Guild Wars 2

Hmm I am not too sure about how a survey would look, but coudn’t you start with a few questions about wich part of the game you like most (PvE, sPvP or WvW maybe a hybrid between two?) and give people a slightly different survey based on the first questions so you would have people with more experience and maybe more ideas for their favorite part of the game giving you feedback on those part. This would avoid giving a huge survey to everyone and give a shorter one instead. Or maybe hand different surveys out to people based on the ammount of time they spent in certain maps? Like give people who are in certain dungeons a survey for just that dungeon (same for other areas in the game).

You could even kind of implement it in the game so it looks more part of the world, have a skritt or something walk upto you and hand you the survey in this case and tell you he wants your opinion about this place of interest.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Honestly and truly: These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication. They are read daily by members of the team — probably more people than you think! — and the forums, as a whole, give us a much better view of what’s important to Guild Wars 2 players than most surveys would do.

Well the thing is it doesn’t feel that way entirely.

Over the past 2 years I’ve seen this game improve GREATLY as far as “convenience” comes, i recall in the early days people wanting a wallet so we wouldn’t have to bank our dungeon tokens, which we received, I recall many players complaining about soulbound legendaries, conveniently that was fixed things like that have been great.

What has not been so great was the latest feature pack restricting players which is now followed up by a “free trial” period to appeal to more casual players, even though the restrictions are far over the top.

However other issues that are indeed harder to fix, have not been addressed yet while those problems were clear from Launce day.
The endless inflation is a big worry on these forums, and though “Anet” clearly stated they would “intervene” if it got out of hands hasn’t done anything yet in 2 years of inflating prices.

And the last big issue is new content, people expected a new expansion in 2 years time, a new continent to explore, Elona for instance, however after 2 years we got a ton of “convenience” and a largely stretched current content by living story and events.
However as far as “long term” goes this isn’t a good things, because at some point the playerbase is going to break.

And no it doesn’t break just like that, but see before GW2 I’m sure most of the current playerbase came from old-day hardcore MMO’s that were already on the verge of dying after the loyal customers were backstabbed a few times by the company developing the game because “casual” players brought in more money.
We came here because this was a great alternative(aside from many GW1 players of course) however i don’t want to see history repeat itself and players leaving GW because something better pops up and people are tired of the lack of development.

TL/DR: Considering the changes that people have asked for for years that haven’t happened people question the forums and ask for a survey to know for sure Anet is hearing us.

And even though i believe some kind of expansion has been under development, the secrecy of Anet giving no announcement of such can bring a lot of complaints towards that…

Okay Gaile, as there are significantly more posts in this thread mentioning the traits system than the survey, and you haven’t said anything about it, I’ll try something else.

If a rule has been implemented at the company banning devs from speaking on traits, nod twice.

Then, if you nodded twice, please do whatever you can to have that rule revoked

I like (and have defended before) the idea of surveys exactly to gauge reception and interest on changes and new things. Many times I think that, even when a “good” change is made in the game, the 90+% of the games who are satisfied continue playing happily, while the 10% that didn’t like that are much more vocal about their displeasure. So, a change can be seen as bad even if most of the players liked it.

One way to make surveys a community-driven process is to collect the most common feedback on the forums and make a survey based on them. This way, the options would be the ones that make the most sense. To illustrate my point I rescued my “traits” survey examples, one of them more binary and one more focused on known feedbacks from the forums.

What do you think of the new trait system?
(o) I like it, it is a fun mechanic!
( ) I hate it, give my traits back!

Any particular criticism about the system?
[X] 100% map completion for traits? Bad idea.
[X] I think that traits should always be found in maps with level lower than the trait availability (level 36 for adept for example)
[ ] All traits should be attainable by playing only a game mode, the current system forces me to WvW / PvE!
[ ] The events that award traits should be better planned to avoid waiting hours for it!
And so on.

Also, the CDIs could be a very fertile ground to get the ideas for the survey structure.
For example, the Guild QoL CDI collected a lot of good ideas, but surveys could help identify which were the most wanted ones so the developers could focus their efforts.

A stop-gap on the road to surveys could be Digg/Bury buttons on the forum, that could also serve for this purpose without needing a completely new survey functionality. But I still like the power of surveys to consolidate information.

Now I think about it, this whole survey thing kind of feels like the voting we had a long time ago in LA. But instead about some smaller things. If you could make it feel the same way I’m certain players would have more interest in filling them in aswell and might attract more people to the forums to give you more feedback on those subjects aswell.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Crash — I’m asking about that thread. I know it’s huge, and believe me, I hear you (and a thousand other forum members ) loud and clear. I don’t have an answer for you on that subject, but I know you’d like to know more about the status of that thread, if nothing else.

Thank you! Much, much appreciated!

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

ipan.4356:

They could tell us whether or not they’re working on an expansion.

Yh exactly any info ! Like we are working on build templates stay tuned we will release it in maybe 2 months and it is enough . It is still better then waiting 6 months for new cmd colors o_0 such a great upgrade .

On build templates, I really wish the search feature worked, Evan Lesh (gameplay programmer) said they absolutely want to do them but there are considerations. You can refer to https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Suggestion-Favorite-builds-button/first. Now, that thread was started several months ago, no one knows when or if it will be finished. Also bringing this up because it shows communication between devs and and the community, only not everything about development is made public and not everything they work on is worth announcing in its current state.

Edit: to add to that, it sounds like Anet keeps going back to the drawing board with their iterative development process. I can only imagine how many times they start from scratch on some projects.

Dunno from my experience the devs of this game have never been in touch with what players have wanted since release. Before they had a good idea but after grind went through the roof, reward went through the floor. Game became a huge pay to win waste of time. I check back every so many seasons to see if they actually ever fix the game.

