Guild Wars 2

What’s your view on the changes. Personal I raised an eyebrow when suggestions was pretty much scrapped.

From what I heard, they want people to make suggestions in the sub-forums most related to the area of the game. I’m not sure how useful that will be in the long-run though; it’ll be better in the sense that it will foster more discussion from players interested in that game’s aspect, but having suggestions spread out across the forums may make it harder to keep track of them, especially on sub-forums that are very fast-moving.

I wish they would put the community events at the top, where people can find them. I also think it is odd to remove the one category that is probably posted in the most (suggestions), and had some really nice ongoing discussions with really good ideas.

WvWvW matchup forum being gone makes me sad.

I like that they moved the General discussion to the top of it’s section, but having living world above game discussion is silly.

I suppose I am biased because I only ever really look at wvw forums, class forums, and general discussion but that’s my opinion.

Now if you will excuse me I have to set down to memorizing yet another account/password for the external forum I have to go to because anet took away wvwvw forums =/

Chaotic Storm.2815:

What’s your view on the changes. Personal I raised an eyebrow when suggestions was pretty much scrapped.

the changes are awesome!

Zaxares.5419:

From what I heard, they want people to make suggestions in the sub-forums most related to the area of the game. I’m not sure how useful that will be in the long-run though; it’ll be better in the sense that it will foster more discussion from players interested in that game’s aspect, but having suggestions spread out across the forums may make it harder to keep track of them, especially on sub-forums that are very fast-moving.

It’s called divide, conquer and ignore.
I’ll be suprised if it is anything more than that.

I say we give the forum changes a day to settle, stop being petty in our complaints, take a deep breath of fresh air and stop acting like ANET exists to ruin our day.

There are obviously some valid concerns in this thread; I’m not saying they’re all nit-picky and unreasonable.

I am personally concerned by potential over moderation of topics and posts that are not particularly positive towards the game and/or the development decisions that fuel it. Of course, I do agree that attacks/flames/etc. should not be tolerated but I can help but cringe a little when I read of increased moderation.

Other than that, I think things sound pretty good. Suggestions was a decent enough place, but really did become a diamond in the rough like place where no one really knew if anyone was even out there looking for the diamonds. By moving suggestions to their appropriate locations, it should not only liven up potentially slow sub forums but might also, just maybe, actually mean there’s eyes looking at them.

That’s asking for an infraction, son!

But to contribute: the changes are great!

If forums are changing then it’d be nice to have a PvE section. It fills odd to have PvP, WvW but no PvE which is just mixed in general GW2 and not completely covered : no fractal and no open world sections…

About the recent changes, it makes sense to me : suggestions will be way easier to use for them. And honestly those forums are mostly about complaining/being glad and suggestions in a form or another : either way it’s about giving feedback so let’s sort all form of feedback the same way.

CC Danicia.1394:

Zaxares.5419:

From what I heard, they want people to make suggestions in the sub-forums most related to the area of the game. I’m not sure how useful that will be in the long-run though; it’ll be better in the sense that it will foster more discussion from players interested in that game’s aspect, but having suggestions spread out across the forums may make it harder to keep track of them, especially on sub-forums that are very fast-moving.

I’ll quote myself from another thread:

We want people to make suggestions in the sub-forums which make sense for their ideas. As example, if you have an idea about sPvP, you can and should post it in the sPvP sub-forum.

The development teams are very excited about this change.

So if you have a suggestion about the forum ? I doubt the “Forum Bugs” section would be the place to go post “Suggestions” on..

You know what’s great?
Knowing that your being heard.

In too many game forums there is an over whelming feeling for a lot of people is developers don’t really listen. Even if they are, they don’t actually communicate that fact, and so to lowly player it seems like they are just talking to a brick wall.
Even thou a lot of the time it is simple unreasonable for developers to hear everyone out. Time being finite.

But with this shift towards the CDI and Doylak Express, it’s a direct line to devs, so while it doesn’t grantee that your ideas will be heeded, or even that your will get a response, it does give enough the distinct impression that you have been heard at the very least.
Confirmation, that alone in invaluable.

