was access to the server. Not input into what the game should become. It’s not your game, you’re simply playing it.

Anet has a vision for their own game. Even a majority doesn’t get to pick what they want. All they can do is stay or leave, spend money or not spend money. That’s it.

Ohoni.6057:

So the changes for new players are not important? Nor major changes?

They are important, but in the sense that they are negative changes which would have made me less likely to continue playing if I were starting out today. We could have talked them down sooner if they’d announced they were working on these changes months ago.

I would imagine they don’t want to reveal any early stage features in case they cause expectations, and then fail to deliver (ie, delays, scraped plans, etc) the less people know about long term plans, the less they expect, and the less things they have to become indignant about

Yes, but a lack of expectation is also damaging, if players don’t have any vision of where the game is heading, it gives them less to look forward to.

So like a CDI where players and dev work together on a specific area? Like the one thats going to be starting soon with Chris Whiteside?

Not really. Those are more about collecting feedback from the players, very little actually comes back to the players from ANet through those.

When you’re dealing with this kind of mentality, it’s usually best not to say anything at all.

No, no it isn’t.

More importantly, do you have any evidence that the people on the forums do not make up a representative sample of the population?

When official polls are conducted they phone 1000 people, not all 300,000,000 people and that is accepted as very accurate of the population. Same idea applies here.

Forums make a poor statistical sample for the general game population because they are self-selected, they are people who choose to get involved. That said, the forums ARE a good representative sample of those who care about the game and its future, so ignoring them is not a reasonable response.

Actually, the Devs (Colin, I believe) did announce that they were working on new player/tutorial/getting started changes more than months ago. I believe it was more than a year ago. There did not seem to be much negative feedback at the time, nor feedback of any kind, truly.

Thus, I’m not sure that when the Devs announce things so far in advance it makes for a better reception when the feature/content comes to light. /shrug

Vayne.8563:

Novalitus.7382:

So let me get this straight…
The people on the forums are the small population and therefore its OKAY for Anet to ignore them? Every single one of us on these forums actually also bought the game and maybe spend money on the cash shop too.

No matter how small, every costumer should count. Otherwise what is the point of having a forum at all?

Actually this is completely impossible.

Every customer should count. And that means what? If I had a shop and 1000 people wanted meat and one person only wanted vegetable dishes, how many vegetable dishes should stock for that one person.

Okay, I’ll bite.

“Every customer should count” should sound familiar to anyone who ever had to work in any sort of service job. It’s customer service rhetoric used by managers and those higher up the food chain to justify trying to placate any and all angry or dissatisfied customers no matter what their complaint is.

It’s an outgrowth of “treat the customer as if they are always right” (which has been distilled down into the wrong “the customer is always right”) approach. You listen, you smile, you never . . . ever . . . contradict them directly or say they are wrong. You apologize for things which aren’t your fault, you promise to fix things which aren’t in your control, you offer any and all things in order to get to that one thing which will satisfy your dissatisfied customer.

And then you take it to someone with the authority to make it happen. It’s out of your hands, and you can faithfully say “I already informed management about this, I apologize it is taking so long to get this settled” or some permutation.

Customer relations is one of those jobs where you have to basically be able to not snap someone’s metaphorical neck over them being raging kittycats to you. It takes never personally owning a complaint as though it was against you, no matter what invective is being spewed your way. And most of all it takes being able to continue on with a calm, reasonable tone despite whatever you may be facing.

It is a carefully crafted illusion like every bit of stage magic you go to watch Penn Jillette do.

The reality of “every customer should count” is how it is a tool used to filter out those who have aptitude for customer relations, and those who do not. If someone can leave each customer who comes through the doors satisfied, no matter how vicious their complaints were? If you have someone at the front desk who can spin that illusion properly and get it believed? That’s the person you want in that position, so you do everything you can to keep them there.

