Guild Wars 2

I have always found reading the forum very informative and interesting, and it’s occurred to me that there are always people who have good points to make, questions about the game and potentially great ideas. Dare i include myself as one of these people.

It is apparent on many forums topics that a lot of people seem to feel frustrated(understandably) when their points are not getting across or being heard. Because of this perhaps an implementation of a system on the forum that allows players to submit posts about any bugs they have come across or perhaps make suggestions about possible new features in the game and allow players to up vote or down vote(or rank out of 5 etc.) said suggestions in a way that, when something becomes apparently popular it would be seen by the Dev’s, and as a result the more pressing matters felt by the gaming community will be more noticeable and can be addressed faster, whilst at the same time making players feel less like an unheard voice and possibly helping you guys with some more awesome idea’s.

May I direct you to:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collaborative-Development/first

and

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collaborative-Development-Request-for-Topics/first

I read those, it just seems like they are having to ‘sift’ through loads of messages to read some key points that could be highlighted and made to stand out with maybe some options to rate suggestions.

I keep posting bug reports or suggestions but I have already learned to not to give a candy about not being answered to it. I did what I could I won’t be crying over it. I don’t care anymore if they don’t care.

Well, there’s a lot of signal to noise here, and not a lot of it is constructive.

Anet could implement a simple “Last read by ArenaNet at XX:XX:XX on Jan1 2013” on the top of the thread.

Somewhere in one of the Dev posts about communication they say it’s really hard to go through the forums and figure out the general feelings of the players. I didn’t mention it there but my first thought upon reading that was “Really? It seems I can go through the forums in 15-20 minutes and figure out what people are complaining about the most.”

Not sure what the problem is there…

Thing is, are they actually problems or are they not problems but something that individual players feel slighted over.

Every 4th post seems to be about how something is too difficult/grindy/pointless.

Then people come in, depending on how desirable the reward and echo the OP.

Then you have a bandwagon of appeal to emotion that makes it look like a problem is bigger than it is.

Mackdose.6504:

Thing is, are they actually problems or are they not problems but something that individual players feel slighted over.

Every 4th post seems to be about how something is too difficult/grindy/pointless.

Then people come in, depending on how desirable the reward and echo the OP.

Then you have a bandwagon of appeal to emotion that makes it look like a problem is bigger than it is.

Because obviously the severity of a problem and the number of subsequent complaints about it are inversely proportional.

Mackdose.6504:

Well, there’s a lot of signal to noise here, and not a lot of it is constructive.

Anet could implement a simple “Last read by ArenaNet at XX:XX:XX on Jan1 2013” on the top of the thread.

That’s…actually a pretty good idea.

Vorch.2985:

Mackdose.6504:

Well, there’s a lot of signal to noise here, and not a lot of it is constructive.

Anet could implement a simple “Last read by ArenaNet at XX:XX:XX on Jan1 2013” on the top of the thread.

That’s…actually a pretty good idea.

There are at least two big problems to this:

1) “the dev’s read this, why aren’t they commenting on anything!!! we want answers NOW!”

2) *5th+ post on same topic * “why aren’t the dev’s bothering to read out post! they must hate all of their players”

While it seems like a nice idea, it would quickly be turned into a way to complain.

Place your head in the role of a developer.
First you need to understand two things
1: the more people are complaining and the more severe they are complaining is important for the priority of an issue. You cant make everyone happy. Developping a game is making decisions. Each one has pro’s and cons and will be debated here. The amount of debate is a good way to know what is important.
2: People who are happy play the game. People who are unhappy complain on forums.

GW2 is alive and kicking. The game has many ex-gw1 players, many ex-WoW players, many ex-LotRO players. etc , etc. The game atracked people from many games and is very big and booming. I know that all those people come from different backgrounds and have different expectations.

For now they are all loyal. But I also sense a conflict between those different expectations. Many people are happy with the game but are missing elements. At the moment Areanet is trying to do two things. 1: please all sides long enough. 2: find a long term solutions for this ‘conflict’.As long as 2 isn’t reached, 1 will be important to them. This means making often decissions you dont like and sometimes decisions you do like. If arenanet screws the balance up for you. feel free to leave and no hard feelings. For me personally I dont agree with everything they are doing, but I feel being heard and have enough hopes that they will find the balance needed for the long term solution.

Specially cause for me this is a game. I come to the game to relax and have fun, chat and meet with friends and hang out together while doing fun things.

Mackdose.6504:

Thing is, are they actually problems or are they not problems but something that individual players feel slighted over.

If enough people are upset about something, even if it’s working as intended and balanced, then there’s a problem.

Even the most unbalanced piece of crud game will be played if it’s fun. And even the most balanced and focused game in the world will fail if people aren’t enjoying it.

There’s always going to be someone complaining about something. Maybe a few someones. But they need to take note when it’s a lot of someones, with a consistent complaint.