Though some changes such as wvw match ups will be missed I can see the reasoning behind. The effort anet is putting to spend more active time in the forums discussing engineer stuff with us instead of spending that time moderating is a good step imo

Honestly? They really don’t get parody do they? My post wasn’t an attempt to stir up controversy but poke a bit of fun at the often repeated idea that there’s always some nefarious motive behind any change.

I’m sorry my attempt at bringing a little lighthearted levity to the thread fell flat. I promise in the future to refrain from humor unless I include a disclaimer.

Lyndis.4653:

If forums are changing then it’d be nice to have a PvE section. It fills odd to have PvP, WvW but no PvE which is just mixed in general GW2 and not completely covered : no fractal and no open world sections…

This is a big issue, and I would love to see it discussed more. We all prefer to post things in their related areas, but several of those areas don’t exist. Not everything belongs in General.

I’m starting to think the forums could use their own CDI.

StriderShinryu.6923:

I am personally concerned by potential over moderation of topics and posts that are not particularly positive towards the game and/or the development decisions that fuel it. Of course, I do agree that attacks/flames/etc. should not be tolerated but I can help but cringe a little when I read of increased moderation.

Other than that, I think things sound pretty good. Suggestions was a decent enough place, but really did become a diamond in the rough like place where no one really knew if anyone was even out there looking for the diamonds. By moving suggestions to their appropriate locations, it should not only liven up potentially slow sub forums but might also, just maybe, actually mean there’s eyes looking at them.

I’m not worried so much about moderation. It’s entirely possible to be quite critical of the game and accrue no infractions. Conversely, if increased moderation means less posters tossing around insults (like the over-used “whining” applied to anyone a poster disagrees with), this can only mean a better forum.

Given certain trolls seem to be free to post as they please and mods frequently edit posts to make language less negative i doubt this is a good thing,

predictions:

since suggestions is archived, the new way to bury undesirable threads will be to merge them till they are unreadable

since dynamic events is also gone there will be a new thread every few hours about whether temple X is open till there is a sticky

the increase in moderation/censorship will lead to more players using external forums till this is just a feedback loop of “everything is awesome”

If these changes mean arenanet are still going to completely blank the dungeon community, I couldn’t care less. Call the subforum boobies for all I care, all I want is some developer interaction.

Just the fact that we can now post suggestions in each subforum is great.
The suggestion subforum was just so huge, such a mess that nobody would read it, was just “hey I throw a suggestion here and I’m going away”.
So just for that, it’s cool. Other than that, I haven’t yet noticed any difference.

Also when I saw the announcement, I had hoped for improvements to the forum long asked such as search option functional and a “mark all read” button

I’m more concerned about the stealth deletion of posts — I’ve noticed some of my posts being deleted without any notification of any sort. As far as I know, you always used to get a PM about why your post was deleted — but no longer, it seems.

I like some of the changes.

Having the GW2 Discussion at the top of it’s category is a good thing, as is archiving the old Suggestion forum.

With the Suggestion Forum in particular, we used to say that it was the forum that all good ideas went to die. We rarely saw any feedback, and if it wasn’t a “hot topic” it disappeared in a flurry of “I want (insert thing here) or I /ragequit,” type posts. Having suggestions put in place inside of the subforum for which they pertain is a good idea.

As far as the bad, though, I am still trying to find everything and will post later if I find something I can’t like.

I think having us suggest things in the area that it is about is a good thing. However, if down the road it becomes hard to handle, well that is on them not us.

I did find a post very interesting and I wanted to touch on that for a moment as well.

“I am personally concerned by potential over moderation of topics and posts that are not particularly positive towards the game and/or the development decisions that fuel it. Of course, I do agree that attacks/flames/etc. should not be tolerated but I can help but cringe a little when I read of increased moderation.”

