Guild Wars 2

I think the hard part is that we collectively have a lot more time to post than you individually. Which is understandable, you are making a game and we are ravenously consuming it.

I think the summaries would be very helpful. It lets us know that our point was heard, even if it’s not adopted. The main struggle I had was with the apparent silence on your end.

1. More feedback in threads from relevant development team members
2. Better focus on the topic at hand/less off-topic discussion
3. More transparency of the CDI meetings. (What are you guys discussing? What has no chance of making it in the game? What suggestions are you taking seriously?)

Suggestion

• A questions & answers part of the thread in the opening post that would be updated every two days.

This would make it easier for people that step in late to see if their concerns on the topic at hand have been adressed already. (A link to the relevant dev post would be great!)

Collect and display top three topics/situations that Anet would like to discuss from our suggestions.
Only discuss those topics.
Close appropriately when red banners feel like we’ve made progress.
Later open new thread to collect the next batch of topics.

Mr. Whiteside’s 1 and 2 look like very good ideas to me. The Living World/Story topic had a lot of lengthy posts, making it difficult for me to keep up with the discussion. Summaries would allow someone to step in partway through without having to read 48 pages. Plus, the LS discussion felt more like discussing development philosophy rather than addressing more concrete issues — and the latter is what i would like to see.

Some developer discussion of what is, and what is not practical, in terms of ANet’s resources, would be appreciated. If many happen to agree on the best idea ever, and then find that it will take 3-5 years (to exaggerate) to implement, that may help to focus the discussion. It is very easy to come up with ideas when other people have to implement them.

Perhaps consider bringing back The Frog in a CDI role to get a livechat / irc-type discourse going on the individual servers at scheduled times. At least it could help bring in talking points from those outside of the forums, and refer more of those in game to get in on the discussion.

I’d love to see focus on talking about what the players of that region are concerned about. After having been told by a community manager that the first community discussions was about Living Story because other regions found that more important than EN GW2’s issues, it felt a bit disingenuous.

If EN gw2’s primary focus is rewards and drop rates and DR, don’t tell them that FR’s concern with living story is more important, even if it is more convenient.

Pushing hard work and difficult issues to the back just means it never gets done.

Focus on hot topics…

There seems to be a pattern that certain minor issues will be addressed, while the elephants in the room get bypassed. Q&A always seems to follow that pattern and as such is not very useful.

Informative feedback…

When making a change inform us why that change is made or being considered.
Saying things along the lines of “because we say so” is not helpful and only creates dissent. Replies of this nature can be found throughout the forums shortly followed by a closing of topics due to topics questionably having “run it’s course”.

I agree on all of your points and have a suggestion.

Why don’t you create a sub forum for CDI? Devs should be the only ones allowed to create new threads in said sub forum and you could organize it better, solving the issues with general topics and “OT” discussions.
Restricting the discussion is a practical idea but bringing out everything that is worth discussing feels a lot better for this initiative.
This way if you find yourself willing to expand on a specific topic you can open a new thread and move the discussion there.

On a second note, I’d like to see some negative feedback on popular ideas as well. Some things are just not possible, or practical or in line with your philosophy, even if widely requested. I’d love to see you explain why you cannot move in a certain direction. It’s better then feeling unheard

Vorch.2985:

1. More feedback in threads from relevant development team members
2. Better focus on the topic at hand/less off-topic discussion
3. More transparency of the CDI meetings. (What are you guys discussing? What has no chance of making it in the game? What suggestions are you taking seriously?)

^this^ … a hundred times ^this^

It’s not a discussion if we’re the only ones posting, and it’s not a collaboration if we don’t have a clue what reactions you guys have to our suggestions. CDI shouldn’t be where the players post a bunch of ideas and you guys go off on your own to decide which are relevant, which are desirable, and which are feasible. There needs to be a LOT more give and take in these discussions, and I was particularly disappointed that a couple of the CDIs were so lacking in that regard (pretty sure you know which ones they were).

Stupid question of the day;

Whats CDI?

Fortus.6175:

Stupid question of the day;

What’s CDI?

Collaborative Development Initiative.

Part 1 of 2)

So this thread is now about 3 concrete things/methods on what we intend to do from now on to evolve on how we discuss further?
Did I got that right??

I believe, the best thing Anet could do next is to split up the big topic of Living World up into some smaller topics that are alot more focused on special topics that are part of the Living World in overall an which anet is planning to do same major improvements/redesigns (if needed) to make in these topics together with us some serious discussions about what Anet is planning to do in the future, what they have discussed lately, which ideas have massively influenced their discussions and WHY.

