Guild Wars 2

Useful thread. Still a shame the official forums are no longer relevant, but thanks for posting these links/quotes.

I appreciate your efforts.

I also find it pathetic that the devs are posting on Reddit instead of on the official forums where they belong.

Edited post to avoid future ban… if only the mods would migrate over to Reddit too…

Randulf.7614:

Useful thread. Still a shame the official forums are no longer relevant, but thanks for posting these links/quotes.

Of course the official forums are relevant. For a variety of reasons, the devs only have time to post rarely. They do, however, read a lot of suggestions and complaints (as can be seen by changes included in HoT, via things fixed, and even from the comments they make on Reddit). There really aren’t many posts on Reddit.

Of course, ANet can (and probably should) do more to acknowledge feedback, be more consistent about the tools that they use, and so on.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Randulf.7614:

Useful thread. Still a shame the official forums are no longer relevant, but thanks for posting these links/quotes.

Of course the official forums are relevant. For a variety of reasons, the devs only have time to post rarely. They do, however, read a lot of suggestions and complaints (as can be seen by changes included in HoT, via things fixed, and even from the comments they make on Reddit). There really aren’t many posts on Reddit.

Of course, ANet can (and probably should) do more to acknowledge feedback, be more consistent about the tools that they use, and so on.

It’s true that most of their posts are fluff posts, but there are posts where they say things I haven’t heard before. like where ArenaColin says they’ve made a larger fractal team and talks about the points on the OP’s thread or the post about Legendary Weapons and failing events that posted over a month ago over there and which was information that people here, who were posting about the same issues for a month and were never answered on this forum to my knowedge, could use. It’s those sort of posts and offhand comments that I want to bring over to this thread. Even if it’s not more than once a week or so, I still think it’s useful information to have posted somewhere on the official forum.

Thanks for taking the time to do this. It’s really nice of you.

So this is what this game has come to. PATHETIC! I think I’m going to join Reddit forums just so I can tell Colin and the rest of Anet how I feel, because they’ll never find out how their customer base feels in their own forums that’s for sure.

Nothing on WvW. No apologies from them for destroying WvW. No acknowledgment from them that everything they have done up to this point has been detrimental to WvW. All they care about is their craptastic PvE and selling useless items on the AH.

If they had any honor they would communicate, but instead they only hide. And to think I use to admire ANET.

pfft. that isn’t info, and it’s very old news. It’s also the same BS they have been saying for a long time and nothing has come from it except a dead game mode.

My point still stands and is more valid than ever.

Grim West.3194:

pfft. that isn’t info, and it’s very old news. It’s also the same BS they have been saying for a long time and nothing has come from it except a dead game mode.

My point still stands and is more valid than ever.

Point is Colin post that info on reddit and not GW2 official forum. Do not derail this thread about argue WvW stuff. Thread is for post what Anet post on reddit and not here on Anet official forum.

Grim West.3194:

pfft. that isn’t info, and it’s very old news. It’s also the same BS they have been saying for a long time and nothing has come from it except a dead game mode.

My point still stands and is more valid than ever.

/shrug.

That they were working on completely overhauling WvW was news to me before I read it over there. As far as I’m concerned that makes it relevant to post on this thread.

As I said, I’ll post what is new to me or I don’t think is widely known, even though it may have been posted elsewhere.

Qugi.2653:

Grim West.3194:

pfft. that isn’t info, and it’s very old news. It’s also the same BS they have been saying for a long time and nothing has come from it except a dead game mode.

My point still stands and is more valid than ever.

Point is Colin post that info on reddit and not GW2 official forum. Do not derail this thread about argue WvW stuff. Thread is for post what Anet post on reddit and not here on Anet official forum.

Point taken, and I’ll leave the thread. I do like what this thread is about. My point still stands though and is more true than you realize.

Grim West.3194:

Nothing on WvW. No apologies from them for destroying WvW. No acknowledgment from them that everything they have done up to this point has been detrimental to WvW. All they care about is their craptastic PvE and selling useless items on the AH.

If they had any honor they would communicate, but instead they only hide. And to think I use to admire ANET.

