Guild Wars 2

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

So how does ANet get solid, detailed, informed feedback from the other 70%+?

The way they usually do – by voting with their feet.

The bottom line is you can’t make anyone do a survey. This 70%+ are probably too engrossed in the game, going along with the ride. New players, while being freshly handheld and spoonfed, are subjected to toxic in-game text from other disgruntled players. Before you know it, these new players lose interest, not because of the content/story/etc. but because of the other players, either in map chat or within a given guild.

Behaviour breeds behaviour.

Players new into an environment such as an MMO are easily influenced. If the overall feel is positive, they’re likely to stay longer and enjoy the game for what it is. However it won’t take too long for the veil to be pulled back on the real state of the game. No survey will stop people from abandonning a skinking ship.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

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

This is what I meant by segmenting the player base. This isn’t a million people each with wildly different expectations, it’s players preferring something between ten and twenty different playstyles with varying degrees of skill. Or maybe, there are five or six classes of content in the game, and each player prefers one or two and actually plays three or four.

If the devs grasp a segmentation that’s even close, it will be self fulfilling, because the people who they missed will all leave sooner or later. More importantly, they will be able to look at what they’re doing through the eyes of each of the segments, and will know in advance that this change or that new feature will delight this segment, and alienate that one. Customer reactions won’t be surprises any more. Plans can be tested in advance, systematically, against the expectations of each target segment.

Filtered through a defective segmentation, the player input will seem like loud, self-contradictory noise and the developers will “learn” (using the term narrowly from Psychology) to ignore that input. One defective segmentation through which the input might be viewed would be the lens only of GW1, which is not an MMO. Another defective segmentation through which the input might be viewed would be that solely of a developer of games for Playstation/Xbox/Wii. A third defective segmentation might be assuming all of the players are unmarried and uneducated U.S. males between 13 and 27 years old, which is so far from the MMO demographic as to be laughable.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

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.

This is what focus groups and open ended 1 on 1 surveys are for. Getting a sample that’s actually representative is really hard, and the discipline to distribute the raw data (warts and all) is hard, particularly for weak or insecure executives.

If the survey data is going to be filtered through the biases of someone who does not understand the customers or is using a defective segmentation, then yes, it is a waste of time and resources. The continued expenditure of development resources under those circumstances is not a wise use of shareholder resources.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

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%+?

This, I think, was the point of this thread: encouraging ArenaNet to capture input from every account holder who cared enough to respond, approximating the active player base.

Ideally, I would like a living set of survey results associated with my account, which I can change any time I am logged into the game, where I answer honestly and for my playstyle the “importance” (to me) and “performance” (how I perceive GW2 is currently doing) in less than 10 target areas, and can then name up to three other areas that weren’t on the list to rate as well. ArenaNet could weight these by gems bought in the last month, gems used in the last month, hours played in the last month, or any other objective measure they think is relevant…but should then make the metrics available to everyone in the company, not just the senior leaders.

laokoko.7403:

I think lots of the time it is more than a popularity contest.

For example if the developer knows players want item A, but item A just take way too long to develop, and is hard to do, more than that if the developer did a bad job players will be angry anyway. Not only that, since it take very long to develop the content, many people might get impatient.

But, item B is much easier to develop, the developer can do it quickly, and many people will actually do item B, eventhough the players arn’t thrill about it, they’ll actually log on and do it. There is small chance of failure.

If you are the developer, which route will you take. I just think it is more than what players want scenario.

I have to object here because that’s what going wrong in my opinion.
When the game shipped I thought they would expand the game like adding more events and polishing dungeons or addressing the general lack of endgame content, pick up loose ends like the polymock arenas, minipet duels, the ingame-lexicon that got scraped shortly before release or the mini dungeon in caledon forest.
They did none of them. Instead they launched their Living Story, which could be nice but I think that the game would have a much more solid footing if those things would’ve been addressed first.

It’s really sad to see the people in this thread try so hard to improve the game and get their ideas going after all the times ANet has slapped us in the face…

Does anyone here actually believe anything is going to change? There have been “Of course we hear you!” threads all the time every couple of months but nothing ever improved, it only got worse because it’s just damage control.
ANet has worked themselves into a corner and for all I care they can crash and burn for their arrogance.

This is what ignoring key problems for well over 2 years (and a ton of laziness) gets you and we shouldn’t be sitting here and even doing their job for them if they don’t even care. Let them milk china for as long as they can and realize they messed up when it’s too late.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

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%+?

bewhatever.2390:

This, I think, was the point of this thread: encouraging ArenaNet to capture input from every account holder who cared enough to respond, approximating the active player base.

I drew a different conclusion about the OP, but rather than argue about what the “intent” was (or was not), I hope that is the result of the post: that it helps ANet recognize the importance of soliciting CDI-like feedback from the silent majority and that it helps those already giving feedback recognize that there are a lot of different points of view, that can’t be adequately captured by by a survey.

bewhatever.2390:

Ideally, I would like a living set of survey results associated with my account, which I can change any time I am logged into the game, where I answer honestly and for my playstyle the “importance” (to me) and “performance” (how I perceive GW2 is currently doing) in less than 10 target areas, and can then name up to three other areas that weren’t on the list to rate as well. ArenaNet could weight these by gems bought in the last month, gems used in the last month, hours played in the last month, or any other objective measure they think is relevant…but should then make the metrics available to everyone in the company, not just the senior leaders.

This is a really intriguing idea. I think it would be great and practical for ANet to find a way to get feedback about the existing game from within the game itself. (Perhaps offering a random drawing among those who submitted sufficient and usable comments.)

However, that only covers the game we see: ANet still needs to find a way to find out from the silent majority what they think about things that aren’t in the game…and that’s much more difficult, because often times, people don’t know how to articulate what they really want.

For example, there’s been a ton of requests for a traditional expansion, but I don’t think anyone really cares about the “tradition” or the “expansion” so much as they are looking for the feeling they get when they purchase a traditional expansion: that fresh “new car” scent, that means they get an opportunity to start fresh without having to start over. The Living Story brings a new epic adventure, but it doesn’t really do anything to make us feel like kids in the candy shop. Traditionally, that’s achieved by adding races, profs, and zones, but there are lots of other ways to achieve that too.