We must understand why you make specific decisions, because we are no gamedevelopers, whe don’t have the understandiing for what consequences our wild phantasies and ideas can mean in regard of what it would take to make them become a working reality ingame and why alot of our ideas and fantasy maybe will never have a chance of seeiing a light in this game.

So a higher rate of developers taking part in the discussions from now on would be really appreciated. So more devs take part in the discussions, so more structured and guided will the discussions be and guarantee that we will reach at the end results out of shared brainstoming, that will be truly inspirative, full of creative energy that could be used to make this game a real awesome experience, that uses all of its potentials in its best possible ways, instead of wasting alot of oppurtunities so far to tell epic stories which give us realyl the impression of basically playing a kind of MMO TV Series that can really build up tension up to a level, that the story of the game sucessfully sucks you in, doen#t let you go anymore and brings players to the point, that they always want to know, what happens next and which new epic adventures they can find the next day they log into the game, which don’t feel totally unrewarding and like repetitive grind for all the effort you had to do in the time.

Part 2 of 2)

Once specific first Main Topics have been created, and in that point I totally agree with Chris’ number 1 – I see this from now on as the absolute top priority point – I think it would be best to give us really more insights on your discussions.
Try to let us become more part of these internal discussions.

You may ask now – how should be just do this?
The answer is simple.
Let the community of all big community parts (German, France, US/English, Spanish) vote for 2-3 official representatives for the community, which should participate in those internal discussions, so that always the “view” of the community interests is part also in those discussions.
The latest upcoming changes you are intenting to make with the fractals do show me, that there must exist that kind of problem, that if developers discuss thigns with themself only permanently, that they seem to lose quickly the view of what the community interests, that they start to implement things into the game, where the developers “believe” that it might be interesting for the community, but end up with ideas for thigns, what the community has never ever asked for, like for example implementing now a leaderboard system into fractals, which is currently the next “kitten storm” issue that Anet has created by themself due to making changes to things, where they thought, the majority of players would like to have somethign like that, when in fact we have never ever seen a single suggestion in these forums for a feature like this or a discussion beign started by the community about a feature like this and if people would like to have something like it ect. pp.
—-

The last thing I’d suggest to Anet for gathering easily information about how the community things about something, without having to make for everything always huge discussion threads is to uses more oftenly powerful tools for gatherign quickly informations from the community.
Use more oftenly polls/surveys. Quicker can’t you receive alot and complex information from the community, how the community thinks about something, without havign to make big discussions permanently which you have to keep actializing every 3 pages

Polls/Surveys are easy placed, they give us input, something to think about with pregiven answer options, are quickly done and can be used also to make out of them useful infograms and statistics, which can then be used to make quicker decisions on how you want to evolve the game into specific directions…

When you see by such statistics, that the community reacts against your thoughts with a total unsuspecting bad resonance about something, that you were planning to implement, then this statistics give you the chance to react on that resonance in time to make needed changes, which can then be discussed in a related discussion thread together.

This will show us, that you recognize the resonace of your community and that you are willing also to make quick changes on something you planned to do maybe in future, if the community doesn’t statistically react very good on something.
It are simple marketing tools, which Anet absolutely should use more oftenly.

So in brief:

1) * More Focused Sub Topics around the Living World with much more increased Developer presence in them to guide the discussions, like such intersting questions like Colin did with the TV Series comparison.

2) * Better implementation of the Community into the internal discussions and internal thoughts behind decisions to help us better understand, why something has to be done, why something can’t be made or requires this and that to be done first, so that somethign would have a chance to be made.
Vote for chosen Community Representatives which you let become part of those internal discussions to a certain degree (naturally nothing that would spoil too much in regard of story/lore related things)

3) * Increase the usage of powerful marketing tools to receive quickly easy and complex information from the community with that you can create useful statistics ect. that can help to make easier important decisions for into which directions you want to evolve the game further and where you need to react and make changes based on our reactions, just BEFORE you implement maybe something, that nobody of us ever wanted, to massively reduce through this the chances, that certain changes of future patches will cause “kitten storms”, like the current plans for the fractal changes, what would have been preventable here now.

Nike.2631:

Fortus.6175:

Stupid question of the day;

What’s CDI?

Collaborative Discussion Initiative.