I am not really savvy on the background of Anet and where there roots are, but I have noticed that many companies seem to support “censorship” of certain conversations from taking place. I understand having rules that surround the use of clean words, but I think one of the most important parts to a successful business is criticized feedback. I am not sure where the line is drawn and how well Anet moderators handle this, but I would like to see more companies start allowing more “freedom of expression” within there products/services.

This does play an important role when “suggesting” things in GW2 for example. Maybe this great company will get on board of “freedom of expression” and stand behind the greatness of being able to handle true values of criticism from its mass player bass.

While I do support “clean” “freedom of expression”, sometimes you cannot have them both!

But hopefully there new forum system will work out for the best! =)

Lyndis.4653:

If forums are changing then it’d be nice to have a PvE section. It fills odd to have PvP, WvW but no PvE which is just mixed in general GW2 and not completely covered : no fractal and no open world sections…

This is so true. The “Guild Wars 2 Discussion” forum is so huge, things are bound to get lost in here. And I don’t really want to sift through all the random threads to find ones on PvE (which is what I’m really interested in).

I think dispersing Suggestions to the relevant forums makes perfect sense and support the change 100%. This is expected to be accompanied by more dev interaction in those forums, which will be awesome if it works out (please make them feel welcome!).

I also like the idea of splitting the profession forums into PvP and PvE sections, because they have totally separate builds and objectives, but if keeping them together makes it easier for the devs to participate, then I’m okay with that too.

The CDIs are so much more useful than the suggestions forum that it makes sense to get rid of it, honestly. The CDIs are focussed, solve problems, and don’t give you the impression that no-one’s paying attention.

I personally think the forums were already over-moderated. So I generally don’t see the increased moderation announcement as a positive thing. Over at our very own GWO forums, things can get a bit heated occasionally, but the moderators allow some snarky comments or sarcasm, because as long as the discussion is not completely derailed, it’s not a big deal. But the moderators on this forum often do not seem to see gray areas. They’ll instantly close down massive interesting discussions because some one posted a negative comment, and they tend to infract people left and right. I have never received an infraction on any forum before. Not on the GWO forums, or GW Guru, and not on the Aurora Glade forums. But I have received a few on these forums. How over-moderated will the forums be from now on?

As there has not been any inflammatory remarks in this thread, I’m not sure why there was a reminder regarding the moderation of threads. Maybe I’m personally missing something.

As far as the changes go, It’s a step in the right direction in my opinion, and I hope that the CDI evolves into a bigger process that also removes redundant threads regarding the same topic. A CDI covers a lot of topics, and also answers a lot of questions that other threads repeat.

mahariel.4981:

If these changes mean arenanet are still going to completely blank the dungeon community, I couldn’t care less. Call the subforum boobies for all I care, all I want is some developer interaction.

That was actually my concern for open world as well. If they haven’t after all this time put in the suggestions for the ui to bring this game up to par with modern games than why should I expect them to do it now after they changed the suggestions forums into subcategories. I’m not the only one who posted things like multi-spec or mini buttons for all sorts of necessary items we use in the game either, there are loads of posts like mine that are there to improve the ui but were ignored entirely.

I’m fine with the changes so long as someone over there realizes that these ui changes are necessary and actually implement them.

I’ve said this for a good 10 years of gaming:

A suggestion forum is to a game developer like a spam folder is to your gmail account.

Yeah.

This change at least shows the devs of this game actually care. Though I wonder how these forums will become without that spam folder…

Overall I’d say bad.
They removed a major reason to come and stay on the forums (matchup threads).

They’ve now dispersed suggestions, which I guess can help the devs, but what about miscellaneous ones? They’re going to clutter the gw2 discussion subforum now.

They make these new subforums and remove existing subforums, yet the stupid search feature is still borked, and has been for a year if not longer.

CC Danicia.1394:

Zaxares.5419:

From what I heard, they want people to make suggestions in the sub-forums most related to the area of the game. I’m not sure how useful that will be in the long-run though; it’ll be better in the sense that it will foster more discussion from players interested in that game’s aspect, but having suggestions spread out across the forums may make it harder to keep track of them, especially on sub-forums that are very fast-moving.

