Guild Wars 2

Sorry but I don’t like the way the forums are laid out now. Really hard to read the way they are now. I don’t like having to weed through the garbage to see what I find relevent to what I need to read.

It’s not too bad, but I really do believe that the Crafting and BLTC forums should remain separate from the General Forum (perhaps being merged together to form their own sub-forum). The General Forum is quite fast moving compared to the other two, with the result that the Crafting and BLTC forums developed their own “cliques”, with most of the regulars there knowing each other and could be relied upon to provide solid advice and insight on related topics there for newcomers.

I fear that this new change will mean that questions regarding crafting and trading will quickly get lost in the din of the General Forum and thus go unnoticed, since many people only ever bother looking at the first page.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Rip Van Winkle.4859:

Sorry but I don’t like the way the forums are laid out now. Really hard to read the way they are now. I don’t like having to weed through the garbage to see what I find relevent to what I need to read.

Sorry that you don’t care for them. I think with time you will find things more efficient and easier to find in the reorganized format, which has reduced the number of forums while retaining all the content. There’s always a bit of learning curve with anything new, but we’ll be watching for feedback over the next few weeks.

No you are 100% wrong to tell me what I may or may not like. As I said I have weed through garbage on here now it was much nicer before. You may like having several type of topics jammed into one I don’t.
Thanks

What about the old topics from closed subforums?
As I understand, currently they are archived and read only until the end of the year when they will be deleted.
Will this mean that those topics cant be seen or quoted anymore?
Will posts in that topic be erased from our personal timeline as well?

Bit sad the race forums are now gone.

Rip Van Winkle.4859:

No you are 100% wrong to tell me what I may or may not like. As I said I have weed through garbage on here now it was much nicer before. You may like having several type of topics jammed into one I don’t.
Thanks

Are you really going to be one of those customers? It’s not so bad, just leave constructive criticism on what they can improve so they don’t just leave you the typical script response and everyone gets something out of it.

mesocosm.6107:

Bit sad the race forums are now gone.

Agreed! I should have visited the Asura forums more while I had the chance…

Also, where’s my multi-quote button?

I don’t know why anyone complains. At this point, it is pretty obvious that the “Devs” do not see any of this. They are just churning out what they want to churn out and have hired Gaile to reduce the negative image the forum posters paint of GW2 so prospective buyers will still buy it.

Disappointing the BLTC wasn’t spared like the dungeon sub. I thought there were a number of convincing arguments made about its usefulness (many of them analogous to the dungeon sub argument.) Hopefully it will be brought back if (when) the moderators see the tp flippers are a unique community that could use their own space for discussion.

Leo G.4501:

Rip Van Winkle.4859:

No you are 100% wrong to tell me what I may or may not like. As I said I have weed through garbage on here now it was much nicer before. You may like having several type of topics jammed into one I don’t.
Thanks

Are you really going to be one of those customers? It’s not so bad, just leave constructive criticism on what they can improve so they don’t just leave you the typical script response and everyone gets something out of it.

mesocosm.6107:

Bit sad the race forums are now gone.

Agreed! I should have visited the Asura forums more while I had the chance…

Also, where’s my multi-quote button?

I have every Right to say how I feel here just as you do. Now we had 4 easy to read forums crammed into 1. Tell me how that is better to read something on? Maybe to you it is better. Common sense is all it takes make it back the way it was. I just call it lazy on the Mods part.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Rip Van Winkle.4859:

Sorry but I don’t like the way the forums are laid out now. Really hard to read the way they are now. I don’t like having to weed through the garbage to see what I find relevent to what I need to read.

Sorry that you don’t care for them. I think with time you will find things more efficient and easier to find in the reorganized format, which has reduced the number of forums while retaining all the content. There’s always a bit of learning curve with anything new, but we’ll be watching for feedback over the next few weeks.

If you happened to have a filing cabinet filled with carefully labeled files, say for recipes, for several categories. Italian recipes in one, German recipes in another, and Spanish recipes in yet another. If you were looking for information on a specific Italian recipe you would go to the correct file and find it, ideally, very quickly. If instead you dumped all of your recipes into one file regardless of category any time you wanted to find information on one specific recipe you would have to thumb through all of them, certainly taking more time than was previously the case.

Eliminating or reducing sub-categorization almost never produces a more efficient search.

and another change that doesnt make any sence whatsoever.. man.. i should invest into a pickle jar and put in all the coins in my wallet everytime something like this pops up… id be kittening rich in a year

I don’t like the change either, but no matter how well Ashen just described the situation, Anet aren’t going to change this. They can be pretty stubborn at times.