Actually, the Devs (Colin, I believe) did announce that they were working on new player/tutorial/getting started changes more than months ago. I believe it was more than a year ago. There did not seem to be much negative feedback at the time, nor feedback of any kind, truly.

The lesson there is to keep people updated as projects progress rather than making a vague mention of it and then going dark for a year, because I follow this game fairly closely and honestly can’t remember anything like what you’re talking about. If they’d said they were going to change how early skills were distributed and shifting the personal story to level 10, I certainly would have voiced my complaints at the time.

Well, here is one interview where he talked about it:

So on that same stance, there have been some comments that new players have come into Guild Wars 2 and found the learning curve quite steep. What kind of things do you think you’d be able to do to help assimilate new players into the game?

Colin: We’re actually working on that right now. As we look at releasing the game in other regions we need to make sure that the new player experience is as easy to learn as possible. So we’re going back and looking at everything we can do to try to do that and we’re looking for a lot of feedback on that too. We’re evaluating what level players leave the game and what level things should kick in.

There are more, but..lol..it’s 3am and I’m not that keen on looking them all up. =)

Novalitus.7382:

@Tolunart
When a ‘red’ pops in to look at the forums I’ve seen no such thing happening to him. No rotten eggs or tomatoes thrown, which is why i think the community we have active on these forums is an actual good one. Compare the community of GW2 to a community of any other F2P game and you’ll see how ugly an online community -can- get.

The GW2 community seems to be more mature and constructive. Of course you’ll always have some bad apples but the majority of these posters are responsible adults, knowing how to write a post that makes sense.

Granted, it could be worse, but the recent “red” threads like “Communicating with you” and announcements about the CDIs starting up again have a range or comments. While some comments are positive or at least “I’ll give you another chance,” there are a lot of comments about how this is the same BS all over again, the devs broke their “promise” about precursors, the game is just a big moneygrab, the CDIs are worthless, devs ignore the forums, etc.

In addition to being inaccurate, these comments are not constructive and many of them appear to have been posted for the purpose of trolling and stirring up the hornets’ nest. Even when someone responds with facts, such as listing positive changes that came from the CDIs or pointing out that precursor scavenger hunt/crafting was announced as something they want to do and are continuing to work on, but was never tied down to a definite release date, the same people ignore these voices of reason and keep posting the same things over and over again regardless of whether their statements are true or have merit.

These people are the reason why the devs stopped talking about their plans for the game and have largely been restricted to “fluff” comments and jokes for the last year. And as long as they continue to act as they have, I don’t have much hope that the situation will change.

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

I had a great solution for them. Putting their feedback in the game. They could restrict the amount of characters, the game could easily be made to allow these posts to be parsed into a database, voila no more forum minority, they’d hear from the players and they’d get the answers of whether people liked or disliked the thing they did in the category and why.

Phoenixlin.8624:

Where is your numerical evidence about minority and majority nonsense?

You’re seriously asking this question? You need to spend about an hour researching and you should be able to find all the evidence you need or you could choose to remain ignorant. The choice is yours.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Karizee.8076:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

Do you have any evidence that only a small minority visit the forum?

Yes, Colin mentioned it 2 days ago when he was discussing the revamps for new players.

“We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit..”

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35771

You know what comes next, right? “Well how do we know he’s not misrepresenting figures to suit his own ends?”

Also, worth pointing out . . . to be fair . . . they can only track users based on account numbers and whether they log into the game on a given day. Technically they have “millions of registered accounts”, which may or may not be all individual users. And technically, there’s no proof each poster on Reddit is one person and also not one person with many many accounts.

Or that everyone who posts on the sub-reddit actually does play GW2 . . .

Yes we all know devs tells the truth 100% of the time…

“You WILL see precursor crashing in 2013”

“You will not have to grind for gear”

“You will see all crafting professions raised to 500 in 2013”

I have no doubt that only a small % of players visit the forums. I do however think that the forums are a representative sample of players in the game.