Thank you, this is exactly the quote I need. Wake up sheeple!

Grim West.3194:

pfft. that isn’t info, and it’s very old news. It’s also the same BS they have been saying for a long time and nothing has come from it except a dead game mode.

My point still stands and is more valid than ever.

If you recall back in the WvWwW megathreads there there 2 kinds of ppl :
a) YOU and the half of posters, where you where asking for WvWvW players to focus less on PvDoor and more on the blob vs blod .

Hence you get the objective(the kamehame beam) in the middle where every x min forces your blob vs blob .

b) The rest , where they knew that even in the Tier 1 servers , not all blobs has the same amount of ppl all the time and they where asking more larger maps , to split the zergs and in turn that wil lead into Defending was valid option

If they take 2 months to reduce the size of the map , and then i see ppl on the forums whining about servers stacking and you huge blobs , in turn i will ’’whine’’ to you …

It’s pathetic that this is even necessary.

Please keep the arguing out guys. This is a useful thread and it would be a shame to see it locked.

Qugi.2653:

Thread should be sticky so GW2 forum member can easy share what Anet post on reddit.

Making a sticky doesnt really mean its more visible. Most forum members dont really check stickies because they think they already checked them out.
A good example are the frequent threads about the common in game mail scam from account hackers. A thread about this pops up every other week with someone wanting to warn others, even though there is a sticky about it.

Offair.2563:

I think Just a Fleshwound should become our reddit -> Forum specialist!

i have to agree with this fully and think it should be so and done !!! now if we can only get them to see that . !!!!:)

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I still think it’s useful information to have posted somewhere on the official forum.

Absolutely. It astounds me that ANet will post stuff on twitter and not here or on Reddit and not Facebook. It’s not all that hard to automate the process of cross-posting. There’s nothing wrong about using multiple channels to communicate, but it seems like even a C-student in Social Media 101 would choose to coordinate the message(s).

edit: grammar

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I still think it’s useful information to have posted somewhere on the official forum.

Absolutely. It astounds me that ANet will post stuff on twitter and not here or on Reddit and not Facebook. It’s not all that hard to automate the process of cross-posting. There’s nothing wrong about uses multiple channels to communicate, but it seems like even a C-student in Social Media 101 would choose to coordinate the message(s).

Apparently devs are not required to post and really they’re totally doing us a favour by releasing “meaty” (Gaile’s words… lol) information on Reddit.

In Anet’s wacky world this apparently makes it okay to ignore the official forums… somehow.

I’m willing to bet this goes back to when the game was first being developed and discussing GW2 on reddit was part information, part hyping the game. And after game launch reddit posting is simply ingrained in some of the old guard including Colin. Reddit was their conduit to the fans.

Now the official forums may be out now, it’s lack of basic features (re: search) makes it less of a preferred means to convey information. A thread on general discussion may get a reply in PvP or WvW or whatever the dev replying (or Gaile) thinks is the best forum. Sure we have the dev tracker but one talkative dev in a thread you aren’t interested in could fill the front page, burying the reply you are interested in several pages deep. All a player knows is the thread where they posted hasn’t had a dev reply yet. Without search or possibly a dev tracker for each board (idea!) it’s frustrating.

Posting on any venue is something the Devs do voluntarily. Except for a select few whose job it is to post, I would assume.

It might encourage those volunteers to post more often, if there was less complaining about where they do post. Just sayin’…

I don’t use Reddit, no idea how it works. But, seems that most important Dev interactions eventually make their way here. Same with Twitter and Facebook.

ArenaNet doesn’t force their employees to share on social media; it may seem a bit much to those that do volunteer to have to post their thoughts/feedback/answers on multiple platforms.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Posting on any venue is something the Devs do voluntarily. Except for a select few whose job it is to post, I would assume.

It might encourage those volunteers to post more often, if there was less complaining about where they do post. Just sayin’…

I don’t use Reddit, no idea how it works. But, seems that most important Dev interactions eventually make their way here. Same with Twitter and Facebook.