The race forums are now together with a lot of other stuff. It looked neater to have the race forums like the profession forums, on it’s own category. It looks a little cluttered. That my only thought on the changes.

I wish they would have kept the Race forums untouched aswell, its a real bummer to see them gone.
Its pretty fun to look into your races forum and find people or topics that are easy to relate to or interesting…it created a sense of pride for say sylvari or human or charr or w.e you may have been.
i’m glad its still there but its kinda just thrown off to the side.. it should at least be grouped in the section with the professions.. (or something just not how it is now)

I totally agree with the OP. The new categories are less useful in my opinion and will make it harder to find things. There was plenty of constructive feedback given in a previous thread, hardly any of which seems to have been taken on board, and the response from ANet to the OP is pretty patronising. “We note that you don’t like the new forum now but we are sure you are mistaken and will realise the error of your ways in due course”.

As Ashen says “Eliminating or reducing sub-categorization almost never produces a more efficient search”. Why isn’t that patently obvious to ANet?

The worst thing about the change is dumping the race forums. I mean seriously, is the forum better now that it’s gone? I know it probably didn’t have as much traffic as some other forums, but i’m sure it was many peoples’ favourite place :P

Gaile Gray.6029:

Rip Van Winkle.4859:

Sorry but I don’t like the way the forums are laid out now. Really hard to read the way they are now. I don’t like having to weed through the garbage to see what I find relevent to what I need to read.

Sorry that you don’t care for them. I think with time you will find things more efficient and easier to find in the reorganized format, which has reduced the number of forums while retaining all the content. There’s always a bit of learning curve with anything new, but we’ll be watching for feedback over the next few weeks.

Speaking as a former member of the BLTC board, now cast adrift in GW2 Discussions …

There were simply far too many subforums for devs to be abke to collate feedback. This change makes it easier for them to find the feedback on a daily basis, which is the main criticism people seem to throw at them.

This is how it should have been from the start, the forums never needed to be this big.

There is no conspiracy, no attempts at sweeping things to one side, no deliberate attempts to destroy their own game. Its just streamlining for the good of the game.

And if you genuinely believe a subforum should exist, give reasons for why. They have already said in the main thread other subforums may be added if they are proved useful ….eg BLTC had so e solid arguments in favour of returning.

But didn’t.

15 chars

Randulf.7614:

There were simply far too many subforums for devs to be abke to collate feedback. This change makes it easier for them to find the feedback on a daily basis, which is the main criticism people seem to throw at them.

This is how it should have been from the start, the forums never needed to be this big.

There is no conspiracy, no attempts at sweeping things to one side, no deliberate attempts to destroy their own game. Its just streamlining for the good of the game.

And if you genuinely believe a subforum should exist, give reasons for why. They have already said in the main thread other subforums may be added if they are proved useful ….eg BLTC had so e solid arguments in favour of returning.

This is ultimately another putting the cart before the horse deal. Reorganization should only happen if and when they decide to get a real piece of forum software. Consolidating so much into general is not more efficient, not for anyone, especially without a proper search and category sub-forum system.

I welcome this new changes, but i still hope you guys make a new subforum (economy maybe) for BLTC and crafting.

Look, even after the reorganization – which made all and everything part of the general discussion – this forum has hardly any movement.

With all those useless topics in general discussion, it now at least looks like people would still care a bit about this game.

Any less activity in here and new visitors might get the impression this game is dead…

Even considering the people who haven’t left yet — most players have figured out that trying to get an answer on anything from ArenaNet is practically impossible.

Me, though? Well, I’m just stupid.

When you consider that threads are now falling off the front page of the forum within a few hours, when you consider that the threads are often badly titled so that the subject is unclear, when you consider that ANet doesn’t have a better search function than anyone else, when you consider that the forums were set up just a year ago so that the Devs could easily find the topics in their particular area of interest, it’s possible that ANet didn’t do enough considering before they made these changes.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Look, even after the reorganization – which made all and everything part of the general discussion – this forum has hardly any movement.

With all those useless topics in general discussion, it now at least looks like people would still care a bit about this game.

Any less activity in here and new visitors might get the impression this game is dead…

So basically the forum’s version of the megaserver :P

Together with the non working search function, this for me is more a forum un-organisation than a re-organisation

From what I can see, what they’ve effectively done is taken some of the forums, condensed them into other forums and made the rest a gigantic big old list in the “Archives” which I kid you not is longer than my arm.

Still, I have to question whether it was worth it, I mean was there any tangible evidence to say that x-subforum needed to be archived? Races are a prime example. And no I don’t consider a grace period to get settled into the new format acceptable. This was forced from the beginning.