I’ll quote myself from another thread:

We want people to make suggestions in the sub-forums which make sense for their ideas. As example, if you have an idea about sPvP, you can and should post it in the sPvP sub-forum.

The development teams are very excited about this change.

I may be proven wrong about this, but isn’t that creating a “needle in a haystack” scenario, having to dig through hundreds of posts to hopefully come across a suggestion? It seems more streamlines to have a separate suggestions area where the focus was on specific improvements.

Now… if, for example, WvW has a separate suggestions category of it’s own, THAT would make a whole lot of sense. Replace the removed match-ups category with a Suggestions category, then you’d have all the specific WvW suggestion threads in one nice, neat, tidy and relevant location.

Just a thought.

Lorelei.3918:

I’ve said this for a good 10 years of gaming:

A suggestion forum is to a game developer like a spam folder is to your gmail account.

Yeah.

This change at least shows the devs of this game actually care. Though I wonder how these forums will become without that spam folder…

Wouldn’t you rather have spam go into your spam folder than have it clutter up your inbox?

Changes don’t make a lick of difference to me. =P

The suggestion forum was a waste anyway. They rarely responded to suggestions there and and we see how much stuff posted is taken seriously when patch after patch misses the mark.

Thinking they’ll read the class forums any more now than they did just because we’re posting suggestions there is laughable for the same reason.

On the plus side they did away with the WvW Match-Up forums. I don’t know if any of you all read them, but if you went 2 posts in a row without someone harrassing someone else it was a good day.

Mythx.9847:

I am not really savvy on the background of Anet and where there roots are, but I have noticed that many companies seem to support “censorship” of certain conversations from taking place. I understand having rules that surround the use of clean words, but I think one of the most important parts to a successful business is criticized feedback. I am not sure where the line is drawn and how well Anet moderators handle this, but I would like to see more companies start allowing more “freedom of expression” within there products/services.

There’s a difference between constructive criticism and criticism. In my experience, the moderators aren’t quashing all negative feedback – they’re keeping the discussion civilized and removing posts that can have a bad impact on the game or players (accusations that players are scammers, exploit details, etc.)

ANet has an interest in the forums being a friendly place where most folks feel comfortable participating in the discussions. More feedback from more of the playerbase is definitely of more value than allowing an angry subset of the playerbase to rant unrestricted. I read the Battle.net forums, but I don’t post there because of the unfettered nastiness. I’d rather the moderation be a little too strict (yes, I’ve had posts moderated) than the forums turn into a free-for-all brawl.

I’m actually kind of surprised that the necromancer sub forum wasn’t removed. That place has tumbleweeds passing through it, that’s how often devs visit it. Of course it is entirely possible that not even the forum maintenance crew are aware that the forum exists. Maybe we are secretly invisible, wouldn’t that be neat?

(whispers)
But in case a dev reads this, the forum is over here: —> Follow the arrows --> HERE

The changes are ok. I like the new location of General Discussion. The issue of the Suggestions forum is interesting though, because while Anet may have all the intention in the world of people posting suggestions in the sub-forums, they are going to need an army of moderators to move suggestions from GD to the proper forums. Otherwise GD is going to be the new suggestion forum (which it wasn’t far from already).

Neural.1824:

Otherwise GD is going to be the new suggestion forum (which it wasn’t far from already).

That’s probably why they did it. But if that is the case, why not merge the two forums? Now you’ll have general game discussion mixed with various suggestions, and it will be a bit of a cluttered mess. And on top of that, you’ll also have both game discussions and game suggestions on the Living Story forum, so its still all over the place.

The moderation is very concerning. The one infraction I received was blatantly draconian, and I’m sure I am not the only one to receive such an infraction.

Moderation is one thing. Stifling discussion is another. This is just a game, so I don’t want to make too big a deal out of this. But attempts to repress negative opinions historically tend to magnify extremism, not eliminate it. If the goal is to make the forums less toxic, draconian moderation is self-defeating.