Thanks! Second stupid question of the day;

What do they mean by “Process Evolution” ? (English is not my first language and reading people’s comments make me even more confused since everyone is talking about a different thing…..)

I suspect “grow a skin” is in my top three. You cannot have individuals with 100% hit rate at responding to approving posts and a <4% rate of responding to critical insights and suggestions for improvement.

Unless all you’re looking for is a rubberstamp on decisions already made.

Nike.2631:

I suspect “grow a skin” is in my top three. You cannot have individuals with 100% hit rate at responding to approving posts and a <4% rate of responding to critical insights and suggestions for improvement.

Unless all you’re looking for is a rubberstamp on decisions already made.

It sounds like we were following the same CDIs ….

Fortus.6175:

Thanks!

No problem .

What do they mean by “Process Evolution” ? (English is not my first language and reading people’s comments make me even more confused since everyone is talking about a different thing…..)

Rather than looking at matters that manifest in-game, this thread is looking at how the interactions between players and developers in CDI threads can be refined – how to get more out of less time and fewer posts from players by giving them better coaching on what the Devs are trying to learn. How to format the threads better so that people who show up a week after its started don’t feel like they can’t post at all unless they read 30 pages of replies first.

For example, the first thread on this board changed direction several times as the Devs gave specific guidance on what they’d like to hear about. This meant after a while responses to the very first post were getting mixed together with responses directed at the 2-3 different Dev posts asking for new topics to be considered. What was already a challenging read because of size become even harder to follow because there were three separate topics pinballing around under one thread.

Basically, before looking into another in-game topic, they want to ask how they can make the Process of talking with us in CDI threads more useful for them and less difficult for us. Evolution of the overall structure.

Thank you very much again, Nike!

@Topic, ok, in order to prevent this response to be too long and have the issues that….ironically, are being discussed I will add my contribution (while the thread is readable on its first 1 page, nobody bothers beyond that, if they even bother to read it to begin with)

First of all I would include these things;

-Make a topic, and lock it for 2 days.

It will allow for people to make “cooled down” comments rather than hot-on-the-spot and unnecesarily long comments. I cant stress how important this is; When people think about something for some time, they “cool-down” and can have better, more civilized feedbacks.

-Reduce the amount of words of a comment, per thread. ONLY for these discussion threads

300-500 word limit, only one response per thread per day, or something like that. Lets face it, nobody wants to read a wall of text, I even think it twice before reading a (100+) one. The reason for one comment per day is; whats the point of limiting the words if the person can just simply make 5 comments about it. It will force pople to not go around the topic, and to make it directly to the point

IM SORRY! This is a wall of text!, the very same thing Im agaisnt!

PD: Lastly, if you are “liking” an idea, LET US KNOW! We can focus on it and let you know about our feedback on said idea, and know how you think like; example:

“Red post:
Hey guys, we like limiting the people who cna post on these threads, as suggested by Gurupandagwed.2456, we are open to debate still, but we are leaning towards this line of thoughts, any suggestions?” and voila!

Make inside of the company a big list of topics and select 1 randomly every 3 days and let people discuss it for as much as the thread goes on.

Pick up your topics from various sources and make it as simple as possible using specific targets: " How to make Crafting more fun " or “If added, how would you implement mounts in the game?” or “Renown heart quests improvements”

For this, create a new Forum subject “Collaborative development” where only the A-net can open up threads and the people can only reply.

I’m against limiting our tools to debate, discuss, and illustrate concepts with something as brutally arbitrary as a reduced character cap on player posts in CDI threads.

That said, I do encourage all players to spend a moment or two to reflect upon and polish your thoughts in these threads before hitting “post reply”. People are going to read your thoughts here – show some courtesy by making your thoughts readable ! This is a little bit less the “living room chit-chat” that pervades the boards, and a little bit more “open mic on the big stage”. You will be in the spotlight. Bring your best game – you won’t get a better opportunity to shine elsewhere.

1. Agree wholeheartedly. “Living World” as a subject was, IMO, simply too broad. By the time I’d form my thoughts on the mechanical subjects (cadence, rewards, etc.) the thread had already spiraled off into lore based discussion (Scarlet, Scarlet, Scarlet). I’d prefer having multiple threads with narrower topics. Colin and yourself can focus on the gameplay type concerns and the lead writers can focus on the story/lore concerns in seperate threads.

(This goes double for when/if Class Balance becomes the subject of the CDI. Sorting out PvE from WvW from PvP concerns in one thread just seems like an excersize in migraine induction.)