ArenaNet doesn’t force their employees to share on social media; it may seem a bit much to those that do volunteer to have to post their thoughts/feedback/answers on multiple platforms.

What ground my gears was seeing post after post after post on this forum from people who were having problems with the Legendary collections which required events to fail and not getting a red post on this forum, and then finding a month old post on reddit discussing this problem and saying failing events wasn’t intentional.

Granted, they have a right to post where they want, when they want, but with important information they should make an effort to also put it on their official forum. Not have people begging for help and attention on their official forum for a major problem blocking progress, and weeks go by and nothing is said here.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Posting on any venue is something the Devs do voluntarily. Except for a select few whose job it is to post, I would assume.

It might encourage those volunteers to post more often, if there was less complaining about where they do post. Just sayin’…

I don’t use Reddit, no idea how it works. But, seems that most important Dev interactions eventually make their way here. Same with Twitter and Facebook.

ArenaNet doesn’t force their employees to share on social media; it may seem a bit much to those that do volunteer to have to post their thoughts/feedback/answers on multiple platforms.

What ground my gears was seeing post after post after post on this forum from people who were having problems with the Legendary collections which required events to fail and not getting a red post on this forum, and then finding a month old post on reddit discussing this problem and saying failing events wasn’t intentional.

Granted, they have a right to post where they want, when they want, but with important information they should make an effort to also put it on their official forum. Not have people begging for help and attention on their official forum for a major problem blocking progress, and weeks go by and nothing is said here.

This is a continuance of less than stellar work by the communications team. It was atrocious before the team was installed, and it has gotten worse after. It will continue to do so until they hire communication experts to communicate for them, give them the proper etiquette, and make sure they stick to the ground rules.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Since the Devs are posting regularly on the Reddit forum and not everyone reads Reddit, I thought I would start a thread with Dev quotes from that forum and try to update it as needed to make the same information over here equally available. This information may be already available from other sources, but if it’s new to me or I think it’s not widely known, I’ll post it here.

Feel free to add relevant, informational posts from Reddit (or Twitter) yourself as you see them.

Reddit Dev Tracker

Today’s post:
ArenaColin Source
You should see the first round of updates that help with #1 and #3 on your list next week from our new Fractals team.
As for #2 and #4 – those are both things we agree with, and we recently formed a larger fractal team after HoT launch so we can do exactly stuff like that.
Great suggestion thread, I passed it along to the team as well.

Judging by the Reddit dev tracker they sure seem to post a lot in that ‘Cupcake Day at ArenaNet!!’ thread.

You are what you eat, I guess.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Posting on any venue is something the Devs do voluntarily. Except for a select few whose job it is to post, I would assume.

It might encourage those volunteers to post more often, if there was less complaining about where they do post. Just sayin’…

I don’t use Reddit, no idea how it works. But, seems that most important Dev interactions eventually make their way here. Same with Twitter and Facebook.

ArenaNet doesn’t force their employees to share on social media; it may seem a bit much to those that do volunteer to have to post their thoughts/feedback/answers on multiple platforms.

That’s not how the world works, you don’t neglect your customer base because you feel that they are “complaining too much”, a good business does the exact opposite and responds to their customers.

If employees of a company don’t have the social or communication skills to respond to their customer base no matter what state they are in, then that company has lots of problems that need to be fixed.

You don’t ignore your official communication with your customers and go do PR on a 3rd party source hoping you don’t have to deal with unhappy customers.

Customers give a business money, it’s the business job to make sure their customers are happy, that’s common sense.

^I think you missed the point….by a wide mile.

It’s something they do voluntarily. It’s not part of their job description. I know I wouldn’t feel motivated to do more, if I got a lot of complaints about what I did do.

Just saying, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

If I understand how things on Reddit work correctly, perhaps they post there because they can’t rake in the karma here on the official forum.

Since Reddit is now the official bug feedback place, is there any news on the Toypocalypse/party issue? I remember last year it was something many fed back across the forum and I thought they’d said they’d look into changing it for this year. Any official comments?

You realise you got unofficially promoted to our community liaison officer from your good work

Randulf.7614:

Since Reddit is now the official bug feedback place, is there any news on the Toypocalypse/party issue? I remember last year it was something many fed back across the forum and I thought they’d said they’d look into changing it for this year. Any official comments?