This thread is already an example: there are multiple sarcastic posts referencing the moderation. And the reason this is such a problem is that all of those sarcastic posts are entirely fair. The moderation really has gone over the line.

I just find it giggle worthy we’ve resorted to this.
Before, people would put suggestions (and nearly everything else) in GD.
The mods then moved it to a place “more suitable”.
Now that place isn’t apparently suitable anymore.

So we simply go back to how we did it, minus that second step.
It is almost as if the constant thread moves were just too much busy work.

Do I think it is a good idea they’ve done this? Yes but even if they didn’t folks would still put stuff in GD anyways. We would have seen people replicating threads because of moves or out of sheer ignorance to the fact that topic was already discussed earlier.

The latter would have been helped if the blasted search engine worked.
The other half of that battle would be having folks learn to use it.

Pandemoniac.4739:

There’s a difference between constructive criticism and criticism. In my experience, the moderators aren’t quashing all negative feedback – they’re keeping the discussion civilized and removing posts that can have a bad impact on the game or players (accusations that players are scammers, exploit details, etc.)

There’s also a difference between removing posts, and removing entire threads. There’s quite a few good discussion threads that have been moved to the trashcan, just because one or two posters made nonconstructive posts. Some of the moderation seems indeed a bit draconian, and out of control. And an increase in that sort of moderation, does not sound very pleasant.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

There’s also a difference between removing posts, and removing entire threads. There’s quite a few good discussion threads that have been moved to the trashcan, just because one or two posters made nonconstructive posts. A lot of the moderation seems indeed draconian, and out of control. And an increase in that sort of moderation, does not sound very pleasant.

That hasn’t been my experience. The threads I’ve seen that were completely removed instead of locked or culled were discussions that were either completely off-topic or about botting or other topics that aren’t a good idea to let run free on an official forum. The off-topic threads might have been good discussions, but I can’t blame ANet for not wanting to run a general online gaming discussion forum.

There are plenty of alternatives. There are tons of unmoderated GW2 reddits that are very active. The official forums should be strictly moderated, because this is where their customers come first for information. In my opinion, it makes more business sense to have a few folks unhappy that the moderation is too strict on the official forums than to have an environment that would give new or potential customers a bad impression of the game’s community.

There is a line of course where strict turns into oppressive, but in my opinion, we aren’t even close yet. There are more discussions than I have time to read and there’s a lot of diversity in the topics. If the community was truly being repressed, it wouldn’t be so active.

I believe the only change this forum would need is a moderation like wizard of the coast boards…..

Strict and clear with no room for interpretation.

The www matchup section was useful, it just was full of personal Attacks and cheat accusations…yet deleting it was not a good answer.

The removal of the Personal Story forum feels like the official death of the personal story system in GW2. Is there a better place to discuss the personal stories or is its removal our indication that no more personal story will ever be added?

Though I will miss the Suggestions forum, having our ideas placed in more appropriate sub-forums will probably garner more acknowledgment. The changes are good.

CC Danicia.1394:

Caedmon.6798:

CC Danicia.1394:

Zaxares.5419:

From what I heard, they want people to make suggestions in the sub-forums most related to the area of the game. I’m not sure how useful that will be in the long-run though; it’ll be better in the sense that it will foster more discussion from players interested in that game’s aspect, but having suggestions spread out across the forums may make it harder to keep track of them, especially on sub-forums that are very fast-moving.

I’ll quote myself from another thread:

We want people to make suggestions in the sub-forums which make sense for their ideas. As example, if you have an idea about sPvP, you can and should post it in the sPvP sub-forum.

The development teams are very excited about this change.

So if you have a suggestion about the forum ? I doubt the “Forum Bugs” section would be the place to go post “Suggestions” on..

You can email forums@arena.net so the whole Community Team can see your suggestion. That being said, you’re making a fair point. Would this be something which would be valuable?

I think so, personally.

Could you also comment on the loss of the personal story sub forum?