2. Good luck trying to summarize every 3 pages… talk about aiming high! I think summaries are good ways for you guys to steer the conversation without having to reply directly to posts. Like “this is the current discussion… we like this idea and are leaning this way… this other idea, while great, faces a multitude of technical hurdles and isnt feasible right now…” etc.

3. More is always good. But I understand you are all crazy busy. I’m not going to get huffy if a few days goes by before you have time to post.

Sorry but I can’t help thinking that you’re changing the process and avoiding the difficult topics. The first topics (for WvW and PvE at least) were basically gimmes, not really difficult topics to address. The topics that I remember that may have been coming next ie. RNG, reward systems, account bound world xp were always liable to cause massive QQ.

I hope I am wrong.

My top 3:
1.) More actual discussion from the developers and less “Hey, here’s a topic, you guys talk about it!”

In the first CDI topic, it really felt like there was little meaningful interaction and discussion with the developers. Instead it was the developers giving players topics and asking that they talk about it. In the cases where there was interaction, it was often in the form of “This is how we’re doing things. Period.” This isn’t just something that can be solved by the developers having more time to post. Instead it’s something that requires a shift to more openness amongst the development team.

2.) More interaction with those who don’t have only positive things to say

It was actually confirmed in the last topic that more weight and attention is givien to those with positive posting records. I know this is far from an all or nothing statement, but it felt that only those with positive posts were getting kudos or call outs. A well written and well reasoned post is something to be desired in this sort of process, of course, but “well written and well reasoned” is not something exclusive to posts full of positivity.

3.) More concise topics that openly acknowledge the non-CDI discussion that has already occurred

If the CDI process is to succeed it should have clear topics and shouldn’t just exist to rehash topics that have already been discussed ad infinitum on the forums. This is something that did occur to some extent as the first topic went on, but even near the “end” I’m not sure anyone was totally clear if we were supposed to be talking about the Living Story or the Living World or if the two are supposed to be considered one and the same. It’s also important to note that in the first topic, a very large portion of what was said had already been said many times before, even to the point where long running previously created topics were frequently referenced.

In short, I think the CDI going forward needs to have more actual meaningful and open discussion amongst both the players and the developers. This discussion should be open to having both positive and negative viewpoints addressed with the topics culled from those that haven’t already been discussed for a long time unless the addition of developer discourse is going to bring forward new angles of attack.

StriderShinryu.6923:

My top 3:
1.) More actual discussion from the developers and less “Hey, here’s a topic, you guys talk about it!”

In the first CDI topic, it really felt like there was little meaningful interaction and discussion with the developers. Instead it was the developers giving players topics and asking that they talk about it. In the cases where there was interaction, it was often in the form of “This is how we’re doing things. Period.” This isn’t just something that can be solved by the developers having more time to post. Instead it’s something that requires a shift to more openness amongst the development team.

Spot on, the model for it should be the interaction in the recent balance changes threads, in them there was genuine back and forth discussion.

• I would like to see your thoughts to a topic in the start post. For example, if we talk about balancing, how do you see the classes. What are their strength, what are their weaknesses, etc. It is hard do discuss about balancing classes, if you think, warriors should be OP and engis bad in PvE (as an example).

• some smaller topics would be better, to simply clarify what everyone is talking about. Maybe create a sub forum just for CDI and threads which address smaller topics.

• maybe even start some polls, if you are not sure if some points addressed would be good or not. Maybe even ingame, its in the code since beta, so why not use it. I mean, there are some nice ideas in this thread, that everyone likes, but sounds strange or some suggestions, that sound great, but in the end, nobody would like them.

I think Chris’ #1 is the most important improvement. Then again, I bet the next CDI discussion will be more focused automatically, as the other popular suggested topics I saw back when CDI topics were discussed were quite narrow.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

bravoart.5308:

I’d love to see focus on talking about what the players of that region are concerned about. After having been told by a community manager that the first community discussions was about Living Story because other regions found that more important than EN GW2’s issues, it felt a bit disingenuous.

If EN gw2’s primary focus is rewards and drop rates and DR, don’t tell them that FR’s concern with living story is more important, even if it is more convenient.

Pushing hard work and difficult issues to the back just means it never gets done.

Hi Bravoart,

The topics were chosen from the global feedback we got from all of our forums. Therefore the first topics were inclusive of all suggestions for discussion from the global community.