Gaile Gray.6029:

If you’re considering how the GW2 Team can best hear your input about the game — such as what you’d like to see in the future, how things are working now, etc. — I personally don’t think a survey is necessary. Honestly and truly: These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication. They are read daily by members of the team — probably more people than you think! — and the forums, as a whole, give us a much better view of what’s important to Guild Wars 2 players than most surveys would do.

Too we have interaction here that’s incredibly effective. Yep, I’m thinking CDIs and I’m glad they’re back! (Even if I marvel how Chris is able to keep up the pace! )

Surveys are difficult to devise in a way that makes them unbiased and statistically accurate. That’s not to say it cannot be done, and the idea of surveys linked to an active game account certainly sounds better to me than those random Internet surveys, like “Who’s your favorite singer,” which get gamed through fan groups, artist management companies, publicists, agents, and the use of “ballot-box stuffing” methods, like vote, clear cache, vote again; vote, change computers, vote again; vote, set up 100 fake e-mail accounts, vote again.

Anyway, just wanted to add a couple of pennies about the subject, fwiw.

If these were read daily then why are leaps broken for nearly every class in this game since the release of the game?

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Gaile Gray.6029:

I appreciate the feedback. I just wonder how such a survey could work. Most surveys are not essay questions. They’re like this:

• Should we change [this thing]? Yes/No.

That seems unhelpful. First, things are seldom answered with just a yes or no answer. Instinct is to react, “Well, I need to know more about why you’re looking at that area,” or “That’s not as important as [these other things]” or “Yes, please change it [this way] and not [that other way].”

Or maybe you’re thinking:

• Which of these things should we focus on? [list]

And we all know, given we’re forum members, that those opinions — about priorities or changes — could number in the dozens. Nah, probably in the hundreds.

Maybe it’s an essay question. Maybe it’s “We’re looking for feedback on [this thing]” where you can provide your thoughts in detail. If that’s the case, may I introduce you to the CDIs?

You make good points, it’s not possible for any human being to read every thread. And certainly when their job is making a game — design, programming, art, writing, and all the other facets of development — reading the forums in large amounts could take them away from their job at a cost to the game.

But if 300 Anet Team members are reading the forums, even if lightly, it starts discussion. Heck, I’ve sent notes about threads to various teams, and I know just about every other person here has done the same. Like this: “I don’t work on [such-and-such], but I found [this linked thread] really interesting.” Or maybe, “This is for your team. I think we can support it by doing [our stuff] if you are going to work on this.”

So surveys? Maybe they’ll happen, I’m not sure. Could you outline your thoughts on how they’d look? Input on something topical? CDIs are great — are you participating? Have you made a suggestion there that we have one on a topic near and dear to your heart?

Please don’t see this as a “never happen” response. I’m mostly just asking questions, that’s all.

Why can’t the survey be something like
on a scale of 1-5 how happy are you with XXXX
out of these 5 things which was your most liked
out of these 5 things which was your least liked
please rate these 5 items in order of most liked to least liked
on a scale of 1-5 how would you rate your experience from levels 1-5, 5-10,10-15, etc
on a scale of 1-5 how would you rate the speed at which you gain skills, the speed at which you gain traits, the speed at which you unlock the ability to do XXXX
what things would you like added to the game out of these 5
what things would you like changed out of these 5
how is your overall satisfaction with XXXX

I think some of these could help you with interpreting what your metrics are telling you. Rather than telling everyone what someone thinks or wants the metrics to tell them.

Quoted for truth, and to emphasize that this is a player who came up with a meaningful survey format to use to compare against Anet’s metrics.

Surveys are hard to do. Extreamly hard!. That said I think that ArenaNet has the resources to write a good one. I also think surveys could provide as a valuable tool. The area that it could get information on is what the playerbase really feels about the

I think a survey would be good to identify the area of the game that should be worked on. It would also be good to identify how well changes were recived. A survey sent out via email and distributed via the various communities Fourms/Reddit/Fan Sites etc. This would help on avoiding selection bias to some degree. This is something these fan made surveys can not preform.

I think after the servery identifies the areas that need focus a CDI should be created and ran to get player feedback on those issues. This would provide the necessary information to improve the system.

The survey could be something as follows:

Place the following playtypes in order of frequently of play.

[] PvE
[] sPvP
[] WvW

Have you tried out XYZ system that was changed.
(Yes)
(No)

Do you feel that XYZ system effects you on the way you play the game.
(Yes)
(No)

On a scale of 1-5 are you satisfied with the way XYZ system was implemented.

The advantage to this survey structure is it removes a lot of bias. It categorizes players based on play-type. If the player has tried said system vs just based upon inaccurate information. If they feel a change effects them. It also provides a scale of satisfaction with the system.

Getting information on what players think needs improvement is much harder. I think that a different system all together should be used for that. A system like getsatisfaction or uservoice works well. The forums can be used in a similar manner however I am unsure on if the +1 button works well as there is no way to flag your idea as a suggestion to be “Voted For”. The not so stellar! search feature is also a problem. I can not easily identify issues that were brought up before. A lot of us have resorted to using Google. I honestly think at this moment that AreanNet should sign up for a Google custom search engine and

There was a survey implemented in the game during the Beta weekends. After a section of the story had been completed there would be a survey pop up with a series of (I’ll be honest) VERY vague questions pertaining to the story, the characters in it, etc. of which we were asked to vote on a scale out of 5.