You realise you got unofficially promoted to our community liaison officer from your good work

I haven’t seen anything but I haven’t gone back to older posts (more than 2 weeks old). So, it’s just what I’ve posted here so far in the last couple of weeks, besides fluff posts.

As I recall, it’s not a bug but an unwanted consequence of something they had to do for PvP. I guess it wasn’t something they could change.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Randulf.7614:

Since Reddit is now the official bug feedback place, is there any news on the Toypocalypse/party issue? I remember last year it was something many fed back across the forum and I thought they’d said they’d look into changing it for this year. Any official comments?

You realise you got unofficially promoted to our community liaison officer from your good work

I haven’t seen anything but I haven’t gone back to older posts (more than 2 weeks old). So, it’s just what I’ve posted here so far in the last couple of weeks, besides fluff posts.

As I recall, it’s not a bug but an unwanted consequence of something they had to do for PvP. I guess it wasn’t something they could change.

ahhh actually that rings a bell yes. Ok that makes more sense, cheers

If only there was an official Anet communications person who could make sure that Anet communications, wherever they are made, were cross-posted on the Official GW2 Forums or Website! Its great that a player thought of doing this (thank you OP) but I can’t imagine that no one at Anet was able to think of it… Or maybe they just didn’t want to promote the official GW2 Site / Forums for some strange reason?

Disappointing. Going by the reddit dev tracker they seem to have posted a lot about HOPE and Astralaria IV item collections, but haven’t addressed a single issue with wintersday, such as:
A lot of players having a difficult time entering the jumping puzzle or other activities

The 10k drink achievement to get the shoulder skin – Yes there is a thread on the forums asking for feedback but the only response we got after the first post was to let us know some threads were merged into it, and another thread that let us know the achievement was going to be available all year, but players still have concerns about it.

Or whether or not they are doing something about the massive amount of botters/hackers in the jumping puzzle.

:(

Perhaps, the Dev(s) that are commenting on the Legendary Collections are not the same Devs concerned with Wintersday. Thus, they would have nothing to say about the event that would be informative.

the dev’s have to go through bunch of red tape before posting here, interesting read

http://www.joshuaforeman.blogspot.ca/2013_09_01_archive.html#4916848020404903535

I have to shut up. It’s really hard for me to collect the valuable feedback offered on forums without response or questioning. Especially when it’s evident that the community likes it so much. Oh well. If the company that pays my paycheck and lets me work on my own crazy pet projects like SAB tells me to resist a difficult urge to interact with players because I’m jeopardizing the company so be it. I’m told I can still post, but much much less, and I need to get my posts approved first. So it’s not really a total shut-up. But I know I’d have to come off as a different person if I go through this procedure, which pretty effectively kills the urge.

TexasRanger.5107:

the dev’s have to go through bunch of red tape before posting here, interesting read

http://www.joshuaforeman.blogspot.ca/2013_09_01_archive.html#4916848020404903535

I have to shut up. It’s really hard for me to collect the valuable feedback offered on forums without response or questioning. Especially when it’s evident that the community likes it so much. Oh well. If the company that pays my paycheck and lets me work on my own crazy pet projects like SAB tells me to resist a difficult urge to interact with players because I’m jeopardizing the company so be it. I’m told I can still post, but much much less, and I need to get my posts approved first. So it’s not really a total shut-up. But I know I’d have to come off as a different person if I go through this procedure, which pretty effectively kills the urge.

Even more interesting read:

Gaile Gray
ArenaNet Forum Communications Team Lead

First let me clear up a few mis-impressions:

No one goes through a review or an approval process in order to post here. No one. I think I recall that years ago a team member mentioned something about approvals, but I do not know what that was about. I can say, though, that as the lead of the forums team today (for the last 15 months) we don’t review or approve posts.

What we are sometimes asked to do it post on behalf of a team. You’ve probably seen me do that recently about game changes, a WvW Sneak Peek, etc.