Chris

I think if you look at it from another angle you’ll see how ‘out-of-the-loop’ you can become with pockets of your playerbase if you collate and execute an idea though a blanket response rather than localised areas.

Let’s say, For example: You have data about how NA and most EU players are playing – They’re fully behind dungeons and fractals, but want changes.
…But on release of GW2 in china, you find, that they’re way more into the LW, alts, the and the home instance, but they’ve started to bring up points that this can be improved.

These are different locales, that play differently as a collective. Surely they should be seen as separate entities in relation to wants/needs?
While it is more time consuming and accurate, it’s obvious that it’s also more convenient on your part to collate and execute as a whole group.

morrolan.9608:

StriderShinryu.6923:

My top 3:
1.) More actual discussion from the developers and less “Hey, here’s a topic, you guys talk about it!”

In the first CDI topic, it really felt like there was little meaningful interaction and discussion with the developers. Instead it was the developers giving players topics and asking that they talk about it. In the cases where there was interaction, it was often in the form of “This is how we’re doing things. Period.” This isn’t just something that can be solved by the developers having more time to post. Instead it’s something that requires a shift to more openness amongst the development team.

Spot on, the model for it should be the interaction in the recent balance changes threads, in them there was genuine back and forth discussion.

Yeah, or (and I sort of hate having to keep bringing it up) Josh Foreman’s posting during the SAB2 release. That sort of honest back and forth with immediate change where possible is the high water mark for player/developer interaction in GW2 to this point. It should be the norm and not the exception.

StriderShinryu.6923:

My top 3:
1.) More actual discussion from the developers and less “Hey, here’s a topic, you guys talk about it!”

In the first CDI topic, it really felt like there was little meaningful interaction and discussion with the developers. Instead it was the developers giving players topics and asking that they talk about it. In the cases where there was interaction, it was often in the form of “This is how we’re doing things. Period.” This isn’t just something that can be solved by the developers having more time to post. Instead it’s something that requires a shift to more openness amongst the development team.

Pretty much.

A discussion can happen, but if it’s between us guys, that have very little control over the game’s direction, but a lot of ideas, then it’s not going to be very productive, and to be honest you can scroll pages through suggestions section of the forums to see that if you really wanted that.

I do have to say, that I saw more “Yes, I concur…[insert very short question to stretch more discussion from players]” instead of hard lined disagreements.

And this…

BobbyStein.2315:

In the future, please ditch the overuse of caps, as that’s not constructive and reduces the chance that we’ll respond. We read this stuff. You’re not posting in a vacuum.

…Was a low water mark.

These topics, they’re chosen specifically because they are things the player base is substantially unhappy about. If you can’t stand up to a little ALL CAPS in a post about things that kitten people off – that you are categorically ruling out interaction with the folks who are passionate about your product – how can we expect any real dialogue at all? This isn’t high tea and we’re all just soooo civilized. This is something we put hours and days and weeks into and we have a connection to it.

Nike.2631:

I suspect “grow a skin” is in my top three. You cannot have individuals with 100% hit rate at responding to approving posts and a <4% rate of responding to critical insights and suggestions for improvement.

Unless all you’re looking for is a rubberstamp on decisions already made.

Fully agree. The amount of well written analytical posts that were completly ignored, with a dev them coming along and saying ‘Thanks for the feedback’ to someone with a one line thread about how they like Scarlett, was discouraging, to put it lightly.

Anet, some of the people who come on here to help you know what they are talking about. Some have experience in these fields or a deep understanding of the issues at hand. When people to go a length to accurately point out an issue and the impact it has, they are doing so with little personal gain to help your business. Seeing mods and Anet staff, treat the community like children, isn’t exactly encouraging for a ‘collaborative development initiative’. It would be nice to see a little more appreciation regarding the amount of work people put into this, instead of line line generic responses that a computer program could generate.

Somewhat on the topic at hand, closing the threads earlier than leaving them open for so long would be better. The other one went on a tangent, to say the least. More focused direction from a developer with meaningful responses would be nice.

My 3:

1. More feedback – It’s great to discuss issues in the forum, but when you have 3 pages of “back and forth” discussion, with one or two posts from an Official, we get the impression that a)we’re talking to ourselves and b) that maybe y’all don’t think the issue is as important as we do. A post here and there saying “That won’t work because…” would go a long way to help us see what you are thinking.