Of course Anet has the ability to write up a survey. Whatever comes from this survey is a completely different story. How they’ll act on this survey is another matter as well. Regardless you can be assured we won’t know the outcome of it, thanks policy.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I appreciate the feedback. I just wonder how such a survey could work. Most surveys are not essay questions. They’re like this:

• Should we change [this thing]? Yes/No.

Maybe, if a Survey is considered, it should be kept as simple as possible. Just ask something like:

Shall we continue to implement new Temporary content or leave said content in the game Permanently?

Short, concise, and directly to the point.

I think I can guess the response to this one without a survey though.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Crash — I’m asking about that thread. I know it’s huge, and believe me, I hear you (and a thousand other forum members ) loud and clear. I don’t have an answer for you on that subject, but I know you’d like to know more about the status of that thread, if nothing else.

Thank you! Much, much appreciated!

^^ What he said.

There are a lot of people that have put in months of effort to get that thread properly addressed. Thank you, Gaile, for at least trying to get us its status in your office.

Instead of a survey, maybe Anet could post a synopsis of what they took from each CDI after internal discussion?

This would take less effort than surveys, and will allow Anet to gauge whether they’re on the same page as the playerbase, broadly speaking.

Illysharia.7286:

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Crash — I’m asking about that thread. I know it’s huge, and believe me, I hear you (and a thousand other forum members ) loud and clear. I don’t have an answer for you on that subject, but I know you’d like to know more about the status of that thread, if nothing else.

Thank you! Much, much appreciated!

^^ What he said.

There are a lot of people that have put in months of effort to get that thread properly addressed. Thank you, Gaile, for at least trying to get us its status in your office.

While you’re at it, how about a bump for the idea of getting un-megaserved somewhere so server communities can meet up?

Gaile Gray.6029:

If you’re considering how the GW2 Team can best hear your input about the game — such as what you’d like to see in the future, how things are working now, etc. — I personally don’t think a survey is necessary. Honestly and truly: These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication. They are read daily by members of the team — probably more people than you think! — and the forums, as a whole, give us a much better view of what’s important to Guild Wars 2 players than most surveys would do.

Too we have interaction here that’s incredibly effective. Yep, I’m thinking CDIs and I’m glad they’re back! (Even if I marvel how Chris is able to keep up the pace! )

Surveys are difficult to devise in a way that makes them unbiased and statistically accurate. That’s not to say it cannot be done, and the idea of surveys linked to an active game account certainly sounds better to me than those random Internet surveys, like “Who’s your favorite singer,” which get gamed through fan groups, artist management companies, publicists, agents, and the use of “ballot-box stuffing” methods, like vote, clear cache, vote again; vote, change computers, vote again; vote, set up 100 fake e-mail accounts, vote again.

Anyway, just wanted to add a couple of pennies about the subject, fwiw.

Look man, You can listen to Jimi but you can’t hear him. There’s a difference man. Just because your listening to him doesn’t mean you’re hearing him.
Sidney Deane
There are threads upon threads upon threads of what we’d like to see in game. Yet I believe very little if any has come to fruition. We did however get NPE. Which I can’t find threads of people requesting it.
I respect you Gaile you’ve done so much for GW1! This is not an attack!
Bi-weekly updates were promised yet we had 4 now a 3 month hiatus! How as a fan/player are we to keep the faith when you’s break your own words?
We are a distraught community because we get vague/condescending replies or no real information.

Survey is good. There have been a few unofficial surveys already done by some players.

Survey might not be able to provide the details but at least, it is able to provide certain insights of things. Also, with a survey that is designed properly, it will allow one to data mine (analyse information, that’s what data mine really means) and summarise or even discover certain things that you never thought existed.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I appreciate the feedback. I just wonder how such a survey could work. Most surveys are not essay questions. They’re like this:

• Should we change [this thing]? Yes/No.

That seems unhelpful. First, things are seldom answered with just a yes or no answer. Instinct is to react, “Well, I need to know more about why you’re looking at that area,” or “That’s not as important as [these other things]” or “Yes, please change it [this way] and not [that other way].”

Or maybe you’re thinking:

• Which of these things should we focus on? [list]

And we all know, given we’re forum members, that those opinions — about priorities or changes — could number in the dozens. Nah, probably in the hundreds.

Maybe it’s an essay question. Maybe it’s “We’re looking for feedback on [this thing]” where you can provide your thoughts in detail. If that’s the case, may I introduce you to the CDIs?

You make good points, it’s not possible for any human being to read every thread. And certainly when their job is making a game — design, programming, art, writing, and all the other facets of development — reading the forums in large amounts could take them away from their job at a cost to the game.

But if 300 Anet Team members are reading the forums, even if lightly, it starts discussion. Heck, I’ve sent notes about threads to various teams, and I know just about every other person here has done the same. Like this: “I don’t work on [such-and-such], but I found [this linked thread] really interesting.” Or maybe, “This is for your team. I think we can support it by doing [our stuff] if you are going to work on this.”

So surveys? Maybe they’ll happen, I’m not sure. Could you outline your thoughts on how they’d look? Input on something topical? CDIs are great — are you participating? Have you made a suggestion there that we have one on a topic near and dear to your heart?

Please don’t see this as a “never happen” response. I’m mostly just asking questions, that’s all.

I think it’s definitely worth looking into considering it might even call back some players you lost because of the lack of interest in their cries during the first two years of what was being done to the game because the 1% of the 1% were demanding harder everything and conventional mundane mmo elements like the gear treadmill and the dungeon only focus while asking that the team neglect everything else which caused the initial exodus in the first place.

People like to be heard and casuals most notably like to vote so I think it would be a positive.