Sometimes we’re asked to read through a post to see if it makes sense, if it answers the questions, if there are other items that could be included.

Sometimes, someone asks me to give a “word smith” review. (I was a professional editor long before I joined Anet. Editing is something I like to do, and a help I can offer my fellow team members.) This doesn’t involve approval, this simply involves clarity.

Posts can be made where the ArenaNet team member is comfortable posting. No one is required to post. No one is forbidden from posting. I agree with you that sometimes there is info “out there” that I’d like to see on the official forums. In cases where I’m aware of it, I’ll ask the dev if he/she could also post here, or if we could synopsize the external post to share it here. I think it works, for the most part: the team member can post wherever he/she wishes, and we’ll do our best to share info here. (In the case of the concerns in the OP, I agree with Baconomics that we did cover the topic here, and I think we did that even before it was present on reddit.)

It’s true that each forum can have heated moments. Heck, I had a neutral info post buried once. It’s wasn’t personal, and I bear no scars. The fact is, members didn’t like the message and used down votes to “shoot the messenger.” (It was sort of a shame because then the info wasn’t known, which was the whole point of posting, but ah well.)

We don’t have up and down voting here, but people speak their minds, and sometimes that becomes over the top. We want to use moderation in the true sense — in a moderate sense — so we’re not likely to smite every single negative post, and I’m sure you know that. Getting more harsh here to encourage devs to post here is an interesting idea, but I’m not certain it’s good for the community as a whole, nor for the forum atmosphere in general.

ArenaNet doesn’t want to adopt a “post here and only here” approach to communications. I hope you’ll understand and support the inclusiveness of our communicating as being more important than the medium on which something is said.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/So-Reddit-Wins-Again/first#post5874997

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

TexasRanger.5107:

the dev’s have to go through bunch of red tape before posting here, interesting read

http://www.joshuaforeman.blogspot.ca/2013_09_01_archive.html#4916848020404903535

I have to shut up. It’s really hard for me to collect the valuable feedback offered on forums without response or questioning. Especially when it’s evident that the community likes it so much. Oh well. If the company that pays my paycheck and lets me work on my own crazy pet projects like SAB tells me to resist a difficult urge to interact with players because I’m jeopardizing the company so be it. I’m told I can still post, but much much less, and I need to get my posts approved first. So it’s not really a total shut-up. But I know I’d have to come off as a different person if I go through this procedure, which pretty effectively kills the urge.

Even more interesting read:

Gaile Gray
ArenaNet Forum Communications Team Lead

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/So-Reddit-Wins-Again/first#post5874997

Read all of his post not just the part I posted here, He got reprimanded for posting here and even took in house company forum posting course 2x in order to post on official forums.

Josh Foreman blog is more credible as the action speaks louder than words and that has back up his post. Gale’s post is complete opposite of course to tote the company line on the forums. Dev’s still don’t post here like how the community wants them to or how Josh Foreman did before being told to stop. But they have no problems posting tons more on Reddit then here since they don’t have to get the okay to post on Reddit, so believe what you want!!

First of all Thank You for starting up this thread. I think its super for someone to do what Anet should be doing, using “OFFICIAL” forums for what is important and should be OFFICIAL statements. I find it incredible that when a company states that honest and unsanctioned communication with customers is damaging for the company, well kind of says it all really. As Josh quoted “If the company that pays my paycheck and lets me work on my own crazy pet projects like SAB tells me to resist a difficult urge to interact with players because I’m jeopardizing the company so be it. I’m told I can still post, but much much less, and I need to get my posts approved first”

I read Josh’s blog and I am glad Texasranger graciously posted it up here to read.
It has been a long time now (and I touched on similar issues in another post), that I had the distinct feeling that a lot of what is said and done by developers are often crushed or stepped upon by a higher ranking official . The reasons behind that were due to some sort of company policy over personal wants and needs over what is good for its customer base.
I never felt Josh ever let us down nor should have ever felt bad about dropping numbers of players in GW2 activities. It was never the content that was in question but the string of bad moves made to the game through upper team decision making and included in the game as player improvements “grind”. That and not listening to the issues and needs that forum community were suggesting to make the game better.