2. More input from the community – Those of us that hang out in the forums are a small percentage of the in-game population. If we’re discussing something here, it may be that the general non-forum population has some input as well. We’d like to hear about some of it instead of having the impression that we forumites are the only people who care about stuff.

3. Hot topics – It’s great to talk about anything at all, but there are some topics that are in need of discussion right now, and others that can be put on the back burner for a bit. For example: we probably need to have a discussion about RNG and reward/risk ratios, while female running animation (apologies to the thread mentioning it) can probably be left for a bit.

I think if you truly wanna do this you Need to say why you do certain things..

There is nothing collaborative about saying: Hey guys we’re just deleting your hard work you did to get to scale 81 fractals.

and when People ask for a reason you do this.. the answer is : Moderator moved your Topic to another Forum / or deleted the Topic… it seems you can’t ask question.. I guess this post will be deleted as well.. wich is just sad …

So the only developer I feel was honest with the playerbase was the one developping SAB … and than again honesty isn’t good for your Company so you did shut him down..

So I really hoped somthing good would turn our with the LS update but seeing my hard work destroyed in a side update note with not a single comment of a dev too. it is just sad and Shows that the CDI actually seems to be only a pharse..

:( I really hoped this update is awesome and the CDI would get to somthing… but I lost my hope for GOOD REASONS!

1) A tangible indication that this process isn’t some form of placebo or sleight of hand.

2) see number 1.

3) see number 2.

Vorch.2985:

1. More feedback in threads from relevant development team members
2. Better focus on the topic at hand/less off-topic discussion
3. More transparency of the CDI meetings. (What are you guys discussing? What has no chance of making it in the game? What suggestions are you taking seriously?)

Someone typed my feed back for me lol. Number 3, what suggestions you’re taking seriously/particularly like, I consider the most important.

You’ve told us the development process is a ship that takes four months to turn which is a good start for transparency, however it would be nice for more information to know what’s open in the realm of possibility and what’s just plain impossible.

I also think that if a topic gains popularity, it should have it’s own split off topic opened for further discussion. This will help keep ideas organized instead of having to remember what page the good idea was on.

On that note, can we have a collab. development forum where only devs can create topics and everyone can post?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

bravoart.5308:

I’d love to see focus on talking about what the players of that region are concerned about. After having been told by a community manager that the first community discussions was about Living Story because other regions found that more important than EN GW2’s issues, it felt a bit disingenuous.

If EN gw2’s primary focus is rewards and drop rates and DR, don’t tell them that FR’s concern with living story is more important, even if it is more convenient.

Pushing hard work and difficult issues to the back just means it never gets done.

Hi Bravoart,

The topics were chosen from the global feedback we got from all of our forums. Therefore the first topics were inclusive of all suggestions for discussion from the global community.

Chris

Hi Chris! I get what you’re saying, and though it is no fault of ANet’s – from an insider perspective this is how the topics appeared to have been chosen.

ANET: Hey everyone! Give us a prioritized list of 3 things you would like to see improvements on.
Players: Ok, can you give us some examples?
ANET: Sure! Things like Living Story, Rewards, Game modes – stuff like that.
Players: Oh, ok, I think I get it.
ANET: So what kind of things would you like to see detail and improvement on?
Player1: Living Story, Rewards, Game Modes
Player2: Living Story, Game Modes, Rewards
Player3: GOD GUYS! Be more creative! Game Modes, Living Story AND Rewards!
ANET: … …well ok then, guess we’ll go with that!

So yeah, player-base kind of sheeped through the whole point of CDI, and now we’re reaping what we sow by getting vague information about features we don’t care about hand-fed to us, instead of insightful input/response. I know that I personally would have liked to see very specific information, input and feedback on a number of things outside of those 3 categories, but obviously when everyone regurgitates the words they hear, you get outnumbered instantly.

I have to say though, I love the way you guys are coming to us for feedback about balance changes. As someone who submits a lot of suggestions for ways that I can see to possibly improve the experience of the game, it is good to feel like you are contributing to the development of your own game/class.

Stop ignoring what you don’t like and answer the questions.

On the subject of “thicker skin”: I totally support the Devs’ right to be treated with respect. They are human beings, and do not deserve to be insulted or expected to endure angry toxicity.

That said, I agree that when dealing with subject matter that is by it’s very nature encouraging people to raise issues they are unhappy about, ANet needs to have reasonable expectations and a sense of perspective.