Popdown menus and limited comment sections for these votes and alternatively request forms could be easily implemented in game and the results could provide a more accurate look at demographics. You could even put these votes in a voting booth on the game :P and place them in categories so that people could vote according to overall playstyle or game element.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Why can’t the survey be something like
on a scale of 1-5 how happy are you with XXXX
out of these 5 things which was your most liked
out of these 5 things which was your least liked
please rate these 5 items in order of most liked to least liked
on a scale of 1-5 how would you rate your experience from levels 1-5, 5-10,10-15, etc
on a scale of 1-5 how would you rate the speed at which you gain skills, the speed at which you gain traits, the speed at which you unlock the ability to do XXXX
what things would you like added to the game out of these 5
what things would you like changed out of these 5
how is your overall satisfaction with XXXX

I think some of these could help you with interpreting what your metrics are telling you. Rather than telling everyone what someone thinks or wants the metrics to tell them.

Now those are interesting ideas! That form of survey makes a lot more sense than the one requiring a answer coupled with an essay question, or the simple yes/no. A few are too vague, but overall, they have good potential. Thanks for these ideas.

Ah come on Gale, don’t act as if no one at the gaming industry never thought of surveys before.

Heck, Blizzard had an ingame survey for EVERY SINGLE QUEST/EVENT during their open betas starting with Burning crusade which was like….8 years ago?

As some intelligent person said, the only reason you don’t have surveys is to hide the massive amounts of negative feedback you would get from most of the recent changes.

I remember in GW2 Beta, you had this survey pop up whenever you finished an event in-game. Add that to dungeons and events you want to know how it’s being received and you’re off to a good start.

Make the dungeon survey pop up on path completion, ask if you want to do it, add like a 5-10s reward for doing it. Make it account bound so you can only do it once and reset it whenever the dungeon is changed somehow so you can do the poll again. Stuff like (rate on 1-10 or whatever system you want to use):

1. How fun was this dungeon path for you

2. How difficult do you think the dungeon path was?

3. How do you feel the direct rewards reflect the difficulty of this dungeon path (wording kittentainly be made easier, and by direct rewards, I mean rewards that you will gain 100% by completing the path. Not including any RNG stuff).

4. Overall, how would you rate the path as a whole

If I remember right Aion used to have in-game surveys once a day for a week or so, to which when you complete them you’re given some fun transformation tonics etc.

Also with the trial accounts, if people do not buy the game by the end maybe they could be sent an email survey as to why they didn’t buy the game, with the last question being left for the user to add additional details/thoughts on the game. (I believe EQ2 did this).

Gaile,
Nice to see you back in the saddle again!
The main problem with feedback on the forums is a very inconsistent mod team.
I have seen some very well written posts with valid points deleted for no apparent reason. For a very long time, it seemed like ANY post that had anything negative to say was deleted and the poster infracted. I and many others simply gave up even trying to say anything as it felt like no one wanted to hear anything except how great a job everyone was doing. Rude, nasty, demanding or insulting post where and SHOULD be deleted but when a player has a valid issue and posts it, to have it deleted and a warning issued just stops people from posting at all.
Feedback on the forums is a great idea, but only if someone wants to listen and honestly from what I have seen, no one at Anet seems to care.
I gave up on the game and uninstalled it months ago. I still watch the forums to see if it improves, and I even reinstalled it and tried it after a death in the family had me very depressed, but it never really seems to change.

Feedback is great, but first the mods need to learn to take the bad with the good and stop using such a heavy hand or there will be no feedback at all.
Second, it would REALLY be helpful if someone simply replied to threads with hundreds of posts complaining about game breaking issues with a simple “We are aware of the issue and looking in to it”. I work in support. I copy and paste that canned response all the time. Users are happy just to know someone has actually seen their message and they are not being ignored. Many times here, we feel ignored.

As to the suggestion of rating features on a scale, that sounds like a great idea.

They could have a “Council Pollster” NPC in LA.

Talk with it, and it’ll pop a web panel that shows one or more weekly or monthly question with a list of predefined options, like “What uncatalogued BL weapon would you like to come back?” or “What is your favorite world boss?”

Players would love that kind of thing.

If you’re considering how the GW2 Team can best hear your input about the game — such as what you’d like to see in the future, how things are working now, etc. — I personally don’t think a survey is necessary. Honestly and truly: These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication. They are read daily by members of the team — probably more people than you think! — and the forums, as a whole, give us a much better view of what’s important to Guild Wars 2 players than most surveys would do.

But if it’s true that the devs are listening, and I’m not saying that they aren’t, then how did we wind up with the spring trait changes or the fall NPE changes? Are you saying that they heard what we were saying, and then decided to do the exact opposite of anything we’d want? I have slightly more faith in them than that. So it stands to reason that if they even entertained the idea that the NPE would be well received, then there must be some sort of breakdown in communication someplace, someone not asking the right questions, and we’d just like to get that solved before they start getting do deep into the next catastropatch.

Ohoni.6057:

If you’re considering how the GW2 Team can best hear your input about the game — such as what you’d like to see in the future, how things are working now, etc. — I personally don’t think a survey is necessary. Honestly and truly: These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication. They are read daily by members of the team — probably more people than you think! — and the forums, as a whole, give us a much better view of what’s important to Guild Wars 2 players than most surveys would do.

But if it’s true that the devs are listening, and I’m not saying that they aren’t, then how did we wind up with the spring trait changes or the fall NPE changes? Are you saying that they heard what we were saying, and then decided to do the exact opposite of anything we’d want? I have slightly more faith in them than that. So it stands to reason that if they even entertained the idea that the NPE would be well received, then there must be some sort of breakdown in communication someplace, someone not asking the right questions, and we’d just like to get that solved before they start getting do deep into the next catastropatch.