It’s just another example of ANet rolling out something nobody asked for and nobody likes or understands. The Forum Shuffle! Designed to uh… uh… What was this going to fix anyhow? Oh, that’s right: To foster the illusion of progress. Just like LS does. That it creates a more confusing structure that buries actual useful feedback is a major win for Anet.

Man, talk about getting a lump of coal for Christmas.

Remember everyone that this change was done because new format is more user friendly, and will facilitate greater interaction between us and ArenaNet team members. Now, give it some time, and surely we all will see a burst of red post activity on every subforum!

Such optimism.

Well everyone, I believe I’ve seen what will happen to the rest of the archived forums. I just tried posting in the Norn subforum only to have my input rejected and saying that I’m not allowed to post in this forum.

So there you go – archived forums are now read-only. Really Anet, what’s the point?!

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

So there you go – archived forums are now read-only. Really Anet, what’s the point?!

Archived forums have always been read only. There wouldn’t be much point to archiving them if they were not.

munkiman.3068:

This is ultimately another putting the cart before the horse deal. Reorganization should only happen if and when they decide to get a real piece of forum software. Consolidating so much into general is not more efficient, not for anyone, especially without a proper search and category sub-forum system.

This is it—the software is and always been incredibly poor ( as acknowleged by various devs that its’ functionality is lacking in a number of areas). It should have been Anets priority to aquire better forum software/platform before any kind of consolidation and removal of categories. Bottom line—-they will do what they want regardless of the communities concerns (with forums or the game). Look how they the suggestions about maintaining the BLTC threads fell on deaf ears. IMHO, the decision had been made and written in stone well before introducing them to the community.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

So there you go – archived forums are now read-only. Really Anet, what’s the point?!

Archived forums have always been read only. There wouldn’t be much point to archiving them if they were not.

The Race forums need to be unarchived, people were still actively posting in them.

Hey, Ms. Grey? Any chance you guys could merge the 700 topics about this “reorganization” as well as the ones about the new daily/monthly changes?

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

JustTrogdor.7892:

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

So there you go – archived forums are now read-only. Really Anet, what’s the point?!

Archived forums have always been read only. There wouldn’t be much point to archiving them if they were not.

The Race forums need to be unarchived, people were still actively posting in them.

There are a lot of sub-forums that were active but still got archived. Anet is basically throwing all the books into one shelf, rather than having them divided up by genre. This is such a tone-deaf move on Anet’s part, I really don’t understand how anyone can defend this mess.

At least it’s not in the game this time.

Another problem, of course, is that a huge number of cached links in search engines are now broken. I’ve had some major issues loading maps today and was looking online for answers, nearly every link was broken…that’s not good…really.

So…question…if I wanted to ask a question about Crafting, that would be the Players Helping Players forum? Or the General forum? Or if I happen to be an elementalist, on the elementalist forum? You know, maybe we need, I don’t know, some subforums that will help us to post in the correct areas so our questions/comments don’t get buried under yet another 10 threads on Mounts.

MFoy.3284:

It’s just another example of ANet rolling out something nobody asked for and nobody likes or understands. The Forum Shuffle! Designed to uh… uh… What was this going to fix anyhow?

The official reason was that the developers didn’t like having to scroll down and visit a couple of different forums so that they could effectively not engage us.

Now they only have to check 5 pages of Topic Soup in a single subforum in order to not answer any questions.

lunawisp.2378:

Another problem, of course, is that a huge number of cached links in search engines are now broken. I’ve had some major issues loading maps today and was looking online for answers, nearly every link was broken…that’s not good…really.

Fortunately, the search engines will update eventually and replace the dead links with the new ones eventually. Soon it will be as easy as before to find player opinions about issues that really need actual responses from ArenaNet.

misterman.1530:

So…question…if I wanted to ask a question about Crafting, that would be the Players Helping Players forum? Or the General forum? Or if I happen to be an elementalist, on the elementalist forum? You know, maybe we need, I don’t know, some subforums that will help us to post in the correct areas so our questions/comments don’t get buried under yet another 10 threads on Mounts.

I second on this
well to be honest, i m very confused now because where can i talk about BLTC/crafting topics?

bertillec.7864:

misterman.1530:

So…question…if I wanted to ask a question about Crafting, that would be the Players Helping Players forum? Or the General forum? Or if I happen to be an elementalist, on the elementalist forum? You know, maybe we need, I don’t know, some subforums that will help us to post in the correct areas so our questions/comments don’t get buried under yet another 10 threads on Mounts.

I second on this
well to be honest, i m very confused now because where can i talk about BLTC/crafting topics?

Usually the 3rd to 5th page of general discussions.