Josh’s post was perhaps the most insightful view we have had from a honest source and how he felt. I give a lot of respects to Josh for that, he has said it as it is.
When I read Gaile’s post about “meaty” info, I had to laugh. If you consider “meaty” as Spam, which I do feel some of the posts that appear on official forums are.
Still waiting on the Wintersday feedback is a good example, but I guess we wait for after the holidays to see what the feedback result entails.

And for those still in the need of something meaty, please indulge

Thank you I was wondering why they were so silent…why would the post on reddit then entirely ignore their own official forums… =/ I hate navigating reddit as I dont use the site

Amazing to see how they’re clearly not embarrassed by this thread to post here more.

So I really want to know.

Why do you post on reddit more than on your own forums? If you didn’t post there people who use reddit would stop posting there and come back here and post here where they should be posting.

I for one don’t use reddit (I have been there to see what its like and discovered I didn’t like it), for reading or posting as the format is ugly and not at all friendly. I also know others who don’t like it or use it.

So Anet Dev’s Reclaim your forums quit posting on reddit return to your own forums! (Yes I do know they post here. But more big update and important information was posted on reddit days before being posted here. Weird no?).

You should ask this on Reddit :/

I did ask one who posted information on Reddit if he was going to post it on the main forum. He said that he didn’t have a tag to post on the English forum so if he posted it would look like a regular person’s post.

So, I guess not all are “licensed” to officially post here but they can officially post on reddit (and no, I’m not going to try to explain that one).

They’ll get flamed if they post here, not so much on Reddit.

I remember one person saying that they were alot more comfortable with reddits format then the forums.

Easier to just read Gaile’s posts in the following thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/So-Reddit-Wins-Again/first#post5874997

I find it absolutely disgusting and pathetic that we actually have to post on 3rd party platform to get dev attention. Or look for answers….

This forums format is crap and we have a new bug every week. It took months for the ability to “Search” through post actually worked here. Reddit is simpler and easier and GW2 devs can employ way more mods just from the reddit community to keep toxicity down.

Hell even the users can help police, if idiocy gets downvoted enough it will actually hide the post, meaning players can get on scummy commenters right away.

Lastly, we don’t have 90 sub-forums on reddit… It’s all a single thread and with the “Hot” setting a dev can find out, easily what most players are commenting on or upvoting.

All in all it’s just a cleaner more streamlined system. There’s a reason why Reddit has survived this long.

Nihevil.8024:

They’ll get flamed if they post here, not so much on Reddit.

This in a nutshell. Whenever any developer dares to post here, the masses quote, cherry pick, and trash all over it. As much as I respect Gaile, I cringe every time she posts because I know an avalanche of negativity is about to happen.

Reddit tends to curb this. Not because it’s better. But because the fan base is more fanatical about down-voting anything negative.

Valid or otherwise . . . and this creates something of a sanctuary.

But let’s be honest: If we were happy with the game, we wouldn’t be posting. We’d be playing the game. Forums tend not to exist to praise anything positive, but to point out missteps and issues that should be addressed.

If this has suddenly turned on its head, please rename the forums Lair of the White Knights and call it a day.

Believe it or not, most negative posters want to improve and enjoy the game. They don’t post because they hate Guild Wars 2. They love the game. But they absolutely hate the direction it’s going lately.

And the deafening silence isn’t helping relieve their concerns.

WereDragon.6083:

This forums format is crap and we have a new bug every week. It took months for the ability to “Search” through post actually worked here. Reddit is simpler and easier and GW2 devs can employ way more mods just from the reddit community to keep toxicity down.

Hell even the users can help police, if idiocy gets downvoted enough it will actually hide the post, meaning players can get on scummy commenters right away.

Lastly, we don’t have 90 sub-forums on reddit… It’s all a single thread and with the “Hot” setting a dev can find out, easily what most players are commenting on or upvoting.

All in all it’s just a cleaner more streamlined system. There’s a reason why Reddit has survived this long.

yeah sooo clean, useless posts about muffins get on top while posts about actual game breaking bugs never see the light of the day