To me it feels sometimes like the communication between a-net members who read the forums and those who make the stuff happen is like a game of whisper down the lane.

Basaltface.2786:

Ohoni.6057:

If you’re considering how the GW2 Team can best hear your input about the game — such as what you’d like to see in the future, how things are working now, etc. — I personally don’t think a survey is necessary. Honestly and truly: These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication. They are read daily by members of the team — probably more people than you think! — and the forums, as a whole, give us a much better view of what’s important to Guild Wars 2 players than most surveys would do.

But if it’s true that the devs are listening, and I’m not saying that they aren’t, then how did we wind up with the spring trait changes or the fall NPE changes? Are you saying that they heard what we were saying, and then decided to do the exact opposite of anything we’d want? I have slightly more faith in them than that. So it stands to reason that if they even entertained the idea that the NPE would be well received, then there must be some sort of breakdown in communication someplace, someone not asking the right questions, and we’d just like to get that solved before they start getting do deep into the next catastropatch.

To me it feels sometimes like the communication between a-net members who read the forums and those who make the stuff happen is like a game of whisper down the lane.

I think it’s more of a ADHD moment and trust me I suffer from it and I know what it’s like. They start concentrating on the subject at hand and a piece of paper moves in the room nearby which totally seems like a herd of animals walking by and then BAM! the thought went out the window and in the process of trying to get it back something completely unrelated unnecessary and out in left field comes from it.

Kit Refinement is the perfect example of this. Don’t like people using kits so much, so lets not only take away one of the essential condition removals for the class which weakened it in PVE, but let’s also add things that make absolutely no sense like droplets of glue instead of full on zones. There are other examples as well. Engineers haven’t had a heal bonus at all from being downed, their downed state is the single worst downed state in the game for PVE, they need healing capabilities even if it is in the form of a trait so guess what they added, instead of dropping something useful like maybe an untargetable temporary healing turret when downed we get oil slicks, like that’s going to prevent some mob from actually finishing us off after their initial tripping.

It’s very frustrating especially from the point of view of an Engineer when we’re supposed to be THE class of intelligence, beyond any other in the game and they make it the dumbest class to play. Seriously, Data from goonies has better ideas then the changes they’ve made to Engineers it’s enough to make you double face palm when the patch notes come out.

So I do have to wonder sometimes, I don’t mean to sound harsh because I am not saying these things for any other reason than to express how it feels sometimes as a player of the Engineer class (definitely not to hurt anyone’s feelings or make them angry) but an in game survey, a PTR for features, not content would have solved much of the problems with this title early on.

Kit Refinement is the perfect example of this. Don’t like people using kits so much, so lets not only take away one of the essential condition removals for the class which weakened it in PVE, but let’s also add things that make absolutely no sense like droplets of glue instead of full on zones. There are other examples as well. Engineers haven’t had a heal bonus at all from being downed, their downed state is the single worst downed state in the game for PVE, they need healing capabilities even if it is in the form of a trait so guess what they added, instead of dropping something useful like maybe an untargetable temporary healing turret when downed we get oil slicks, like that’s going to prevent some mob from actually finishing us off after their initial tripping.

Really this highlights my absolutely biggest, #1 absolutely crucial problem with GW2 development: 99% of all class balance changes are designed ENTIRELY with PvP in mind, without giving a second thought to how it might impact PvE utility, while almost no changes are made with PvE viability as the focus. They are, for example, far more concerned with giving players tools to avoid getting stomped, rather than to avoid getting torn apart by a pack of mobs.

Ohoni.6057:

Kit Refinement is the perfect example of this. Don’t like people using kits so much, so lets not only take away one of the essential condition removals for the class which weakened it in PVE, but let’s also add things that make absolutely no sense like droplets of glue instead of full on zones. There are other examples as well. Engineers haven’t had a heal bonus at all from being downed, their downed state is the single worst downed state in the game for PVE, they need healing capabilities even if it is in the form of a trait so guess what they added, instead of dropping something useful like maybe an untargetable temporary healing turret when downed we get oil slicks, like that’s going to prevent some mob from actually finishing us off after their initial tripping.

It always seemed to me, like the classes were DESIGNED with PvE in mind, and then rebalanced into the godawfully designed SPvP system, which makes for a lot of crap on both sides.

Really this highlights my absolutely biggest, #1 absolutely crucial problem with GW2 development: 99% of all class balance changes are designed ENTIRELY with PvP in mind, without giving a second thought to how it might impact PvE utility, while almost no changes are made with PvE viability as the focus. They are, for example, far more concerned with giving players tools to avoid getting stomped, rather than to avoid getting torn apart by a pack of mobs.

I seem to remember filling out game surveys in multiple MMO’s over the last 15 years.

Even one as recently within the last 6 months for a new game out on the market. (And funny thing that, they’ve actually made – successful – changes to the game that reflect some of the responses they received.)

I’ve filled out official surveys on forums – from VN Boards, alpha and beta testing, in- depth surveys mid-game cycle, heck, even exit surveys – that last reach for the ultimate customer feedback.

There’s plenty of precedent, and plenty of examples available, just within the gaming industry alone, if ANet doesn’t have a full-fledged marketing department with the proper level of experience/expertise and/or can’t afford the professionals.

From a 30-year development software “veteran”, I’m just surprised that any professional business entity is not actively interested in numeric data which will definitively answer the question “if I make this design decision, or allocate resources in this way, how many of my customers will I drive away?”

Gaile Gray.6029:

These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication.

Are you sure? I’m pretty sure some devs(Colin? I don’t know anymore) said before that the minority of the players use the forums or reddit or other forums. So how can this forum considered to be an effective medium for communication?