I worked in retail for 10 years, and if I was able to have people say completely nasty, demeaning, horrible things right to my face and not crumple up in a sobbing, defeated heap, I certainly think ANet employees can handle a little caps-lock or slight sarcasm now and then.

Yes, there is a line that should not be crossed. There is behavior that no one should have to tolerate. But it does sometimes feel as though ANet is more worried about the tone of someone’s post than they are the content. Not all blunt words are disrespectful. Sometimes, they’re just honest. And yeah, it doesn’t always feel good. Trust me when I say I know this from experience. But when you can examine the core of the message without getting all hung up on how it was delivered, you are much better off in the long run.

expansion please

I completely agree with StriderShinryu’s post.
The majority of discussion was between ourselves, which made it nearly the same as any typical thread here on the forum, other than some devs essentially adding post counts just to say ‘requoting for justice’, or going ‘yeah, that’s nice’.
I’m sure there are many parts where you’ve said ’we’ve had that discussion amongst ourselves’, but you almost never delve into your (or your team’s) views on the pros and cons of the ideas thrown around, and which side you think is more preferable to lean on.
A good example is the “global domination” idea that went on in the thread.
You guys have the metrics, you tell us where the idea may possibly fail.

Is this a CDI about how to do CDI?

Brutal Arts.6307:

Stop ignoring what you don’t like and answer the questions.

This happens to be my honest thought about the whole feedback system between GW2 Arenanet and its players. Some of us simply aren’t very intrigue with our words, and it seems that whatever facts we use to support our critism of the game, you guys believe that your data are more accurate so our feedback seems to have less impact of the game than others who “fits your agenda”.

Honesty is what we need here. If the players ask a question, could you guys just answer them in a way that doesn’t cause anyone to start speculations?

Players will always appreciate brutal honesty more than soft lies that are caused by pride and fear of personal offenses.

And sometimes being accused of something does not mean that the person lacks the communication respect, but once again the individual may be just seeking a definitive answer for their question.

Share your agenda, Share your process. I’m sure everyone’s attitude will be much less aggresive if you let us understand where you guys are at developing the game. That is all we care about when talking with developers; we understand you guys ultimately make the decision, but we would like to understand what you guys value in GW2’s game developments. You know all about our personal opinions but we do not know yours.

Try having a discussion with the players instead of one comment and response here and there.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Please do not assume that because a particular comment or post was not replied to that it was ignored. This is simply not true.

There is no bias toward any type of criticism/discussion as long as it is productive.

As i mentioned we need to have more focused topics and more time to be able to fully enter into the discussion. This is something we are actively working on.

Please do not try to derail a thread about how we can improve by building arguments around assumptions.

Finally this initiative is extremely important and should be treated with respect with the focus on evolving a great game. And the first round of CDI around Living World was extremely useful.

Chris

Then please tell us, what is your thought about that particular comment which we assumed got ignored? In other words, can developers please “share with players” something useful for once instead of giving premeditated answers that forces players to just ‘assume—- oh, that is probably what he/she means’? When we see something that we suggested multiple times not being implemented into the game, those of us who supports the idea would obviously appreciate being told about why the idea did not fit the development criteria.

EDIT: Some of us outside of the community has great ideas to offer, but I guess negative attitudes on the forum tends to easily influences your decisions making as game developers. This is how I picture a typical Anet Dev talking to a GW2 critic:

Critics: I didn’t really like the dungeons in GW2.
Anet: —-—
Critics: Hello.
Anet: Your points have been dismissed for its lack of factual reasoning. Have a good day.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

There is no bias toward any type of criticism/discussion as long as it is productive.

Right but negative feedback is not necessarily unproductive. If people are saying that content is boring, or frustrating, and explain why, then that can be very valuable feedback and should be taken seriously.

What is worse than people who complain about what your studio produces , are those who simply move on, and are no longer there to use the gem store.

Let’s say that in the future you move on to a different company plan, like expansions, or even a new IP. If fans are too embittered by then, they might no longer be interested in Anet’s next product and not buy in.

This is why it is important to listen to the community, and not try to shut down or shut out criticism.

What is worse than all of the above, in my view, is if this infects your company culture and developers are afraid to speak up and ask for the big changes to process that are needed .

I think the whole CDI concept was great. The one for the living story and the one for PvP showed great interaction.

I do recommend getting more ANET presence in the WvW thread next time. That one felt more half hearted than the others. We didn’t really have any collaboration there. I don’t think the summary really captured a good part of the dialog either.