Gaile Gray.6029:

If you’re considering how the GW2 Team can best hear your input about the game — such as what you’d like to see in the future, how things are working now, etc. — I personally don’t think a survey is necessary. Honestly and truly: These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication.

These forums are a_huge_and very effective medium for hearing from the vocal 5% (estimated) of your player base who take the time to post here and sift through the piles of players sniveling for responses from Anet, not so much effective for hearing the opinions of the average Joe who never reads or posts here.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Surveys are difficult to devise in a way that makes them unbiased and statistically accurate.

In-game mail is a strong way to narrow down the opinions of all players because the majority of us read our game mail every day. I know multiple choice can be limiting but if done in a progressive manner it can give some good results.

I suggest to remove must for sub-category in report bug system ing. What happen to reports that have wrong sub-category? (wrong category probably is rare to find) What happen to report in other language? I suggest to improve ss atta, by adding mechanism: when player use ss buton on keyboard during writing report it is automatically attachement – why? becouse now u have ss made when start report, or you can click buton in bot of report bug’ panel, but when you need to do ss for sth that covers this bug tab, u have no ss that fit to your response. Btw, I admire you for wide wisdom about scenery of your game: cuz not always people say where their problem occured and your time when you log to game to fit ing image with ss that u received. I think that some people resign from reporting bugs cuz of low knownledge about if they report correctly. In each category, and sub-c, there should be grey notice what about, what you demand/what will help you to solve – tips. Next suggestion: when we complain about npc routes/behavior, it would to thick option that appear npc route points, when u click them it works like show system, but only copy to report tab. Latest thought is that people that who are responsible for this section of game have problems with finding source of problem, firstly caused cuz of all that I said previously and due of understanding and imo mess.

Report bug ing is part of communication. There are still ways to improve it.

Btw imo not for survey, cuz they will take it as opportunity to maintain other things: we were concentrated on survey so we didin’t do anything besides. But ing survey seems to be better than survey in forum, but! there are minuses like: infinite vote possibility for / per player, so not majortity decisions but clickor your survey. If that happen it will be even worse. Disrupting dirupted Devs with survey, that will take their develompment time, that they could use for sth new, that they always do.-s1+c1, imo is bad decision for us/or decision that doesn’t matter.

Well this certainly isn’t a new idea (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/A-Polling-System/ <- 2 years old although given that the forums don’t show years…), although I’m glad to see it getting some ANet attention.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Why can’t the survey be something like
on a scale of 1-5 how happy are you with XXXX
out of these 5 things which was your most liked
out of these 5 things which was your least liked
please rate these 5 items in order of most liked to least liked
on a scale of 1-5 how would you rate your experience from levels 1-5, 5-10,10-15, etc
on a scale of 1-5 how would you rate the speed at which you gain skills, the speed at which you gain traits, the speed at which you unlock the ability to do XXXX
what things would you like added to the game out of these 5
what things would you like changed out of these 5
how is your overall satisfaction with XXXX

I think some of these could help you with interpreting what your metrics are telling you. Rather than telling everyone what someone thinks or wants the metrics to tell them.

Now those are interesting ideas! That form of survey makes a lot more sense than the one requiring a answer coupled with an essay question, or the simple yes/no. A few are too vague, but overall, they have good potential. Thanks for these ideas.

I had to jump in here.

This is what a typical survey is. Curious why you are surprised(not to sound offending here). For example, Ive participated in so many betas and the most effective betas of a game provide a survey after the beta. ESO did this with a multi-page survey where I was able to rate things on a scale of 1-5 or something similar, as well as provide a few free-form text opinions on certain subjects. In the end, however, if the company chooses to ignore what their player base writes in their surveys, then thats on the developers.

Ofcourse, I must suggest a few things to survey on:

How happy are you with the speed at which traits are unlocked?
How happy are you with how fast your character progresses?
How happy are you with how the story progresses?

…

A few questions that may SEEM biased, but I believe could give you an idea of where the community really stands on some controversial topics.

How happy are you that ascended gear has been added to the game?
Do you enjoy the living story content?
How happy are you with the current status of legendary acquisition?
How happy are you with the current content available for PvP?
How happy are you with the current content available for WvW?
How happy are you with the current open world content(PvE)?
How happy are you with the addition of megaservers?
How happy are you with the addition of Quality of Life improvements(such as the wallet)?

..
Add in some free-text fields…

Please list two things you feel Guild Wars 2 does exceedingly well and why:
Please list two things you feel Guild Wars 2 needs improvement on and why:
Please list two suggestions for GW2:

Just my two cents.

I know the ‘controversial’ questions there will be flags for some people to hop all over my post and try to flog it as much as they can…just sayin…there are threads about people disliking those topics for a reason. Throw it on a survey and see what we think instead of opinions getting buried in mindless 20 page threads that end up being flame wars. Clear, clean, and concise survey where no one but Arenanet can see answers and no one can argue one point or the other with people, derailing the value of the initiative.

At the end of it, if you feel so inclined, post some stats and results.

Just wanted to leave a note; I do support the idea of a survey.
Tho it’s not really simmple, this forum turns out mutch better when speaking about opinions, but some simple poll would be nice feedback. Like;

Do you like the world being partly destroyed in name of Living World?
a) Absolutely, go ahead!
b) Partially, but rebuilding the lost seems like never going to happen…
c) You’re destroying an already liveless world even more to bring it alive. Not a good idea…

Gaile Gray.6029:

I appreciate the feedback. I just wonder how such a survey could work. Most surveys are not essay questions. They’re like this:

• Should we change [this thing]? Yes/No.

That seems unhelpful. First, things are seldom answered with just a yes or no answer. Instinct is to react, “Well, I need to know more about why you’re looking at that area,” or “That’s not as important as [these other things]” or “Yes, please change it [this way] and not [that other way].”

I don’t see why it can’t be supplementary to what you already do.

Right now, you say that the Anet team reads the forums- but that’s not a great indication of what the playerbase wants. You could, at best, count the number of for/against players on a topic and use the forum as a sample size, but that doesn’t seem very accurate to me.

Something like the “NPE” or “Ascended Armor” would be perfect examples of where a survey would come in. You guys read forums, come up with a solution, and then present it.

1) Would you want to see a new, dungeon attainable, armor set to continue character progression beyond Exotic armor? (Y/N)

2) Would you want all story chapters to be condensed into segments, attainable every 10 levels, as opposed to new story content every level/every few levels? (Y/N).

If every 2 weeks or so you present a survey in game, per account, for each user to take and answer these questions, you could continue formulating ideas as you do know, but add that 1 extra step to get a TRUE majority consensus from the current playerbase, as opposed to what the forums claim (“I disagree with you and everyone else on the forums, therefor the ‘silent majority’ that actually agrees with me just isn’t speaking right. Because obviously I’m right and speak for everyone!”).

That’s my $0.02

Gaile Gray.6029:

I appreciate the feedback. I just wonder how such a survey could work. Most surveys are not essay questions. They’re like this:

• Should we change [this thing]? Yes/No.

That seems unhelpful. First, things are seldom answered with just a yes or no answer. Instinct is to react, “Well, I need to know more about why you’re looking at that area,” or “That’s not as important as [these other things]” or “Yes, please change it [this way] and not [that other way].”

Or maybe you’re thinking:

• Which of these things should we focus on? [list]

Thank you for this conversation, Gaile, and you raise a couple of very good points.

First, given how good ArenaNet is at metrics, I’d suggest adding another, “net promoter score”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter

Second, a tool I’ve seen used over the years is “importance-performance analysis”. The original scholarly article describing it, from 1977 is (unfortunately behind a paywall) at
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1250495
A google search found an example here, which illustrates different segments of customers having very different needs and perceptions of how well those needs are being met
http://www.academia.edu/1881603/Importance-performance_analysis_of_guest_entertainment_technology_amenities_in_the_lodging_industry

Lastly, I agree, it is absolutely necessary that the survey be tied to account, and available to every account, so that the ballot box can’t be stuffed. People will still self select for responding: it is important not to present someone with a wall of incomprehensible choices (ie a really badly designed importance-performance survey presentation) or with a survey beyond their attention span (a massively long survey will also produce skewed data, because a lot of people will simply abandon it). It is also important not to do what Blizzard did with the WoW cancel-account survey, which was to provide a list of choices so filtered by what management wanted to hear that for most customers none of the answers really captured “the message is raid or quit, and I won’t raid on your terms, so you’ve told me to quit”, or “the cataclysm expansion destroyed what I loved about this game, so there is no reason for me to stay”, or “the community environment is toxic”. It is super important to allow open ended answers and “other” topics, prompting for a short explanation. Anyhow, there are tools which send an email with a customer-unique url for the survey, with the raw data associated with a specific account held by a third party so the answers would be anonymous aggregates to ArenaNet, but would accept no more than one response per account.

PS

The classic failure of the message boards, watched and summarized by a hierarchy of CM’s, which is then summarized by management to the top, is that at each step the data is filtered both by the viewpoint of the reader/summarizer and by what management wants to hear. So by the time the data gets to the top, it’s so distorted it bears no resemblance to statistically valid data on what the various segments of the customer base actually thought was both important and needed attention. What is done to keep these biases out of the current approach?

@FellowPlayers:
a. We had surveys in beta:
As many already said, we had surveys in beta. Even if the in-game survey mechanics were deleted the source code is still there, in some in some Git repo branch or whatever distributed version control system they use… Bringing the code back takes even less effort and time than arbitrarily raising the gem price.

Subject: Request #<ticket-number>: How would you rate the support you received?
[…]
We’d love to hear what you think of our customer service. Please take a moment to answer one simple question by clicking either link below:

How would you rate the support you received?

Good, I’m satisfied

Bad, I’m unsatisfied

This survey e-mail is intended only to provide feedback on your customer support experience. A response here will not update your ticket.
[…]

So please, it really hurts me too see all of you all struggling so much. They don’t want it. And I bet this thread will get dumped as soon as possible.

And what happens when they read something they dont like the sounds of?

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

And what happens when they read something they dont like the sounds of?

(See last paragraph of my post 3 posts above.) I concur that when the input is filtered subjectively, or worse, through the biases of a middle manager doing the filtering, the essence of the content can easily be lost. Just read the history books about the progress reports within the US government/military during the Vietnam war 40-50 years ago, where “we are losing this war on the ground” turned into “things are going well” by the time the reports had been filtered through all the layers of management…

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

And what happens when they read something they dont like the sounds of?

It would be no different than reading responses from their alpha testers and from forum posters.

They are free to weigh it, consider it, interpret it as they please or ignore it.

Or as is often typical in dysfunctional organizations, (as bewhatever has pointed out twice now), “filter” it so that management only hears “good news”. (Messengers are often “shot”.)

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

We already had many surveys and white knights told us that forum community is minority,happy people play game/upset sit on forums and bla bla bla.

Which is probably why when I play I play GW: Prophecies through Eye of the North and have never gone past about 30th level in GW2.

Like somebody before said people very often demend really difficult content which requires much time to develop . But Anet can give us really a lot of recycled content.

Like, flexible skill bars so we can assign our skills in the order that suits us – as it was in GW1.

In game survey is great idea we will see how many people want new map like dry tops, how many people want new dung and how many people want new pvp map . But there is one problem , people would see survey and they will demend content and right now anet is just sitting and doing nothing without any responsibility .

I’m still waiting for the completion of the Palawa Joko story that was written up in the magazine where I got my Destroyer minipet, rofl.

I think the problem with the surveys during beta, and I thought this at the time too, was that we were so excited to even be playing the game, objectivity suffered.
And this is why bringing those in-game surveys back now would be a good idea.
We’ve had time to get over the novelty and excitement phase and are now better equipped to criticise content.

But this is all pie-in-the-sky thinking, and I’m not likely to play this game ever again. I feel too strongly that ArenaNet have critically compromised their artistic vision and integrity with a base lust for cash.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Why can’t the survey be something like
on a scale of 1-5 how happy are you with XXXX
out of these 5 things which was your most liked
out of these 5 things which was your least liked
please rate these 5 items in order of most liked to least liked
on a scale of 1-5 how would you rate your experience from levels 1-5, 5-10,10-15, etc
on a scale of 1-5 how would you rate the speed at which you gain skills, the speed at which you gain traits, the speed at which you unlock the ability to do XXXX
what things would you like added to the game out of these 5
what things would you like changed out of these 5
how is your overall satisfaction with XXXX

I think some of these could help you with interpreting what your metrics are telling you. Rather than telling everyone what someone thinks or wants the metrics to tell them.

Now those are interesting ideas! That form of survey makes a lot more sense than the one requiring a answer coupled with an essay question, or the simple yes/no. A few are too vague, but overall, they have good potential. Thanks for these ideas.

actually, koreans have been doing exactly those kind of ingame surveys for the past ten years (yup no kiddin’) and those games I won’t mention are still happily running tailored around their customers.
When eight-or-so years ago I was playing such games, every once in a while (usually in a cycle of two/three months) a survey would pop ingame immediately after loggin in the main city hub: there were no ways to avoid it, you had to complete it to play the game, but it was stated it was really really important. And it was.
The structure was exactly the one described by Lobo, and allowed for a much more accurate picture of the playerbase opinion/reaction/future expectation; as much as I love this forum, it represents a tiny portion of the overall population (everyone in the field knows that more than 90% of customers will not voice their concerns), but it is also true that said statistics needs to take into account the “newcomers factor”.
When I switched from that MMO to gw2, I was used to take so many surveys that was really surprised to not see one here…..

You can try a survey, but in the end, all we’ll be left with is: “I guess everything is terrible and also everything is great; also a lot of people want X feature added, but apparently a lot of people would quit it we add X feature…”

That’s a lot of time/money wasted to figure out the player base has absolutely no consensus on what they do or don’t want from this game. They just want this game (or whatever game comes next) to be the greatest MMO they’ve ever played in their entire lives forever…

Draknar.5748:

You can try a survey, but in the end, all we’ll be left with is: “I guess everything is terrible and also everything is great; also a lot of people want X feature added, but apparently a lot of people would quit it we add X feature…”

That’s a lot of time/money wasted to figure out the player base has absolutely no consensus on what they do or don’t want from this game. They just want this game (or whatever game comes next) to be the greatest MMO they’ve ever played in their entire lives forever…

It’s a fallacy to think that the player base is a single uniform segment. We all know it’s not, in any game. The key is mining the data to find the clusters of people — noting that only rarely does someone fit in only one category — and then figure out how to serve enough of those clusters to pay expenses with a little left over.

Kind of like winning an election, or getting a bill passed in Congress. Make deliberate choices which segments to delight, which to be good enough for, and which you will regrettably have to alienate to accomplish the first two.

Oh, and gaming customers have very long memories, so don’t ever go back and try to serve a group you’ve already driven off. They’re gone. Choose your customers well.

Three additional comments:

1. There is formal training, called QFD, which the auto industry imported from Japan back 30 or 40 years ago, in a systematic way to make feature choices in a complex product. I took that training in the 1980s. I think ArenaNet senior staff would benefit from understanding this way of thinking, even if they never applied the formal process.

2. There are textbooks on developing online games, by authors like Mulligan, Bartle, and Koster. I think ArenaNet senior staff would benefit from the perspective of each of these authors, even if they do not agree with every position those authors take.

3. One of the very, very basic philosophies in marketing, called the Kano model, is that customer needs and expectations come in three kinds: unstated needs, the needs on which products compete, and opportunities to delight. It is absolutely essential to know your customer well enough that, in pursuit of opportunities to delight, you do not run afoul of unstated needs and as a result drive your customers to your competitors because you took away the product they wanted to keep buying from you.

Decrypter.1785:

Ide like to propose anet does a survey because it seems the player base and developers are on different pages atm

More importantly, “the players” are on different pages with other players.

The great thing about a survey is that it’s a quick way to measure the pulse of people on a particular topic. The horrible thing is that it’s terrible about understanding why people feel the way they do and worse, they are easily misunderstood even by the people sponsoring the survey. Oh sure, there are surveys that drill deep down into understanding the issues, but those require hiring firms that charge a ton of money for their expertise. And even then, (a) you only get answers to the questions you think to ask and (b) people are still prone to misunderstand what the survey is telling them about the situation.

I think a more important thing for ANet to do would be to figure out a way to get input about the game (and how ANet handles its future) from people who don’t usually provide such input. In other words, redditors, guru-ists, and forumistas might only be 10-30% of all players who feel strongly about the game. So how does ANet get solid, detailed, informed feedback from the other 70%+?